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batboyblog · 2 years

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Senate 2022: You'd Better Vote!

If you're an American VERY IMPORTANT! elections are coming up on November 8th. Since the 2020 election the US Senate has been tied at 50 Democrats and 50 Republicans with Vice-President Harris casting the tie breaking vote that gives Democrats their majority. Even with such a tight margin Democrats have managed to pass the largest climate action taken by any country so far on earth (yet), lower prescription drug costs, pass the first gun control law since the 1990s , made lynching a federal crime after over 100 years of trying, made Juneteenth a federal holiday, confirmed the first black woman ever to serve on the Supreme Court, passed a trillion dollar infrastructure bill to rebuild our roads, bridges, transportation, better internet, clean water, and support electric cars, saved the US Post Office, passed a renewal of the Violence Against Women Act which had been in limbo since 2019.

Imagine all that the Democrats in the Senate could get done in the next 2 years with a stable majority? On the Flip side if Republicans net just one seat Mitch McConnell has made it clear there will be no progress if he's majority leader again. There are 35 Senate seats up on November 8th, I'm gonna list out the 9 seats with vulnerable Democrats who need re-electing and seats Democrats can flip to expand their majority. Everyone needs to vote, but voting is the start, the most basic thing you need to do, if you live in any of these states PLEASE sign up to volunteer for these candidates, to go talk to voters, to register new voters, to give rides to the polls etc. If you don't live in any of these states, you can still volunteer to make phone calls or text voters it's easy! if you have money to give please please give money campaigns are so expensive. Finally most of these campaigns have merch shops so if you feed more comfortable buying a shirt or a bag or whatever do that lots of them have cool pro-choice things.

Arizona

Mark Kelly (Re-elect)

Senator Mark Kelly was elected in a special election in 2020 and is running for a full term this year. Kelly is a former astronaut and the husband of gun violence survivor and gun control advocate Gabby Giffords. Kelly is a strong supporter of gun control an issue he's worked on with Giffords as an activist for 10 years before Congress. Republicans have nominated Blake Masters, who worked for one of Trump's top supporters, Peter Thiel, Thiel spent 13 million dollars to get Masters nominated. Masters calls himself a "America First Conservative" and a "hard-core nationalist". Masters has embraced the racist "Great Replacement" conspiracy theory, supports Trump's conspiracy theories about the 2020 election being stolen, is against gay marriage, says gun violence is all the fault of black people, and is against aid to Ukraine. Kelly is a good democrat, Masters is a white nationalist and election denier, we need Kelly back in the Senate, and we need to keep Masters far far away

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Florida

Val Demings (Flip)

Congresswoman Val Demings has represented the city of Orlando in the US House since 2017. Before that she served as Orlando's first woman chief of police. In Congress Demings has used her law enforcement background to lend credibility to gun control and police reform. Demings also served as one of the impeachment managers in Trump's first impeachment trial. If elected Val Demings will be Florida's first woman and first black Senator. Demings is running to unseat Republican Senator Marco Rubio. After running against Trump in the 2016 primaries Rubio became one of Trump's biggest supporters in Congress. Rubio reacted to the Parkland shooting in his state by doubling down on opposing any gun control, Val Demings voted to ban assault rifles. Rubio has also been a cheerleader for Florida Governor Ron DeSantis' anti-LGBT/anti-Trans policies that bully queer students in Florida, he doesn't believe in the right to same sex marriage and is for banning books. Rubio also wants a total ban on abortion in all cases, Val Demings has a 100% rating from NARAL Pro-Choice America. Florida needs a strong supporter of Gun control, climate action, the right to choose, and LGBT rights in the Senate, Florida needs Demings not Rubio

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Georgia

Raphael Warnock (re-elect)

Senator Raphael Warnock was elected in a special election in 2020 and is running for a full 6 year term this year. Warnock is the first black senator from the State of Georgia and the first Democrat elected in 20 years. Before becoming a senator Warnock was the pastor of the historic Ebenezer Baptist Church, which was Dr. Martin Luther King Jr's church and a center of the 1960s civil rights movement. Warnock used his position to protest and fight against the death penalty, to expand medicare in Georgia, for gun control, and for voting rights. In the Senate, Senator Warnock has been one of the most outspoken on voting rights pushing the John Lewis Voting Rights Act named after his late friend Georgia Congressman John Lewis. Republicans for nominated former football player, and Trump super fan, Herschel Walker to try to unseat Senator Warnock. Walker vocally supported Trump's election lies, posting many times on social media that Biden did not win the 2020 election. Walker declared this week that climate action was "giving money to trees" and "don't we have enough trees?". Walker believes in a total ban on abortion, and is against LGBT rights. Walker is against gun control and floated the idea of the government monitoring all social media and internet usage by Americans instead of gun control. Walker beat his now ex-wife Cindy Grossman, and threatened her with a gun and knives multiple times, after the divorce Grossman feared Walker would kill her and her boyfriend. Walker also is a dead beat dad who has a number of children out of wedlock that he has no contact with, he has criticized black men many times for being absent fathers. The US Senate doesn't need a man who threatens to shoot women, re-elect Senator Warnock.

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Nevada

Catherine Cortez Masto (re-elect)

Senator Catherine Cortez Masto was narrowly elected in 2016 and his running for her second term in the Senate. Senator Cortez Masto is the first women elected to represent Nevada in the Senate and the first and to date ONLY Latina elected to the US Senate. When she was Nevada's attorney general Cortez Masto sued Bank of America for it's predatory lending practices and won nearly a billion dollars against the bank. As a US Senator Cortez Masto has been a major supporter of clean energy jobs and hopes to turn Nevada into the solar energy capital of America. Republicans have nominated former Nevada attorney general Adam Laxalt to try to unseat Cortez Masto. Laxalt spent his time as AG (2015-2019) suing the Obama Administration EPA to fight against strong climate regulations. Laxalt opposed a multi-state law suit against ExxonMobil for it's role in downplaying Climate change. Laxalt also sued the Obama administration to stop DACA, filed briefs supporting radical anti-abortion laws from Texas and Mississippi when they went to court, and sued the Obama Department of Labor to stop certain workers being paid over time. After leaving office Laxalt was the Chairman of Trump's 2020 re-election effort in Nevada. As Chairman Laxalt was the leading figure in the election conspiracy in Nevada claiming the election in his state was fraudulent and Biden hadn't really won Nevada. Laxalt has made many false claims of election fraud in Nevada in the 2020 election. Laxalt launched his 2022 campaign for Senate claiming "woke corporations" "academia" and "the radical left" have taken over America. Nevada has to send Cortez Masto, the only Latina in the Senate, back for another term, Laxalt is dangerously unfit.

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New Hampshire

Maggie Hassan (re-elect)

Senator Maggie Hassan was elected in the closest senate race of 2016 and is running for her second term in the senate. Senator Hassan was a key vote to save Obamacare from repel in 2017. During her time in the US Senate Senator Hassan has helped pass bills to more than double the funding to help treat the opioid crisis as well as banning surprise medical billing. Senator Hassan first ran for office 20 years ago as a way to advocate for her son who has Cerebral palsy, she's been a strong advocate for disability rights and special education through out her time in public service. Because New Hampshire has one of the latest primaries (September 13th) we don't know for sure which Republican will be nominated to face her in November. The front runner is a retired general named Don Bolduc. Bolduc's first foray into into politics was spinning and supporting 2020 election denial conspiracy theories, even after the January 6th riot. Bolduc has closely tied himself to Trump. Bolduc called fellow Republican, New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu "Chinese Communist sympathizer" and accused him of "supports terrorism" for not being conservative enough and loyal to Trump enough. New Hampshire should send back a Senator who gets things done and not a wing-nut calling people in his own party communists and terrorists.

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North Carolina

Cheri Beasley (flip)

Former Chief Justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court Cheri Beasley is running to fill a Senate seat opened up by the retirement of Republican Senator Richard Burr. In 2008 Beasley became the first black women to win a state wide election in North Carolina when she was elected to the Court of Appeals. In 2012 she was appointed to the state Supreme Court and won election in 2014. She was appointed the Chief Justice in 2019 the first black woman to serve as the State's Chief Justice. Beasley lost by less than 500 votes her run for a full term as Chief Justice in 2020. In her time as a public defender and elected Judge and Justice Beasley has stressed fairness and equity. If elected she'd be the first black Senator from North Carolina. She's stressed health care and abortion rights as key issues of her campaign. Republicans have nominated Congressman Ted Budd to try to fill the seat. Congressman Budd is a member of the radical "House Freedom Caucus". He voted to repeal Obamacare in 2017. Budd was also a major support of Trump's attempt to over throw the result of the 2020 election. Congressman Budd voted against certifying the election result on January 6th, even after the capital had been stormed by violent Trump supporters. Budd is Trump's hand picked candidate for the North Carolina Senate seat, Budd only launched his campaign after meeting with Trump in Mar-a-Lago. North Carolina doesn't need an election denying Trump toady for Senator, send Cheri Beasley to Congress.

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Ohio

Tim Ryan (flip)

Congressman Tim Ryan is running to fill a Senate seat being opened up by the retirement of Republican Senator Rob Portman. Congressman Ryan has represented the Youngstown area of Ohio since 2003. In his time in Congress Ryan has been a champion of unions and American workers. His Senate run is focused on protecting American manufacturing jobs and bring well paying union jobs back to the American heart land. Ryan is strongly pro-choice. Republicans have nominated author and venture capitalist JD Vance. Vance is closely tied to Trump money man Peter Thiel as well as Arizona candidate and white nationalist Blake Masters. Vance has publicly said that women should stay in abusive marriages. Vance is against abortion in all cases even rape or health of the mother. Vance has also publicly stated he sees the populist, antisemitic, anti-LGBT dictatorship of Hungarian Prime Minster Viktor Orbán as a model for America. Vance talked about how he hopes in a second Trump term to purge all civil servants who don't agree with Trumpism and replace them with "our people". America does not need a pro-fascist who supports wife beating in the Senate, send Tim Ryan to the Senate instead.

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Pennsylvania

John Fetterman (flip)

Pennsylvania Lieutenant Governor John Fetterman is running to fill a seat opened by the retirement of Republican Senator Pat Toomey. First elected Lt Governor in 2018 Fetterman has used his platform to advocate the legalization of marijuana. Fetterman also is a vocal supporter of the LGBT community clashing with the Republican state legislature repeatedly about the display of a pride flag off the balcony of his official office at the state capital. Fetterman is running a campaign that is strongly pro-choice, supportive of criminal justice reform, and calls healthcare a human right. Republicans have nominated Mehmet Oz, better known as Dr. Oz. As a reality TV star "physician" Oz was criticized repeatedly for advocating fake cures and dangerous weight loss pills. During the Covid-19 pandemic Oz pushed Trump's favorite fake cure, Hydroxychloroquine, which is not a treatment for Covid. While running for the senate Oz has endorsed banning trans people from sports by law, and that trans youth are based on "false science". Oz is also says he'd vote to repeal Obamacare and strongly supports fracking. Pennsylvania doesn't need a flip flopping TV huckster from New Jersey as its Senator, election Fetterman.

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Wisconsin

Mandela Barnes (flip)

Wisconsin Lieutenant Governor Mandela Barnes is running to unseat Republican Senator Ron Johnson. Barnes served in the state legislature from 2013 till 2017 before being elected Lt Governor in 2018, he is the first black person to win state wide office in Wisconsin. As Lt Governor Barnes served as the chair of the Climate Task Force putting forward a 55 point plan to combat climate change. Barnes has been a vocal supporter of policies like Medicare for All, a Green New Deal, and marijuana legalization. If elected Barnes would be the first black Senator from Wisconsin and one of only two Senators in their 30s. Incumbent Republican Senator Ron Johnson has been Wisconsin's Senator since 2010 and is running for his 3rd term in office. In the Senate Johnson was one of Trump's strongest allies. Johnson was one of the main congressional pushers of the 2020 election conspiracy theories to the point his home town paper the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel called him a member of the "Sedition Caucus". Johnson also has pushed conspiracy theories that the January 6th riot was the fault of Nancy Pelosi or the FBI, and said he didn't think it was a big deal and felt safe during the attack because they were Trump supporters. Johnson has also pushed Covid misinformation, such as mouthwash as a treatment for Covid-19 or that "thousands" of deaths had been linked to the vaccine. Johnson has blamed mass shootings on a failure to teach "values" and is against gun control. in resent weeks Johnson has floated the idea of privatizing Social Security and Medicare. Protect Social Security, send Barnes to Congress.

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If you're one of the 85 million Americans who live in one of these States please PLEASE PLEASE remember to VOTE November 8th

Everyone remember to VOTE NOVEMBER 8th! vote in EVERY election from School Board on up to Governor and Senate, now more than ever all these elections matter and they matter a lot.

if you have $10, $5, even $1 to spare please please please think about giving it to one of these candidates, Democrats are passing big things and are running against the worst of the worst.

If you live in one of these states please please PLEASE think about giving just one weekend between now and Election Day to talk to voters and help turn out the vote. Even if you don't live in any of these states you can call or text voters in these states and help these campaigns

#Politics #US politics #Democrats #Senate #Florida #pennsylvania #Ohio #Georgia #Arizona #election #vote #voting #November 8th

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thechanelmuse · 2 years

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That little ass comment box and it’s limits on the length I can type is driving me nuts. Let’s do this on a clean post 🙃.

@khalif-horton

I don’t know Yvette Carnell like that; I only know of her looking for a gold sticker for whatever she’s doing/done and being a leader of an organization. I’m not in search of a leader. I’m firm on lineage-based federal and state reparations for Black Americans (preferably federal before states), an Anti-Black Hate Crime bill and data disaggregation. Lineage-based because our ancestors built the United States through forced chattel labor that others immigrated to, and you can’t do anything to benefit one race (so they say 🙃) because it violates the 14th amendment.

Data disaggregation makes things clearer in wealth disparity amongst other things, but also for anyone having that strange identity crisis as to who they truly are simply because they were born in the United States. This is why lineage matters. I can’t be me while they’re being me and them simultaneously. Hence the student union example. Disaggregation should’ve been done, but wasn’t as another layered undermining tactic. Heavy state and federal penalties needs to be attached with falsifying to simply garner whatever benefits and resources. You also won’t have shit like the likes of Rachel Dolezal and Mindy Kaling’s brother sliding through.

Racially Black people are different ethnic groups with distinct histories, cultures and the ancestral lands where our ancestors were ultimately rooted. We’ll prob disagree on that. You’re a Pan-African and I am not.

Reparations is not for racism. It’s a debt owed. But I also want genocide and theft in there which links to Jim Crow and it’s governmental sanctions, the bombing and torch of our businesses and towns that were kept desolate or turned into lakes, 15 million acres of land—including farmland and heirs property—stolen down to 1 million acres left, etc. People be out here passing around videos of Black Americans being exterminated by the slave patrol police like white people used to do with those postcards of lynching barbecues. It’s genocide. (It’s not lost on me it happens to other racially Black people who look like us.)

Black Americans make up 50% of the homeless in our country, including our vets and those on Skid Row. Our median wealth is projected to be 0 by 2053. We have to advocate for us. Ain’t nobody coming to save us. People are just onlooking. Ain’t no UN coming despite us checking off every box per their definition of genocide:

Killing members of the group;

Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;

Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; [black maternal mortality]

Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group. [that child trafficking CPS that remove a child for any reason they choose and ASFA]

So, you don’t support a particular form of reparations, but you’ve been involved in reparations work for 2 years? What does that even mean?

CARICOM has their own reparations plan going to get what’s owed from that damn Queen and other countries that played a part in the enslavement and labor of their ancestors. The African Union has their own thing going for the Scramble for Africa. Black Americans will not survive without reparations and the country won’t survive without us. The government knows it. It’s spite. People know. So what do you support specifically as redress for Black Americans?

SN: What I mean by “racially” Black - We know race doesn’t exist, but is a caste here which people who immigrate or are born here via immigrants are funneled into by choice or not. Opposed to “Black” as an ethnicity, which some Black Americans still use like an ethnic group.

And about that celebrate part you mentioned in your other comment. I’m doing it for the ancestors. Ancestors like Callie Guy House and Isaiah Dickerson been leading the way, like when they started The National Ex-Slave Mutual Relief Bounty and Pension Association in 1894. People like them were waking up other ancestors to be firm in knowing they were owed. A lot of Black Americans today have awakened while others are continuing to wake up. So I celebrate for the ancestors even if it’s small strides leading to bigger ones.

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i-eat--kids · 3 years

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We need to learn history, especially American history.

Including the disturbing parts, the dark parts.

Lynching is a difficult topic, but it needs to be talked about, even if it makes a few white people uncomfortable.

We need to learn about the struggles of trans women, how they were murdered.

How gay marriage didn't become legal in the US until 2015.

How (white) women couldn't even vote until 1920.

How black people couldn't sit in the front of a bus, or how black men couldn't speak to a white woman without being murdered.

How Japanese Americans were forced in to internment.

How the Anti-Lynching bill wasn't passed until 2019, and the fact that people still voted against it.

Please don't let these stories die. People want to forget the past and act like it never happened.

We still have a long way to go.

#black lives matter #blm #activism #feminism #gay rights #civil rights #stop asian hate

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96thdayofrage · 2 years

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The bill aims to amend section 249 of title 18 of the United States Code to specify lynching as a hate crime act and anyone who conspires to commit such an act resulting in death or serious bodily injury shall be punished by up to 30 years in jail.

The bill passed in a Monday night vote by 422 votes to 3. The only three lawmakers to vote "no" on the Emmett Till Antilynching Act were Republican Reps. Andrew S. Clyde (GA), Thomas Massie (KY) and Chip Roy (TX).

In a series of tweets following the vote, Massie explained why he voted against the bill to make lynching a federal hate crime.

"The Constitution specifies only a handful of federal crimes, and leaves the rest to individual states to prosecute," Massie said.

"This bill expands current federal 'hate crime' laws. A crime is a crime, and all victims deserve equal justice. Adding enhanced penalties for "hate" tends to endanger other liberties such as freedom of speech.

"Lynching a person is already illegal in every state. Passing this legislation falsely implies that lynching someone does not already constitute criminal activity."

Massie added that the bill creates another federal crime of "conspiracy," which he has concerns could be "enforced overbroadly on people" who are not perpetrators of a crime.

Others said the bill to make lynching a federal hate crime, which was passed following after around 200 previous failed attempts by lawmakers to change current anti-lynching legislation, has been a long time coming.

"Today is a day of enormous consequence for our nation," Rep. Rush said in a statement. "By passing my Emmett Till Antilynching Act, the House has sent a resounding message that our nation is finally reckoning with one of the darkest and most horrific periods of our history, and that we are morally and legally committed to changing course.

"I was eight years old when my mother put the photograph of Emmett Till's brutalized body that ran in Jet magazine on our living room coffee table, pointed to it, and said, 'this is why I brought my boys out of Albany, Georgia.' That photograph shaped my consciousness as a Black man in America, changed the course of my life, and changed our nation."

Rush added that "modern-day lynchings" such as the February 2020 murder of Black man Ahmaud Arbery in Georgia show that the "racist hatred and terror that fueled the lynching of Emmett Till lynching" are still present in the U.S. today.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the passing of the bill was made possible by "generations of brave activists," including Rush.

"Nearly seven decades later, the brutal murder of Emmett Till is forever seared into our collective memory," Pelosi said.

"Sadly, hateful attacks are not yet a relic of the past: from the scourge of police violence to assaults on houses of worship. That is why the Democratic Congress is hard at work empowering our legal system with more tools to bring perpetrators to justice."

Pelosi also called for the Senate to "take immediate action" and send the bill to President Joe Biden so it can be signed into law.

Roy and Clyde have been contacted for comment.

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mostlysignssomeportents · 3 years

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How the filibuster dies

I am, frankly, afraid of what’s going to happen in the 2022 midterm elections. If the GOP block the Dems from passing any legislation — even the Jan 6 Commission bill! — then it’s going to be very hard to mobilize millions of habitual non-voters to show up for the midterms.

And at least one of those bills — HR1, the “For the People Act” — has to pass soon if we’re going to head off possibly irreversible voter suppression that will require Democrats to win even-larger supermajorities to win office.

The 2020 elections — and the shambles in Arizona — highlighted just how much of US national politics is controlled by the states.

If you think that the GOP Congressional caucus is unhinged, you don’t wanna see what’s going on in the state parties:

https://www.vice.com/en/article/v7ed9y/trump-election-conspiracy-theories-taking-over-republican-party

With a razor-thin hold on the Senate, the Dems need bold action and unity to pass HR1. But establishment Dems like Manchin and Sinema act like their path to re-election requires them to sabotage the Dems on core issues like the $15 minimum wage.

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/27/bruno-argento/#crisis-of-legitimacy

Manchin’s commitment to keeping the filibuster makes him into a de facto agent of the GOP, inasmuch as this means that he can single-handedly prevent the Dems from materially improving the lives of tens of millions of Americans.

https://pluralistic.net/2021/02/01/dinos-and-rinos/#entryism

Manchin has publicly pledged to destroy the Dems’ midterm chances — and forseeable future — by defending the filibuster. This utterly disheartens me. With the US is on the cusp of either charting a new path, or collapsing into autocracy, this is no time for decorum.

But this morning, I read a post by Ryan Grim that gave me hope. Grim starts from the undeniable observation that when a thing doesn’t happen immediately, it’s easy to think it’ll never happen. But history tells us that things do, indeed, happen.

https://badnews.substack.com/p/how-the-filibuster-goes-down

He cites Adam Jentleson’s KILL SWITCH, a 2021 history of the Senate and its rules, including the filibuster, as a means of defending the country’s premier undemocratic, anti-majoritarian institution. https://wwnorton.com/books/9781631497773

Jentleson lays out the path to change as a three act structure. In Act I, the filibuster moves from an obscure issue to something that Dems and the Dem Senate caucus are talking about, with all-round recognition that the filibuster is broken.

That’s already happened: even Manchin has supported reinstating the “talking filibuster” (the Mr-Smith-Goes-to-Washington version).

Next is Act II, in which the GOP illustrates that merely reforming the filibuster will do no good, because they are so intransigent that there is no place for comity in the chamber.

https://pluralistic.net/2021/01/30/meme-stocks/#comity

The GOP’s certainly doing everything it can to hasten Act II along.

I mean, McConnell publicly announced his intention to operate in bad faith to kill the Dems’ agenda — the same threat that Obama failed to take seriously in 2009 — and he’s backed up his words with deeds.

The GOP’s indefensible reversal on the Jan 6 Commission is gift-wrapped proof that they cannot be negotiated with. If the GOP is blocking an investigation into a lynch-mob that came within a whisker of murdering Mike Pence, what won’t they block?

https://thehill.com/homenews/house/554743-ocasio-cortez-60-seconds-difference-on-jan-6-could-have-ended-in-a-martial

If Senate Republicans filibuster the Jan 6 Commission bill, they’ll make the case for killing the filibuster more clearly than any Democrat could. Manchin is on record as saying “I’m still praying we’ve still got 10 good solid patriots” among the GOP Senators.

This is Manchin signalling that he might bend on the filibuster, if the GOP force him to.

Grim: “If he’s forced to for the good of the country, because there aren’t enough good solid patriots willing to put that country first, well…The filibuster is not a suicide pact.”

Grim thinks that this could happen as early as next week, when the Senate votes on whether to proceed with the Jan 6 Commission. If that happens, we’ll move on to Act III.

Act III is the fight over what replaces the filibuster — what the new rules will be. This is the GOP’s last chance to save the filibuster, if ten GOP Senators will vote in favor of the commission, end the crisis, and take filibuster reform off the table.

That’s what usually happens when the Senate gets to this point. It might happen again. But even if the GOP saves the filibuster this time, the crisis itself will have given Manchin the political cover — and personal experience — to consider killing the filibuster next time.

“If the option is a global financial crisis or a vote to reform the filibuster in order to raise the debt ceiling, the choice even for Manchin is an obvious one: ditch the filibuster. That would be the final act of the play. “

Killing the filibuster is key to giving us HR1, the PRO Act, health care reform and a $15 minimum wage. And once Dems start making laws, the GOP obstruction plan becomes counterproductive: simply shouting no to everything means GOP Senators deny themselves any say.

Grim: “Ending the filibuster is far more likely to bring on bipartisanship than keeping it.”

#pluralistic

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yeehawetc · 3 years

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Title: Bachelor’s Grove

Pairing: none

Summary: It’s Christmas 1885. Dutch is talking to anarchists, Hosea’s trying to scam an old man out of his house, and Arthur’s trying to figure out the very weird kid they just picked up. Nobody knows if they’re going to keep him, and John doesn’t want to go back.

Warnings: some gory imagery; almost-kind-of-you-decide-whether-it’s-magical-realism?

On AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28368408

@wolfmeat, I was your secret santa! (I bet you never guessed. Love you)

The sun glancing off the frosted windows of the station house blinds Arthur temporarily as he slips off Boadicea. He tugs off his heavy mittens to tie her to the hitching post, then stuffs his chapped hands quickly back into his coat pockets. There was an inch of ice on the water bucket this morning in camp. Arthur wishes Dutch had chosen a warmer morning to get caught with a known anarchist distributing anti-government literature.

He steps inside, and again can’t fucking see for a minute. The station’s dark even in daylight, old wood lit by dusty kerosene lamps that stink louder than the general musk of a constant cycle of drunks’ piss and tobacco spit. Arthur stops for a minute inside the door to let his eyes adjust, and the officer at the desk barks at him.

“What you want, son?”

“Payin’ a social call,” Arthur says, and takes the wad of bills Hosea counted out for him and tosses it onto the desk. The fella’s eyebrows hop nearly off his face, and Arthur scans the cells while he counts the money. It doesn’t take him long to pick him out. There’s not many people in the 18th district jailhouse wearing black silk and sitting on the cot like it’s a goddamn throne.

Dutch stands to meet him when Arthur approaches the cell, straightening his vest and checking the time on his pocket watch. As if Arthur were here picking him up from a social function, as if he didn’t have a huge purple bruise over one cheekbone.

“Good morning, Arthur,” he says, spreading his arms wide.

“Hosea’s gonna have your hide,” Arthur tells him. Dutch waves that away blithely, picking up his coat. He limps elegantly to the door of the cell and extends a broad hand to the jailkeeper, who doesn’t take it.

“A merry Christmas to you and your family,” Dutch says, beaming. Arthur can tell he’d like to knock the man’s teeth out. “Very sorry to insult your hospitality this way, but I’m afraid I ain’t inclined to spend another night in the company of the state.”

The guard isn’t impressed. “Go on,” he says, “before I change my mind.”

Dutch, Arthur notes with some dismay, is clearly in a good mood. For the first fifteen minutes of the ride back to camp, Dutch expounds on the uselessness of the state and the pathetic bankruptcy of soul that must lead a man like that wretch back at the jailhouse to feed his family off the profits of a government that’s nothing more than a tradition, and a cruel and foolish one at that, and Arthur picks at the loose wool on his mittens and watches his breath steam in the air.

“The true place for a just man, Arthur, is a prison,” Dutch shouts to him through the blistering chill as they wind south towards Bachelor’s Grove.

“True place for a man who can’t run on a sprained ankle, more like,” Arthur says, and Dutch throws his head back and laughs so loud a crow gets startled off the fence they’re passing by, and Arthur can’t help himself, he’s grinning.

“We’re onto something good here, Arthur,” Dutch says as they pass into the woods. “Silas tells me that Leslie Ashville—that haggard old maggot who owns the steel works where Silas’s poor cousin lost his hand last month—is losing his mind.”

“This the same Silas who got you arrested last night?” Arthur asks.

Dutch ignores him. “Old Ashville’s cracking, Arthur. Talking to folks as ain’t there and forgetting his own name. They say he ain’t gonna see the year of our Lord 1886, and it don’t seem right to me to let that fine gentleman die alone, with no one but his vampire of a nephew to carry on his legacy.”

“So,” Arthur says, starting to see where this is going, “you’re goin’ to apologize to Hosea for getting yourself arrested by inviting him to con a dyin’ man out of his money?”

“A dyin’ industrialist,” Dutch confirms brightly.

The camp’s a cluster of tents and wagons in a stand of oaks just south of the quarry pond, a respectful distance from the scattered headstones of Bachelor’s Grove cemetery. As they ride in, Arthur can see Hosea and Miss Grimshaw hurrying between the tents, ducking to look under the wagons and talking hotly. He catches Miss Grimshaw’s last sentence on the wind as he and Dutch ride closer: “...can’t have gone far in this cold.”

“What’s happening?” Dutch inquires as he slips down from the Count, favoring his hurt ankle just a little.

“The boy’s disappeared,” Hosea says, and Arthur doesn’t miss the relief that settles over Dutch’s features when he realizes this latest catastrophe is going to postpone a conversation with Hosea about his own sins.

“Go on, Arthur,” he says, “you look up thataways, and pray he ain’t fallen down that quarry. I’ll look off to the west, and Hosea, you and Miss Grimshaw stay here in case he comes back on his own.”

Arthur sets out grudgingly on foot. This ain’t the first time the kid’s given them trouble. In fact, Arthur reflects, he’s been more trouble than anything else since the moment Dutch caught sight of that rabble of homesteaders tying a noose to a walnut tree and decided to investigate. When they got closer and it turned out the fearful criminal due for a lynching that day was a twelve-year-old kid with an armful of onions and a crazy look in his eye, Arthur was the one who picked the kid up and carried him to safety while Dutch and Hosea argued with the would-be executioners. And then, Arthur was the one who got onion juice spit in his eye for his troubles and a nice set of bite marks on his neck.

The kid’s calmed down in the weeks since, or at least been effectively convinced Arthur isn’t trying to kidnap him, but he still bites. And apparently that ain’t all. Once they got him back to camp and a bowl of stew in front of him, he told Dutch his name’s John, his folks are dead, and he knows how to kill a man. Those facts, in that order, and if they didn’t light Dutch’s face up. Dutch likes the odd ones. Arthur tries not to think too deeply about how that reflects on him.

John’s odd, all right. He talks to himself all day; talks to animals too, and rocks and trees. And, strange enough, he’s a hell of a shot—hit every one of the cans Dutch lined up for him a week after he joined the camp, “just to see what he can do.” But he’s young, younger even than Arthur was when Dutch found him, and that’s a problem. Dutch said he’s safer here than on his own, Miss Grimshaw said a child his age got no business running with outlaws, Hosea said he ought to go to an orphanage, and John started hollering so loud nobody could finish the argument, and in the month since the question of what’s to be done with John has stood open. For now, it seems, he’s with them, but one of these days somebody’s gonna have to make a decision.

But maybe John’s made a decision of his own, now. This isn’t the first time he’s run off—he seems to have a special talent for that—but the longer Arthur trudges through the snow, the more it seems John might have made a real shot at it this time.

Arthur skirts the mouth of the quarry pond, looking reluctantly for any sign of a little body floating in the glassy dark water ringed all around with ice, and ascertains to his satisfaction and relief that John hasn’t drowned. He’d be sure to, if he had fallen, based on the almighty fuss he put up the first time Miss Grimshaw tried to get him to wash himself, shrieking that she was trying to drown him. Dutch finally intervened, grabbing John by his collar and belt and tossing him bodily into the creek, where it immediately became clear John’s never been in water deeper than his big toe. Arthur grins to himself as he picks around the clumps of buckthorn skirting the edge of the pond, remembering the look of dumb outrage on the kid’s spluttering face when he resurfaced and realized he was only knee-deep.

Arthur turns away from the quarry and up the snowy path towards the cemetery gates, squinting at the beaten stones that line the ground on either side. He can’t make out the names, but Hosea told him it’s mainly railway workers and homesteaders buried here, Russians and Germans and Irish. Folks who came from worlds away to get run over by wagons, or catch the grippe, or just to blow their own brains out when the crops failed and the government turned a blind eye. Ma’s buried in a place that looks like this. Pa too, maybe, only Arthur didn’t stay to see.

He watches a red-bellied woodpecker hammer busily at someone’s gravestone, and wonders if he should start to worry.

Then he turns onto the path leading up to the cemetery gate, a rickety wrought-iron arch planted between two spreading white cedars, and sees the kid. He’s sitting in the snow next to a tall granite monument, arms clasped around his legs and his head ducked down onto his knees, drowning in Hosea’s spare coat and Miss Grimshaw’s old scarf. His hair, as usual, hangs down over his pinched face like he’s trying to hide it.

“Hey,” Arthur calls out, and watches as John’s head snaps up like a spooked deer. But he stays where he is, body held tense and unmoving, as Arthur jogs forward through the icy cover of snow.

Up close, Arthur can see the kid’s been crying: his eyes are red, his cheeks are wet and chapped, and there’s a goddamn river of snot traveling down his chin. Still, when Arthur asks if he’s all right, he snaps, “A-course” and glares as if Arthur accused him of some grave offense.

“You scared folks, runnin’ off like that,” Arthur tells him, nudging John’s leg with the toe of his boot.

John shakes his head. “I ain’t scary.”

“Never said you was.” Arthur holds out a hand to pull the kid up. John doesn’t take it. “Come on now.”

John shakes his head, straggly hair flying side to side with the vehemence of his refusal. Stubborn as a horse’s ass is one thing they’ve already learned about John, and it ain’t Arthur’s favorite quality.

“What happened this time?” he sighs, settling himself against a gravestone opposite John. “Hosea said you just up and disappeared.”

John shrugs. “I ain’t talkin’ to you.” He’s picking at a loose thread on the sleeve of the coat, frowning furiously at it.

“What, did Grimshaw try to make you wash again? Because you know you stink.”

“Don’t neither.”

“You do,” Arthur assures him.

John sniffs, pulling his sleeve over his face and smearing snot even further across his cheek. “I ain’t goin’ back,” he says.

“Suit yourself,” Arthur says, shrugging broadly. “You wanna run off on your own, get yourself strung up by another pack of tetchy farmers, I guess that ain’t no business of mine.”

“No it ain’t,” John snaps, nodding in satisfaction.

“Awfully cold, though,” Arthur remarks, pulling his coat a little closer and squinting up at the sky. “I do believe that’s a storm comin’ in off to the east there.” John pokes his head up from the depths of Hosea’s coat to swivel his skinny neck around. “Still,” Arthur goes on, “you’ve obviously made up your mind, so I ain’t gonna try to talk you out of it.” He stands up, brushing snow off his coat. “Shame about them pies, though.”

John squints at him. “What pies?”

“Pies?” Arthur says. “Oh, the pies—oh, that ain’t nothin’. Only, I know Miss Grimshaw was plannin’ a heap of pie for Christmas. Mince pie, she said. Maybe apple. And Hosea, he’s made friends with a fella down at the slaughterhouse, figures he’ll get us a pig to roast.”

John stares. “I never seen a pig roast.”

“Well,” Arthur says, “I guess you ain’t gonna see one this year. Seein’ as you’re goin’ it alone now.” John squirms irritably in his snowy seat, frowning at Arthur. Arthur waits, listening to crows scream in the cedars.

“They was fixin’ to take me back to the nuns,” John says finally, in an unusually soft little voice. Not looking at Arthur.

“What,” Arthur says, startled, “Hosea and Grimshaw?”

John nods. “I heard ‘em. I was diggin’ in the dirt by that big ol’ stump an’ I was eatin’ some cheese an’ then I heard the lady say ‘this ain’t no place for a child, I heard him cough’ only I wasn’t coughin’, I just had some crumbs in my throat, an’ then Hosea said ‘he ain’t settlin’ in so good an’ I think we oughta see if them nuns’ll take him,’ an’ Dutch weren’t there and now he’s gone they’re gonna take me back there an’ so I got my coat an’ I snuck off ‘fore they could catch me an’ I ain’t goin’ back, if you take me back they’re just gonna make me go back to the nuns an’ they’ll cook me an’ eat me an’ then I ran an’ I ran an’ I heard someone comin’ so I hid behind the graves only then I thought maybe it was dead folks so I waited an’ then I heard someone else comin’ but it was you an’ I ain’t goin’ back, I ain’t gonna let ‘em do it.” He breaks off, breathing hard. His cheeks are red.

Arthur, a little dizzy trying to parse out that garbled spew of words, thinks he can see tears gathering in the corners of the kid’s eyes. Passing over, for the moment, the idea of cannibal nuns, he sighs and says, “Look, kid, ain’t nobody gonna send you anywhere without Dutch’s say-so, and Dutch ain’t decided yet.”

John frowns. “But he went to jail.”

“Yeah, dumbass, and I went and got him out,” Arthur says. “He’s out lookin’ for you right now.”

The kid’s eyes get wide at that. Arthur sees him take a shaky little breath and whisper something to himself that Arthur can’t catch.

“Come on,” he says, “I’m freezin’ my nuts off, and you ain’t gettin’ cooked alive by nobody this Christmas. Come on back, and I’ll tell Grimshaw an’ Hosea to lay off talkin’ about nuns.” He holds out his hand again.

This time, after a little consideration, John takes it, tugging hard as he struggles up to his feet. Arthur’s astonished at how light he is; the kid weighs nearly nothing. He sets himself on his feet, pulls Grimshaw’s scarf over his grimy face, and looks up to Arthur.

“An’ we’ll have pie?” he asks, hopefully.

“Sure,” Arthur nods. “Pie and pig.”

“I ain’t never had a Christmas dinner,” John tells him as they head back towards camp.

“What, never?”

John shrugs. He’s playing with the loose ends of his scarf, tossing them back and forth on his palms. “I heard about it, but I never had one. Me an’ pa, one time we stole a whole duck an’ he said that’s Christmas dinner, but it gave me the trots an’ I shit till I yelled.”

“Thank you for that,” Arthur says.

John nods, clambers over a wooden fence, and drops down the other side in a little flurry of snow. “What’s it like?” he asks, and the question’s so dumb and so oddly sweet that Arthur feels a little twinge in his chest.

“I dunno,” he says. “Like a party, I guess. Folks make good food and talk and sing, and go to church I suppose, only I ain’t been since I was a little, little kid, littler than you.”

“I ain’t little,” John interjects, scrambling over a rock.

“Well, I was,” Arthur says. “But my ma used to make supper, and we’d have turkey and fish and ham and potatoes and beans, and after she’d play on her organ.”

“What’s a organ,” John asks.

“A kinda musical instrument,” Arthur tells him. He hasn’t thought about this in years, can only vaguely picture the boxy little organ in the corner, Mama’s pale hands on the keys. The melody’s long gone. “Sorta like a piano, I figure, only it’s got pipes and pedals. My ma had one from a catalogue, and she said it kept her company out there in the country.” He remembers that: the way she’d sit at the organ in the evenings, not even playing some nights, just sitting. The way she cried when they came back from town and the organ was gone, sold to a man Pa found looking to pay good money for a secondhand Beckwith for his wife. Arthur remembers that, all right.

“So,” John says, “ya play music and ya eat?”

“More or less,” Arthur says. “S’posed to be some kinda holy day, but mostly folks just like to eat.”

They’re nearing camp, now, and Arthur can see the defensive curl in John’s shoulders. When he sees Dutch sitting at the camp table, though, he breaks away from Arthur’s side and dashes over, planting himself next to Dutch, arms crossed stubbornly over his chest.

“So you found him, Arthur,” Dutch greets him as Arthur approaches the table.

“Out hidin’ in the graveyard,” Arthur says. “I guess he prefers the company of dead folks to ours.” Dutch laughs, and John scowls.

“I weren’t hidin’,” he says. “And I didn’t see no dead folks.”

Arthur leaves him with Dutch, leaning intently over Evelyn Miller’s America and shooting Dutch shy reverential looks, and goes to find Hosea. He’s by the fire, poking at the dull coals, and he raises a hand as Arthur approaches.

“Found him all right?”

Arthur hums his yes, settling himself on the log Dutch dragged out of the woods as a seat. “Told ‘im we’d have pie for Christmas,” he tells Hosea. “He liked that.”

Hosea laughs. “Our little associate seems mightily driven by food,” he remarks drily.

“Like a damn pig,” Arthur agrees. Hosea chuckles, stretching his legs out and lighting a cigarette.

“I take it Dutch filled you in on his latest scheme,” he remarks, and Arthur can tell from the crinkle at the corner of his eye that excitement’s overtaken his annoyance at Dutch.

“The Ashville thing? He mentioned it,” Arthur says. “Somethin’ about stealin’ the fella’s legacy, or something.”

“Legacy, Arthur, is another word for a fat bank account,” Hosea says. “Besides, if we can play this thing right, there’s a roof over our heads in January. That boy’s already got a cough, and I for one would prefer not to spend the winter thawing out my backside every time I need to shit. I’ll need your help with the paperwork for this one, though.”

Arthur nods, rubbing his hands together in the growing warmth from the fire, and feels odd. Doesn’t know why he feels, suddenly, choked. He feels the way he did when Hosea and Dutch first picked him up, as though any wrong word would have him out on his ear or worse. Like all his words were caught in his throat, because he couldn’t pick the ones that were right.

Hosea, naturally, doesn’t miss a thing. “What’s on your mind?”

Arthur hesitates, chewing his lip, thinking about John’s blank, tearful face; about Mama crying the night the Beckwith disappeared; about old Leslie Ashville alone in his house on Cherry Street, talking to people who aren’t there. About the look on John’s face, hope and wonderment, when Arthur said Dutch was looking. For him.

“He’s scared of us,” he says finally. “Scared of you. And Grimshaw, but that’s—I mean, she scares everyone.”

Hosea snorts gently, but all he says is, “Give him time.”

“How much time?” Arthur says. “Dutch ain’t said if he’s staying with us.”

“Dutch’ll decide when the time’s right,” Hosea says, as if that settles it. As if Arthur hasn’t heard John whimpering in his sleep every damn night since they picked him up. Arthur turns to look at him and Dutch—two dark heads matched at the table—and hopes the right time’s soon.

ii.

The house on Cherry Street is three dusty stories of Italianate brick, lit from within by a dozen candles. From the street, it looks warm, even festive—someone’s hung a grand ring of pine and holly on the heavy oak door—but as soon as Hosea steps inside, he feels the chill. It’s different from the brisk winter evening outside: a dry, sickly cold that seeps through Hosea’s coat and settles along the joints of his bones.

Someone’s dying in this house. Hosea’s felt that cold before.

He follows the maid down the hallway to the parlor, past the cavernous recesses of unlit rooms. Behind the false front of lamps, this house is dark and silent, save the single corridor of light that traces a line down its center. Hosea watches a chandelier of thick, ugly crystals sway mutely above his head as he passes beneath, and fixes his mind on his story.

It’s his second visit to the Ashville mansion. On the first, he introduced himself as William Ashville, the long-lost offspring of the affair a group of Ashville Steel workers told Hosea about over bad whiskey at the Red Hen. It seems the story’s well known among Ashville’s discontented employees: the lady’s name was Eleanor, and Ashville promised her marriage, then left her at the altar and came west instead to make his fortune off the work of honest men. Nobody’s been able to give Hosea an exact date, but one fellow, with a rough white beard and teeth so sparse and loose Hosea suspects he lost one in his beer over the course of the conversation, remembered the year Ashville turned up in Chicago as 1856, so Hosea’s dated the affair to about thirty years ago. He considered, briefly, having Dutch step in as the prodigal bastard, but this part requires a delicacy that Dutch, for all his charms, lacks. Besides, Hosea flatters himself that he can still play thirty. He borrowed a bit of Dutch’s pomade for the occasion, and a little of Susan’s face powder—and besides, old Ashville’s eyesight isn’t that good.

All in all, Ashville took the news of his unwitting fatherhood surprisingly well. Hosea, who after thirty-odd years of disregard for the fairer sex unexpectedly became surrogate parent to an unwashed teenage criminal, can attest to the shock that comes with that sort of arrival. True, there was a moment of initial skepticism from Ashville, but the family bible Hosea produced (purchased from a bookseller in the Levee, embellished by Arthur with the names of a whole fictitious lineage for poor forgotten William Ashville) seemed to turn the tide of his disbelief, and the love letter Hosea wrote after making a study of Ashville’s handwriting clinched the story. Today, Hosea’s back, in character as young William, with two missions: to lend cheer to his aging father’s lonely indisposition, and to lift a copy of the old man’s will.

He hears Ashville’s voice before they reach the parlor: halting, guttural, like water through a clogged pipe. He’s murmuring about the newspaper, about catching a train. The maid leads Hosea into the room, where an unfed fire lights a frail circle around Ashville’s chair and casts long shadows across the rich Turkish carpet, and Hosea can see that it’s empty; that Ashville’s talking to no one.

“Sir?” the maid says, leaning down to the high upholstered chair by the hearth. “Young Mr. William here to see you.”

Mr. Leslie Ashville, sole owner and proprietor of the Ashville Steel Works, looks molded of lean clay. He’s wrapped in a brocade robe that looks like it hasn’t been washed since the early ‘70s, his head bare save the airy thatch of white hair shrouding the glare of his scalp. Hosea finds him fascinatingly grotesque.

“Good evening, father,” he says, settling in the chair across from Ashville, who acknowledges his presence with a faint hum that turns into a cough.

“Is that you, William?” he croaks, finally, and Hosea leans closer to take his hand.

“I’m here.”

“Thought I saw your mother last night,” Ashville rasps. “Thought I heard her, in the walls.”

“Perhaps it was her spirit,” Hosea offers. “I do believe she’s glad to see us reunited.” There’s a bulk of shadow off behind Ashville’s right shoulder in the general shape of a writing desk. Hosea makes a note, and refocuses his attention on Ashville.

“She was beautiful, your mother,” the old man says, and then he’s off chasing the thread of that long-forgotten memory, a thread that seems to unravel every time he reaches another knot. Hosea plays the dream-weaver, dropping a hint or a suggestion every time he hears the man’s voice falter. It’s fragments he offers the old man, things that could have belonged in any lifetime, things easily forgotten and more easily misremembered: the color of a dress, the fate of an old school friend, the name of a parson or a shopkeeper; always just enough to get Ashville’s feet back under him and send him off along another strand of reminiscence. Together, between Ashville’s dying memory and Hosea’s healthy imagination, the two of them write Leslie and Eleanor’s love story by the light of the fading fire as the evening deepens into night.

The bells of St. Clement’s are chiming ten when it finally happens: Ashville stammers, trails off, and doesn’t look to Hosea for the next line of his memory-fantasy. Instead, his ancient head droops and lolls magnificently, and after a moment’s pause Hosea hears a loud, guttering snore. Ashville’s asleep.

Finally.

Easing himself off the slick horsehair of his seat, Hosea crosses to the shadowy desk he noticed earlier in the evening. It’s a heavy thing, made of rich cherrywood and full of drawers and cracks and pigeonholes. Hosea returns to the center of the parlor for a candle, and sets to work searching the desk, an ear out for the maid’s footstep or a shift in Ashville’s steady, ugly breath.

An hour later, he’s slipping out the front door into the midnight chill, bidding the maid a happy Christmas, with the thin pages of Leslie Ashville’s will flat against his side under his heavy coat. He found the lockbox easily enough, stowed in a deep drawer under a sheaf of old bills and past due correspondence, and five minutes was all it took to break the lock while Ashville snored in his seat ten paces away. The will itself is simple: all Ashville’s wealth and property deeded to his nephew Fred Ashville, the current junior proprietor of Ashville Steel and the devil himself as far as most of the working population of the west side’s concerned. Hosea thinks, as he makes his way down Cherry Street under a soft flurry of snow, that they’ll be doing mankind two services this December: keeping Leslie Ashville company on his trip towards the undiscovered country, and seeing to it that Fred Ashville never prospers again.

The campfire’s burning unusually bright when Hosea makes his way through the last bent hickories of Bachelor’s Grove. At first, Hosea thinks it must be Dutch who’s up, caught in one of those odd brain fevers where he can’t sleep till he’s filled fifty pages with words about God and death and man’s perverse indifference to nature—but when he gets closer he sees that it isn’t Dutch at all. It’s John, hunched gracelessly on one of the logs like a disgruntled little bullfrog, tossing little twigs and dead leaves into the flames to watch them sizzle and smoke. His lips are moving, but from his distance Hosea can’t tell what he’s saying. It occurs to Hosea that he’s spent quite a lot of his time lately in the company of people who talk to the air around them.

That’s the thing that worries Hosea. It’s not the taking him in—they’ve done as much before, and not only with Arthur. Hosea knows what it’s like to be ten and cold and empty as a tomb on Judgment Day, and he’s not about to turn away hungry mouths when there’s room at the fire and enough in the pot to go round. Besides, he’s never regretted letting Arthur stay. But Arthur was fourteen, not twelve, and Arthur didn’t talk to people who aren’t there. Arthur was just a kid whose father hit him too much, and a damn good thief. John’s something else, and after weeks Hosea still isn’t sure exactly what.

Hosea approaches the fire, and John starts, shoving his hands under his armpits as though Hosea just caught him doing something bad.

“It’s late,” Hosea observes.

John shrugs. “I’m not tired.” His eyes are huge in the firelight, and Hosea has the feeling he often gets when John looks at him—that the kid is sizing him up, calculating where to strike if trouble starts.

“I can see that,” Hosea says.

“Is he dead?” John asks. Arthur’s been telling him about the scheme, then. Hosea makes no pretense of sensitivity when it comes to death, but having spent a full evening playing the loving son to Ashville, Sr., he feels a mite put off by the ghoulishness of the question.

“Old Ashville? Not yet,” he says. “Go to bed.”

John doesn’t go to bed. He leans back, firelight catching the ragged ends of his hair, and says, “I seen a fella die once.”

“So have I,” Hosea tells him.

“He was coughin’,” John goes on, undeterred. “Blood was comin’ out of his mouth, an’ out of his nose, an’ all down his shirt an’ then—” he pauses dramatically, gathering a handful of rotting leaves into his grubby hand, “—then he shit in his pants, an’ a whole lot of blood came out his mouth, an’ the lady said he’s really dead now.” He tosses the bundle of leaves into the fire, which sends up a small gasp of muddy smoke. Hosea wonders who the lady was. Wonders where this child’s been, to tell that kind of story.

He doesn’t ask. “You’ve been dreaming,” he says, and it’s less a guess than most of what he spun for Ashville earlier tonight. He’s seen that spooked look before—seen it in Arthur’s eyes when he was barely older than John and still fighting his father off in his sleep; seen it in his cousin’s eyes when he came back from Sharpsburg a leg light and ten times heavier for it; seen it in Dutch, sometimes, too. Hosea knows too well what nightmares look like.

John scrubs at the snot trailing from his nose and shrugs. “I seen it,” is all he says. But he shudders, and his skinny shoulders hunch smaller against the night.

He’s clearly not going to go back to bed, and in a way, Hosea can’t see why he should have to. It’s well past midnight now, but Hosea isn’t tired either. The moon’s high, the air’s quiet, and he’s got a job to do. He might as well have some company while he does it.

“Come on,” he says, waving towards the table. John follows him over, and Hosea draws Leslie Ashville’s will from under his coat and spreads the pages across the pocked wood. John, who can’t read and tried to bite Dutch when he offered a lesson, peers at the frail sheets with the curiosity of a spider inspecting a particularly fearsome fly.

“Now,” Hosea begins, “what we’ve got to do is this.”

iii.

On Christmas Eve, something happens.

John isn’t sure at first what’s happened, only that folks are talking real loud and nobody’s telling him anything, but that’s not new. He goes into the trees and finds a big old stick and hits a stump till it falls into soft, stinking rubble, and stamps in the snow till there’s a flat circle all around. There’s a fat squirrel running around the base of a tree a ways off, and it stops for a minute and sniffs in John’s direction.

“I ain’t smelly,” he tells the squirrel. “An’ I ain’t stupid.”

The squirrel twitches and scoots away, tiny claws on the snow.

“John!” Arthur calls, and John kicks bits of rotten wood across the ground until Arthur comes through the trees. “Get your coat on,” he says, nodding back towards camp; “we’re goin’ into town.”

“Why,” John asks. He thinks about a wagon full of kids, rolling through the iron gates of the orphanage. He thinks he could kill Arthur, if he tried to put him in there. Kick his nuts, put his thumbs in his eyes and squeeze the jelly out, like that fella did to Pa in the bar, get his gun off him and point it to his heart.

If he had to do it, he thinks he could. He’d be sad about it after, though. He likes Arthur.

“Ashville’s dead,” Arthur’s saying. His face is split with a grin; John’s never seen him smile much. “We’re gonna be rich. We’re gettin’ the house.”

“Oh,” John says. He can see the old man in his head, wrinkled and tiny in a house like a tomb, the way Hosea told him the night he came back with that secret pack of papers. Worms in his nose. Gobs of blood pouring, pouring out of his slack, black mouth. “Really?”

“Really.”

It’s a cold ride into town, perched on the back of Arthur’s horse with his arms tight around Arthur’s middle. John can hear Dutch talking up ahead, but the wind’s too quick to hear the words. John probably wouldn’t understand it anyway. He can’t understand half what Dutch says. He’s never met anyone as smart as that. He wonders when Dutch is going to find out that John’s dumb as a rock. Dumb as a rock and the devil in him, that’s what people say. Dutch don’t seem to mind the devil so much, though. John doesn’t know what to think about that.

How exactly they got this house, John still doesn’t understand. Hosea took that dead man’s sheaf of papers, and said we’ll write these out again, and he and Arthur sat at the table for hours inking and scratching till Hosea said it was all perfect, and then there was some meetings with lawyers and magistrates and aldermen, and then it was all done, only the old man weren’t dead. John asked if Dutch was going to kill him, but Dutch just laughed and said I ain’t a murderer, I’m a philanthropist, and Hosea said that’s my old dad you’re talking about, and now John isn’t sure. But Arthur said it’s like a game, don’t you worry, and when the old man dies we’ll take his house, and now he’s dead. John squeezes a little tighter around Arthur’s middle, and tugs himself closer in the saddle.

They’re riding through the grand part of town now, the part where every house has three floors and curly carvings on the windowsills and a pretty little tree out front all its own. John remembers sleeping here one night last summer, after Pa died, in a little stand of apple trees behind one of the mansions. He ate the hard little apples off the ground till his stomach hurt, and fell asleep in a shed, and in the morning an old African man came along and told him to run or he’d be in a pile of trouble, so John ran. He’s scanning the houses as they pass, trying to remember which one it was with the apples and the old man who said to run.

The house where Ashville died is cold, and it smells like dust. John watches Arthur and Dutch and Hosea and Miss Grimshaw striding through the halls, crowing and laughing and saying Shakespeare, and looks to see if he can spot the place where the old man died. But there’s no blood on the floors or the furniture, just warm leather and shiny velvet and wood that gleams like gold when Dutch pulls back the heavy curtains and lets the winter sun spill over the room.

“Merry Christmas,” Dutch booms, and Hosea says “hear, hear,” and John wonders if the ghosts can hear them too.

Arthur takes him upstairs. Upstairs is a row of rooms, each the size of a house, each full of cobwebs and dead beetles and beds with heavy ceilings. Arthur tugs the curtains aside in each room while John sneezes in the bright dust and pokes at the silky wallpaper.

Then Miss Grimshaw comes up the winding staircase and sets them to work, hauling carpetbags up the stairs and beating dust out of the duvets with an old broom from the kitchen. She snaps orders like a policeman and drags John by her iron knuckles to a room at the end of the musty hall and tells him it’s his. John suspects a trap, but Arthur laughs and says I ain’t bunkin’ with you no more, and John understands. After supper that night, when Dutch and Hosea pop open a bottle of wine they found in the cellar and Arthur starts singing and Hosea says John can’t have any wine and Dutch says it’s all right and Grimshaw says it ain’t, John sneaks upstairs to the Room That’s His, and wonders when they’ll drop him at the orphanage.

He’s lying in the dust, watching moonlight crawl over the tall windows, when he hears the voice. It doesn’t sound like Dutch or Hosea or Arthur, but it’s a man, and it’s saying his name.

John.

John stands up. The door to the hallway opens, opens without him touching it, and on the other side’s a man who looks familiar. He’s not tall and he’s not short, with a little mustache and a fancy suit, and his hat reaches towards the ceiling and his eyes are fixed on John’s heart and not his face.

“John,” he says, “I’ve missed you.”

Then his face swells and melts. His eyes are hot black hollows, crawling with white worms, blood pouring out his mouth. John watches the river of black gore, swimming down his front, running over the rich, dusty carpet, the smell of shit rising thick and hot around him, and the man twitches and moans and heaves. Blood pouring out his mouth. John tries to scream and he can’t scream, he can’t breathe, and the smell of blood and shit makes him gag and retch, and the blood keeps coming, a black waterfall streaming from the strange man’s face as he sways and leers and shimmers in the dark.

“John!”

Someone’s holding his shoulders, shaking him. There’s carpet under his feet, warm and soft, and he gags, and hears Arthur say shit.

He opens his eyes. He’s in the dark, in the hallway, and Arthur’s here in a big white shirt with his hair mussed up from sleep. He’s got John by the shoulders, and he’s got an odd look on his face, like something bad is happening, and John wonders if it’s happening to him.

He looks worried, John realizes with a muffled shock.

“You okay?” he’s asking, and John shakes his head before he can think about it. His heart’s beating like an army drum. He thinks he can feel it shaking his whole body. He steps from foot to foot on the swampy carpet, and realizes his pants are wet. “What happened,” Arthur asks.

John’s stomach jerks and twists inside of him. If he tells Arthur the truth, he’ll be gone by morning.

Arthur’s hand’s at the back of his head, in his hair, steady and warm.

“Come on, kid.”

John sucks in air.

“It was him,” he whispers. “It was the devil.”

Blood pouring out his mouth.

Arthur sighs, a little sound that’s almost a laugh, and says, “There ain’t no devil here. You had a dream.” He leans in, smelling like wine and horse, and pats John on the back, one arm around him pressing close, his scratchy chin brushing against John’s forehead. John thinks it’s a hug. He doesn’t know what that means.

“I ain’t good,” John starts to tell him—heart in his stomach, stomach in his throat. “I’m crazy an’ I’m bad an’ I got the devil in me an’ he follows me an’ last year he made me shoot a man till his brains came out through his nose an’ the nuns’ll give me back to him,” but Arthur stops him, hand on his cheek, shaking his head and saying no, no, forget all that, you’re dreamin’, there ain’t no devil and there ain’t no nuns here. You’re home now, John. Forget that.

In the end, Arthur picks John up like he’s a kid, and John’s too tired to complain. He wraps his arms around Arthur’s neck and lets him carry him down the hall, away from the room with the devil’s blood soaking into the floor and into Arthur’s room, where there’s a heap of orange coals in the hearth and a wooly blanket that Arthur wraps him in once his sodden pants are gone. They sit by the fire, John a mute cocoon and Arthur more than half asleep, and Arthur pulls out his notebook and shows John a funny drawing of a man with an apple for a head.

John thinks about home.

“You’re a good kid,” Arthur says, his voice soft and silly. He’s drunk. “Dutch ain’t gonna send you back, y’know.”

John’s throat aches like there’s someone punching it. His cheeks are hot, lit up by the fire and the tears spilling up and over his eyelids. He can’t answer back. He thinks about a flat plain, gray grass wrinkled by the wind, and a heap of rocks at the edge of a hill. He can’t get the picture out of his head. Can’t get the devil’s voice out of his throat.

“You’re home,” Arthur says, and the warmth of the fire swallows him up, and he sobs into Arthur’s side for a long time.

Down the hallway, in the darkness, the door swings silently open and shut.

#rdr secret santa 2020 #rdr2 #john marston #arthur morgan #rdr2 fic #we got some christmas here and we got some wild handwaving towards the background plot i had in mind but didnt have the energy to write #this really might not make sense but it is gifted with love to my perfect wife

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nan-drw · 4 years

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This is not the India Mahatma Gandhi dreamt of when he began his Satyagraha.

This is not the India Babasaheb Ambedkar envisioned when he drafted the constitution.

AND this is definitely NOT the India I was born in!

These people, who claim to be the leaders of this once thriving nation, have managed to systematically annihilate the very spirit of its existence and democracy.

It all started out very normal, in 2014, the year BJP came into power and Narendra Modi took centre stage as Prime Minister, with a promise of 'good days'.

I don't know if the 'good days' ever arrived, but I made several observations.

Modi (of course) dished out a few fancy schemes. Mob lynchings and minority persecution became common. About 20 billion dollars were spent on foreign visits. The economy dwindled. Random rants about Pakistan. Demonetisation. Women were (are) being brutally raped and murdered. Laws were arbitrarily amended for the worse. Filmmakers were accused of 'hurting the Hindu sentiments' when it was clearly not the case. History textbooks and names of cities were changed for no reason. Farmers commited suicide. An entire state was detained. More rants about Pakistan. Detention camps (!) were built. Peaceful protestors were beaten black and blue. Politicians who opposed the government were (are) trolled for no reason. Pushing for a One-Party system. And worst of all, the media either slept through all of it, or was busy putting the central government on a pedestal for no apparent reason or achievement. Journalists who tried questioning the government were shot.

Despite all this, they got re-elected in the centre once again in 2019 and this time all hell broke loose, for the public could now see them for who they were, anti-democratic, anti-secular, extremist, divisive, Islamophobic, fascist brats!

In December 2019, the Citizenship Amendment Bill (now law) was passed. This law provides citizenship to anyone identified as being in India illegally, if they are from a non-muslim community (Hindus, Jains, Sikhs, Christians, Parsis, Buddhists) and originally from Pakistan, Bangladesh or Afghanistan. This act, clubbed with the National Register of Citizens is dangerous. Under NRC+CAA, millions of people have to present documents proving their Indian citizenship. If you're from a non muslim community and you do not have the required documents, then chill, you'll still be 'Indian'. But if you're a Muslim, you immediately lose your citizenship due to CAA and will be either deported or sent to detention camps. They carried out NRC in Assam and about 19 lakh people lost their Indian citizenship and were sent to concentration camps.

Also, it's not just about the Muslims. Think of the poor people. The illiterate people. The destitutes. The transgenders. The tribals. The people who DO NOT wish to be associated with any religion i.e. athiests. There are so many more.

Some of you might say, so what? Just show the documents and get it done, simple! NO. IT'S NOT THAT SIMPLE. IT'S NOT SIMPLE WHEN YOU HAVE TO PRESENT 60-70 YEAR OLD DOCUMENTS IN ORDER TO PROVE YOUR INDIANNESS. Also, do you REALLY think that every person carries the birth certificates, insurance policies and other documents of their ancestors? Think again.

I am a Muslim and I'm scared. For the first time in my life; I'm scared to be in my own skin, of my own identity. I'm afraid of calling myself an Indian. The possible outcomes of the implementation of NRC+CAA makes me shiver. Who knows, I'll be gone from the face of the earth. Or left to rot in a detention camp? Or something else?

Remember the last time concentration camps were built?I don't think I need to remind you of it.

BJP is a fascist part which rose to power largely because of its favour of 'Hindutva' and follows the ideologies of the RSS. This includes the building of a Hindu state. A quick google search will tell you how impressed the RSS leaders and BJP fathers were with Hitler and supported his Nazi system.

These new laws are eerily similar to the Nuremberg laws and Reich Citizenship laws of Nazi Germany, which dictated who all were eligible to be Reich citizens. It excluded Jews, the same way the CAA excludes Muslims. All of it was done (is being done) legally following constitutional norms by those in power. The Nuremberg laws were, in many ways, the beginnings of Genocide against the Jews.

With the Citizenship Amendment Act, Modi and Co. Is trying to bring the system in India too. It's a step towards their dream of a 'Hindu state'. The act is fundamentally discriminatory in nature, undermines the constitutional right to equality and discriminates on the grounds of religion. Also, now that everyone is after NRC CAA, nobody is asking the real questions, about the state of the economy, the rising prices, the never ending crimes against women...the list goes on.

A genocide against the Muslims is well underway in India.

Ever since the bill was passed by the parliament, students of the Jamia Millia Islamia University, Delhi have been actively involved in peacefully protesting against it. They've been joined by students from educational institutions all over India, plus the general public, who understand what this new law really is. The BJP has been trying hard to stop and discredit these protestors. The police, acting on Modi and Co's orders is resorting to extreme violence in order to stop the students and protestors. The police have open fired on the students, molested the female ones, sprayed tear gas and beaten students mercilessly(many have ended up in hospitals with broken bones, injuries, one guy lost an eye). They are provoking the peaceful protestors to resort to violence and then putting them in jail for crimes they did not commit. BJP, and their blind supporters (bhakts) are spreading fake news through their social media and labelling the protestors terrorists. The government has shut down internet and other modes of communication in several parts of the country, the whole state of Assam has blacked out. We don't know what's happening there.

Now we understand what Kashmiris have been going through. Cut out from the rest of the world (since almost 140 days, a record for any democracy), under constant watch of the military, stripped off their basic human rights and what not!? We are sorry Kashmir, we failed you.

I salute the protestor's spirits, they haven't lost hopes or taken backfoot because of the violence instigated against them by the police; they've stuck to their cause and are responding with almost superhuman strength! I pray for them all day.

If you are reading this, please spread this! Tell about the situation of India to everyone. Raise awareness. Be respectful in disagreements but demolish opposing arguments using pure logic. Stand united! If you can, participate in the protests. If you're already doing it, kudos to you! Remember, DO NOT RESORT TO VIOLENCE. If you're outside India, please help us and tell people about this state of affairs in India. Educate people about the ill effects of this law. Please! I request you please help us! We need to show these fascists the power of the people. We cannot just silently stand by as Modi and Co make a joke of our constitution and morals! This cannot, and should not continue!!! This is not about being a Muslim, Hindu, Christian, Sikh or Jain or Parsi, it's not even about being political, it's about being an Indian! It's about being a human.

....And now, coming to the Ostriches, those who have their heads buried in the ground, those who are pretending there's nothing wrong happening in the country right now, those who think that NRC+CAB are not anti-national, those who are still supporting the BJP, those who are silent because they don't want to make political statements, I have only one thing to say to you; when we are silenced, I hope you regret being silent.

From the Quran-

And never think that Allah is unaware of what the wrongdoers do. He only delays them for a day when all the eyes will stare, in horror...

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msclaritea · 3 years

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“There have been prosecutors that refused to seat Black jurors, refused to prosecute lynching, disproportionately condemned young Black men to death row and looked the other way in the face of police brutality,” Politico reported.

“It matters who is in those rooms. I knew I had to be in those rooms. We have to be in those rooms even when there aren’t many like us there.” Kamala Harris makes history

What Kamala Harris Did In Those Rooms: Or 50 Criminal Justice Reforms & Accomplishments (link includes corresponding articles)

1. Deputy DA- Kamala Harris Opposed Prop 21 (passed with 62%) which increased criminal penalties for crimes committed by youth and incorporated many youth offenders into the adult criminal justice system.

2. Deputy DA- Kamala Harris co-founded the Coalition to End the Exploitation of Kids, to provide legal and health services to sexually exploited children, including teenage “prostitutes”

3. As member of the board of trustees of SF MOMA, Kamala Harris created the 1st of its kind in the US “Matches” program, which pairs at-risk youth with mentors to expose them to art and broaden their horizons.

4.DA- Kamala Harris created Back on Track program to help drug offenders re-enter society. Provided vocational training, counseling, parenting services, etc. Substantially reduced recidivism for participants

5.DA- Kamala Harris refused to seek the death penalty even when pressured by members of her own party due to racial disparities in how it is applied 6.DA- Created LGBT Hate Crime Unit

7.DA- Kamala Harris worked to get the first safe house in San Francisco for girls who wanted out of the sex trade 8.DA- Changed underage women/men from being treated as prostitutes to being treated as victims

9.DA/AG- Kamala Harris helped found the Center for Youth Wellness which works to improve the health of children exposed to childhood trauma

10.AG- Kamala Harris created the Bureau of Children’s Justice (BCJ) to streamline enforcement of laws that uphold children’s rights & pursue policies that improve the lives of children Unroll available on Thread Reader

11.AG- BCJ partnered w/USC to link data from the DOJ & Social Services’ case mgmt systems to enable researchers for the 1st time to better determine the overlap b/w CA’s child welfare &juvenile justice populations

12.AG- Kamala Harris’ BCJ worked to diagnose challenges in California’s juvenile justice data systems, in partnership with the Governance Lab at New York University

13.AG- BCJ worked to deliver previously unavailable juvenile justice data (from the Juvenile Court Probation Statistical Sys) to researchers at the Public Policy Institute of CA, Harvard U of Chicago,& UC Berkeley 14.AG-BCJ collaborate with the Judicial Council to develop dashboards for judges to make better decisions about adjudicated juveniles. 15.AG-Awarded Second Chance Grant to expand Back on Track to LA as AG

16.AG- As Attorney General CREATED the Division of Recidivism Reduction and Re-Entry (DR3) to reduce the number of repeat offenders

17.AG- DR3 partnered on the Court of College (C2C). The program is designed to divert young offenders from future criminal behavior through cognitive behavioral intervention & exposure to higher education

18.AG- Kamala Harris’ DR3 partnered on the Career Pathways program. It’s an out-of-custody, recidivism-reduction program that provides resources to a probation-supervised population.

19.AG- Kamala Harris’ CA DOJ was accepted into the natl Defending Childhood State Policy Initiative; a cross-sector team of state leaders to develop shared priorities to prevent/address children’s exposure to violence.

20.AG- Created the Truancy Intervention Panel to implement best practices for truancy prevention.

21.AG- BCJ in partnership w/the Ad Council & CA Endowment, conducted a study/designed a public education toolkit to help educators/community leaders communicate w/parents on the importance of kids being in school

22.AG- Created SmartJustice, a new database and analytical tool to track repeat offenders and offense trends to provide counties with more effective options in developing anti-recidivism initiatives.

23.AG- Kamala Harris issued guidance to CA law enforcement agencies outlining new responsibilities to track/report citizen complaints against peace officers, including complaints alleging racial/identity profiling

24.AG- Supported AB71 (which became law) requiring all CA law enforcement agencies to collect data on shootings & use of force by a civilian/police against the other that result in serious bodily injury or death.

25.AG- Created the first Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training (“POST”) certified law enforcement training on both procedural justice and implicit bias, the first of its kind in the country.

26.AG- Instituted a body camera policy for all DOJ special agent personnel conducting field operations.

27.AG- Convened community members, incl. roundtables w/HS students from South/East LA. The topics were experiences with police and ideas on how to improve the relationship between youth & law enforcement.

28.AG-Created the 21st Century Policing Working Group to foster discussion regarding implicit bias and building community trust.

29.AG- Kamala Harris created OpenJustice, a 1st of-its-kind criminal justice open data initiative providing unprecedented data. Provides key criminal justice indicators and transparency Unroll available on Thread Reader

30.AG- Kamala Harris opened a civil pattern or practice investigations into the Kern County Sheriff’s Office 31.AG-Kamala Harris opened a civil pattern or practice investigations into Bakersfield Police Department

32.AG-Kamala Harris Created the Racial Profiling Advisory Board Unroll available on Thread Reader

33.AG- Kamala Harris issued guidance outlining the law enforcement agencies responsibilities to assist immigrant crime victims in applying for U-visas.

34.AG- Kamala Harris enlisted major law firms to provide pro-bono legal services to for unaccompanied children entering the US. She supported legislation to provide $3M to qualified CA nonprofits to provide legal aid.

35.AG-Kamala Harris sponsored Bill that allows human trafficking victims to petition court to set aside a conviction of solicitation/prostitution.

36.AG- Kamala Harris eliminated longstanding rape kit backlog of over 1,300 untested kits and significantly reduced processing times. Received the US DOJ’s Award for Professional Innovation in Victim Services

37.AG- Kamala Harris sponsored AB1644 to establish 4yr pilot to assist elementary schools in providing mental health services to students, prioritizing schools in communities with high levels of childhood trauma/ adversity

50 Times #Kamala Accomplished/Advocated for #CriminalJusticeReform 38.AG- #KamalaHarris supported Senate Bill 1143 to significantly limit the practice of isolating juveniles in room confinement. The bill was signed into law and took effect in 2018.

39.AG- Kamala Harris supported AB 1840 to require that state agencies give preference to homeless youth and formerly incarcerated youth when hiring interns and student assistants

40.AG- Kamala Harris supported AB2390 to provide a legislative fix to 2010 legislation that inadvertently removed a mechanism for juvenile offenders with good records on supervised probation to obtain honorable discharge status

41.AG- Kamala Harris supported AB1843 to ensure that juvenile records are protected from unfair and undue inquiry during employer background checks.

42.SEN- Kamala Harris reintroduced (along with colleagues) the National Criminal Justice Commission Act. Creates a National Criminal Justice Commission to review & propose reforms to address the most pressing issues facing the Criminal Justice system.

43.SEN- Kamala Harris sponsored bill that would legalize marijuana; expunge prior convictions, require re-sentencing hearings for those still under supervision;& invest money in communities adversely impacted by the War on Drugs

44.SEN- Kamala Harris sponsored the Pretrial Integrity and Safety Act of 2017 — to encourage states to reform or replace the practice of money bail.

45.SEN- Kamala Harris sponsored legislation to increase funding for public defenders, reduce their workload, and provide pay parity between prosecutors and public defenders

46.SEN- Kamala Harris introduced legislation to limit the use of solitary confinement. Also pressed Bureau of Prisons to take measures to address the significant increase in the use of restricted housing.

47.SEN- Kamala Harris sponsored legislation to end discrimination in public housing for offenders released from prison

48.SEN- Kamala Harris sponsored legislation to reform the treatment of incarcerated women in order to reduce the negative impact incarceration has on the family of women behind bars, especially their children

49.SEN-Kamala Harris sponsored legislation to establish the Commission on the Social Status of Black Men & Boys. The Commission will investigate/provide recommendations to improve the disparities Black men experience.

50.SEN- Kamala Harris worked with civil rights groups (like the NAACP LDF) to strengthen the First Step.

MY QUESTION TO HER CRITICS: CAN YOU DO BETTER?

#Kamala Harris #Accomplishments #Those Rooms=The Lion's Den #LGBTQ Rights #Black Lives Matter #California #Georgia #nevada #Arizona #Black Men #Black Women #Recidivism #Civil Rights #Financial Rights

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channelmono · 4 years

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An incomplete list of helpful things mainstream BLM discussion is putting to the forefront

and why we should KEEP it mainstream until change finally comes!

(I promise not to get traumatic with the material)

The countless other cases beyond George Floyd of previously-unrecognized fallen black friends whose police murderers have yet to be accounted for.

The negative consequences of “All Lives Matter” and similar derivatives.

The negative consequences of silence, complicity, obstruction, and performative activism with no calls to action.

The widespread desire for not just the inoffensive and ineffective incremental reform, but the absolute abolishment of police/justice systems as they stand.

Every single time the police make a “wholesome” or “in-solidarity” gesture to go viral, they immediately lie and open fire on protestors unprovoked once the cameras turn off.

Every single time the govt/police outright lie in easily disprovable ways, from the NYPD claiming a Rolex store was looted by protestors to Trump denying any use of tear/CS gas.

The countless times the police have attacked and seized peaceful protestors completely unprovoked, with increasing ferocity, fraudulence, illegality -- and most importantly -- scorn and contempt from the public.

The countless times protestors and observers have remained peaceful, constitutional, and caring of their fellow man as TV news characterized them as riots while hyperfocusing on looters.

Methods to keep protestors safe, from the rights to protect themselves, to the communal knowledge of “don’t show protestor faces on social media”, to the weapons the police are using and how to deal with them before they’re deployed. (this is really important imo!!!!)

The countless instances of protestors still caring more about public health during the COVID-19 pandemic while beaches, casinos, and other high-traffic areas are so impatient to restimulate the economy that nobody there even wears face masks.

The widespread reputation of “All cops are bastards”, in part due to the increased knowledge of the “good cops” who challenge systemic racism and brutality end up fired, abused, and/or killed by their former kin.

Debunking of widespread misconceptions and misinformation, from the campaign to raise Derek Chauvin’s charges (we can’t prove it was premeditated, let alone in court procedure) and the DC Blackout (sourced to a troll account with 3 followers), to safety concerns like fake “protests” (baits for lynching) and various ineffective safety measures against police during protests.

Ways to game and overwhelm social media systems into shutting down the spread and visibility of hate movements (thanks, Kpop stans! Stan Loona!)

The practically-nonexistent and lackadaisical regulations police are held to, from pathetically tiny training periods to their ability to stay on the force despite multiple severe transgressions they are presently NOT obligated to tell the public.

The absurdly disproportionate allocation of major city funds towards the police for a perception of crime only caused by a lack of funds towards constructive services like jobs, physical and mental healthcare, education, livable wages, food security, etc.

The amount of oppressive bills govts are trying to sneakily pass while everyone’s “distracted” to hope nobody notices.

The countless small businesses (especially black-owned) neglected by the govt and left unable to participate without outsider funding in the oh-so-precious economy it scrambled to revitalize.

Resources and charitable movements to help those within the black community in need.

The power of community bail funds and their ability to power many illegitimately-arrested through legal processes with highly-maximized and recyclable charity cash.

The endless list of incredibly talented black individuals with bright potential careers in the arts, sciences, humanities, etc. but were lost solely due to racial discrimination, and yet continue to fight for their right to work anyway.

Increased movement towards building allies through empathy with understanding of mental health over callous and antagonistic threats of ostracism.

Increased prevalence of introducing anti-racism to children and respecting their ability to think.

The knowledge that just because George Floyd’s killers were charged, that doesn’t mean black lives are completely saved, and that they should ALWAYS matter, not just today or tomorrow. There’s still so much work to be done.

The countless news showing how much the protests are working, and how much progress we are making as a movement and as a people. At our current pace, as long as our demands remain loud and visible, we should be expecting change soon.

Thank you for bringing these to the light, everyone! If we keep talking, we can keep up with, if not outpace whatever the opposition throws at us!

The more we stay informed, the more we can endure, and the more the police/govts will continue making themselves look like failures that will have no choice but to change for the better.

Your voice matters! Keep the discussion mainstream, my lovely friends!

#black lives matter #black lives mattter #black life matters #channel mono #no signal studio #politics

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theliberaltony · 4 years

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via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

When protests kicked off throughout the nation a week and a half ago, commentators turned to history to make sense of events. One year dominated the conversation: 1968. Racial tensions, clashes between police and protesters, a general sense of chaos — 1968 and 2020 seemed to have a lot in common. Observers wrote about how Trump’s use of “law and order” rhetoric echoed Richard Nixon and George Wallace in 1968. The comparison makes broader sense, too: 1968 was a destabilizing year in American politics, marked by Civil Rights protests, uprisings born out of racist oppression, assassinations, violence at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago (classified later as a “police riot”) and protests against the Vietnam War. Racial tensions and inequality were at the center of the instability that year, with the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. sparking uprisings in cities across the country.

But 1968 isn’t the only chapter in American history that’s relevant to the current crisis. America has a long history of racial injustice, which makes it difficult to isolate any one precedent for the current environment. History has a way of building on itself; the injustices of one generation are passed on to the next, even as incremental progress is made. This is why I want to share with you three other episodes that also help contextualize the moment we’re in now. They, like 1968 and the broader Civil Rights movement, highlight the depths of violence and injustice that black Americans have faced, and explain why everyday political processes have failed to bring about lasting systemic change.

1990s: National attention on police brutality spurs action … sort of

The early 1990s saw two connected developments that still shape the dynamics of policing in the U.S. First, in 1991, before there were cell phones everywhere, a witness in Los Angeles caught police officers beating Rodney King on a hand-held camcorder, and the video caught the nation’s attention. The four officers charged in the incident were acquitted, which sparked further national outrage, and some Los Angeles residents took to the streets, turning to violence and destruction of property. In total, the demonstrations lasted for five days.

The Rodney King episode is different in important ways from the protests happening now over George Floyd’s death, but there are still some similarities. Namely, it was a high-profile incident of police brutality that underscored just how differently police treat black Americans from white Americans. Additionally, a bystander’s video recording of the officers beating King brought the incident to national audiences, heightening a broad sense of injustice when the verdict was announced.

The fallout after the King verdict is worth considering in this moment. For one, some research shows that the event triggered lower public trust in the police in Los Angeles, especially among African Americans.

The role of the federal government is instructive here as well. In 1992, California Gov. Pete Wilson requested military assistance under the Insurrection Act of 1807, which Trump has suggested he might also invoke now. But LA’s ordeal also prompted federal change — Congress passed legislation allowing the Department of Justice to order reforms of police departments found to have engaged in misconduct. That ability has allowed the federal government to investigate police departments and root out poor practices. This oversight, however, has not been enough to prevent police killings, as we saw again with Floyd.

This provision was also part of a larger piece of anti-crime legislation — the now somewhat-infamous 1994 crime bill that helped create the mass incarceration crisis and forced recent Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden to confront their past stances on crime. The crime bill arguably helped to create some of the challenges today’s protesters are responding to. As sociologist Philip McHarris explained in The Washington Post, the bill “flooded black communities with police, helped states to build prisons and established harsher sentencing policies.” These policies not only helped to create the conditions for further police violence, but by expanding policing and incarceration in the U.S., they also helped to diminish the political power of many black communities through disenfranchisement and disengagement.

The point is that while focusing national attention on police brutality brought about needed change in some respects, reforms fall short when the system charged with implementing that change has racist origins.

Reconstruction: The federal government fails to protect black lives

After the American Civil War ended slavery in 1865, there was no road map for what Southern society would look like, but white Americans quickly adoped two major changes that harmed formerly enslaved people. First, Southern states passed laws restricting black citizens’ freedoms and essentially preserving the abuses of slavery. Second, violence against freed people living in those areas changed form but very much continued, and included the destruction of homes and churches, and sexual violence.

Particularly relevant to the current moment: Then-President Andrew Johnson allowed all this to happen. He failed to extend federal protection to the victims of the violence that Southern whites were engaging in, and, through his liberal use of pardons and lax loyalty requirements, he even allowed former Confederate leaders to find important roles in new state governments. These individuals, once in power, enacted oppressive measures. As historian Annette Gordon-Reed describes in her biography of Johnson, simple things like hunting and fishing became criminal activities for many black Americans, meaning they were increasingly dependent on their employers for their livelihoods.

Johnson’s decision to allow both state and non-state violence against southern blacks deeply shaped American racial politics. The laws states adopted in this period ultimately created the status quo that the civils rights movement of the 1960s pushed back against.

But this historical period is also a pivotal one in understanding race relations in America today as it highlights the lasting repercussions of morally bankrupts presidential judgment. As my colleague Perry Bacon and I wrote a few days ago, the events of the last few days — and years — suggest that Trump is not interested in using federal power to help those protesting racial injustice, and is, at best, indifferent to those goals. Experts have compared Johnson to Trump for years. History shows us that when federal leaders ignore racial injustice and violence — and certainly when they embody and enshrine it — that injustice and violence continues unabated, even if its form changes.

Early 1900s: Black Americans organized and met opposition at every turn

The power structure created after the Civil War led to a lynching crisis in the South (and elsewhere in the U.S.). Thousands of lives were lost in this brutal and inhumane system of vigilante justice — journalist Ida B. Wells, for instance, wrote extensively to document the violence of lynching and to spread awareness nationwide about what was happening.

But it is also in this dark chapter of American history that black American activists entered a new phase in organizing against systemic racism, using a variety of approaches. As political scientist Megan Ming Francis has written, this period gave birth to civil rights organizations like the NAACP, which pushed to change policy through Congress, the White House and the courts.

Those efforts made a real difference. Francis emphasizes the way in which black Americans organized and achieved these changes despite their exclusion from much of the political process and lack of traditional political power. These groups increased public awareness, improved legal standards and persuaded presidents to publicly denounce lynching.

The struggles of this movement, however, also illustrate how slow and frustrating it can be to work through official government channels. For instance, at the urging of these early civil rights activists, the House of Representatives passed an anti-lynching bill. But the bill died in the Senate after a filibuster, and no federal anti-lynching law was ever passed. (The latest anti-lynching bill was held up in the Senate as recently as June 4, 2020.) The American political system makes change difficult. In both Congress and the White House, Southern votes exerted a great deal of influence, and the opponents of an anti-lynching bill had both political power and the power of the status quo.

Every moment in history is distinct, and there are no perfect parallels for what’s happening in 2020. However, looking at other points in both the distant and recent past helps us see how deeply racial injustice is ingrained in the American system. The 1968 comparison can be helpful, but it also tempts us to frame the situation in terms of tranquility and unrest. But “tranquility” has been defined by those in power — almost always whites. Looking at other events helps answer some deeper questions about why people have taken to the streets to demand change and why protesters may be able to accomplish more faster by disrupting “normal” life. Because the system itself is part of the problem, politics, again and again, has set up the rules to make it difficult to pursue accountability and justice within the system.

#IFTTT #Politics – FiveThirtyEight #politics #538 #Julia Azari

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blackkudos · 4 years

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Georgia Douglas Johnson

Georgia Blanche Douglas Camp Johnson, better known as Georgia Douglas Johnson (September 10, 1880 – May 15, 1966), was an African-American poet, one of the earliest African-American female playwrights, and an important figure of the Harlem Renaissance.

Early life

She was born as Georgia Blanche Douglas Camp in 1880 in Atlanta, Georgia, to Laura Douglas and George Camp (her mother's last name is listed in other sources as Jackson). Both parents were of mixed ancestry, with her mother having African-American and Native American heritage, and her father of African-American and English heritage.

Camp lived for much of her childhood in Rome, Georgia. She received her education in both Rome and Atlanta, where she excelled in reading, recitations and physical education. She also taught herself to play the violin. She developed a lifelong love of music that she expressed in her plays, which make distinct use of sacred music.

She graduated from Atlanta University's Normal School 1896. She taught school in Marietta, Georgia. In 1902 she left her teaching career to pursue her interest in music, attending Oberlin Conservatory of Music in Ohio. She wrote music from 1898 until 1959. After studying in Oberlin, Johnson returned to Atlanta, where she became assistant principal in a public school.

Marriage and family

On September 28, 1903, Douglas married Henry Lincoln Johnson (1870-1925), an Atlanta lawyer and prominent Republican party member who was ten years older than she. Douglas and Johnson had two sons, Henry Lincoln Johnson, Jr., and Peter Douglas Johnson (d. 1957). In 1910 they moved to Washington, DC, as her husband had been appointed as Recorder of Deeds for the District of Columbia, a political patronage position under Republican President William Howard Taft. While the city had an active cultural life among the elite people of color, it was far from the Harlem literary center of New York, to which Douglas became attracted.

Douglas's marital life was affected by her writing ambition, for her husband was not supportive of her literary passion, insisting that she devote more time to becoming a homemaker than on publishing poetry. But she later dedicated two poems "The Heart of a Woman" (1918) and "Bronze" (1922) to him; these were praised for their literary quality.

Career

After the Johnson family moved to Washington, D.C., in 1910, Douglas Johnson began to write poems and stories. She credited a poem written by William Stanley Braithwaite, about a rose tended by a child, as her inspiration for writing poetry. Johnson also wrote songs, plays, short stories, taught music, and performed as an organist at her Congregational church.

Poetry

She had already begun to submit poems to newspapers and small magazines when she lived in Atlanta. Her first poem was published in 1905 in the literary journal The Voice of the Negro. Her first collection of poems was not published until 1916.

Johnson published a total of four volumes of poetry, beginning in 1916 with The Heart of a Woman. In the 21st century, her poems have been described as feminine and "ladylike", or "raceless". They have titles such a "Faith", "Youth", and "Joy".

Her poems were published in several issues of The Crisis, the journal of the NAACP that was founded and edited by W. E. B. Du Bois. "Calling Dreams" was published in January 1920, "Treasure" in July 1922, and "To Your Eyes" in November 1924.

During the 1920s, Douglas Johnson traveled extensively to give poetry readings. In 1925 her husband died, and she was widowed at the age of 45. She had to rear their two teenage sons by herself. For years she struggled to support them financially, sometimes taking the clerical jobs generally available to women.

But as a gesture to her late husband's loyalty and political service, Republican President Calvin Coolidge appointed Douglas Johnson as the Commissioner of Conciliation, a political appointee position within the Department of Labor. In 1934, during the Democratic administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt, she lost this political appointee job. She returned to supporting herself with temporary clerical work.

Johnson's literary success resulted in her becoming the first African-American woman to get national notice for her poetry since Frances Ellen Watkins Harper. In 1962 she published her last poetry collection, Share My World.

The Heart of a Woman

Johnson was well recognized for her poems collected in The Heart of a Woman (1918). She explores themes for women such as isolation, loneliness, pain, love and the role of being a woman during this time. Other poems in this collection consist of motherly concerns.

Bronze

Johnson's collection published as Bronze had a popular theme of racial issues; she continued to explore motherhood and being a woman of color. In the foreword of Bronze she said: "Those who know what it means to be a colored woman in 1922- know it not so much in fact as in feeling ..."[1]

Plays

Johnson was a well-known figure in the national black theatre movement and was an important "cultural sponsor" in the early twentieth century, assembling and inspiring the intellectuals and artists who generated the next group of black theatre and rising education (16). Johnson wrote about 28 plays. Plumes was published under the pen name John Temple. Many of her plays were never published because of her gender and race. Gloria Hull is credited with the rediscovery of many of Johnson's plays. The 28 plays that she wrote were divided into four groups: "Primitive Life Plays", "Plays of Average Negro Life", "Lynching Plays" and "Radio Plays". The first section, "Primitive Life Plays", features Blue Blood and Plumes, which were published and produced during Johnson's lifetime.

Like several other plays that prominent women of the Harlem Renaissance wrote, Sunday Morning in the South (1925) was provoked by the inconsistencies of American life. These included the contrast between Christian doctrine and white America's treatment of black Americans, the experience of black men who returned from fighting in war to find they lacked constitutional rights, the economic disparity between whites and blacks, and miscegenation.

In 1926, Johnson's play Blue Blood won honorable mention in the Opportunity drama contest. Her play Plumes also won in the same competition in 1927. Plumes is a folk drama that relates the dilemma of Charity, the main character, whose baby daughter is dying. She has saved up money for the doctor, but also she and her confidante - Tilde - don't believe the medical care would be successful. She has in mind an extravagant funeral for her daughter instead - with plumes, hacks, and other fancy trimmings. Before Charity makes a decision, her daughter dies. Plumes was produced by the Harlem Experimental Theatre between 1928 and 1931.

Blue-Eyed Black Boy is a 1930 lynching genre play written to convince Congress to pass anti-lynching laws. This lesser known play premiered in Xoregos Performing Company's program: "Songs of the Harlem River" in New York City's Dream Up Festival, from August 30 to September 6, 2015. "Songs of the Harlem River - a collection of five one-act plays including Blue-Eyed Black Boy also opened the Langston Hughes Festival in Queens, New York, on February 13, 2016.

In 1935, Johnson wrote two historical plays, William and Ellen Craft and Frederick Douglass. William and Ellen Craft describes the escape of a black couple from slavery, in a work about the importance of self-love, the use of religion for support, and the power of strong relationships between black men and women. Her work Frederick Douglass is about his personal qualities that are not as much in the public eye: his love and tenderness for Ann, who he met while still enslaved, and then was married to in freedom for over four decades. Other themes include the spirit of survival, the need for self-education, and the value of the community and of the extended family.

Johnson was one of the only women whose work was published in Alain Locke's anthology Plays of Negro Life: A Source-Book of Native American Drama. Although several of her plays are lost, Johnson's typescripts for 10 of her plays are in collections in academic institutions.

Anti-lynching activism

Although Johnson spoke out against race inequity as a whole, she is more known as a key advocate in the anti-lynching movement as well as a pioneering member of the lynching drama tradition. Her activism is primarily expressed through her plays, first appearing in the play Sunday Morning in the South in 1925. This outspoken, dramatic writing about racial violence is sometimes credited with her obscurity as a playwright since such topics were not considered appropriate for a woman at that time. Unlike many African-American playwrights, Johnson refused to give her plays a happy ending since she did not feel it was a realistic outcome. As a result, Johnson had difficulty getting plays published. Though she was involved in the NAACP's anti-lynching campaigns of 1936 and 1938, the NAACP refused to produce many of her plays claiming they gave a feeling of hopelessness. Johnson was also a member of the Writers League Against Lynching, which included Countée Cullen, James Weldon Johnson, Jessie Fauset, and Alain Locke. The organization sought a federal anti-lynching bill.

Gloria Hull in her book Color, Sex, and Poetry, argues that Johnson's work ought to be placed in an exceedingly distinguished place within the Harlem Renaissance, and that for African-American women writers "they desperately need and deserve long overdue scholarly attention". Hull, through a black feminist critical perspective, appointed herself the task of informing those within the dark of the very fact that African-American women, like Georgia Douglas Johnson, are being excluded from being thought of as key voices of the Harlem Renaissance. Johnson's anti-lynching activism was expressed through her plays such as The Ordeal, which that was printed in Alain Locke's anthology The New Negro. Her poems describe African Americans and their mental attitude once having faced prejudice towards them and the way they modify it. Isolationism and anti-feminist prejudice however prevented the sturdy African-American women like Johnson from getting their remembrance and impact with such contributions.

S Street Salon

Soon after her husband's death, Johnson began to host what became 40 years of weekly "Saturday Salons" for friends and authors, including Langston Hughes, Jean Toomer, Anne Spencer, Richard Bruce Nugent, Alain Locke, Jessie Redmon Fauset, Angelina Weld Grimké and Eulalie Spence — all major contributors to the New Negro Movement, which is better known today as the Harlem Renaissance. Georgia Douglas Johnson's house at 1461 South Street NW would later become known as the S Street Salon. The salon was a meeting place for writers in Washington, D.C. during the Harlem Renaissance. Johnson's S Street Salon helped to nurture and sustain creativity by providing a place for African-American artists to meet, socialize, discuss their work, and exchange ideas. According to Akasha Gloria Hull, Johnson's role in creating a place for black artists to nurture their creativity made the movement a national one because she work outside of Harlem and therefore made a trust for intercity connections. Johnson called her home the "Half Way House" for friends traveling, and a place where they "could freely discuss politics and personal opinions" and where those with no money and no place to stay would be welcome. Although black men were allowed to attend, it mostly consisted of black women such as May Miller, Marita Bonner, Mary Burrill, Alice Dunbar-Nelson, Zora Neale Hurston, and Angelina Weld Grimke. Johnson was especially close to the European-American writer Angelina Grimké. This Salon was known to have discussions on issues such as lynching, women's rights, and the problems facing African-American families. They became known as the "Saturday Nighters."

Weekly column

Between 1926 and 1932, she wrote short stories, started a letter club, and published a weekly newspaper column called "Homely Philosophy."

The column was published in 20 different newspapers, including the New York News, Chicago Defender, Philadelphia Tribune, and Pittsburgh Courier and ran from 1926 to 1932. Some of the topics she wrote on were considered inspirational and spiritual for her audience, such as "Hunch," "Magnetic Personality," and "The Blessing of Work." Some of her work was perceived to help people cope with the hardships of the Great Depression.

One of the articles that focused on spirituality was "Our Fourth Eye", in which she wrote that "closing one's natural eyes" to look with the "eyes of one's mind". She explains that the "fourth eye" assists with viewing the world in this way. Another essay of Johnson's, "Hunch" discusses the idea that people have hunches, or intuition, in their lives. She goes on to explain that individuals must not quiet these hunches because they are their "sixth sense- your instruction".

Legacy

Throughout her life she had written 200 poems, 28 plays and 31 short stories which is a pretty great achievement to have especially during this period of time. In 1962, she then published her last poetry book called "Share My World". Throughout "Share My World" and the poems inside, they reflect on love towards all people and forgiveness which shows how much wisdom she has gained throughout her entire life. In 1965 Atlanta University had presented Douglas with an honorary doctorate of literature which praised her for all the accomplishments she has had and for the great woman she was and still is known as.

When she died in Washington, D.C., in 1966, one of her sister playwrights and a former participant of the S Street Salon, sat by her bedside "stroking her hand and repeating the words, 'Poet Georgia Douglas Johnson'".

Johnson received an honorary doctorate in literature from Atlanta University in 1965. In September 2009, it was announced that Johnson would be inducted into the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame.

Major works

Poems

The Heart of a Woman (1918)

Bronze (1922)

An Autumn Love Cycle (1928)

Share My World (1962)

The Ordeal

Plays

A Sunday Morning in the South (1925)

Blue Blood (1926)

Paupaulekejo (1926)

Plumes (1927)

Safe (c. 1929)

Blue-Eyed Black Boy (c. 1930)

Starting Point (play) (1930s)

William and Ellen Craft (1935)

Frederick Douglass (1935)

And Yet They Paused (1938)

A Bill to Be Passed (1938)

#09/10 #05/15

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icubud · 4 years

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Historical truth about Democrats and Black Lives

Some history on lynchings in the USA

From 1882 to 1968, "...nearly 200 anti-lynching bills were introduced in Congress, and three passed the House. Seven presidents between 1890 and 1952 petitioned Congress to pass a federal law."[32] The Southern Democratic block in the Senate prevented the passage of any anti-lynching bill during this period. In 2005, by a resolution sponsored by senators Mary Landrieu of Louisiana and George Allen of Virginia, and passed by voice vote, the Senate made a formal apology for its failure to pass an anti-lynching law "when it was most needed".[32]

From the mid-1870s onward, violence rose as insurgent paramilitary groups in the Deep South worked to suppress black voting and turn Republicans out of office. In Louisiana, the Carolinas, and Florida especially, the Democratic Party relied on paramilitary "White Line" groups, such as the White Camelia, White League and Red Shirts to terrorize, intimidate and assassinate African-American and white Republicans in an organized drive to regain power. In Mississippi and the Carolinas, paramilitary chapters of Red Shirts conducted overt violence and disruption of elections. In Louisiana, the White League had numerous chapters; they carried out goals of the Democratic Party to suppress black voting. Grant's desire to keep Ohio in the Republican aisle and his attorney general's maneuvers led to a failure to support the Mississippi governor with Federal troops.[51] The campaign of terror worked. In Yazoo County, Mississippi, for instance, with an African-American population of 12,000, only seven votes were cast for Republicans in 1874. In 1875, Democrats swept into power in the Mississippi state legislature.[51]

Once Democrats regained power in Mississippi, Democrats in other states adopted the Mississippi Plan to control the election of 1876, using informal armed militias to assassinate political leaders, hunt down community members, intimidate and turn away voters, and effectively suppress African-American suffrage and civil rights. In state after state, Democrats swept back to power.[52] From 1868 to 1876, there were 50–100 lynchings annually.

Conclusions of numerous studies since the mid-20th century have found the following variables affecting the rate of lynchings in the South: "lynchings were more numerous where the African American population was relatively large, the agricultural economy was based predominantly on cotton, the white population was economically stressed, the Democratic Party was stronger, and multiple religious organizations competed for congregants."[57]

From 1896 until 1900, the House of Representatives with a Republican majority had acted in more than thirty cases to set aside election results from Southern states where the House Elections Committee had concluded that "black voters had been excluded due to fraud, violence, or intimidation". However, in the early 1900s, it began to back off, after Democrats won a majority, which included Southern delegations that were solidly in Democratic hands.

The NAACP mounted a strong nationwide campaign of protests and public education against The Birth of a Nation. As a result, some city governments prohibited the release of the film. In addition, the NAACP publicized production and helped create audiences for the 1919 releases, The Birth of a Race and Within Our Gates, African-American-directed films that presented more positive images of blacks.

On April 1, 1918, U.S. Representative Leonidas C. Dyer of St. Louis, Missouri, introduced the Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill in the U.S. House of Representatives. Rep. Dyer was concerned over increased lynching, mob violence, and disregard for the "rule of law" in the South. The bill made lynching a federal crime, and those who participated in lynching would be prosecuted by the federal government. It did not pass due to a Southern filibuster, and the Senate would not pass anti-lynching legislation until 2018 (the Justice for Victims of Lynching Act).

On 1919, the new NAACP organized the National Conference on Lynching to increase support for the Dyer Bill.

In 1920, the black community succeeded in getting its most important priority in the Republican Party's platform at the National Convention: support for an anti-lynching bill. The black community supported Warren G. Harding in that election, but were disappointed as his administration moved slowly on a bill.[95]

Dyer revised his bill and re-introduced it to the House in 1921. It passed the House on January 22, 1922, due to "insistent country-wide demand",[95] and was favorably reported out by the Senate Judiciary Committee. Action in the Senate was delayed, and ultimately the Democratic Solid South filibuster defeated the bill in the Senate in December.[96] In 1923, Dyer went on a midwestern and western state tour promoting the anti-lynching bill; he praised the NAACP's work for continuing to publicize lynching in the South and for supporting the federal bill. Dyer's anti-lynching motto was "We have just begun to fight," and he helped generate additional national support. His bill was defeated twice more in the Senate by Southern Democratic filibuster. The Republicans were unable to pass a bill in the 1920s.[97]

Southern Senators continued to hold a hammerlock on Congress. Because of the Southern Democrats' disfranchisement of African Americans in Southern states at the start of the 20th century, Southern whites for decades had nearly double the representation in Congress beyond their own population. Southern states had Congressional representation based on total population, but essentially only whites could vote and only their issues were supported. Due to seniority achieved through one-party Democratic rule in their region, Southern Democrats controlled many important committees in both houses. Southern Democrats consistently opposed any legislation related to putting lynching under Federal oversight. As a result, Southern white Democrats were a formidable power in Congress until the 1960s.

In 1947, the Truman administration published a report entitled To Secure These Rights which advocated making lynching a federal crime, abolishing poll taxes, and other civil rights reforms. The Southern Democratic bloc of senators and congressmen continued to obstruct attempts at federal legislation.[107]

Under the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration, the Civil Rights Section of the Justice Department tried, but failed, to prosecute lynchers under Reconstruction-era civil rights laws. The first successful federal prosecution of a lyncher for a civil rights violation was in 1946. By that time, the era of lynchings as a common occurrence had ended. Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. succeeded in gaining House passage of an anti-lynching bill, but it was defeated in the Senate, still dominated by the Southern Democratic bloc, supported by its disfranchisement of blacks.

Source

#BLM #history #learn #liars #democratic party #DNC party of death and hate #truth

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warlockfemale · 4 years

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Silver Screen Films: Minorities or LGBTQ Edition

Because while I adore old films I also know that they sometimes have horrible, horrible outdated thoughts on race and the LGBTQ community. And yes they will have messages that are kinda racist now. Warnings are not going to include that because it’s gonna be a given. Silent Films:

Within Our Gates: 1920. Black drama (kinda melodramaish) Warnings for lynching and attempted rape/talked about rape.

The Symbol of the Unconquered: Silent, black, western film. Warnings for KKK and threats of sexual violence. The Daughter of Dawn: Silent film with a 100% Native American cast. Thought lost until it was found in around 2007. 2013 finally shown again. Have yet to see it so don’t know what warnings to place.

Honorable/Dishonorable mention: Broken Blossoms. Silent film about a Chinese man (played by a white guy) who goes to London to spread the Buddhist faith. Honestly racist and lots of problems with it but I’m putting it here because it’s one of the very, very few films that showed an Asian man as a 100% good person who tries to help an abused child (who later on gets beaten to death by her father) and was a reaction to the sudden surge of anti-Chinese groups appearing in the USA. Warnings: Look it’s a super bleak film about racism, child abuse, alcoholism, depression, and drug use.

Different from the Others:1919 LGBTQ film, considered the very first pro-homosexual film ever made and Nazis hated it so much they tried to destroy the film but failed. Warnings: Suicide, blackmail.

Michael: 1924 silent film. Almost all of the main characters are gay or bisexual, though bisexual is also the asshat of the film and the only named woman is the villian. A Florida Enchantment: 1914 film about a woman who takes enchanted seeds that change gender. Thought to be first film showing bisexuality and transgender roles. Warnings: Super, super blackface. Like not even sure how it was ok even for that time period that is how blackface it is.

Talkies:

Pinky: 1949 drama film about a white passing black woman. Though the actress was in fact white the story line really dives into the race relations of the era (also pretty sure that they had to cast a white woman in part because they can’t have a actual black woman in a romance with a white dude.) Film still got in trouble because ewwww black and white people together and the film showing that white people are racist in the south? And it showed the town in a bad light about being super racist? Went to the supreme court who said that the film was protected by the first amendment and the south had to suck it up.

Lying Lips: 1939 black crime/thriller film. Have not seen it but I keep being told I should. 1940s Green Hornet Serial: Notable for having an actual Asian-American playing Kato who talks like a normal human. Well as much of an normal human as everyone else in it. Again not really “great” but seriously finding films with Asian-Americans that don’t show them as savages in this time was hard. Though poor Keye Luke (Japanese) got billed as Korean, then Filipino due to WW2.

Harlem on the Prairie/Two-Gun Man from Harlem: 1930s All black cowboy films made by the same man. First is also a musical and as far as I can recall both are rather light hearted. Glen or Glenda: 1953 Ed Wood film about cross-dressing written and directed by a cross-dresser. It is also one of the few in which the person gets to have a happy ending and not kill themselves or sacrifice themselves for somebody else. Warnings: It’s a badly made film with a lot of added random sex to keep butts in the seats. Suicide. Honestly there are also a lot of non-white actors in films that were rather racist. However they still got billed as leads or lead villains and got paid which was considered a win for the time. Might make another post for that.

#sorry for lack of latino films #most of what i thought about was either there is one good small part or was made in a latino country #so did not fit the bill #silent era #talkies #silver screen #1920s #1930s #1940s

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96thdayofrage · 3 years

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Democrats were all but sent back to square one after Senate Republicans used a filibuster to block legislation that would have overhauled basically everything about elections in the U.S. and greatly benefitted Black voters, in particular.

The failure by Senate Democrats to secure bipartisan support behind the For The People Act, which, among other things would make voting easier, means they’re effectively back to the proverbial drawing board in the fight for stronger voting rights. It also allows Republicans to continue enacting restrictive election laws in their states across the country with impunity.

“The fight to protect voting rights is not over, by no means,” Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer insisted without offering any hint to what the next steps are beyond simply trying to get the For The People Act passed in the Senate again; prospects that don’t seem immediately promising.

One way to get it passed, though, would be to eliminate the filibuster itself, something that has been called “a relic of Jim Crow” not only because it is rooted in racism but also because it disproportionately affects Black people when employed during debates about voting rights, in particular — like on Tuesday.

LaTosha Brown and Cliff Albright, co-founders of Black Voters Matter, said Senate Republicans were ignoring the will of the nearly 70% of Americans who are in favor of not just debating HR1/S1 but also passing the For The People Act.

“Their actions today prove that they’re hell-bent on dismantling our democracy,” Brown and Alright said in a statement emailed to NewsOne.

The statement continued: “The Senate filibuster is part of the Big Lie in this country that democracy is afforded equally to all Americans. Even as the majority of voters support legislation like HR1/S1, cowards in Washington are hiding behind the filibuster to stall major voting rights legislation and, ultimately, kill Black voting power. The truth is that racism is embedded in the fabric of our nation and coded in phrases like ‘bipartisanship.’ And as long as the filibuster remains intact, senators will continue to weaponize it against Black voters.”

Black leaders, in particular, have been leading the charge calling for an end to the filibuster, a tool that Republicans have used three times now during Joe Biden‘s presidency, and counting.

The filibuster has been preventing Blck progress since the 1840s. Created to protect pro-slavery planters, the modern filibuster is more than a simple procedural move. Notably, it was also employed against both the Civil Rights Act of 1964 for 60 business days — a record that still stands to this day — and an anti-lynching bill in 1922.

The need for a supermajority to pass legislation may make sense in a truly bipartisan body that can compromise. But compromise cannot exist when Republicans remain laser-focused on legislating based on Donald Trump’s lies about nonexistent election fraud.

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freedomartspress · 4 years

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Three Poems — Tongo Eisen Martin

Kick Drum Only

All street life to a certain extent starts fair

Sometimes with a spiritual memory even

Predawn soul-clap/ your father dying even

Maybe I’ve pushed the city too far

My sensitivities to landfill districting and minstrel whistles/

White supremacist graffiti on westbound rail guards

-all overcome and reauthored

The garbage is growing voices

Condensed Marxism

modal gangsterism for a warrior-depressive

Underpass in my pocket

because I am a deity

or decent bid on the Panther name

revolutionary violence that chose its own protagonists

or muted stage of genius

A merciful Marxism

Disquieted home life

Or metaphor for relaxing next to a person

Who is relaxing next to a gun

I stare at my father for a few seconds

Then return to my upbringing

Return to the souls of Ohio Black folks

Revolution is damn near pagan at this point

You know what the clown wants? The respect of the ant.

Wants a pen cap full of bullets

Wants to see their ancestors in broad daylight

I am not tired of these rooms; just tired of the world that give them a relativity

My only change of clothes prosecuted

The government has finally learned how to write poems

shoot-outs that briefly align…

that make up a parable

white bodies are paid well, I posit

do white men actually even have leaders?

all white people are white men

white men will only ever be metaphors

all I do is practice, Lord

A rat pictures a river

Can almost taste the racial divide

Can almost roll a family member’s head into a city hall legislative chamber

Knows who in this good book will fly

I have decided not to talk out of anger ever again, Lord

Met my wife at the same time I met new audience members for our pain

We passed each other cigarettes and watched cops win

A city gone uniquely linear

Harlem of the West due a true universe

“I will always remember you in fancy clothes,” my wife said

so here I sit… twisting in silk ideation

My rifle made of tar

My targets made of an honest language

This San Francisco poetry is how God knows that it is me whining

Writing among the lesser-respected wolves

Lesser-observed militarization

Dixie-less prison bookkeeping/I mean the California gray-coats are coming

lynch mob gossip and bourgeois debt collection

I mean, it’s tempting to change professions mid-poem

in a Chicago briefing, a white sergeant saying, “blank slate for all of us after this Black organizer is dead.”

standard academics toasting two-buck wine at the tank parade

bay of nothing, Lord

nuclear cobblestones, gunline athleticism

and the last of the inherited asthma

children given white dolls to play with and fear

facial expressions borrowed from rich people’s shoe strings

I can hear hate

And teach hate

And call tools by people names

And name people dead to themselves

no one getting naturalized except federal agents soon

carving the equator into throats soon

I’m sorry to make you relive all of this, Lord

pre-dawn monarchy

friends putting up politician posters then snorting the remainder of the paste

minstrel scripts shoveled into the walls by their elders

my children sharpening quarters on the city’s edge

For these audiences

I project myself into a ghost like state

For these gangsters, I do the same

every now and then, we take a nervous look east

Sleep becomes Christ

Sleep starts growing a racial identity

do you ever spiral, Lord?

has the gang-age betrayed us?

be patient with my poems, Lord

So much pain

there is a point to crime…

There has to be if race traitors come with it

Lord, is that my revolver in your hand?

Better presidents than these have yawned at cages

Have called us holy slaves

Filled the school libraries with cop documentaries

Baby, I don’t have money for food

I have no present moment at all

I Do Not Know the Spelling of Money

I go to the railroad tracks

And follow them to the station of my enemies

A cobalt-toothed man pitches pennies at my mugshot negative

All over the united states, there are

Toddlers in the rock

I see why everyone out here got in the big cosmic basket

And why blood agreements mean a lot

And why I get shot back at

I understand the psycho-spiritual refusal to write white history or take the glass freeway

White skin tattooed on my right forearm

Ricochet sewage near where I collapsed

into a rat-infested manhood

My new existence as living graffiti

In the kitchen with

a lot of gun cylinders to hack up

House of God in part

No cops in part

My body brings down the Christmas

The new bullets pray over blankets made from old bullets

Pray over the 28th hour’s next beauty mark

Extrajudicial confederate statue restoration

the waist band before the next protest poster

By the way,

Time is not an illusion, your honor

I will return in a few whirlwinds

I will save your desk for last

You are witty, your honor

You’re moving money again, your honor

It is only raining one thing: non-white cops

And prison guard shadows

Reminding me of

Spoiled milk floating on an oil spill

A neighborhood making a lot of fuss over its demise

A new lake for a Black Panther Party

Malcom X’s ballroom jacket slung over my son’s shoulders

Pharmacy doors mid-slide

The figment of village

a noon noose to a new white preacher

Wiretaps in the discount kitchen tile

-All in an abstract painting of a president

Bought slavers some time, didn’t it?

The tantric screeches of military bolts and Election-Tuesday cars

A cold-blooded study in leg irons

Leg irons in tornado shelters

Leg irons inside your body

Proof that some white people have actually fondled nooses

That sundown couples

made their vows of love over

opaque peach plastic

and bolt action audiences

Man, the Medgar Evers-second is definitely my favorite law of science

Fondled news clippings and primitive Methodists

My arm changes imperialisms

Simple policing vs. Structural frenzies

Elementary school script vs. Even whiter white spectrums

Artless bleeding and

the challenge of watching civilians think

“terrible rituals they have around the corner. They let their elders beg for public mercy…beg for settler polity”

“I am going to go ahead and sharpen these kids’ heads into arrows myself and see how much gravy spills out of family crests.”

Modern fans of war

What with their t-shirt poems

And t-shirt guilt

And me, having on the cheapest pair of shoes on the bus,

I have no choice but to read the city walls for signs of my life

The Chicago Prairie Fire

First, I must apologize to the souls of the house

I am wearing the cheek bones of the mask only

Pill bottle, my name is yours

Name tagged on the side of a factory of wrists

Teeth of the mask now

Back of the head of the mask now

New phase of anti-anthropomorphism fending for real faces

Stuck with one of those cultures that believes I chose this family

I am not creative

Just the silliest of the revolutionaries

My blood drying on

my only jacket

just as God got playful

the police state’s psychic middlemen

Evangelizing for the creation of an un-masses

An un-Medgar

Blood of a lamb less racialized

or awesome prison sentence

Good God

Elder-abuse hired for the low

dog eat genius

Right angle made between a point

On a Louisiana plantation

And 5-year old’s rubber ball

3 feet high and falling

like a deportee plane

to complete my interpretation

(of garden variety genocide)

I am small talk

about loving your enemies

A little more realistically

About paper tigers

And also gold…

I need my left hand back

I broke my neck on the piano keys

Found paradise in a fistfight

Maybe I should check into the Cuba line

Watching the universe’s last metronomes

some call Black Jacobins

Just wait…

These religions will start resigning in a decade or two

Some colorfully

Some transactional-ly

In a cotton gothic society

Class betrayal gone glassless/ I mean ironically/ my window started fogging over too

Wondering which Haiti will get me through this winter

Which poem houses souls

Which socialist breakthroughs

Breakthroughs like ten steps back

Then finally stillness

Stillness

Then stillness among families

a John Brown biography takes a bow

I’m up next to introduce Prosser to Monk

I remember childhood

Remember the word “Childhood” being a beginning

Scribbling on an amazing grace

I rented this body from some circumference of slavery

Remember being kicked out of the Midwest

Strange fruit theater

Lithium and circuses

Likeminded stomachs

The ruling class blessing their blank checks with levy foam…

with opioid tea

Sentient dollar bills yelling to each other pocket to pocket

Cello stands in the precinct for accompanying counterrevolutionaries

My mother raised me with a simple pain

A poet loses his mind, you know, like the room has weather

Or first-girlfriend gravity

Police-knock gravity

Mind-game gravity

Or revolution languishing behind

The sugar in my good friend’s mind

“The difference between me and you

Is that the madness

Wants me forever”

A pair of apartments

Defining both my family

And political composure

Books behind my back

Bail money paved into the streets

Playing:

Euphoria

Cliché

Bracing for the medicine’s recoil

Sharing a dirty deli sandwich with my friends

Black Jacobins

Underground topography

Or grandmother’s hands

Psychology of the mask now

Teeth of the mask again

—

Originally from San Francisco, Tongo Eisen-Martin is a movement worker and educator who has organized against mass incarceration and extra-judicial killing of Black people throughout the United States. His latest curriculum on extrajudicial killing of Black people, We Charge Genocide Again, has been used as an educational and organizing tool throughout the country. His book of poems, Someone’s Dead Already was nominated for a California Book Award.

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