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newstfionline · 3 years

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Monday, September 20, 2021

Biden’s Entire Presidential Agenda Rests on Expansive Spending Bill (NYT) Biden’s entire presidential agenda is riding on the reconciliation bill being crafted in Congress right now. No president has ever packed as much of his agenda, domestic and foreign, into a single piece of legislation as President Biden has with the $3.5 trillion spending plan that Democrats are trying to wrangle through Congress over the next six weeks,” Tankersley writes. “It is almost as if President Franklin D. Roosevelt had stuffed his entire New Deal into one piece of legislation, or if President Lyndon B. Johnson had done the same with his Great Society, instead of pushing through individual components over several years. If he succeeds, Biden’s far-reaching attempt could result in a presidency-defining victory that delivers on a decades-long campaign by Democrats to expand the federal government to combat social problems and spread the gains of a growing economy to workers. If he fails, he could end up with nothing. As Democrats are increasingly seeing, the sheer weight of Mr. Biden’s progressive push could cause it to collapse, leaving the party empty-handed, with the president’s top priorities going unfulfilled. … If Mr. Biden’s party cannot find consensus on those issues and the bill dies, the president will have little immediate recourse to advance almost any of those priorities.

Child care in the US is a ‘broken market,’ Treasury report finds (Yahoo Money) A Treasury Department report this week characterized the U.S. child care system as “unworkable” as Democrats push reform that experts say is an “overdue and critical investment.” The average American family with at least one child under age 5 uses 13% of their income to pay for child care, according to the report, nearly double the 7% that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services considers affordable. Additionally, less than 20% of the children eligible for the Child Care and Development Fund—a federal assistance program for low-income families—are getting that funding. “Child care is a textbook example of a broken market, and one reason is that when you pay for it, the price does not account for all the positive things it confers on our society,” Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said in a statement on Wednesday. “When we underinvest in child care, we forgo that; we give up a happier, healthier, more prosperous labor force in the future.”

Inspiration4 Astronauts Beam After Return From 3-Day Journey to Orbit (NYT) After three days in orbit, a physician assistant, a community college professor, a data engineer and the billionaire who financed their trip arrived back on Earth, heralding a new era of space travel with a dramatic and successful Saturday evening landing in the Atlantic Ocean. The mission, which is known as Inspiration4, splashed down off the Florida coast at 7:06 p.m. on Saturday. Each step of the return unfolded on schedule, without problems. Within an hour, all four crew members walked out of the spacecraft, one at a time, each beaming with excitement as recovery crews assisted them.

Haitians on Texas border undeterred by US plan to expel them (AP) Haitian migrants seeking to escape poverty, hunger and a feeling of hopelessness in their home country said they will not be deterred by U.S. plans to speedily send them back, as thousands of people remained encamped on the Texas border Saturday after crossing from Mexico. Scores of people waded back and forth across the Rio Grande on Saturday afternoon, re-entering Mexico to purchase water, food and diapers in Ciudad Acuña before returning to the Texas encampment under and near a bridge in the border city of Del Rio. Junior Jean, a 32-year-old man from Haiti, watched as people cautiously carried cases of water or bags of food through the knee-high river water. Jean said he lived on the streets in Chile the past four years, resigned to searching for food in garbage cans. “We are all looking for a better life,” he said.

Three Weeks After Hurricane Ida, Parts of Southeast Louisiana Are Still Dark (NYT) For Tiffany Brown, the drive home from New Orleans begins as usual: She can see the lights on in the city’s central business district and people gathering in bars and restaurants. But as she drives west along Interstate 10, signs of Hurricane Ida’s destruction emerge. Trees with missing limbs fill the swamp on either side of the highway. With each passing mile, more blue tarps appear on rooftops, and more electric poles lay fallen by the road, some snapped in half. By the time Ms. Brown gets to her exit in Destrehan 30 minutes later, the lights illuminating the highway have disappeared, and another night of total darkness has fallen on her suburban subdivision. For Ms. Brown, who works as an office manager at a pediatric clinic, life at work can feel nearly normal. But at home, with no electricity, it is anything but. “I keep hoping every day that I’m going to go home and it’ll be on,” she said. Three weeks have passed since Hurricane Ida knocked down electric wires, poles and transmission towers serving more than one million people in southeast Louisiana. In New Orleans, power was almost entirely restored by Sept. 10, and businesses and schools have reopened. But outside the city, more than 100,000 customers were without lights through Sept. 13. As of Friday evening there were still about 38,000 customers without power, and many people remained displaced from damaged homes.

Favela centennial shows Brazil communities’ endurance (AP) Dozens of children lined up at a community center in Sao Paulo for a slice of creamy, blue cake. None was celebrating a birthday; their poor neighborhood, the favela of Paraisopolis, was commemorating 100 years of existence. “People started coming (to the city) for construction jobs and settled in,” community leader Gilson Rodrigues said. “There was no planning, not even streets. People started growing crops. It was all disorganized. Authorities didn’t do much, so we learned to organize ourselves.” The favela’s centennial, which was marked on Thursday, underscores the permanence of its roots and of other communities like it, even as Brazilians in wealthier parts of town often view them as temporary and precarious. Favelas struggle to shed that stigma as they defy simple definition, not least because they evolved over decades. Paraisopolis is Sao Paulo’s second-biggest favela, home to 43,000 people, according to the most-recent census, in 2010. Recent, unofficial counts put its population around 100,000.

The barbecue king: British royals praise Philip’s deft touch (AP) When Prince Philip died nearly six months ago at 99, the tributes poured in from far and wide, praising him for his supportive role at the side of Queen Elizabeth II over her near 70-year reign. Now, it has emerged that Philip had another crucial role within the royal family. He was the family’s barbecue king—perhaps testament to his Greek heritage. “He adored barbecuing and he turned that into an interesting art form,” his oldest son Prince Charles said in a BBC tribute program that will be broadcast on Wednesday. “And if I ever tried to do it he ... I could never get the fire to light or something ghastly, so (he’d say): ‘Go away!’” In excerpts of ‘Prince Philip: The Royal Family Remembers’ released late Saturday, members of the royal family spoke admiringly of the late Duke of Edinburgh’s barbecuing skills. “Every barbecue that I’ve ever been on, the Duke of Edinburgh has been there cooking,” said Prince William, Philip’s oldest grandson. “He’s definitely a dab hand at the barbecue ... I can safely say there’s never been a case of food poisoning in the family that’s attributed to the Duke of Edinburgh.” The program, which was filmed before and after Philip’s death on April 9, was originally conceived to mark his 100th birthday in June.

Relations between France and the U.S. have sunk to their lowest level in decades. (NYT) The U.S. and Australia went to extraordinary lengths to keep Paris in the dark as they secretly negotiated a plan to build nuclear submarines, scuttling a defense contract worth at least $60 billion. President Emmanuel Macron of France was so enraged that he recalled the country’s ambassadors to both nations. Australia approached the new administration soon after President Biden’s inauguration. The conventionally powered French subs, the Australians feared, would be obsolete by the time they were delivered. The Biden administration, bent on containing China, saw the deal as a way to cement ties with a Pacific ally. But the unlikely winner is Britain, who played an early role in brokering the alliance. For its prime minister, Boris Johnson, who will meet this coming week with Biden at the White House and speak at the U.N., it is his first tangible victory in a campaign to make post-Brexit Britain a player on the global stage.

Hong Kong’s first ‘patriots-only’ election kicks off (Reuters) Fewer than 5,000 Hong Kong people from mostly pro-establishment circles began voting on Sunday for candidates to an election committee, vetted as loyal to Beijing, who will pick the city’s next China-backed leader and some of its legislature. Pro-democracy candidates are nearly absent from Hong Kong’s first election since Beijing overhauled the city’s electoral system to ensure that “only patriots” rule China’s freest city. The election committee will select 40 seats in the revamped Legislative Council in December, and choose a chief executive in March. Changes to the political system are the latest in a string of moves—including a national security law that punishes anything Beijing deems as subversion, secession, terrorism or collusion with foreign forces—that have placed the international financial hub on an authoritarian path. Most prominent democratic activists and politicians are now in jail or have fled abroad.

The Remote-Control Killing Machine (Politico/NYT) For 14 years, Israel wanted to kill Iran’s top nuclear scientist. Then they came up with a way to do it while using a trained sniper who was more than 1,000 miles away—and fired remotely. It was also the debut test of a high-tech, computerized sharpshooter kitted out with artificial intelligence and multiple-camera eyes, operated via satellite and capable of firing 600 rounds a minute. The souped-up, remote-controlled machine gun now joins the combat drone in the arsenal of high-tech weapons for remote targeted killing. But unlike a drone, the robotic machine gun draws no attention in the sky, where a drone could be shot down, and can be situated anywhere, qualities likely to reshape the worlds of security and espionage.

Israeli army arrests last 2 of 6 Palestinian prison escapees (AP) Israeli forces on Sunday arrested the last two of six Palestinian prisoners who escaped a maximum-security Israeli prison two weeks ago, closing an intense, embarrassing episode that exposed deep security flaws in Israel and turned the fugitives into Palestinian heroes. The Israeli military said the two men surrendered in Jenin, their hometown in the occupied West Bank, after they were surrounded at a hideout that had been located with the help of “accurate intelligence.” The prisoners all managed to tunnel out of a maximum-security prison in northern Israel on Sept. 6. The bold escape dominated newscasts for days and sparked heavy criticism of Israel’s prison service. According to various reports, the men dug a hole in the floor of their shared cell undetected over several months and managed to slip past a sleeping prison guard after emerging through a hole outside the facility. Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip have celebrated the escape and held demonstrations in support of the prisoners. Taking part in attacks against the Israeli military or even civilians is a source of pride for many Palestinians, who view it as legitimate resistance to military occupation.

Jaw-dropping moments in WSJ's bombshell Facebook investigation (CNN Business) This week the Wall Street Journal released a series of scathing articles about Facebook, citing leaked internal documents that detail in remarkably frank terms how the company is not only well aware of its platforms’ negative effects on users but also how it has repeatedly failed to address them. Here are some of the more jaw-dropping moments from the Journal’s series. In the Journal’s report on Instagram’s impact on teens, it cites Facebook’s own researchers’ slide deck, stating the app harms mental health. “We make body image issues worse for one in three teen girls,” said one slide from 2019, according to the WSJ. Another reads: “Teens blame Instagram for increases in the rate of anxiety and depression ... This reaction was unprompted and consistent across all groups.” In 2018, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said a change in Facebook’s algorithm was intended to improve interactions among friends and family and reduce the amount of professionally produced content in their feeds. But according to the documents published by the Journal, staffers warned the change was having the opposite effect: Facebook was becoming an angrier place. A team of data scientists put it bluntly: “Misinformation, toxicity and violent content are inordinately prevalent among reshares,” they said, according to the Journal’s report.

#headlines #news

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notinthehistorybooks · 5 years

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In 1781, Quock Walker ran away from “home”.

Born in 1753 an originally believed to be from Ghana, Walker was a slave, owned by Massachusetts slave owner James Caldwell of Worcester County -- just west of Boston. Caldwell promised Walker his freedom once he turned 25 years old, but Caldwell died before the promise was upheld. Nathaniel Jennison, Walker’s owner after Caldwell’s death, refused to give Walker his freedom. So, at 28, three years after the promise, Walker escaped.

Walker went to a nearby farm owned by Seth and John Caldwell, the brothers of James Caldwell. There he was promised a “safe home”. Somehow, Jennison got wind of Walker’s whereabouts, tracked him down and beat him. Walker fought back, suing Jennison for battery.

At this moment in history, the states, later to be known as the United States, were hoping to gain freedom from England. The American Revolution was in full effect. The language determining citizenship, freedom and what it meant to be “a man” in the eyes of the law were up for interpretation.

Two civil cases were heard, on top of one criminal case: Quock Walker v. Jennison. Though the suit originally circled around battery, it became a suit about the legality of slavery. Walker’s lawyers argued against the concept of slavery -- as the practice went against the Bible and the Massachusetts Constitution of 1780. The jury agreed. Walker was a freeman and awarded him 50 pounds in damages. Their decision was appealed and later tossed out, due to a failing to appear on Jennison’s case or papers were improperly filed.

The preamble of the Worcester Anti-Slavery Society (something Jennison would have been enraged to see), 1846 -- Digital Commonwealth

In September of 1781, the Attorney General of Massachusetts brought upon a case on the battery charges and the question of Walker’s freedom to the state’s Supreme Court. The results went unchanged. The Massachusetts Supreme Court found Walker a freeman, citing the Massachusetts Declaration of Rights -- “all men are born free and equal” -- as the basis of its decision. In their review, the court cited Brom and Bett v. Ashley (1781) in their reasoning for the Walker decision. That case concerned an African-American woman named Elizabeth Freeman (known as Bet or MumBet) who sued for her freedom and won -- effectively becoming the first enslaved African American to win a freedom suit in Massachusetts. Both these decisions effectively ended slavery in Massachusetts, though no new laws were put in place. A gradual disappearance of the practice happened over the news one hundred years.

In the 1790 United States census, no slaves were recorded in Massachusetts.

This decision gave Boston -- the state’s largest city and capital -- a glowing destination for runaway slaves and freed people of color. They settled in today’s Beacon Hill community, on the north-side of Boston. Its name comes a former beacon that sat upon the neighborhood’s highest point. By the mid to late 1700s, around more than 1,000 African Americans called Beacon Hill home. Throughout the 1800s and into the 20th century, Beacon Hill became the battling ground for those arguing for emancipation, citizenship, women’s rights and tons of civil rights causes.

Today, Boston’s Black Heritage Trail runs through Beacon Hill, detailing the sites and people of the city’s African-American history. From private homes to schools to meeting sites, the walk takes one on a journey through some of Boston’s (and the country’s) highest and lowest points in its history.

54th Massachusetts Regiment Memorial

The memorial that sits opposite of the Massachusetts State Capitol is a good starting point for the tour. Its depiction of the Massachusetts 54th Regiment is a fairly well-known story in American history.

The regiment was an infantry regiment that saw service during the American Civil War. It was the first African-American regiment created by a northern state during the war, where all the men enlisted were African-Americans. The officers, however, were white men: most notably Robert Gould Shaw, commander of the regiment and a patron of Boston. Shaw came from abolitionist parents and believed his men should be treated as soldiers--regardless of their skin color. He told his men to refuse pay until the government was willing to pay them equally.

Their most famous engagement came at the Second Battle of Fort Wagner in July of 1863. The 54th Massachusetts led a frontal assault on Fort Wagner and paid heavily: 20 were killed, 102 went missing and 125 were wounded. The battle was a Confederate victory, but the battle’s legacy is more important. Shaw died as he led his troops toward the fort, and his body was left in a ditch with his fallen African-American soldiers. Confederate victors thought the gesture an insult to Shaw’s honor; Shaw’s family and friends believed different. “We can imagine no holier place than that in which he lies, among his brave and devoted followers, nor wish for him better company,” Frank Shaw, the commander’s father, wrote to the surgeon of the regiment.

In 1900, William Carney, a sergeant in the 54th Massachusetts regiment, received the Medal of Freedom for his bravery during the Second Battle of Fort Wagner. During the battle, when the outlook of victory was grim, Carney grabbed hold of the regiment’s colors and is said to have shouted: “Boys, I only did my duty; the old flag never touched the ground!”

Today, the memorial sits valiantly in Boston Common. Completed in 1884 by Augustus Saint-Gaudens, the 54th Massachusetts’ memory forever lives in for those who pass the impressive site. On top of its important legacy, the memorial serves as a good starting point for Boston’s Black Heritage Trail.

George Middleton House

Walking up Joy Street and two blocks north of the 54th Memorial sits the George Middleton House. Among Beacon Hill’s brick facades and streets, this building sticks out. Its gray facade is notable and it looks out-of-place, essentially squeezed from its surroundings.

The home, built in 1797, was the home of Patriot soldier George Middleton. During the American Revolution, Middleton served as a commander of the Bucks of America. They were a Boston-based military unit who were part of the Massachusetts militia. Little is known and no official records exist, but the Massachusetts Historical Society has a flag belonging to the group -- leaving some credence to their existence.

After the war, Middleton joined others in the African-American community to Beacon Hill and became one of its first residents -- building the home at 5 Pinckney Street that stands today. He championed civil rights after the war for African-Americans, organizing the African Benevolent Society in 1796. At the turn of the century, Middleton turned his attention to ending slavery throughout the country. He worked with community leaders and wrote pamphlets to help the cause gain steam. He died in 1815.

The house today is privately owned, but marks a vivid reminder for Boston’s post-colonial history.

Phillips School

Head down Pinckney Street, where Anderson Street meets Pinckney, and you wind up at the Phillips School.

Built in 1824, the school was primarily a white-only school. In 1855, Massachusetts law required schools to integrate; Phillips Schools obliged with the law. The school became one of Boston’s first integrated schools. During its segregated days between 1835 and 1855, Phillips School was considered the best for children in Boston.

The school rests only blocks away from the Abiel Smith School, Boston’s public school for African-American children (we’ll get there in a second). The African-American community of Boston fought for integration throughout the 19th century and, when integration happened in 1855, were quick to act. African-American children began attending Phillips School almost immediately.

Today, the former school is a private residence. But the box-like structure of the former school is hard to miss in Beacon Hill.

John J. Smith House

Blending in with the rest of the houses at the end of Pinckney Street, the John J. Smith House sits upon a noticeable slope. In 1820, John J. Smith was born in Richmond, Virginia. He arrived in Boston around twenty years later and became a vital figure in Boston’s African-American community.

First, Smith was a barber. But cutting hair was not the only purpose of his barbershop; he began using his barbershop to organize and meet with abolitionists throughout the city. His home at 86 Pinckney Street was a stop on the Underground Railroad, as he aided escaped slaves to freedom. He helped establish emancipation and justice for escaped slaves such as Shadrach Minkins and Lewis Heyden. Charles Sumner, the United States Senator of over twenty years during the mid-to-late-1800s, was a friend and client of Smith. According to the National Park Service, when Sumner was not found at his office or at home, he was said to be found at Smith’s.

During the 1850s, John J. Smith fought for equal rights in Boston’s public schools -- connecting him to the previously mentioned Phillips School. In the 1870s, Smith’s daughter Elizabeth became one of the first African-American teachers in Boston. Georgiana, Smith’s wife, was a notable member of the community, as well. She worked for the Freedman’s Bureau. Public service was something ingrained in this family throughout their lives.

Smith’s post-Civil War workload is equally as impressive. He served in the Massachusetts House of Representatives, its third African-American member, and was appointed to serve on the Boston Common Council -- the first African-American to do so. On top of all of these achievements, he successfully worked to have the first African-Americans appointed to work for Boston’s police force.

He died in November of 1906, a glowing reminder of the importance of public service.

Charles Street Meeting House

A little detour of a couple blocks is involved to get to Charles Street, where the Charles Street Meeting House resides.

Originally, the site was the Third Baptist Church, built in 1807. Segregation practices were in force during the early run of its existence. African-Americans were allowed only in the gallery and were not permitted to take part in community events organized by the church. Those rules were not in place for long.

In 1836, Timothy Gilbert invited African-Americans to join him in the pew seating during a service. The results were unsuccessful. Gilbert was expelled from the church; the seating arrangements remained. (Gilbert helped find the Tremont Temple -- today known as the country’s first integrated church.) However, over time, the Third Baptist eventually became more lenient in its inclusion of African-Americans.

Despite the Third Baptist Church’s treatment of African-Americans in its early years of existence, members were mostly anti-slavery in mind. Noted African-American speakers such as Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass gave speeches at the church. Notable abolitionists Wendell Phillips and Charles Sumner also spoke at the Charles Street Meeting House.

After the Civil War, various churches and organizations used the church’s space. Today, it is home to various businesses as office space.

Lewis and Harriet Hayden House

Remember Lewis Hayden? He was one of the escaped slaves that John J. Smith helped in the mid-1800s. Up the street and a couple blocks over from the Charles Street Meeting House -- on Phillips Street -- sits the house of the Haydens.

Lewis was born in 1812 in Kentucky. Hayden was frequently sold in his early years. In the mid-1830s, he married Esther Harvey and had a son. They were all sold to noted United States Senator Henry Clay, who later sold Esther and their son to the Deep South. Hayden never saw them again.

In 1842, after years of learning to read and desperately fighting for his freedom, he married Harriet Bell -- an enslaved woman. Harriet had a son, who Lewis treated like his own. Fearing his family would be split up again, he began planning to escape north. I

Around 1844, Hayden met Calvin Fairbank, a Methodist minister involved with the Underground Railroad. He asked Hayden, “Why do you want your freedom?”. Hayden replied, “Because I am a man.” Fairbank was convinced.

He, along with Delia Webster, a teacher from Vermont working in Kentucky, helped Hayden and his family escape north. Fairbank and Webster were both caught after helping the Haydens escape. Webster served a two-year prison sentence; she was pardoned. Fairbank was sentenced to 15 years. He was pardoned after serving four.

Hayden ended up in Canada, then Detroit, Michigan, ultimately moving to Boston in 1846. He ran a clothing store and became a community leader. In 1850, the family moved into the house that is now part of the Black Heritage Trail. Their home became a welcoming spot for escaped slaves or anyone of color. Between 1850 and 1860, they Hayden house was always full of tenants and residents (according to the Boston Vigilance Committee); they took in anyone that needed help. Among the causes that Hayden thought his time worthy, he helped collect money for John Brown, as Brown prepared for his raid on Harper’s Ferry.

During the Civil War, Lewis Hayden helped recruit for the 54th Massachusetts and later served in the Massachusetts House of Representatives. In 1889, Lewis died. Four years later, his wife Harriet followed him to the grave. In death, the two remained a beacon for hope and good fortune to those of need: Harriett bequeathed money to Harvard Medical School, setting up a scholarship for African-American students.

John Coburn House

Continue down Phillips Street and one ends up at the John Coburn House (the darker brick one at the end).

Coburn, born in 1811, was an African-American abolitionist and became one of Boston’s wealthiest residents. He lived most of his life at the house (from 1844 to his death in 1873) that is now a part of this trail -- at 2 Phillips Street. Coburn’s money came from his ownership in a clothing store on Brattle Street in Boston. However, there is some evidence that he also took in money from running a gaming house for “wealthy Bostonians”.

In 1845, Coburn became the treasurer of the New England Freedom Association. Their goal: to aid escaped slaves and fight for their emancipation. Throughout the local papers, Coburn advertised safe lodging for those in need and advertise for his group. In 1854, he founded the Massasoit Guards, an African-American military force to help police Beacon Hill. Coburn was the company’s captain. However, the Massasoit Guards was never officially recognized by Massachusetts.

Along with Lewis Hayden, Coburn helped John Brown’s raid by recruiting volunteers. Coburn died in 1873. He married Emeline Coburn; they had one adopted son, Wendell Coburn, who was deeded all his father’s belongings after his death.

Smith Court Residences

Circle around Cambridge Street and head down Joy Street, again, until you come across a house tucked away by a dead end. This bright structure is part of the Smith Court Residences.

The structure pictured, known as the William C. Nell House, is part of the residences that sit on Smith Court. They are some of the oldest structures in the area’s African-American history. Built between 1798 and 1800, many African-American families called this building-- and those surrounding it--home. The house was a boarding house and many walked through its doors throughout its existence. 3 Smith Court (the one pictured) was home to the area’s longest resident was James Scott, who lived on the premises from 1839 to 1865, and owned the property from 1865 to his death in 1888. He was a clothing dealer and assisted escaped slaves to freedom. (He was arrested once for helping to aid the rescue of Shadrach Minkins, though was later acquitted).

During the 1850s, William Cooper Nell resided on Smith Court. Nell was Boston’s most notable proponents of school integration. He knew and worked everywhere in hopes to see African-Americans living and working side-by-side with their fellow white Americans. He became a noted writer, historian and is remembered as the country first African-American historian.

The buildings surrounding the notable 3 Smith Court structure housed many African-American families. All of which did their part in helping others find safe shelter, food and, in many times, a friend.

African Meeting House

Turn around.

Across the street from the Smith Court Residences is the African Meeting House -- almost the end of the tour.

Built in 1806, the African Meeting House was site of the first African Baptist Church of Boston. It is the oldest “extant church building in the country”, along with being known as the first African American Baptist church created north of the Mason-Dixon line. This was a church built by African-Americans and for African-Americans. The church originally had 24 members, 15 of which were women. Cato Gardner spearheaded its construction, raising $1,500, and his name is still enshrined outside the buildings walls.

The African Meeting House was Boston’s “spiritual center” for its African-American community. It served as the “chief cultural, educational and political nexus” for African-Americans living in Boston. Its speakers throughout the years showcase the church’s importance: William Lloyd Garrison, Maria Stewart, Wendell Phillips Sarah Grimke and Frederick Douglass. Among the many organizations to utilize its space was the New England Anti-Slavery Society, which was founded at the shite in 1832. Furthermore, the 54th Massachusetts used the space as a recruitment post in 1863.

Today, it is a museum and a recommended site to visit when in Boston. The pews are most of the construction is original. One can almost hear Frederick Douglass or any of its noted speakers throughout its history shout and cry for freedom.

Abiel Smith School

Alas, we come to an end.

Next to the African Meeting House is the Abiel Smith School. When Abiel Smith, a white philanthropist, left $4,000 for the African-American children of Boston in his will, community organizers used the money to help fund a school. The building was constructed in 1834 and was the first public school for African-American children -- which was aptly named after Smith. Up until 1835, African-American children went to school next door at the African Meeting House. Now, they had a building of their own.

William Cooper Nell, who later lived across the street from the school, attended and won (along with two other students) the Franklin Medal for academic achievement. They were not allowed to attend ceremonies in downtown Boston. Nell got in anyways, convincing a waiter to let him help serve the white guests. It is said it was during this ceremony that Nell said, “God helping me, I would do my best to hasten the day when the color of the skin would be no barrier to equal school rights.” Perhaps attending this school and experiencing segregation helped Nell fight so furiously for integration later in life.

At the end of the 1840s, many African-American parents took their children out of the Abiel Smith School -- in protest to help integrate Boston schools. It worked, as noted earlier. The Abiel Smith School was closed the same year Boston outlawed “separate schools”.

And, with that, we close the tour of Boston’s Black Heritage Trail. It’s beautiful walk through Boston’s Beacon Hill community and highly recommended for any visitor or resident. For those who have not made the trip, I hope this guide helped explore Boston’s African-American community and history.

(Thanks to the National Park Service and the Museum of African American History for the research, quotes and information.)

#african american history #history #boston #massachusetts #united states #african american #slavery #54th massachusetts #quock walker #frederick douglass #john coburn #lewis hayden #harriet hayden #john j smith #george middleton #writing #my writing #tour #photography

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prairiechzhead · 6 years

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Great.

21st Century Demelza isn’t going away any time, soon.

I have so many problems with this quote, I don’t even know where to begin.

I stayed home for a few years when my son was a baby and I was no “wilting-flower”. Taking care of children is HARD work.

Women back then were strong. It was the laws on the books and society that held them back.

Women in those days who stayed home were LUCKY because it meant that they weren’t so impoverished, they needed another income to survive. If a married woman worked for a salary, it meant they were desperately poor.

Women in those days put up with isolation, especially in the American west after the Homestead Act was passed. Imagine having to spend six months out of the year, living in a 10 by 12 shanty to hold down your claim, and spending it all by yourself. Some women were driven mad--literally--from the loneliness.

Then there was disease and the high rates of child mortality. Imagine having to bury a child. Now imagine having to bury more than one of your children. The family depended on the wife’s cooking and preserving. There was no refigeration. There were no grocery stores. If she didn’t see to the cream or can the vegetables or salt down the meat, the would starve during the winter.

And cleaning. Laundry was physically demanding labor. And it was a process because lice and other pests had to be killed.

And in some places, imagine having to send your ten year old off to work as a servant or work in a factory because the harvest was a disaster and you need the money.

None of these women are “wilting flowers”.

I have 3rd and 4th great aunts and uncles, and distant cousins, who lived in Devon and Dorset in the late 18th and 19th centuries, who turned up on census forms in someone else’s household who were servants at the age of 13. Can you imagine sending a 13 year old away to go and work for someone else? I can’t. Some of these girls grew up and eventually married. I would hardly call someone who had to leave home at 13 to go to work a “wilting flower”.

This is my 7th Great-Grandmother, Elizabeth Bunch Daugherty. She risked her life to warn other settlers of an impending Indian raid. She is not a “wilting flower”.

Anyone who is married knows that while yes, you can have your own identity, you are still one-half of a whole. You cannot have a successful marriage when you’re doing your own thing. The appeal of the Poldark novels for me is how R & D had, after their indiscretions, a pretty equal marriage for that time. And implying that Book!Demelza is oppressed because she enjoys the simple things in life: home, her children, etc., is insulting to the character and to Winston Graham.

This quote just reeks of upper-class, white female non-inter sectional feminism. It reeks of First World problems. She already has a better life and freedom just from the simple fact that she married someone of a higher class. She wouldn’t know she was oppressed if she stayed a kitchen maid or married someone of her own station. The only thing that was holding her back was the laws at the time.

Maybe they should change the name of the show to Demelza. I like you, Eleanor, but in this case, your ignorance is showing.

#I was afraid that this was going to happen #troll me if you want but I stand by this #come at me bro

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biofunmy · 4 years

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The Great Recession Broke The American Economy. We Still Haven’t Fixed It.

Chicago Tribune / Tribune News Service via Getty Images

Thousands of Wisconsin teachers, state workers, and union members protest Gov. Walker’s legislation, in the State Capitol in Madison, Wisconsin, Feb. 18, 2011.

At 6:30 a.m. every weekday, Ethan Floerke wakes up for his full-time job teaching language arts to 100 seventh graders at Lake Mills Middle School in Wisconsin. Almost nine hours later, at 3:05 p.m., he sets down his books and puts on a uniform. It’s time to deliver pizzas, many of which go to the families of his students. Floerke works the part-time job about 25 hours a week.

It’s an exhausting grind, but it’s still not enough for the 29-year-old to pay his loans and bills while also setting aside savings. In the summer, Floerke teaches summer school, delivers pizza, and also works for the parks department as a security guard on the public beaches. “I am working 70-plus hours a week during the summer,” he told BuzzFeed News.

This is Floerke’s sixth year teaching. One of five children, he graduated college in December 2013 with $30,000 in student loans and began teaching at a salary of about $32,500.

After working for over a year, he bought a used 2010 Jeep Patriot, taking out a $14,000 loan. Two months later, it died. He bought another car, and within a few weeks, his debt for cars alone had skyrocketed to $30,000.

“That one decision, that terrible car decision, and I’m $60,000 in debt. It was terrifying,” he said.

Thus began Floerke’s adult life.

Lauren Justice for BuzzFeed News

Ethan Floerke at home in Lake Mills, Wisconsin, Dec. 6. James works multiple jobs in an effort to pay down debilitating student debt.

On the other side of the country, in New York, another young man was starting his life. He’s asked to be called Tom for this story, to protect his privacy.

Floerke and Tom have many similarities. Both are well-educated millennial American men born who grew up in low- to middle-income families. But they differ in one respect: Floerke’s income puts him in roughly the 40th percentile of American income. (That is, 60% of the country makes more than he does, 40% makes less.) Tom’s base salary, which today is $210,000 a year, places him in the 92nd percentile.

And on this one difference, an entire decade turned.

Nothing has been felt more profoundly by Americans over the last decade than the widening gulf in wealth. The gap between the richest and poorest Americans is at its highest levels in 50 years, according to the US Census Bureau. The wealthiest 10% of Americans now hold two-thirds of all household net worth, and everyone else — the other 90% — share the other third.

In 1986, roughly when Tom and Ethan were born, the Gini index, the standard measurement of income inequality, stood at 0.375 in the United States. In 2018, that number reached 0.49, the highest measurement ever recorded in this country. (0.0 means a perfectly equal distribution of income, while 1.0 means a single person would receive all the income.)

Only a very small number of potential items on the national agenda actually come to dominate our political life. And at the opening of the decade, it looked unclear that economic inequality would be one of them. In 2011, the Occupy movement came and went — an inchoate venting of collective anger that seemed to disappear without a trace. Yet it shaped the Dickensian lens through which we viewed the rest of the 2010s.

Inequality has become the centerpiece of American national politics.

Ethan Floerke was in high school, his older twin siblings in college, when his father lost his job. His mother, a nurse, would soon face with her own health problems. “That’s really when the credit cards started coming into play,” he recalled. “For the last 10 years, [my dad] was so negative: ‘Oh, I’m never going to be able to retire. This is this is my life now.’ And he was exhausted, just completely stressed and wrecked.”

Meanwhile in New York, Tom graduated from law school in 2009 with six figures in student loan debt. “The most my mom ever made was, like, $30,000,” he told BuzzFeed News. A job offer from a law firm, where he worked as a summer associate, evaporated when the economy crashed, so he was working as a waiter at a Chinese restaurant, earning $150 on the rare good day and $35 on a bad day. But Tom had married the daughter of a doctor and a lawyer. He didn’t know it yet, but that would change his life.

The soil in which the two men were planted was the Great Recession, an 18-month period from late 2007 to mid-2009 when the economy slowed, the housing market collapsed, joblessness rose to levels not seen since the ’80s, stock markets crashed, and the financial industry was thrown into turmoil.

David Mcnew / Getty Images

A fence surrounds a site where new home construction has been suspended in El Centro, California, March 12, 2009.

Just one month into his presidency, President Barack Obama’s plan to help people facing foreclosure — the Homeowner Affordability and Stability Plan — drew outrage from CNBC editor Rick Santelli, who ranted on Squawk Box that the government was promoting bad behavior and subsidizing “the losers’ mortgages” and proposed a Chicago tea party where “we’re going to be dumping some derivative securities” into Lake Michigan.

Within hours, OfficialChicagoTeaParty.com was live. The media dubbed it the “rant heard around the world.”

In Wisconsin, the recession led to deep cuts in state government spending.

“The recession has hit Wisconsin harder than most state governments, especially when it comes to lost tax revenues and the size of the hole in its budget,” according to a Pew report in 2009. “On top of that, unemployment is climbing as the state’s largest sector — manufacturing — sputters. Wisconsin’s history of budget shortfalls and pattern of borrowing frequently to cover operating expenses, among other measures, made it poorly positioned to weather the most recent severe economic downturn.”

Floerke was pursuing a degree in education at the time. “I remember teachers that have been teaching for 20-plus years telling us, ‘You need to do something else. This is not a profession to get into right now.’ And you would hear these stories every single day,” he said.

When Republican Scott Walker became governor of Wisconsin in 2011, he proposed Act 10, the “Wisconsin budget repair bill,” which called for major cuts in state aid to school districts, increased the amount employees paid for their health insurance and pensions, and eliminated many collective bargaining rights for public employees.

Teachers and other state workers protested for months in 2011. Tens of thousands of them swarmed Madison on Feb. 16, chanting “Kill the bill” and “Hey hey, ho ho / Scott Walker has to go!” On March 12, after Walker signed the bill, the crowd outside the Wisconsin State Capitol swelled to 85,000 to 100,000 people, bigger than the protests in Madison during the Vietnam War. Farmers drove in 50 tractors to participate in the protests. “This is what democracy looks like,” people cheered.

“We had teachers and professionals from all walks of life across state lines that would come and help advocate with us,” Floerke recalled. Among education students at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, “everyone just decided, in solidarity, we were going to walk out of class.”

In Washington, DC, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau — an agency authorized by the 2010 Dodd–Frank bill but originally proposed in 2007 by then–Harvard Law School professor Elizabeth Warren — launched in July. “This agency is ready to be a cop on the beat for American families — and I couldn’t be prouder,” said Warren, whom Obama had named a special adviser for the bureau.

Emmanuel Dunand / Getty Images

Occupy Wall Street participants stage a protest on Times Square in New York, Oct. 15, 2011.

Then on Sept. 17, 2011 — three days after Warren announced her candidacy for a Massachusetts Senate seat — the Occupy Wall Street movement took off. After a call for action by the Canadian magazine Adbusters, nearly 1,000 people, who had organized on social media, staged a demonstration in Zuccotti Park in Manhattan’s Financial District. Signs floated amid the crowds with messages like “People Not Profits” and “End the Oligarchy.”

Demonstrators set up sleeping bags and tents. They did mass yoga. Soon, there were drum circles. Crosby & Nash did an acoustic performance. The protesters were largely affluent, white, and highly educated, according to a study by the City University of New York. Anthropologist and activist David Graeber described them as “young people bursting with energy, with plenty of time on their hands, every reason to be angry, and access to the entire history of radical thought.”

The New York protesters remained in Zuccotti Park for two months before they were ousted by police. Mayor Michael Bloomberg said the “health and safety conditions became intolerable.”

Tom, who had tried to start his own law firm “with very little success,” was waiting tables during Occupy. “I was trying to get a job, and my view on it was, man, these people aren’t even fucking trying to work and I’m busting my ass up here,” he said. “Quite honestly, I thought, I bet you’re going to tip me poorly later.”

That fall, Tom received a call from his wife’s uncle, offering him a job at the same law firm that wasn’t able to hire him after graduation.

Amid protests against the 1%, capital rapidly accumulated on the West Coast, as American tech recovered from the dot-com bust and began its incredible decade. Instagram had just launched its iOS app. Apple exceeded ExxonMobil as the most valuable company in the world in August. Uber commenced its expansion from a San Francisco–based service to cities around the country and, by December, had made its way to Paris.

In 2012, as the country prepared for another presidential election, Facebook pulled off the largest-ever tech IPO in May, raising $16 billion. At age 28, Mark Zuckerberg’s net worth shot up to $19.1 billion, making him the world’s 29th richest person.

Mladen Antonov / Getty Images

A woman watches Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg speaking in a promotional video ahead of the company’s IPO, in Washington, May 8, 2012.

But the unemployment rate was still above 8%, and it was already time for another election. In his campaign kickoff speech, Obama said, “Too many of our friends and family are still out there looking for work. The housing market is still weak, deficits are still too high, and states are still laying off teachers, first responders. This crisis took years to develop, and the economy is still facing headwinds. And it will take sustained, persistent effort — yours and mine — for America to fully recover.” He went on, “This is a make-or-break moment for the middle class, and we’ve been through too much to turn back now.”

His Republican opponent, business executive Mitt Romney, had his own take on what the US needed. Weeks before the election, Mother Jones released a video in which Romney told a closed-door meeting of donors that he believed that 47% of Americans are people who “are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it.”

“[M]y job is is not to worry about those people,” said Romney.

Inequality continued to worsen in Obama’s second term. According to a report by the economist Emmanuel Saez, the incomes of the richest 1% of households increased by 31.4% between 2009 and 2012, representing 95% of all new income gains, while the remaining 99% of households captured the other 5%.

Floerke graduated from college in December 2013 and worked as a substitute teacher before taking a job at Lake Mills School District. “I quickly realized just how far $30,000 actually goes.” After paying his bills, he usually had $20 to $30 left in his bank account at the end of the month.

To keep costs down, Floerke rented a one-bedroom unit in an old farmhouse for about $600 a month. “At first when I started living there, I’m like, oh, this looks so cool because it was old. I’ve got this room off my bedroom and I call my Narnia room because it’s got a really small door that opens up behind a bookcase. But it’s lost its charm after six years,” he said. “I’m freezing at night because the heater unit’s in the middle of the apartment and that’s the only place where heat comes out, so it’s really cold in the bedroom.”

In 2013, Tom and his wife bought an apartment in New York for $225,000, borrowing the 10% down payment from her parents. “We bought in an up-and-coming neighborhood. And then the neighborhood came,” he said. Two years later, they sold it for $402,000, allowing them to repay her parents and buy a two-bedroom apartment, where they are now raising their children.

The next year, Warren, now a senator, shared a stage with the economist Thomas Piketty, who was touring the United States to promote his book Capital in the Twenty-First Century, to discuss income inequality. “The game right now in America is rigged. It is rigged so that those at the top keep doing better and better, and everyone else is under increasing pressure, is under increasing economic strain,” Warren said.

As concerns about rising inequality grew, there were also signs that the economy was turning a corner. People began buying houses again, fueled by low interest rates, falling unemployment, and improved consumer confidence. But as confidence rose, so did debt. Total mortgage debt climbed to $8.17 trillion in the first quarter of the year from $7.93 trillion during the same period in 2013, according to data from the New York Federal Reserve. Student loans, meanwhile, continued their steady ascent. Students’ average debt at graduation rose 56% from 2004 to 2014, from $18,550 to $28,950, according to the Institute for College Access and Success. The class of 2014 was dubbed “the most indebted ever.”

“There was no clear, good decision of what to do next because there was uncertainty everywhere,” said Floerke. “There was a lot of criticism about people going back and living with their parents. And older generations might have criticism about millennials not taking responsibility for their lives. But the reality is, they are trying to start their lives in the most uncertain, difficult times. No wonder that they’re their back home with their parents — because they can’t make an actual run of it yet.”

Reuters

Parade participants protesting against high student loan burdens are preparing to take part in the annual 4th of July parade at Ashland, Oregon, July 4, 2015.

In July 2015, Amazon’s market value exceeded Walmart’s, fueled by the boom in third-party marketplace sellers on the platform. In October, former Amazon Prime Now drivers sued the company, claiming they should have been classified as employees rather than contractors. It was just one of several labor classification lawsuits filed against tech companies that expanded using contract workers, dodging the need to offer consistent pay, benefits, and other worker protections.

“Amazon is not significantly different than Walmart: Its workers are a resource, and resources are expected to maximize output at the lowest possible cost,” the New Republic wrote. “There are some reasons to feel good about this—no company is more committed to making it easier for consumers to buy things—and a lot of reasons to be troubled.”

That year, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’ net worth shot up by nearly $30 billion to $58.4 billion.

The economy had been growing for years, but the distribution of wealth had become more unequal. “In 2016, the median wealth of upper-income families was seven times that of middle-income families, a ratio that has doubled since 1983,” according to Pew.

By 2016, it was clear that millennials — especially older millennials — were still struggling with the impact of the Great Recession. “Wealth in 2016 of the median family headed by someone born in the 1980s remained 34% below the level we predicted based on the experience of earlier generations at the same age,” according to the St. Louis Federal Reserve.

Older Americans, meanwhile, experienced a stronger recovery. “On balance, wealth has shifted away from younger families toward older families,” the St. Louis Fed reported.

Donald Trump — who pegged his own net worth at more than $10 billion — had his own angle on inequality, blaming the “leadership class in Washington, DC,” during a campaign speech in Wisconsin: “Aren’t you tired of a system that gets rich at your expense? Aren’t you tired of big media, big businesses, and big donors rigging the system to keep your voice from being heard? Are you ready for change?”

It would be Trump’s bleak message of American carnage that would win over America’s rust belt and suburbs, its farmers and older voters — not Bernie Sanders’ or Hillary Clinton’s. In his own way, the poor man’s idea of a rich man was himself a product of American inequality as much as Warren.

In August, on the campaign trail for the Democratic nomination for president, Warren laid out her case. “More and more working families today are hanging on by their fingernails in a country with an economy and a government that works only for those at the very top,” she said. “This crisis didn’t start when Donald Trump walked into the Oval Office. And it won’t just magically disappear the day he walks out of it.”

Warren talked about the fight for the middle class: benefits for full-time, part-time, and gig workers, the Fight for $15, protecting unions, childcare and universal pre-K, affordable health care, and debt-free college.

“This fight is our fight!” she declared to a standing crowd, noisy with applause.

In 2019, Tom’s base salary is now $210,000. “If you’re born poor, you have to have a lot of things really go right in order to get out of it,” he said. “I wouldn’t say there is necessarily a ceiling to how high you can go — I’ve seen some people get very, very wealthy. But you have to have so much go right. And truth be told, I’m one of those people.” Those who are born wealthy, on the other hand, he said, “have a floor that they can’t really get below. They can fuck up and still be perfectly fine.”

And although Floerke hasn’t fucked up, he is far from fine.

In Wisconsin, the median compensation for teachers fell by 12.6% in inflation-adjusted terms during the five years after Act 10 was passed. Floerke fell ill in 2017. “I couldn’t breathe. I was working late at night and my colleague had to call an ambulance for me. I was put on a stretcher and rolled out of the school. I needed my gallbladder removed,” he said. Even with the school’s health insurance, he owed thousands of dollars. When he recovered, he started delivering pizza, a job at which he earns $8.25 an hour plus tips.

Floerke’s teaching salary finally crossed the $40,000 line in 2018, a fifth of what Tom makes, not counting the pizzas. “Without these part-time jobs, I would be living paycheck to paycheck because I’m certainly not making enough teaching to put money away,” said Floerke.

As Floerke drives around Lake Mills to deliver pizza, he sees “the income disparities every single day.” Many of their families seems far worse off than he is. “I feel guilty talking about my situation because it’s nothing compared to what these families are dealing with. And I think, My goodness, how are they making it?”

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cmorel1613-blog · 5 years

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Police Violence

Police Violence during recent years has become a national issue that terrifies many, mainly people of color. Due to racial discrimination and police officer being protected by the law, every day there is a new victim who has been either wrongfully killed or wrongfully beaten by police officers because of the color of their skin. This act of senseless violence is inhumane and unjust, instead of protecting and serving they kill without any consequences while the victims stories are disregarded by the law.

One example proving that this violence is inhumane is from July 2014, an African American man from Staten Island by the name of Eric Gardner was wrongfully killed by the hands of an on-duty police officer. In an article of the New York Times it was reported that Eric Gardner was being arrested for illegally selling un-taxed cigarettes and while in the pursuit of his arrest an officer put him on a prohibited 15 to 19 second chokehold which ended his life, his last words being “I can’t breathe”. This negligence is wrong in all levels, Officer Daniel Pantaleo was protected by the law and because of it he was never charged for using an illegal chokehold which was banned by the NYPD in 1993, but instead was put on desk duty making more money than what he was making on the day he wrongfully killed Eric Gardner. Eric Gardner was not resisting arrest the officer’s involved did not had to not choke him to death this makes this violence inhumane and the fact that the officer was not held accountable for his actions make this example unjust.

“Beyond the Chokehold: The Path to Erick Gardner’s Death”

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/14/nyregion/eric-garner-police-chokehold-staten-island.html

Another example demonstrating how unjust police violence is was on November 2014, another fatal shooting took place, not of a man but of a 12-year-old African American boy Tamir Rice who was wrongfully shot for playing with a toy gun which police officers thought was a real gun. On the day of Tamir Rice’s death, a citizen called 911 and informed the 911 dispatcher that a black male “probably a juvenile was pointing “a pistol” at people, but added twice that the gun was “probably fake”. In an article in the New York Times reported that the 911 dispatcher failed to inform the officers of the callers suspicion that the gun was fake and that the person was a minor. This act of violence is unjust because like Officer Daniel Pantaleo, Officer Timothy Loehmann was not charged for the death of Tamir Rice, and is currently a free man. The fact that the operator who missed to give the officers valid information that could’ve prevented Tamir’s Death was not held accountable, Officer Timothy Loehmann who wrongfully discriminated Tamir Rice as someone dangerous was also not held accountable makes this example unjust not only to the family who lost him but to Tamir Rice who had his life taken at such a young age.

“Cleveland Officer will not face charges for Tamir Rice’s Shooting Death”

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/29/us/tamir-rice-police-shootiing-cleveland.html

Another case of unjust senseless police violence due to racial discrimination took place on September 2016 in Tulsa Oklahoma, when Officer Betty Jo Shelby fatally shot and unarmed man by the name of Terence Crutcher during what appeared to be a routine traffic matter. In an article on NBCNEWS.com it is reported that in a police cruiser dashcam during the traffic stop Terence Crutcher is seen unarmed with his hands up walking towards his car. Officer Shelby claims Terence failed to respond to commands and believed he was walking towards his car to reach for a weapon. The jury in officer’s Shelby’s case ruled her action as justified due to the suspects action, but Terence Crutcher is seen with his arms up while Officer Shelby was walking towards him instead of shooting him why not taser him? The fact that he was a man of color made him a threat, and that’s wrong. In an article on the Washington Post it is reported that, Officer Shelby is currently teaching a course on how to survive incidents like the ones she experience.

“Terence Crutcher Shooting by Tulsa Police was ‘Tragic’ but Justified”

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/terence-crutcher-shooting-tulsa-police-was-tragic-justified-jury-foreman-n762566

“She Fatally shot an unarmed black man. Now she’ teaching other police officers how to ‘survive’ such incidents.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2018/08/28/she-fatally-shot-an-unarmed-black-man-now-shes-teaching-other-cops-how-to-survive-such-incidents/?utm_term=.3ec04f06ef3f

In an article on citylab.com, Leon Ford Jr. was interviewed on his experience of surviving an unjust police shooting. On November 12, 2012 Leon was pulled over by two Pittsburgh police officers who mistook him for a suspect with a similar name. While complying with both officers request another police officer by the name of David Derbish got into his car which is against Pittsburgh police protocol. This encounter later ended with Leon crashing into someone’s porch, arrested, and with a bullet in his spine. The City awarded Leon with a $5.5 Million-dollar lawsuit but because of this unjust violence he can no longer walk, and Officer David Derbish is still on the force.

“How to Survive Police Shooting When You’re Black”

https://www.citylab.com/equity/2018/05/pittsburgh-police-shooting-survivor-wants-to-change-the-game/559493/

Studies of police shootings proves how unjust police violence is due to racial discrimination. In order to tally the effects of police shooting researchers have taken a new approach calculating years of life lost. In an article on NBCNEWS.com a study shows that more Blacks and Hispanics are killed by the hand of white officers than Whites. Years of life Lost (YLLs) are the difference between an individual’s age at death and their corresponding standard life expectancy at age of death. The database showed that there was 1,146 police killings in 2015 and 1,092 in 2016 and it also shows that African Americans died at the hands of police at a rate of 7.2 per million, while whites are killed at a rate of 2.9 million. The researchers checked the ages of those killed and used the U.S Census and other data collected in order to determine how long they would’ve expected to live had they not been killed. “Years of life lost from police violence were greatest among younger age groups across racial and ethnic groups, but the distribution of years of life lost was higher among even younger ages in people of color compared with white.” They wrote. The fact that this data proves that young Black and Hispanic men are a threat and a target to police makes it senseless and unjust because they are young people who need guidance not to be wiped out.

“Police killings hit people of color hardest, study finds.”

https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/police-killings-hit-people-color-hardest-study-finds-n872086

Another study that demonstrates how police violence is unjust was posted on Diversityinc.com researchers found that in 2017 police killed 1,129 people, 27 percent being black despite blacks being 13 percent of the population and 1 percent of officers were charged for their crimes. Researchers also found that out of 534 officers involved in killings at least 43 officers had previously killed someone and still continued to be in the force, and 12 had multiple prior shooting. This study proves how unjust police violence is because some of these officers have already killed other people of color before and the law hasn’t done anything to hold them accountable, instead they are rewarded with a higher rank and possibly a medal for great work.

In a study published in 2017 it found that Black men are often viewed as being larger and more capable of causing harm than white men who are the same size, thus causing police officer to racially profile them and justify their actions of senseless violence. “People have a bias to perceive young black men as bigger, taller, heavier, more muscular and more physically threatening than young white men” – Racial Bias in Judgement of Physical Size and Formidability: From Size to Threat. During this study John Paul Wilson PhD, of Montclair State University found that participants were consistently biased in regard to this subject. “Participants also believed that the Black men were more capable of causing harm in a hypothetical altercation and, troublingly, that police would be more justified in using force to subdue them, even if the men were unarmed.” Wilson said. People have a misperception of black men, and these perceptions makes them a target to be shot and put down. This perception is unjust because black men aren’t the only race that has physically strong men and just because they are physically strong doesn’t mean that in order to subdue them, they have to be shot and killed.

“The Data is in: Police Disproportionately Killed Black people in 2017”

https://www.diversityinc.com/news/data-police-disproportionately-killed-black-people-2017

Despite the evidence, not everyone disagrees that police violence is unjust. For instance, Members of the Federal Government like The Trump Administration support police violence, or in their view point police safety. During a speech to Suffolk Country law enforcements on July 28th, Our president Donald J. Trump said “Like when you guys put somebody in the car and you’re protecting their head, you know, the way you put their hand over? Like, don’t hit their head and they’ve just killed somebody—don’t hit their head. I said, you can take the hand away, O.K.?, please don’t be nice.” He is referring to the suspects that are being arrested indicating that he is pro police violence.

“Police Chiefs Blast Trump for Endorsing Police Brutality”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2017/07/29/u-s-police-chiefs-blast-trump-for-endorsing-police-brutality/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.6f8f26330202

Another example, of a member of the Federal Government who supports police “safety” is Attorney General Jeff Sessions in a speech to Memphis police officers he said “If you’re a gang member, know this: you think you’re targeting us. Well we are targeting you. We will find you. We will devastate your networks. We will starve your revenue sources, deplete your ranks, and seize your profits. We will not concede a single block or single street corner to illegal gangs.” After this speech Sessions has had the Justice Department back away from “pattern or practice” investigations that look into extensive constitutional abuse in police departments. Thus, also indicating that police violence is the way to “protect the people”.

“Donald Trump is serious when he jokes about Police Brutality”

https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/donald-trump-is-serious-when-he-jokes-about-police-brutality

There are also sections of the public who disagrees police violence is unjust. For instance, on July 31, 2018 during a Black Lives Matter march a white woman decided to angrily walk into the movement where protesters gathered after the shooting of Thurman Blevins, a black man who was shot and killed while running away from the police. The outcome of this event wasn’t what the white women expected after she decided to angrily snatch the sign out of the hands of black female protester, and was meet with a nice punch to the face. This act of rage the white women had towards the crowd who was protesting police violence indicates that she is in favor of police violence.

“White women snatches protest sign from Black Women, Cries to Police when she gets punched in the face”

https://www.theroot.com/white-woman-snatches-protest-sign-from-black-woman-cri-1828051788

Different ethnic groups have different views on police force. Previous research has shown that people of racial minority groups, such as Blacks and Hispanic tend to rate police far less favorable than White racial groups. In 2015 Gallup a research company released the data in which asked people of different racial groups, “Do you have a favorable or unfavorable opinion of police officers in your community?” 65 percent said favorable and 25 percent said unfavorable. 70 percent of which whites answered favorable while 43 percent of blacks and 49 percent of Hispanic said unfavorable. This research demonstrates how different ethnic groups have different views on police force based on the encounters they have with police. Blacks and Hispanics have more encounters with police than Whites, this being the reason why whites have a better view on police force than those of Blacks and Hispanics.

“Racial Divide in Attitudes Towards the Police”

https://opportunityagenda.org/explore/resources-publications/new-sensibility/part-iv

Media outlets are very bias towards police violence. For instance, when a person of color is killed by a police officer, media outlets tend to use words like accident, mistaken, or confused in order to make the incident look as if it was an accident rather than a murder. In a story of 26-year-old men who was shot and killed by an off-duty police officer who thought she was entering her apartment. Media outlets were quick to publish this story as if she was an innocent off duty cop who was mistaken all while an innocent black person is dead.

Another example of media outlet being bias towards police violence is the words they choose to use when publishing a story of people of color and people of white ethnicity. We often see media outlets use words such as murder, criminal, suspect, and perpetrator when crimes are committed by men of color, all while suspects of white ethnicity words such as mental health, confused, and stupid are used. For instance, when a white person commits a crime such as mass shooting, media outlets always defends their actions by saying they have a history of mental illness thus being the reason for their actions, but when a man of color commits a crime they are portrayed to the people as the worst kind of criminal leading to being either killed by police or wrongfully sentence to a longer prison term. The media outlets are the reason as to why innocent people’s stories are getting swept under the rug and police officers are getting away with murder because they fail to be truthful and not bias towards police violence.

“Examining the Racial and Gender bias in the Media: Police Crime Reporting.”

https://medium.com/awaken-blog/examining-the-racial-and-gender-bias-in-the-media-police-crime-reporting-2c1846faf2db

In most cases I can understand and I may to a certain extent agree to the reasons why police violence should be acceptable. There are criminals who are beyond evil they are rapist, murderers, serial killers, and those kinds of people deserve to be treated unfairly and in all honesty die, but unarmed people should not. For instance, like all the cases of unarmed men who were fatally shot by police, instead of the police using a gun why not use a taser gun to bring them down? If a suspect is not resisting is there a need for five officers to tackle him down while one shocks him to death? It is unjust to treat people with violence due to the color of their skin, if they are unarmed, and if they are compliant. The fact that some officers abuse their authority in order to get away with wrongful violence is unjust and inhumane.

Police violence has to stop and those who wrongfully kill need to be held accountable so that the families that have lost someone can have justice. Until the law doesn’t hold police officer’s accountable for their senseless violence the people will always live in fear and the people will never trust the same people that are meant to protect and service.

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lopezdorothy70-blog · 6 years

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Polluting Pigs Part III

By Dr. Mercola

North Carolina is the second largest pork producer in the U.S. and home to more than 2,500 pig CAFOs (concentrated animal feeding operations).1 The estimated 9 million pigs living in the state produce copious amounts of waste - up to 10 times the amount of an average human2 - for which there is no easy, nor environmentally friendly, disposal solution. Whereas a small farm can use the waste produced by its animals as fertilizer, the massive amounts of waste produced on CAFOs becomes a toxic liability.

Nonetheless, it's typically stored in "lagoons," where the waste can leach into groundwater and wells, run off into waterways and cause all sort of environmental problems. The liquefied waste from the lagoons is then sprayed onto nearby fields. North Carolina alone has an estimated 4,500 active lagoons and 1,700 inactive lagoons,3 and tests have revealed they contain far higher levels of pollutants than the industrial farms are reporting.

North Carolina CAFOs Not Reporting True Levels of Toxic Pollutants in Waste Lagoons

Inspectors with North Carolina's department of environmental quality (DEQ) tested 55 waste lagoons at 35 CAFOs, which revealed vastly different levels of pollutants than were reported by the CAFOs' own tests just one month prior.

In a letter to one CAFO, the DEQ stated, "The results show a significant difference in the PAN [peroxyacetyl nitrate] concentrations as well as other macro and micro nutrients that put into question the validity of the March 17th sampling results. It is unlikely that a lagoon make-up will change significantly in a month without a significant operations event occurring like a lagoon sludge clean out."4

Among the disparities were levels of nitrogen, phosphorus and heavy metals, including zinc and copper. In one case, zinc levels were more than 100,000 percent higher in the DEQ's tests compared to what the CAFOs reported.

Speaking to The Guardian, Devon Hall, co-founder of Rural Empowerment Association for Community Help (REACH), an anti-hog-CAFO group, said, "This manipulation of data is an insult to the community members suffering from the industry's continued use of the lagoon and spray field system … We demand real enforcement. The response to this slap in the face should be more than a slap on the wrist."5

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North Carolina regulators have since launched an investigation into the underreporting of toxins, including "additional evaluation of historic data" at the CAFOs. Curiously, in their certified letter to one of the CAFOs where discrepancies were reported, the DEQ also apologized for the "short notice" provided by their staff regarding the collection of samples.6

Unfortunately, even as CAFOs have polluted waterways and endangered residents' health, they've been allowed to flourish in the state, despite it being a hurricane-prone area.

Waste stored in open-air lagoons may be breached by floodwaters from hurricanes. This has occurred in North Carolina repeatedly: in 1996 following Hurricane Fran; in 1998 following Hurricane Bonnie; in 1999 following Hurricane Floyd; and in 2016 following Hurricane Matthew. In 1997, following manure spills that proved to be disastrous, North Carolina implemented a ban on the construction of new CAFOs, but the ban expired in 1997 (and loopholes allowed some CAFOs to be built even during the ban).7

Pig Fecal Matter Regularly Spattered on Neighbors' Homes

CAFOs throughout the U.S. have been battling a slew of lawsuits from neighbors whose lives have been ruined by the industrial farming facilities. In North Carolina alone, The Guardian reported, pig farms "produce around 10bn [billion] gallons of feces a year, which is more than the volume of waste flushed down toilets by the human population of Germany."8

Says Elsie Herring, who lives in eastern North Carolina next to a field regularly sprayed with CAFO pig manure, "You stand outside and it feels like it's raining but then you realize it isn't rain. It's animal waste. It takes your breath away. You start gagging, coughing, your pulse increases. All you can do is run for cover."9 In April 2018, a federal jury ruled in the favor of North Carolina residents who live near the Kinlaw hog farm, a 14,000-animal facility, in Bladen County.

They were awarded a collective $750,000 in compensation plus another $50 million in damages as part of a nuisance lawsuit against Murphy Brown LLC, a subsidiary of Smithfield Foods, the world's largest pork producer. The suit claimed the operations and manure lagoons were harming residents' health and lowering property values. According to one of the attorneys on the case, Michael Kaeske, bacteria from swine digestive systems were found coating the exterior surfaces of all 10 of the plaintiffs' homes.10 The lawsuit stated:11

"Specifically, these homes have tested positive for the DNA fingerprint of pig intestinal bacteria on their surfaces - they literally have pig feces on their walls. Which means that what the families have been saying for so many years, is true - they have been assaulted by the particles of a foul, disgusting and germ-ridden odor. Which the multinational company refuses to correct even as it receives the economic benefits of record exports and profits."

The favorable verdict gave hope to the many other communities rallying against the damages caused by industrial agriculture, particularly since Smithfield and other meat producers wield incredible lobbying power, making nuisance lawsuits historically difficult to win. Unfortunately, about a week after the ruling, a federal judge called upon a North Carolina law that limits punitive damages to no more than three times the amount of compensatory damages or $250,000, whichever is greater.

As a result, damages in the suit were reduced to $3.25 million, which means the plaintiffs, who were set to receive $5 million in compensatory damages, will each receive $325,000 instead - hardly enough to compensate them for the damages and allow them to relocate. Murphy Brown is also appealing the Kinlaw case, and only time will tell whether the company will ultimately be held responsible. This suit is only the first of 26 nuisance lawsuits filed against Murphy Brown; the next went on trial in June 2018.12

Duplin County, North Carolina, Has 38 Pigs Per Person

Certain areas of North Carolina are so densely populated with pig CAFOs that pigs in the areas outnumber people. CAFOs, with their environmental hazards and noxious odors, are also often disproportionately placed in areas with larger African-American, Latino and Native American populations.

Such is the case in Duplin County, which has 2.3 million pigs in CAFOs (along with 16.2 million poultry). With a human population numbering around 60,000, this works out to 38 pigs for each person.13 A study by researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill revealed, in fact, that pig CAFOs are much more likely to affect African-American, Latinos and native Americans, noting:14

"The proportions of Blacks, Hispanics and American Indians living within 3 miles of an industrial hog operation are 1.54, 1.39 and 2.18 times higher, respectively, than the proportion of non-Hispanic Whites. In census blocks with 80 or more percent people of color, the proportion of the population living within 3 miles of an industrial hog operation is 2.14 times higher than in blocks with no people of color. This excess increases to 3.30 times higher with adjustment for rurality."

Previous research has also revealed that pig CAFOs in North Carolina are far less likely to appear in white communities, especially those low in poverty. "This spatial pattern is generally recognized as environmental racism," the researchers wrote.15

What Makes Pig CAFOs Such Bad Neighbors?

CAFOs pose environmental hazards in a number of ways, starting with water pollution. The excess of nutrients that runs off or leaches from CAFO waste lagoons lead to algae overgrowth in waterways, depleting the water of oxygen and killing fish and other marine life in expansive dead zones.

This, combined with the excess fertilizers applied to monocrops like corn and soy, which are also used for CAFO animal feed, sends a steady stream of nitrogen and phosphorus to both surface and groundwater, spreading potentially disease-causing organisms and unsustainable amounts of nutrients along the way.

The dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico is the largest recorded dead zone in the world, beginning at the Mississippi River delta and spanning more than 8,700 square miles - and industrial agricultural pollution is primarily to blame. Drinking water can also be affected.

In North Carolina, the Neuse and Cape Fear Rivers, which provide drinking water for 40 percent of the state's residents, have been named among the most endangered rivers in the U.S. because of the many CAFOs in the rivers' floodplains.16 Air quality is also an issue. Ammonia, which is formed when microbes digest nitrogen in manure, has a pungent odor and can lead to chemical burns, cough and chronic lung disease. Other toxic compounds commonly released by CAFOs include:17

Hydrogen sulfide, which has a rotten egg odor and can cause inflammation of eye and respiratory tract membranes, loss of olfactory neurons and even death

Methane, an odorless but highly flammable greenhouse gas

Particulate matter, including particles from feed, bedding, dry manure, soil, animal dander and feathers, which can cause chronic bronchitis and respiratory symptoms, declines in lung function and organic dust toxic syndrome, a severe flu-like illness

Beyond pollution, CAFOs pose serious threats of spreading diseases to humans. For instance, a pig virus, the porcine deltacoronavirus (PDCoV), first identified in Hong Kong in 2012, has recently been shown to have the potential to leap to humans. The sometimes-fatal virus causes diarrhea and vomiting in pigs, and researchers revealed it has the potential to be transmitted between species, including to humans.18

"We're very concerned about emerging coronaviruses and worry about the harm they can do to animals and their potential to jump to humans," senior study author Linda Saif, an investigator in Ohio State's Food Animal Health Research Program at the Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center (OARDC), said in a press release.19Antibiotic-resistant disease can also be spread via CAFOs.

In 2015, research published in Clinical Infectious Diseases revealed that current workers at pig farms are six times more likely to carry multidrug-resistant MRSA than those without exposure to CAFO pigs.20 Aerosolized MRSA has even been detected in the air inside and downwind of a pig CAFO, as well as in animal feed.21 Needless to say, living near a CAFO has turned many people's "American dream" into a nightmare.

What's the Best Way to Fight Back Against CAFOs?

People in rural communities often feel helpless against the giant multinational corporations ruining their lives. It's a good sign that some residents have been awarded damages for their CAFO-caused hardships, but the amounts are unlikely to prompt change within the industry. And, ultimately, this is what's needed to stop the environmental destruction that's occurring at the hands of CAFOs.

The solution lies in changing agricultural practices from industrial to regenerative. Choosing grass fed products like grass fed beef and bison over those raised in CAFOs is a solution that we can all take part in. Look for pastured pork, free-range poultry and other animal products raised naturally in concert with the environment and actively avoid those raised on CAFOs.

The vast majority of animal products sold in U.S. grocery stores come from CAFOs, which is why sourcing your food from a small local farmer, farmers market or food co-op is one of the best decisions you can make - not only for your own health but for that of the environment and the people forced to live near CAFOs. Ultimately, if a sizeable minority of people begin to boycott CAFO products, they may be forced to change their ways.

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makeitnotbetrue · 7 years

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mourning becomes america or how i stopped worrying and learned to love the apocalypse?

happy fucking new year!

hey! is everyone still crying? it’s been almost two months now since the election. i meant to get this post up before the election, but you know how it is. life came along and altered my plans. funny how that happens all the time...

have you survived the most divisive election in american history? after that shit show, america needs a vacation! or serious psycho therapy. i’m exhausted, are you?

since chump [or rump if you prefer] was elected, i’m asked the same questions; “how did this happen?”, “what’s wrong with people?”, “do you believe he was actually elected?”, “is he going to get us into a war?”, “will the world end?”. answers: people are stupid, people are really ignorant, yes, yes and no!

before we continue, let’s get something straight. stupidity and ignorance are two different things. stupidity, your brain doesn’t work. for whatever reason, it’s not functioning properly. you’re not developmentally challenged, no one hit you on the head and damaged your brain. you just don’t know how to use your brain for making rational thoughts or decisions.

ignorance, on the other hand [and notice the root word], you choose to ignore the facts. all the information is there, but you either don’t want to know them or don’t care about them because they don’t fit your construct of reality. you are willfully oblivious!

we’ll address the other answers in a moment... the day after the election, nyc looked like a ghost town. the streets were empty. the sky was covered with angry dark smoke and ash gray colored clouds, blocking all light. i sensed an unspeakable foreboding, as if all the life and happiness had been drained out of the world. i kept waiting for the sky to open and a voice to say, “there is no love in this house!” what few people i did see walking around acted like they were zombified, as if they had been given a frontal lobotomy. it’s been almost two month and i still see mystified new yorkers walking around in a daze as if the shock treatment they recently had hasn’t worn off yet. their disbelief that chump is our president elect all a bad dream; and at any moment they will wake up and hillary will miraculously be president. you need another round of shock treatment!!! better yet, let’s perform another lobotomy on your brain so that you can remain in your pseudo-liberal fantasy!

on my food coop shifts, i hear people talk about how stunned they are that chump is president. when they start whining, well, let’s just say that they are lucky that there are gun laws in ny! if i had a gun, there’s no telling what i might do with it. they bitch about chump; what a crook he is, he’s a misogynist, a tax dodger, a draft dodger, he has no redeeming moral values, he’ll send your children to die in a war, blah, blah, blah... but guess what? it’s not going to effect them because they’re middle class and white! i’ll say it again! they’re not going to be effected by any of chump’s policies because they’re middle class and white!!! have you noticed that all the people bitching about chump becoming president are people who are actually going to benefit from he’s policies? so why are they bitching? because they are ignorant in a different way than chump’s supporters! they’re hillary supporters. you know, the social “liberal” elite that think they are too intelligent to support an attention grabbing buffoon like chump. they’re all for social justice as long as it doesn’t come to their neighborhood. help the homeless! but not in my neighborhood! help the junkies get off drugs! but don’t put a rehab center in my neighborhood! help the minorities and underprivileged kids get a better education! just keep them in their neighborhoods! separate but equal!!! and when we gentrify their neighborhood, bus them to a school in another neighborhood with other brown people like themselves. you know, just so they feel comfortable with their own kind...

hillary won new york [and she only won the state because of nyc and westchester, the most densely populated parts of the state - chump won most of the counties, but they had few electoral votes] and most of new england [she and chump split maine - because people in maine are crazy! or are they? mmm... ]. the plain and simple truth is, as new yorkers, we live in a bubble. and it’s a hypocritical bubble at that! for all our so called “progressive” and “liberal” thinking, nyc is one of the most segregated cities in america! i shit you not!!! school system - number 1 in segregation! through gentrification, people of color are being priced out of neighborhoods they’ve lived in for decades. in some cases, over a century! or if they are “financially viable”, the realtors have some bullshit excuse for keeping them out of their own neighborhood; and/or a so called “up and coming” or “good” neighborhood. and it’s become very difficult to prove racial, ethnic and religious discrimination here now. over the last 10 years, we’ve had an increase in hate crimes. probably due to a backlash from obama becoming president than anything else. as soon as he became president, as i predicted, all the racists hiding in the closet came out. and they came out with a fury! but what’s funnier is that it took a biracial black man with a white mother and whose father is from kenya, so there’s no african american slave connection for him to bitch about, to become our first “black” president. in some aspects, our first “black” president is technically white because of his mother. it’s not just jewish law, it used to be the law of the land, you are the race of your mother, until the jim crow laws went into effect and wealthy whites in the south started disowning their daughters for falling in love with former slaves. this was a topic that was discussed it the media when obama was elected. should he really be considered black because his mother was white. white politicians were so pissed off that obama is miscegenated, that the 2010 census was changed to include biracial and multiracial categories for the first time just so that they didn’t have to admit that he is technically white!!! or to quote an archaic expression - he is an issued negro. don’t you love the racism in this country?! land of the free... and just a side note, and i'm not saying any of this is right one way or the other; but that recently freed black male former slave theoretically had more rights than a white female who had allegedly been free all her life. i’m just saying. it’s misogyny at its best! african americans had a problem with obama too! his father’s from kenya. his family didn’t experience american slavery, so they felt that obama couldn’t relate to them. no matter where he turned, he got it from both sides! but honestly, could you get any whiter than obama?! really?!!! if he says “folks” one more time! he’s like a 1950s white sitcom dad! is he channelling ward clever or jim anderson?! so don’t put on the pretense of shock and disbelief that a demagogue like chump is now our president. the only real ethnic diversity white americans want is in their take-out!

before i begin berating our candidates, i want to point out a few of obama’s finer points. the republics and many white americans say that obama is soft on illegal immigration. in fact, obama has deported more or has more illegals in detention centers than any other president. obama actually wanted to have universal health care, but the pussy democrats wouldn’t support him. wonder why? could it be that he beat all his white counter parts during the primary? were the clintons secretly sabotaging his presidency with backdoor deals? who knows?! what we got instead was this watered down bullshit that is the same plan that mitt romney introduced in massachusetts when he was governor. it’s not obama care, it’s romney care! with no support from his own party, obama kissed so much republican ass he became mitt romney. yeah, he got a few things done. he did something w. never did. he got osama! if anything, can you conservative ass wipes give him that?! but let’s point out some of the good things obama has done. he appointed the first latino to the supreme court; and it’s a woman! he’s expanded rights for the lgbt community! same sex marriage! yay?... same sex divorce?... everybody’s got a right to be an asshole, right?..... when it came to commuting jail sentences and giving out presidential pardons, obama actually gave them to people who were really repentant for their crimes and who deserved a second chance, not some white collar hedge fund executive that lost someone’s life saving. obama lifted sanctions and normalized relations with cuba. yes, that’s a good thing! what are you haters holding on to?! chump getting elected killed castro! not your fucking bombs in his beard or your agents wearing poison lipstick. are you serious?! the attempts to kill him were like plots from a bad mike myers movie! and at least obama didn’t get us into any “new” wars. he tried to get us out of old ones, but alas, that didn’t last long because we destabilized those regions so much, we’ll never get out.

as for whether or not chump is going to get us into a war - hell yeah! we are already involved in several wars around the globe; whether we’re providing arms or troops, we’re there. the question is whether chump are going to escalate any war actions we are involved in. it pains me to say, because so many people are suffering in syria and the least we could do is provide them with relief by giving them sanctuary, but obama was right not to send troops into syria and get us deeper into another war that we can’t get out of. w bush and company took out saddam which completely destabilized the entire middle east. iraq and iran kept each other in check, which in turn kept the rest of the middle east in check because saddam was batshit crazy and no one knew what that crazy fucker was going to do! now look at the shit show that’s there! the truth is, no matter who became our president, we will probably going to have to send our forces somewhere. why? because of oil! i’ll say that again. because of oil! it was a matter of who wanted to do it willingly and who would do it reluctantly. hillary and chump would do it willingly for different reasons. hillary wants to prove she’s got a bigger dick and is just as tough as the boys; and there’s oil! chump wants to plaster his shitty hotels and casinos all over the middle east; and there’s oil! if bernie went in, it’s because he couldn’t stand the atrocities of the al-assad government, not so much the oil, but americans will force him to get the oil!

so here’s a novel idea! please follow along because there will be a quiz afterwards! let’s take some of that money we’re putting into the american war machine, oil exploration and gas fracking in our national parks, wild life preserves and off shore waters, and put it into developing affordable solar and other forms of natural energy. stop using your gas guzzling vehicles. stop heating your homes with crude and gas. basically get off the oil tit! then we wouldn’t need to send our troops into the middle east to steal the fucking oil from the arabs and the persians! our troops wouldn’t come back home fucked in the head because they shot a 6 year old they thought was carrying a bomb and then they wouldn’t need the mental health care that you refuse to provide them with through your bureaucratic bullshit and they wouldn’t commit suicide or shoot up supermarkets, mickey dees and shopping malls!!! got all that?! oh, i forgot. none of that is going to happen because politicians like hillary and rich assholes that can buy their way into the presidency like chump have the oil companies’ cocks so deep down their throats, that oil spluge has bypassed their stomachs and is gushing out their asses. what?! i can’t hear your lies! you have a dick jammed in your filthy putrid jizz infested mouth! remember to swipe it before you kiss your children you unrepentant gangrenous demonic cuntmuscle! un-fucking-believable what these assholes are doing to vets!!!

people asked, before and after the election, is this the best we can do? is this the best america has to offer? yes!!! yes it is! why? because this country is and always will be a cesspool!

first, let us look at the major candidates. all the candidates, including bernie. contrary to popular belief, hillary, chump and bernie were not the only people running for president. there were over 100 people running for president. some of them had legitimate platforms like jill stein and gary johnson. while others wanted to mandate policies of seeking out extraterrestrials and expelling them from the planet [that’s taking xenophobia to the extreme] to insuring the rights of sasquatch to the guy who wants to ban animals as food. yes!!! someone wants to ban your rights to eat a juicy burger or steak or that delicious pulled pork sandwich! no more bacon and eggs?! heavens to murgatroyd!!!

let’s start with bernie... a lot of people think that hillary railroaded bernie. and there probably was some tempering and election fraud during the democratic party primaries. why? because the fucking clintons are bullies! they’ve become so powerful, if you’re a member of the democratic party and you want to do something, anything at all, you have to have backing by the clintons. remember that back in 2008 when hillary was running against obama in the primaries, the clintons tried to bribe the delegates to change their votes for obama to her during the democratic convention. the delegates wouldn’t and the most old bug eyes and bubba could get obama to agree to was a cabinet post for her. being a bully can only get you so far. and i’m not saying this is true, i don’t know what’s in her heart, but can you imagine what would have happened to obama if he had picked her as his vice president? would air force one be shot down by “terrorists”? maybe an “accidental” fall down a flight of stairs?

honestly, she didn’t need to bully bernie because he wouldn’t have gotten elected anyway. and it’s not because he’s a so called “radical”. bernie’s not a radical, he’s an old hippy that bought a suit and tie. he’s not a socialist. he’s not a commie. at least not in the way the republicans, or even some of the democrats, would have you believe. socialist! communist! radical! these are words used to scare people because the powers that be are banking on the fact that most of you don’t even know what these words mean. look at the roots of these words! socialist/social - society! communist/commune - community! the republicans use words like democrat and liberal as if they were profane. democrat - democracy! isn’t that what we claim we want in this country?! democracy?! the right to choose who represents our interest in a fair and uncorrupted system of government! liberal - liberty! liberal means free thinking, open minded and liberty means freedom! is the ability to think for yourself a bad thing?! the republics and their rich crony friends would have you think so. do you want your freedom? or do you want to continue with the illusion of freedom that the current government allows you to have? right now, you have the freedom to keep voting for the same repulsive bullshit parties that aren’t going to do a fucking thing for you except screw you out of your hard earned dollars because rich people and corporations don’t pay their fair share of taxes. radical means change or extreme change from the root; synonymous with things like revolutionary, reform, provocative, liberal, progressive, different. and let me ask you this: pro means good, con means bad. they’re opposites. if progress means to move forward, what does congress mean?!

back to bernie... he’s an old school democrat; the kind that used to believe in things like social and civil rights for all citizens, quite unlike the do nothing, lobbyist and corporation ass-kissing pussy centrists that occupy washington now. what’s so radical about wanting to ensure decent and universal health care to all citizens? what’s so radical about wanting someone to earn a real living wage so that you can afford the fundamentals like food, clothing and shelter? what’s so radical about believing that all americans have a right to get a college education if they want one so that they know they aren’t being screwed over by the rich? what’s so radical about believing in real social justice and wanting to end the privatization of prisons? these are not radical ideas! it’s basic human decency!!! wait! my bad! caring about the well being of your fellow human beings?! that is a radical idea!!! what the fuck is he thinking?! i guess he forgot that the 1960s are over and the lend a helping hand to a person in need spirit has died a long time ago. in fact rigor mortis has set in.

bernie is an independent that joined the democratic party because as an independent, he never would have gotten the exposure he needed running for president. however, he was never going to get elected if he had been the democratic candidate for several reasons. first of all, he truly is independent. too independent! he’s not in bed with anybody! but, isn’t that a good thing? yes! good for us, bad for the corporate money machine that really runs the country. bad for bernie because there was no way in hell they were going to let him take office. bernie does not suck dick and he will not bend over and take it up the ass! secondly, bernie is too nice. he’s angry, but he’s nice. he will call you out on your bullshit, but he does it diplomatically. do you see chump being diplomatic? he’s a fucking asshole! and he just makes shit up just to fuck with you!!! and he doesn’t care if you call him out on his bullshit! he just makes up new bullshit. do you think bernie can contend with that?! he let bug eyes and her monkey devils walk over him. third, bernie didn’t have the support he needed to secure the nomination let alone become president. yes, overwhelmingly bernie had the youth vote, but they make up a small portion of the electorate. some of his supporters weren’t even old enough to vote. and who were these youth supporters? a large portion, dare i say the majority, were under 30, well educated and white. yes, many of his supporters were over 30. many were black and latino. he might have even had some asians and native americans in there. there were some people in their 30s and 40s, but still the majority were well educated, under 30 and white. what does this mean in the greater scheme of things. since the majority of voters are in that 40 to 70 demographic and they overwhelmingly supported bug eyes, it means that bernie was fucked from the beginning! it means that this country is so fractured that we may never come out of the abyss.

the only people who seemed to be listening to what sanders was saying were people who he wasn’t particularly addressing. what he had to say about education and colleges was addressed to the youth vote in part because his ideas on the future of education in this country effected them; but it was really addressed more to their suffering parents who have to pay for that shit. all those angry young people screaming and having temper tantrums at rallies; and later when hillary got the nomination, you didn’t pay for shit! your parents did! what the fuck are you angry about?! you just got out of fucking grad school! what’s the matter?! you’re upset because you didn’t get that six figure job you thought you deserved with your bullshit degree in dead languages?! using your law degree for toilet paper because skadden arps is not hiring this year? boo woo!!! despite what your micro managing parents told you, you don’t get what you want just because you want it. you have to work for it! you have to earn it! bernie was not talking to you!!! you haven’t lived long enough to be disappointed or disenfranchised. if your parents are still paying your cell phone bill or you rent or even half your rent, you are not disenfranchised. you are spoiled and you need to grow the fuck up! bernie was talking to the real disenfranchised, not you. he was talking to people who went through social injustice. he was talking to the people that despite working 40 hours a week, they still can’t pay their bills, rent or feed their family. he was talking to the vets that got neglected by the government when they came back from fighting its unjust wars. unfortunately only a few of these people heard bernie cry out about the injustices in this country and how he wanted to change things. the rest were just too beaten down to listen or care. apathy is now the blue plate special along with avarice for dessert.

now i’m going to say something and take it to heart. because if you take away anything from what i’ve said so far, it is that you have a deeper understanding of how truly fucked up this country is and how divided we are as a nation. bernie would not have won the election because of one simple fact; he’s jewish. we have never had a jewish president or even a vice president. “but we never had a black president and then obama got elected!” yeah, right! and just look at how successful he was with congress shutting down anything he tried to do. we won’t have another black president for another 232 years! grow up!!! let’s face some truths; obama was elected because the american people thought the two white guys that he ran against were scarier! if mccain died, we’d have sarah palen. as for mitt, there wasn’t a self respecting woman alive in american that was going to vote for mitt; and if there husband did, they’d lose their balls. we’ve only had one catholic president and his brains were splattered over the streets of dallas.

there have only been 8 jewish supreme court justices, 3 of which are on the bench now. and not one of them has ever been chief justice! only one was consider for chief justice and so much dirt was dug up on him to keep him from getting the nomination that he had to resign to avoid impeachment. did you watch the senate confirmation hearings for kagan when obama nominated her? that redneck lindsey graham asked her what she did on christmas to call to the fact that she was jewish. why didn’t anyone call this prick out on his bullshit?! her response, “like any good jew, i was probably in a chinese restaurant.” then she asked him what was his point. he admitted he had none other than wanting to know what she did for christmas. why didn’t he just scream “she’s a jew” at the top of his lung because that was his point, right?! and this is what that other asshole redneck pat buchanan had to say about kagan: “If Kagan is confirmed, Jews, who represent less than 2 percent of the U.S. population, will have 33 percent of the Supreme Court seats. Is this the Democrats’ idea of diversity? But while leaders in the black community may be upset, the folks who look more like the real targets of liberal bias are white Protestants and Catholics, who still constitute well over half of the U.S. population.” this is an actual quote from a so called educated person! these two clowns are not in a minority! just travel around the country. get out of la, nyc, san fran, seattle austin and see what’s really out side the bubble. see exactly how “tolerate” the rest of the country actually is.

you’re probably asking, if this country is so anti semitic than why do we support israel? because we hate arabs more than we hate jews! why? because they have oil! enough said! our only interest in israel is to use it as a base camp for destabilizing the middle east to steal the oil from the arabs. we don’t really support israel. if the israelis suddenly found oil, we’d be trying to steal it from them too.

if bernie had gotten the nomination, chump would have used bernie’s faith against him. he throw shit up against hillary about her foundation and chump fucking gave her money for it! given the racial, ethnic and political climate in this country, do you think chump would be a gentleman and not use bernie’s faith against him?! he’d call attention to it every chance he got, even though his own daughter married someone jewish and converted. he’s divisive and doesn’t give a shit if it serves his purpose. chump would probably have you believe that bernie would let israel annex the u.s. and that we’d all have to convert to judaism. chump is a demagogue and he will use your most paranoid fears against you, against bernie, hillary, or anyone that gets in his way. he’ll plant that seed; try to equate bernie with everything the rest of the country hates about jews. jew! new york - jew! brooklyn, new york - jew! woody allen - jew! larry david - jew! whiny, kvetch - jew! chump’s been doing a lot of whining and kvetching himself, but it’s okay because his protestant. and white. and male. and rich. and privileged. and he has been able to screw you out of enough of your money and he wants more! so he has every right to complain! and think about this. bernie had relatives that died in the holocaust. i’m not saying this is fact, it’s only a possibility; chump, whose grandfather was an illegal alien and a pimp from germany [and chump still has relatives living in germany today], may have had relatives that put bernie’s relatives to death. again, not saying it’s true, just saying it’s a possibility. chump never talks about the german side of his family or what they did during the war. when it’s put into perspective, however, kind of sick and ironic, isn’t it?

oh, bug eyes! i have a special place in my heart for bug eyes. she does something to me. it’s called agita! when is somebody going to take that power hungry bitch down?! i don’t mean in an election. i mean when are people going to finally say enough is enough?! take a hint! the american people are tired of you and your sexual predator husband. she should have taken a hint when she ran against obama in 2008. people didn’t want you then; and they certainly don’t want you now. the clintons have too much baggage. sex scandals, money scandals, political improprieties. and for all this scandal, they are very, very, very boring! excruciatingly boring! how could you be involved in political, financial and sex scandals and be so fucking boring?! chump has the same thing going on, but he’s batshit crazy and that makes him entertaining!

this was hillary’s election to lose. and dammit, it was an embarrassing defeat. statically she had everything she needed to win; so how do you get your ass whipped by a batshit crazy megalomaniac with hair that looks like he just had eight rounds of electroshock?! can you explain that to me?! i’ll tell you how; by carrying around the excessive garbage that is the clintons! hillary’s biggest problem, besides the fact that she changed her position every time something became topical or someone challenged her, was that she couldn't prove why she was better than chump. if sanders had an idea, bug eyes said, “"great and here’s how i’m going to expand and make it better.” really?! i mean, really?!!!

bug eyes said chump was unfit to be president. she ought to know, she and bubba went to his wedding. the clintons were, and records show that they still are, members of chump’s country/golf club. in fact chump and bubba were regular golf buddies. chump gave money to the clintons’ foundation and vice versa. the debates were like an episode of divorce court flintstone style; with bug eyes as wilma and chump as fred. were they actually about anything other than middle school name calling?! maybe if we had some third party candidates there, there might have been a real discussion about the issues. what’s the problem chump? did bug eyes and bubba give you a blender in the wrong color for a wedding present? was it cuisinart instead of kitchenaid? what’s the matter bug eyes? did chump and his latest mail order bride not send you a thank you note for said blender? or did you catch bubba groping said mail order bride? if you think he’s so unfit, why the hell are you hanging out with him?! when i think my friends are unfit, not worthy of my company, i cut them off! see ya! don’t call me, i’ll call you when the apocalypse begins. i guess i’ll be making a lot of phone calls soon...

i’ve talk to a lot of people about bug eyes, about chump and so many of them were so turned off and repulsed by this election that they didn’t want to vote at all. they thought chump was a joke, completely unqualified to lead the nation, but they also said that they couldn’t tolerate another 4 years of the clintons. it would be another 4 years of gridlock as an all republic congress tried to shutdown a democratic president; and she’s a woman, so all the men in washington wouldn’t think she’s tough enough to make the”hard” decisions like starting another war in the middle east to get more oil. the scandals and what would bubba’s role be a first man or first husband? there were rumors circulating around that she was going to make him u.n. secretary. if the rumors were true; had she been elected, that would have made them the most powerful couple in the world - bigger than queen elizabeth and prince philip! which is more frightening? chump being president or the clintons being the most powerful couple in the world? because you’re not just electing old bug eyes; they’re a package deal, you’re electing bubba too. it’s a round about way of him getting a third term as president.

you say he wasn’t so bad last time. he was kind of nice. yeah! of course he’s nice. he’s a used car salesman! he has something to sell you that you don’t want. he told you flat out that he was full of shit and he didn’t care. “you vote for me, that’s on you.” and people still voted for him. hell, when he was governor of arkansas he nickname was slick willie! if you can’t figure that out, go back to school! i’ll give it to him, though. at least he has charisma. bug eyes... well, she’s like a frigid proctologist. she feels nothing and is ready to stick a cold, stiff probe up your ass. see, for most people, they knew one way or another they were going to get shafted. it was a question of how they were going to get shafted; by a bile talking limp dick with his innocuous concubine or were they going to get double teamed by an icy anal probe and pathological sex addict. the choice is yours! most people went for the limp dick because they thought it would hurt less when they’d have to bent over. not!!!

bug eyes thought she had the white pseudo intellectual and working class [union employees] vote sewn up; and that she only needed to court the minority vote. a gross miscalculation on her part. she had to do a lot of back paddling because bubba passed the crime bill when he was president and minorities weren’t going to let her forget that. he also passed the welfare reform bill which hurt a lot of single mother out there trying to raise their children. women weren’t going to let her forget that! then there’s her ridiculous slogan, “america’s already great.” how many test audiences did her analysts go through before they settled on that one. is that really the best they could do? how are you going to tell people america is already great when their income doesn’t keep up with the cost of living?! how is american great when 75% of your paycheck goes for rent or on your mortgage?! how is america great when someone would rather pay the penalty for not having healthcare because they can’t afford the so called affordable healthcare because they don’t earn enough, but they earn too much to get any kind of aid? how is american great when you’re forced to go to college just to get a minimum wage job and you go into debt doing so?

years ago, when slick was president, bug eyes had a great slogan. she said, “it takes a village to raise a child.” she even wrote a book about it. she actually “borrowed” it from an african proverb, but none the less it’s true! i would hope that buggers would believe that’s true, after all she supposedly wrote it. i can’t say what’s actually in her heart, but i’ve never seen anything, or heard about or read about her taking some kid from the south side of that village up to her estate in chappaqua. have you? so much for the village...

of the major candidates, hill was the only one that was for gun control. you can no better control the guns in this country than you can control what brand of toothpaste or deodorant people use. americans love their guns and they aren’t giving them up. gun legislation is a joke! take a gander at the brady bill. it doesn’t stop people from buying guns, not really. the bill applies to how guns are sold by licensed dealers. once that gun leaves the gun shop, it’s fair game. and it only applies to guns manufactured in a 50 year period; so let’s say there is a working luger from ww2 at a gun or antique shop, it’s over 50 years old and considered a curio. you don’t need to do a background check because it’s a collector’s piece. you can still shoot someone and blow his head off. or someone with a clean background can buy a gun, then turn around and sell the gun to someone or even give it away as a gift because he’s not a licensed gun dealer. there are too many loop holes in the law that can still get guns in the hands of people who shouldn’t have them. the brady bill was passed to give white americans the illusion of safety.

and why are white americans only mildly concerned about about guns when, say, an african american church or an lgbt night club is shot up? “oh, those poor people! it’s a tragedy!” they have no problem with guns and black on black crime. when someone mentions gun control, they have a convulsion because they need their guns to protect themselves from the brown people who are trying to move into their communities. the only time white americans are truly concerned about gun control is when one of their own goes into a school or one of their suburban shopping malls and shoots up the place. their fears about brown people and crime are preposterous! statically most crime is committed within a race. white on white, black on black, latino on latino, native on native, asian on asian. why? because people stupidly trust people in their own race or ethnic background more than they would a so called outsider. the brown people aren’t coming to get you! not yet anyway... gun control is not the issue. the american attitude is! this nation needs to be on lithium and have some serious psycho therapy about anger management. americans are so quick to solve every problem with violence. maybe it’s because this nation was founded by ex-cons and peasants; there seems to be an abusive streak embedded to the soul of this country. hillary you need to address the systemic problems that’s ailing this nation! you can’t put a bandaid on bleeding artery...

now, don’t get me wrong. bug eyes actually did have a platform. she had ideas that could have actually help people. if you had gone to her website, many her ideas and reforms [some of them “borrowed” from other candidates] were posted there. some of them may have actually worked had she been elected and congress cooperated. they would have help all americans; even those blind, close minded whites that so vehemently supported chump. the problem is that hillary didn’t make that clear to them, or all of us, because she thought that those people were a minority. she thought she had all the “intelligent” people in her pocket. she needed to speak out on the issues. she needed to address the problems of this country with all its citizens and make it clear that she was fighting for everyone. she needed to tell everyone that there are no special interests; that the only interest is the state of human dignity and what it is costing americans to have it. I CHALLENGE ANY POLITICIAN THAT IS AGAINST MINIMUM WAGE TO LIVE ON IT FOR ONE YEAR AND SEE IF THEY CAN SURVIVE WITHOUT SACRIFICING SOME PART OF THEIR DIGNITY! instead, hillary chose to make a disgraceful spectacle of herself by playing a malicious game of “yo’ mama” with the chumpster! come on!!! you’ve been in the political game long enough. saying i’m not chump isn’t going to get you anything, especially when you’re carrying around the baggage that you have. you’re chump in a lady’s pantsuit and less entertaining! how many men refer to their ex-wives as ellie mae? you can’t run on a platform of how ludicrous and incompetent your opponent is if you’re not going to outline how and why you are better than him. you can’t run a platform of “i’m not donald.” that doesn’t mean anything! you have to have solutions to real problems! you have to say what the fuck you’re going to do!!! and you didn’t! and that’s why you lost the election...

so now let’s take a look at our president elect. there were a myriad of reasons why chump was elected, foremost, that white americans thought that america or the idea of the “american dream” was no longer theirs. xenophobia has become a viral infection. what white americans forget, is that they are all descendants of immigrants themselves. this land was stolen from the native americans. the only thing that was paid for was parts of nyc and part of the hudson valley by the dutch, which the england stole from them. chump goes off about the mexicans and the anti immigration racist cheer and swoon at his rhetoric as if he were moses delivering the ten commandments. what white americans fail to realize, or maybe they don’t want to realize, is that at one time the majority of the country west of the mississippi river was in fact mexican/spanish territory! look at all the goddamn names! they’re all spanish! or native american in the northern midwest and the north west. people you need to get a clue besides a grip!!!

chump was primarily elected because of one thing; and that thing was the only thing this election was really about - the state of white privilege in america!!! who has it, who thinks they’re losing it and who wants it. nothing more. nothing less. chump is not the problem. he is just a symptom of a greater disease; and if this infection of hatred and bigotry, contempt of the lower classes and the misfortunate are not addressed, we won’t have to worry about invaders or terrorist because we will have another civil war. we will destroy ourselves!

first of all, let me ask you this: would you let a person who’s declared bankruptcy four times be in charge of the finances of this country? in 1995 chump lost $916,000,000 in “investments”. some reports say it was $950,000,000. either way, because of the loss, he probably won’t have to pay taxes again until he croaks. again, would you let a person who loses that kind of money in one year be in charge of this country’s finances?! when i brought up these facts with chump supporters, they either ignored the facts by making excuses for him or they’d bring up some shit about bug eyes; or they say it was the nature of business, which is still ignoring the facts. he’s either a stupid business man to lose so much or he’s a crook. i’m choosing the latter because chump is too devious to be stupid. my question is, what is he going to swindle out of the american people? chump makes slick willie look like a boy scout. i was going to say priest, but given the church’s history with priests and children; then i thought mormon, but again, the mormons with their multiple wives... i went with boy scout. and here’s another fun little piece of trivia: hillary was originally a republic. she was a goldwater girl when she was in college. she switched parties, becoming a democrat in the late 60s, because she thought the republics weren’t doing enough to ease the flight of minorities and women. chump was originally a democrat, even voted for bubba - twice! he changed parties and became a republic for the 2008 presidential election because he thought there were too many democrats running and he’d get more exposure as a republican.

anyway, i don’t think chump believes half the bile that comes out of his mouth. he’s a demagogue, he’s divisive! he will use whatever is in his arsenal to get what he wants. demagogues use people’s fears and prejudices to turn them against one another; and in this country, that’s not very hard to do. 2008 was not the right time for chump. the events of 911 were fading as the country was collapsing financially from the s&l housing scandal and deregulation made the banks untouchable when they unscrupulously swindled the american people out of our money. all of that can be blamed on w. and the republicans and their failed policies. the american people were ready for change, or so they said. they elected a democrat for president [and he was a black man] so he could “fix” the country. however, they reelected the same old cronies that were palling around with bush. where’s the change?! the republicans shutdown congress and we had 8 years of gridlock and nothing was done. then everyone blamed obama for the effects we are still feeling from the bush administration. it takes less than a minute to make a catastrophic mistake that we may or may not recover from. it takes decades to repair that mistake if it can be repair at all. look at the middle east and north africa.

people used to say that reagan was the anti-christ. he had the 666 thing going on with his name. don’t know if it’s true, it can just be hear say, but i heard that’s really the reason hinkley shot him, the jodie foster thing came later because reagan’s handlers were trying to cover up the religious aspect of the shooting. again, just a rumor... i have seen the anti-christ and he has a mouth that’s shaped like an anus for spewing his bile and an atrocious combover and he’s not even bald! chump is the perfect representation of everything american. spoiled, selfish, egotistical, arrogant, ignorant, oblivious, divisive, misogynistic, greedy, and a sense of entitlement.

chump promised he’d bring back jobs to america. why doesn’t he start by having his clothing line manufactured in america! all those “let’s make america great again” hats were made in china and so is his clothing line. the hats should have states, “let’s make america white again” because that’s what his campaign was all about. all those monoliths around the world that he builds for his own self glory and bear his name were build with chinese steel, not american. chump says he’s going to reopen the coal mines in wv and put miners back to work. the mines were closed because everyone was dying from black lung disease, carbon monoxide poisoning, cave ins or explosions. the use of coal was making the air unfit to breathe. why should chump care if these people are dying from working in the mines. he’s not going to live in their area. he’s not putting a casino there. the coal industry was not regulated well and the owners found ways of skirting around those regulations. the workers were the ones that were screwed because they weren’t able to sue their bosses when something went wrong. do we really need to give that back to them? why don’t we invest in other forms of energy? why don’t we educate these people to do some kind of other labor. why do we just educate them period?! oh, because they might understand that they are being fucked over! i am not going to talk about standing rock because it hits too close to home and i may have to get a gun and go to a shopping mall!

look at the people chump is choosing for his cabinet. can we be any more fucked?! ceo of exxon as secretary of state?! how bad do we need oil?! steven mnuchin as secretary of the treasury? really?! the foreclosure king?! goldman sachs banking asshole! hollywood producer! a fast food restaurant executive as secretary of labor?! that’ll put a kick in minimum wage! and let’s not forget betsy devos of amway fame as secretary of education! i don’t know, maybe putting all these business may do something positive. maybe chump is really benign and is as innocuous as his trophy wife, but deep in my heart i think THIS COUNTRY IS TRULY FUCKED!!! so maybe when the infrastructure does collapse, and it will, it will spark the wake up call that america finally needs because it’s been complacent for far too long.

i have my dry goods. a supply of fabric for making clothes, yarn for knitting more clothes and blankets. batteries, flash lights and candles, portable griller for cooking. i’ve even learned the useful skill of canning and i’ve got some mini greenhouses for growing vegetables. i don’t need to eat meat. brushing up on my combat skills. i may have to get that antique luger...

wake up people! this is not really tv! ARE YOU READY FOR THE APOCALYPSE?!!!

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newstfionline · 3 years

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Wednesday, April 28, 2021

Canadian beavers chomp down town’s internet (BBC) Beavers have been blamed after a town in the Canadian province of British Columbia lost their internet service for some 12 hours. The provider Telus said that parts of the underground cabling, servicing Tumbler Ridge, had been found in the beavers’ home. Some 900 internet users and 60 TV customers were affected, it said. Telus spokeswoman Liz Sauvé described it as a “very unusual and uniquely Canadian turn of events”.

US marks slowest population growth since the Depression (AP) U.S. population growth has slowed to the lowest rate since the Great Depression, the Census Bureau said Monday, as Americans continued their march to the South and West and one-time engines of growth, New York and California, lost political influence. Altogether, the U.S. population rose to 331,449,281 last year, the Census Bureau said, a 7.4% increase that was the second-slowest ever. Experts say that paltry pace reflects the combination of an aging population, slowing immigration and the scars of the Great Recession more than a decade ago, which led many young adults to delay marriage and families. The new allocation of congressional seats comes in the first release of data from last year’s headcount. The numbers generally chart familiar American migration patterns: Texas and Florida, two Republican Sunbelt giants, added enough population to gain congressional seats as chillier climes like New York and Ohio saw slow growth and lost political muscle. The report also confirms one historic marker: For the first time in 170 years of statehood, California is losing a congressional seat, a result of slowed migration to the nation’s most populous state, which was once a symbol of the country’s expansive frontier.

After Nearly a Year of Unrest, Portland Leaders Pursue a Crackdown (NYT) After the protests have concluded, sometimes in the early morning hours, Margaret Carter finds herself climbing into her gray Toyota Camry and cruising the streets of Portland so she can see the latest damage for herself. Carter, 85, has been downtown to the Oregon Historical Society, where demonstrators have twice smashed out the windows, recently scrawling “No More History” on the side of the building. She has driven past the local headquarters of the Democratic Party, where windows have also been shattered. Last week, she found herself at the Boys & Girls Club in her own neighborhood, nearing tears at the scene of costly window destruction at a place she has worked so hard to support. “Portland was a beautiful city,” said Carter, who was the first Black woman elected to the Oregon Legislative Assembly and is now retired. “Now you walk around and see all the graffiti, buildings being boarded up. I get sick to my stomach. And I get angry.” After almost a year of near-continuous protests since the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Portland’s city leaders are signaling that it may be time for a more aggressive crackdown on the most strident street actions. Mayor Ted Wheeler last week put into place a state of emergency that lasted six days and vowed to “unmask” those demonstrators who engaged in repeated acts of vandalism or arson. In his call for the public’s help, Wheeler urged people to report anything they might overhear about property destruction plans or boasts. He also called for residents to report protesters who appeared to be disguising their identity and to document their license plates for the police.

California recall has enough signatures to make ballot (AP) Organizers of the recall effort against California Gov. Gavin Newsom collected enough valid signatures to qualify for the ballot, state election officials said Monday, likely triggering just the second such election in state history. The recall against Newsom, a first-term Democrat seen as a possible White House hopeful someday, will be among the highest-profile political races in the country this year. An election is likely in the fall and voters would face two questions: Should Newsom be recalled and who should replace him? The votes on the second question will only be counted if more than half say yes to the first. Newsom won election in 2018 with support from more than 60% of the voters. Recalling him will be a tough sell in the heavily Democratic state where just a quarter of the state’s registered voters are Republicans, about the same number as those who identify as “no party preference.”

Under the sea, out of sight (Bloomberg) A 52-foot long, 8-foot wide submersible hauling 2,500 kilograms of cocaine was intercepted by U.S. authorities in the Caribbean about 150 miles north of South America. Since last October, the U.S. Caribbean Corridor Strike Force has seized a total of 17,000 kilograms of cocaine worth more than $510 million off the coast of Puerto Rico. Increased enforcement has pushed cartels to invest significant funds in transporting their wares under the sea.

Turkey announces “full lockdown” from April 29 to curb COVID spread (Reuters) Turks will be required to stay mostly at home under a nationwide “full lockdown” starting on Thursday and lasting until May 17 to curb a surge in coronavirus infections and deaths, President Tayyip Erdogan announced on Monday. Turkey logged 37,312 new COVID-19 infections and 353 deaths in the last 24 hours, health ministry data showed, sharply down from mid-April but still the world’s fourth highest number of cases and the worst on a per-capita basis among major nations. Announcing the new measures after a cabinet meeting, Erdogan said all intercity travel would require official approval, all schools would shut and move lessons online, and a strict capacity limit would be imposed for users of public transport. Turks will have to stay indoors except for essential shopping trips and urgent medical treatment.

Iran, US warships in first tense Mideast encounter in a year (AP) American and Iranian warships had a tense encounter in the Persian Gulf earlier this month, the first such incident in about a year amid wider turmoil in the region over Tehran’s tattered nuclear deal, the U.S. Navy said Tuesday. Footage released by the Navy showed a ship commanded by Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard cut in front of the USCGC Monomoy, causing the Coast Guard vessel to come to an abrupt stop with its engine smoking on April 2. The Guard also did the same with another Coast Guard vessel, the USCGC Wrangell, said Cmdr. Rebecca Rebarich, a spokeswoman for the Navy’s Mideast-based 5th Fleet. Such close passes risk the ships colliding at sea.

Israel is committing the crime of ‘apartheid,’ new report says (Washington Post) Israeli authorities are “committing the crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution,” according to a major new 213-page report released Tuesday by global advocacy group Human Rights Watch. The organization argued that, in terms framed by existing international law, overarching Israeli policy toward Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem constituted an agenda to both maintain Jewish Israeli domination and systematically oppress Palestinians. Beyond the all-but-dead “peace process” of the past few decades, the organization pointed to the inescapable and unequal reality that defines life for everyone living between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. “This is the most stark finding Human Rights Watch has ever reached on the conduct of Israeli authorities,” Omar Shakir, the organization’s Israel and Palestine director and the author of the report, told Today’s WorldView. “For too long, the international community has failed to recognize the reality on the ground for what it is.” Shakir added that HRW is hardly alone in arriving at this conclusion. For years, Palestinians have invoked apartheid in discussing the region’s status quo: where an Israeli military occupation governs over many aspects of their lives, where the security and political imperatives of the Israeli government curtail their own rights, and where the expansion of Jewish settlements inexorably entails further Palestinian dispossession.

Virus surge in crowded Gaza threatens to overwhelm hospitals (AP) More than a year into the coronavirus pandemic, some of the worst fears are coming true in the crowded Gaza Strip: A sudden surge in infections and deaths is threatening to overwhelm hospitals weakened by years of conflict and border closures. Gaza’s main treatment center for COVID-19 patients warns that oxygen supplies are dwindling fast. In another hospital, coronavirus patients are packed three to a room. For months, Gaza’s Hamas rulers seemed to have a handle on containing the pandemic. But their decision to lift most movement restrictions in February—coupled with the spread of a more aggressive virus variant and lack of vaccines—has led to a fierce second surge.

Fighting erupts in Myanmar; junta to ‘consider’ ASEAN plan (Reuters) Karen insurgents attacked a Myanmar army outpost near the Thai border on Tuesday in some of the most intense clashes since a military coup nearly three months ago threw the country into crisis. The Karen National Union (KNU), Myanmar’s oldest rebel force, said it had captured the army camp on the west bank of the Salween river, which forms the border with Thailand. The Myanmar military later hit back against the insurgents with air strikes, the KNU and Thai authorities said. The fighting took place as the junta, in a setback for diplomatic efforts by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), said it would “positively” consider the bloc’s suggestions to end the turmoil in Myanmar but only when stability was restored.

‘Red Tourism’ draws Chinese on centennial of Communist Party (AP) On the 100th anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party, tourists are flocking to historic sites and making pilgrimages to party landmarks. On a street where the Red Army once roamed, a group of retirees in historic pastel-blue army uniforms belt out tunes made famous through countless movies, television shows and other forms of propaganda. Historic locations in Jiangxi and Guizhou provinces—the sites of revolutionary leader Mao Zedong’s early battles, his escape from Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist forces in the Long March and the cementing of his leadership in Zunyi—are experiencing an influx of tourists this year as post-pandemic travel returns to China. In Guizhou, tourism in the first quarter of 2021 has already recovered to 2019 levels, local official Lu Yongzheng said. The province, among China’s top tourist destinations, received millions of tourists who brought in billions of dollars in revenue. The rise in tourism is also spurred by a campaign announced by President Xi Jinping in February to educate the Communist Party’s 91 million-plus members on its history and ideology.

Gunfire rocks Mogadishu (Foreign Policy) Violence erupted in the Somali capital Mogadishu on Sunday as anti-government fighters traded fire with troops loyal to Somali President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed over his decision to remain in power after his term expired. Mohamed, whose four-year term ended in February, extended his presidency for two years on April 14 after an election deadlock, drawing strong condemnation from, among others, the United States and the European Union, who have threatened to impose sanctions on the country.

Shipping Containers Plunge Overboard as Supply Race Raises Risks (Bloomberg) Containers piled high on giant vessels carrying everything from car tires to smartphones are toppling over at an alarming rate, sending millions of dollars of cargo sinking to the bottom of the ocean as pressure to speed deliveries raises the risk of safety errors. The shipping industry is seeing the biggest spike in lost containers in seven years. More than 3,000 boxes dropped into the sea last year, and more than 1,000 have fallen overboard so far in 2021. The accidents are disrupting supply chains for hundreds of U.S. retailers and manufacturers such as Amazon and Tesla. There are a host of reasons for the sudden rise in accidents. Weather is getting more unpredictable, while ships are growing bigger, allowing for containers to be stacked higher than ever before. But greatly exacerbating the situation is a surge in e-commerce after consumer demand exploded during the pandemic, increasing the urgency for shipping lines to deliver products as quickly as possible.

Ungrounding (Skift) Last year saw the mass grounding of commercial aircraft as airlines grappled with an utter collapse in demand for their services, and in the United States, those mothballed planes are getting ready to re-enter service. At American Airline’s Tulsa maintenance base, idled jets are getting revamped ahead of a summer when most of the carrier’s 1,400 jet fleet will re-enter the skies. Reactivating a single 737 takes 1,000 person-hours and costs about $39,340 in labor alone. That is, comparatively, cheap, at least stacked against the $10 million impairment charge taken for each of the 150 aircraft it retired last year.

#headlines #news

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newstfionline · 6 years

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After Texas church massacre, tiny town turns to prayer to begin healing process

By Peter Holley and Eli Rosenberg, Washington Post, November 12, 2017

SUTHERLAND SPRINGS, Tex.--The sprawling white tent was already packed with hundreds of mourners Sunday, some of them spilling outside beneath an overcast sky, by the time Frank Pomeroy, the pastor of First Baptist Church of Sutherland Springs, took to the stage. He stood in front of a wooden cross wrapped in holiday lights.

At this moment a week earlier, with Pomeroy out of town, Devin Kelley entered the small white church and started shooting members of the pastor’s beloved congregation with an assault-style rifle. Twenty-six of them, including a pregnant woman’s unborn child, would die in the massacre.

In a tent erected on a baseball field a few blocks away, Pomeroy was again preaching, this time to a far larger congregation made up of victims, their family members, locals and outsiders who arrived from around the region to show their support for this tiny, heartbroken town.

“I know everyone who lost their life that day, some of which were my best friends, and my daughter,” Pomeroy said, pausing to hold back tears as the crowd began to applaud and yell encouragement. “I guarantee without any shadow of a doubt they are dancing with Jesus today.”

Pomeroy told the crowd that his church, just days removed from being full of FBI crime scene investigators and the horrors of the largest mass shooting in Texas history, would reopen to the public Sunday as a memorial. It had been cleaned, painted and had audio from previous services playing in the background.

“I haven’t seen this done in other catastrophes,” Pomeroy said. “But I want the world to know that that building will be open so that everyone who walks in there will know that the people who died lived for their lord and savior.”

Members of the crowd, most wearing jeans and leather boots, listened to sermons from Pomeroy, Sen. John Cornyn and Mark Collins, a pastor at a nearby church, who spoke about the importance of faith and healing. They sang along to songs and hymns, many hugging and breaking down into tears.

Sutherland Springs, faced with unimaginable loss, has turned to its faith as its most potent coping mechanism. Instead of casting blame, or going into hiding or questioning why this tragedy befell them, this town has instead publicly looked to God, believing that there’s a reason for all of this. The victims, many here believe, are in a better place. Sorrow has quickly morphed into courage and resolve.

That began immediately after the Nov. 5 massacre, which took place during weekly Sunday services. Shellshocked residents began to gather at this tiny town’s community center, and Mike Gonzales, a pastor and local activist, arrived with one question in mind.

“What time is the prayer vigil?” he said, tapping neighbors on their shoulders one by one. “Does anyone know where we’re going to pray?”

Nobody had an answer. Some told the 46-year-old retired Army warrant officer that it was too early to think about a vigil. Bodies were still lying in the grass outside First Baptist Church a block away.

Gonzales disagreed. He took a deep breath and yelled, “Excuse me, can I have your attention? There will be a prayer vigil at 7 p.m. tonight at the post office!”

Six hours later, in a parking lot illuminated by candles, Gonzales--clad in black and with a fresh military buzz cut--was surrounded by hundreds of mourners, including Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R), as he led the first worship service since Kelley, 26, had slaughtered 25 First Baptist congregants, eight of them children and teenagers.

“I propose we take a pact, right here, in this small town, that evil will not prevail,” Gonzales said. “That right here in the heart of Texas, this community, Sutherland Springs in Wilson County, will be stronger than ever!”

“Amen,” the teary mourners replied.

“If you agree, lift your candle,” he added. “It starts right now.”

At Gonzales’s impromptu gathering--and at multiple prayer vigils and memorials that followed, including one that featured Vice President Pence and a “prayer strategist”--a similar sequence unfolded: sorrow-filled remembrances, vows of support, calls for faith and fiery condemnations of evil, followed by gospel music, shouts of “Hallelujah!,” streaming tears and hands reached high.

In the homes and churches around Sutherland Springs, where families mourned their loved ones alongside preachers from around the region, the importance of prayer was never up for debate, even if it meant accepting an event of such horror: Only God could explain it.

Many Sutherland Springs residents said they consider prayer a deep and concrete response to the tragedy. The shooting was the result of a deranged individual, they said, not the type of weapon he used. To prevent another mass killing, they argued, society has to start by changing the culture that conditioned the killer. That starts with prayer, they said.

“It’s all we have sometimes,” Gonzales said. “It also begins the process of healing. Without it, you won’t heal, and right now people here are hungry for that.”

More than half of Americans say they pray daily, according to a 2014 Pew Research Center survey. The same survey found that 63 percent of adults in Texas say they pray at least once a day, and 76 percent say they believe in heaven.

In scrappy, small Texas towns such as Sutherland Springs, where prayer occurs before local football games and veterans meetings, at the community center, and before school each morning, expressions of faith are woven into daily life. The town of about 400 people is home to a Dollar General store, a post office and a pair of gas stations, but it has four churches and one Islamic center. More than 10 percent of the county’s residents live below the poverty line, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, and community leaders say churches are the place locals turn when they lose a job, they need a meal or they can’t afford to pay for a funeral.

The Rev. Stephanie Spellers, an Episcopal priest, said that in moments of conflict or tragedy, prayer can facilitate the cooperative selflessness a community needs to endure.

“Prayer is really as much about our own orientation as it is about changing God’s mind,” she said. “It’s not like it somehow shifts the wind in a different direction, but it shifts us in a different direction.”

Paul Buford, the senior pastor of River Oaks Church--a Baptist church three miles away from the First Baptist Church of Sutherland Springs--said that’s exactly what prayer has helped his congregation do in recent days.

In the hours after the shooting, Buford’s church was converted into a crisis center for victims’ families, turning classrooms into a temporary home for the Red Cross and the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention.

“I’ve had many wet shoulders over the past few days,” he said.

The ties between the two churches are many, with some families, such as the Holcombes--who lost eight members in the shooting--attending services in each church, Buford said.

Prayer has been a bulwark against the kind of hopelessness and blame that could swallow a town after 10 percent of its residents were shot. From the perspective of evangelical Christian believers, he said, meaninglessness might be the worst possible fate because belief assures one a place in “God’s kingdom.”

“What is the point of slogging through life day by day by day so that when we die, we’re put in the ground and we throw dirt on top of the person and that’s it?” Buford said. “That’s a scary thought. But I have something to look forward to. Do you?”

As he’s wrestled with the killings, Gonzales said he’s returned to a line in the Bible from Philippians 1:21: “For to me, to live is Christ, and to die is gain.” To die in a church, while expressing one’s faith, he said, would’ve been considered an honor in biblical times.

“Anyone who lost their life in that church is part of a legacy that will live on forever,” Gonzales said.

Several days after she survived the First Baptist Church shooting, Rosanne Solis holed up in her dimly lit trailer at the end of a quiet neighborhood street in Sutherland Springs. Recovering from a shoulder wound, Solis is pondering death as well, namely, how she narrowly avoided it.

“I’m still shocked by the fact that all these children died. I knew all of them that were in there,” she said, before nodding toward her boyfriend, Joaquin Ramirez, who was grazed by a bullet inside the church. “I feel guilty because we survived and they didn’t. It’s God’s way, but I don’t understand God at all.”

Between trips to the doctor and to the store, she’s forced to change her bandages at least three times a day, and she’ll have permanent physical reminders of what happened in that church. “The doctors said it will take at least a year to heal,” she said. “The bullet went straight through and left a big, deep hole.”

But with the help of prayer, Solis said, her belief in God is deeper now than it was a week ago.

“We got out of that church for a reason, and that reason is for me to have a closer relationship with God than I did in the past,” Solis said. “I’m a changed person now.”

#Sutherland Springs #Texas church shooting

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newstfionline · 7 years

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In Kiron, Iowa, pop. 229, life, death and another cup of coffee

By Stephanie McCrummen, Washington Post, April 16, 2017

KIRON, Iowa--Russell Paulson had already heard by the time he arrived at the Quik Mart for his afternoon coffee. Walt Miller had died.

“Died last night, huh?” someone was saying as Russell pulled up a chair.

“Yeah, last night,” another man said.

Russell listened; he had known Walt. At the age of 80, he knew almost everyone in Kiron, a town of 229 people, one of whom is U.S. Rep. Steve King, who has a house on the edge of town. Russell knew King, too, knew that he was the sort of person always stirring controversy, often by raging against what he called “cultural suicide by demographic transformation.” More recently, King had said that “we can’t restore our civilization with somebody else’s babies,” a comment embraced by prominent white supremacists and widely condemned around the country as demonizing Latino and other non-European immigrants.

There was little controversy across King’s district, though, a swath of rural America made up of tiny towns with tiny, aging white populations that routinely elected King with more than 70 percent of the vote. In Kiron, people brushed it off as King being King, a man they all knew, expressing a plain truth they all understood: The white population was shrinking, and towns like theirs were vanishing, with the few exceptions being places such as Denison, a pork-processing town 20 minutes down the highway where population growth was being driven by immigrants from Mexico and Central America.

Kiron, meanwhile, was losing steam. According to the most recent census figures, the population included nine Mexicans; the other 220 were all white, and their numbers were decreasing by 10 or so each year, and now, on a Wednesday, by one.

“Oh, Walt Miller? He did pass?” Dwain Swensen, 67, said, sipping his coffee.

“What’d he have, pancreatic cancer or something?” said Ron Streck, 70.

“Liver,” said Herman Kohnekamp, also 70. “I think that’s what it was, wasn’t it, Russell?”

“I knew he passed but didn’t know any details,” Russell said.

It was a quiet afternoon, the ritual 3 p.m. coffee in a place where, as one regular put it, “you can figure out Steve King by understanding all of us.” Every day but Sunday, the bell on the front door rang as they arrived. The wood-paneled backroom was waiting. The Bunn-o-Matic and the Styrofoam cups. The space heater humming. The clock with the squinting Merit cigarette man on one wall, the calendar on the other, the cracked blinds dangling over the window where the view through the slats was a sea of farm fields, and on a hill in the distance, a stand of evergreens where the cemetery was. Now the bell on the front door rang again, and Russell looked up.

“Oh,” Ron said under his breath, seeing who it was. “Here comes trouble.”

It was Kevin Lloyd, 52, who came in occasionally, and had been in the day before, all riled up about the latest Steve King situation, waving his hands and going on about how people had misunderstood what he’d meant about “other peoples’ babies.”

“If you’re American, you got to take care of America!” he had said then. “I love that people want to come here from Mexico, from Ukraine, from the Middle East, but they need to come here legally.”

Dwain, Ron, a woman named Jane Gronau and Russell had been there, sipping their coffees, as Kevin had continued that he had no idea why people would call King a “white supremacist,” or, for that matter, why people would call President Trump racist. “Now, is Barack Hussein Obama a Muslim? In my opinion, yes,” he had said, and that had brought him to the other thing he figured King meant about babies. He had meant Muslim babies of the Muslims that Obama had allowed into the country.

“And here, I’m going to quote a great president, Abe Lincoln,” he had said. “He said the fall of America will come from the inside. Well, if you’re allowing all these children in, and if they hate America, how long is it going to be before we’re not the United States of America anymore?”

Jane had nodded: “If you study the number of Muslims, there are going to be so many here, and they’re going to have so many kids, they’re going to be able to take over that way.”

Dwain had nodded: “They say ‘freedom of religion’ but if you’re Muslim, and you become Christian, you’re ousted. Sometimes, they kill ‘em.”

“They behead ‘em,” Kevin had said into a quiet Iowa afternoon.

“I think what King was trying to get across is, look: We can only grow so many hogs, so much beans and so much corn,” Kevin had said. “If we let everybody in, we’re going to be without a food source. And what happens when that’s gone? Then we’re all in trouble.”

The next day, Russell had his morning coffee and got into his car.

He stopped by the bank where he’d been going since the 1940s.

“Hi, Russell,” the one teller said to her one customer.

He got back into his car and drove one block to the edge of town, turned onto the two-lane highway, then one long gravel road after another, straight lines stretching out into still-fallow fields.

“Some of the roads have been abandoned,” he said. “Because there’s not as many people living out here, the roads just disappeared.”

He knew the roads better than anyone. His own family’s roots in the area stretched back to the 19th century, when the U.S. government was aggressively removing Native American tribes to make way for one of the largest immigration waves in American history. The Swedes came, the Germans came, the farms, the towns and generations of babies, one of whom was Russell Elmer Paulson, born in 1937. He was raised on his mother’s family farm in rural Kiron and never left other than a stint in the Army, and one in Dubuque.

He and his wife, Glenda, inherited land when Russell’s parents died and lived on it until they retired and moved into town. Russell’s work had been farming and insurance adjusting. His culture was being a Methodist and a Mason and listening to polka, though most of that had fallen away. The church he and Glenda had gone to “died for lack of people and money,” he said. There were hardly any Masons left. Polka was not enjoying a revival. His kids had left for jobs in other areas. Glenda had died last year.

“See that ridge? That’s the old railroad bed,” he said now, driving along, squinting through his gold-rimmed glasses.

“My aunt bought this,” he said, passing a stand of trees where farmhouses had been.

“Walt would go there,” he said, pointing out a repair shop where Walt Miller had coffee, and soon he turned onto a narrow dirt road leading to the farm where he and Glenda had lived, a collection of storage buildings where Russell now kept his old tractors, and one he used as an office, where he went these days to work crossword puzzles or just sit and think.

“Commune with God and the birds,” he said. “Well, not too many birds now.”

He glanced around at the old buildings, now shuttered and locked, though someone had broken into one of them recently.

“They stole a bunch of tools and such,” Russell said, pulling back onto the gravel road. “No need to get all worked up about it.”

He passed a rotting barn and a bird on a stretch of barbed wire, and after a while, a gray house with a huge American flag.

“This is Steve King’s house here,” he said, looking at it.

He had known King a long time and saw no reason to be bothered by something or other he said. He supported King--“I have no reason in the world to dislike the man”--but wasn’t one to rant about politics. He had no computer, no smartphone. His television had no cable. He watched a half-hour of national news, a half-hour of local, followed by “Wheel of Fortune” and Lawrence Welk. He ate chicken tenders and food he described as “American.”

“He’s just kind of one of us,” Russell said of King, driving on past a field where a church had burned down, and the home of a man who’d died last year. It began to rain.

“When it comes down like it’s doing now, it’s just wonderful,” he said.

He drove past fields and more fields until he came to another stand of trees on a hill.

“This is the cemetery,” he said, pulling in.

He drove slowly past the headstones. “A lot of these people I knew,” he said and began reading names.

“Larson.”

“Lind.”

“Gustafson.”

“Paulson--this would be my folks right here,” he said, and then he noticed the time, almost 3 p.m.

He headed back to town, pulling onto Main Street where a wooden sign said, “Kiron, Blessed with the Best.”

After King had made his comment about babies, some out-of-town protest group had put up another sign below that one that said, “White Supremacist.”

The sign didn’t make any sense to Russell, and, after it was removed, his main worry was that the protesters might have damaged the town sign, which had started to rot a few years ago.

Russell had taken on the job of maintaining it. He had trimmed the tree branches that had grown through the wood. He had taken down “Blessed with the Best” and repainted each of the letters. He went to a lumberyard and had a new K, I, R, O, and N made, painting each letter several times and spraying them with wood preservative. One year, he and Glenda had planted a bed of petunias and geraniums.

“I don’t think we will ever have a better display of flowers,” he said now, and soon he was pulling up to the Quik Mart for the afternoon coffee. As he walked inside, he saw a funeral notice on the front door with a photo of a smiling man in gold-rimmed glasses.

“Oh,” Russell said, pausing for a moment. “There’s Walt.”

The next day, the bell rang as the door with the funeral notice swung open, and it was Dwain, then Bob James, then Herman, then Russell. The Merit cigarette clock showed a few minutes after 3 p.m. Russell got the coffee pot and poured. The bell rang again, and it was a man named Glen Ballantine.

“Time for plowing?” Herman asked the 84-year-old farmer.

“Two weeks,” Glen said, sitting down.

Bob was reading the paper. Russell was sipping his coffee, looking out the window.

“Got the visitation tonight,” Herman said.

He didn’t have to mention Walt Miller’s name because they all knew what he meant.

They went back to talking about plowing, and Glen was saying how different farming was now than when he was a young man, which for some reason reminded him of one of his first jobs, digging graves.

“For 18 bucks,” he said.

“You dug a regular grave for 18 bucks?” said Dwain.

“Oh yeah, and we had to fill ‘em back up again,” said Glen.

“I helped dig one once,” said Russell. “You know, manually. Only one. I don’t know what I got paid. But. That’s a long way down to the bottom of that.”

“If there was frost in the first foot, you got $1 more,” said Glen.

“What’d you use to get through the frost?” asked Bob.

“Pickax and sledgehammer,” said Glen. “And when we’d fill ‘em, we’d fill ‘em in 14 scoops. We were just little kids, more or less.”

“We had more dirt than we needed,” Russell said. “And had to --”

“Had to haul that away,” said Glen, finishing his sentence.

“Had to put that on the pickup,” said Russell, and they went on talking like that until Herman got up to leave. It was after 3:30 p.m.

“Funeral home starts, what, at 4?” Herman said.

“Four till 7, it says on there,” Russell said.

The funeral home was in Denison, and the sun was going down as Russell turned onto the two-lane highway toward one of the only towns in Steve King’s district that was growing, and which appeared in the distance as a cluster of lights and rising steam from the pork-processing plant.

Russell turned by the Walmart, bustling on a Friday payday, and turned again into a neighborhood where Latino kids were playing in a yard. Up a hill, he parked in front of the funeral home, where people were still streaming in near 7 p.m.

Russell made his way through the receiving line, his hat off, comb lines visible in his gray hair. He shook hands with Walt’s family, who thanked him for coming, and inched forward until he reached the open casket.

He stood there a moment. He looked at Walt. He looked at the light-blue satin lining and the farm scene etched into it. A man stood next to Russell.

“Went fast,” he said of Walt, who had passed away soon after his diagnosis. “That’s what you hope for.”

“I do,” said Russell, still looking at Walt, and soon, he headed back to Kiron.

The funeral was the next day at Zion Lutheran Church in Denison, and more people came from Kiron and other vanishing towns like Odebolt and Ida Grove. They sat in jeans and dresses and suits on the wooden pews of a church founded in 1872, and read about Walt in the program, where it was said that “farming and fixing equipment and household items were his favorite things to do,” and soon the church bells began ringing.

The pews creaked as everyone stood and watched the pallbearers roll in the coffin draped in a white cloth with a red cross, and a procession of dozens of family members that included exactly one baby, a girl with a black ribbon around her head.

“Your world has changed,” the pastor began.

When it was over, people got back into their cars and drove 20 minutes up the highway to the cemetery in Kiron, a long procession of headlights passing through fields and more fields, then turning right, then heading up the hill to the stand of evergreens, and afterward, at 3 p.m., the bell on the Quik Mart door began ringing.

It rang for Herman, who arrived with a loaf of homemade bread. It rang for Dwain, for Bob, and for Charlie, who shuffled into the backroom and said, “Buried a nice guy this morning.”

It rang for Russell, who poured his coffee, walked back into the wood-paneled room, and pulled up a chair.

“Strawberries come to life this time of year, Russell?” Dwain asked.

“I don’t know,” Russell said.

They talked about the frost, and when spring might arrive.

“Well, I better get moving,” Charlie said and headed out.

“I got things to do, too,” Russell said, but then he didn’t leave, not yet.

He got up and sat where Charlie had been, closer to the window.

“Well, I gotta go,” Herman said.

“See you, Herman,” Russell said.

“Bye, Herman,” Dwain said, and now there were just the three of them left.

Dwain cleared his throat. A car passed by. The space heater hummed. Bob finished his coffee. Russell swallowed the last of his.

“You want more coffee, Mr. Bob?” Russell asked.

“Do you?” said Bob.

“Yeah,” Russell decided, and walked over to get the coffee pot.

He poured some into Bob’s cup. He poured some into Dwain’s cup. He filled his own and sat down again. He tapped his thumb on the table. Eventually he stood up and walked toward the door, where Walt’s funeral notice no longer was.

“See ya, Russell,” said Dwain.

“See ya, Russell,” said Bob.

“I hope so,” Russell said.

#Kiron Iowa #Steve King #rural towns

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