Patricia Okoumou

Therese Patricia Okoumou (c. 1973- ) is the woman who climbed up on the Statue of Liberty in New York on July 4th 2018. She was protesting President Trump’s immigration policies:

“Michelle Obama, our beloved First Lady, that I care so much about, said, ‘When they go low, we go high.’ And I went as high as I could.

“Trump has ripped this country apart. It is depressing. It is outrageous. I can say a lot of things about this monster, but I will stop at this: His draconian zero-tolerance policy on immigration has to go. In a democracy we do not rip children, we do not put children in cages. Period. There is no debating it. Nothing you can say to me can justify putting children in cages. Only a stupid, unintelligent coward and insecure – I will add, a maniac – will rip a tender-age child from its mother. Reunite the children now.”

“Children should not be separated from their parents, especially on a holiday like this.”

While she was saying all of that she was wearing a black T-shirt that said:

“White supremacy is terrorism”.

Okoumou with her lawyer, Rhiya Trivedi, in front of the federal courthouse in Manhattan, July 5th 2018. (Via The Mary Sue)

On July 4th she had been taking part in a Rise and Resist NY protest when her heart told her to climb to the top of the statue. She got as far as the place behind Lady Liberty’s right foot. It is unclear how she got even that far – it took police ropes and ladders to reach her.

Cover of the New Yorker magazine, July 2nd 2018, showing immigrant children hiding in the dress of the Statue of Liberty.

She said she would not come down till “all the children were released.” She hid in the folds of the Lady Liberty’s dress fearing the police would shoot her. After three hours the police grabbed her and brought her down. Thank God no one got hurt!

President Trump called her a “clown” and praised the bravery of the police.

According to the latest government numbers there are nearly 3,000 children who have been taken from their parents and not yet returned. Trump put in place no system to match parent with child.

The police arrested Okoumou on three federal misdemeanour charges: trespassing, disorderly conduct, and interference with government agency functions. She could get up to six months in prison for each. After a night in jail, the judge let her go on her own recognizance. Her court date is August 3rd.

She is herself an immigrant. She came to the US in 1994 from the Republic of Congo, what Trump would call a “shithole country”. She lives in Staten Island, where New York police killed Eric Garner. She is a US citizen.

Her lawyer says she was drawn to the US by the words found at the base of the Statue of Liberty:

“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

Okoumou feels those words are betrayed every time a family is separated, every time an immigrant is criminalized.

– Abagond, 2018.

See also:

• Statue of Liberty – a symbol of immigration since the 1930s
• Fourth of July – US independence day
  • What to the Slave Is the 4th of July?
• Donald Trump
  • zero tolerance immigration policy
  • “shithole countries”
• Eric Garner

578

What to the Slave Is the 4th of July?

Slave family, Savannah, Georgia, 1860s. (Via History.com)

“What to the Slave Is the 4th of July?” (July 5th 1852) by Frederick Douglass is the most famous anti-slavery speech ever given in the US. Douglass was not just one of the best orators of the English-speaking world in the 1800s, he was also a former slave.

• Date: Monday July 5th 1852 (not the 4th, on purpose).
• Location: Corinthian Hall, Rochester, New York.
• Host: Rochester Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society.
• Admission: $0.12 (average day’s pay = $0.87).
• Audience: 500 to 600 Blacks and Whites.
• The times: Nine years before the Civil War. “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” (1852) is a huge bestseller. The infamous Fugitive Slave Law (1850) is the law of the land, North and South.

Douglass, circa 1848.

The Declaration of Independence was read in full and then Douglass spoke for little over an hour.

“At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed. … not the gentle shower, but thunder. “

Douglass praises the Founding Fathers, the Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution. The spirit of the Bible and the Constitution are against slavery.

The fault lies with the present generation and its moral hypocrisy. Thus the famous bit:

“What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciations of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade, and solemnity, are, to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy – a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices, more shocking and bloody, than are the people of these United States, at this very hour.”

On slavery: Douglass lays out the horrors of the internal US slave trade and the Fugitive Slave Law, stuff like family separation. He knocks down the arguments for slavery.

The Christian church could bring an end to slavery in the US, as it had in the British Empire, but instead:

“It has made itself the bulwark of American slavery, and the shield of American slave-hunters. Many of its most eloquent Divines, who stand as the very lights of the church, have shamelessly given the sanction of religion and the Bible to the whole slave system.”

The church “tramples in the dust the great truth of the brotherhood of man.”

Slavery is not just cruel and immoral:

“The existence of slavery … corrupts your politicians … saps the foundation of religion … endangers your Union … and yet, you cling to it, as if it were the sheet anchor of all your hopes.

“Oh! be warned! be warned! a horrible reptile is coiled up in your nation’s bosom; the venomous creature is nursing at the tender breast of your youthful republic …”

– Abagond, 2018.

See also:

• External links:
  • full text (10,536 words, about 26 pages)
  • YouTube: excerpts performed by Danny Glover and James Earl Jones
• Frederick Douglass
• The Fourth of July
• family separation
• slaveholder religion
• US slavery
• abolitionists
  • Walker’s Appeal
• Black counter-frame – what this speech is an example of
• Does the Bible say that slavery is wrong?
• Was Hitler evil?

566

Lost book covers, part II

Here are some covers of books that I lost through the shifting sands of time – or had to return to the library. Through the magic of the Internet I can see them again (click on images below to enlarge).

I did part one last year.

Bread and Jam For Frances – by Russell Hoban. Frances is a badger, but since I did not live in England, I thought she was some kind of bear. And that jam was some kind of jelly. I remember reading this in the hallway at school while my mother and my teacher were in the classroom talking behind closed doors. To this day I take a book with me if I know I might have to wait. My teacher loved that I was reading books on my own. My mother took it for granted. So did I.

The Snowy Day – by Ezra Jack Keats. This book is burned into my brain, snow angels and all. My mother loved this book more than I did.

Find the Constellations – by H.A. Rey, he of the Curious George books. Notice the colour scheme. I loved this book! I also loved books about planets, but since I cannot remember their authors or titles, it is hard for me to find their covers.

The Hobbit – by Tolkien. The girl who sat across from me in art class was reading this book. It was when I first heard about Tolkien.

The World Inside – by Robert Silverberg. Set in the year 2381 when whole cities live inside of skyscrapers 3 kilometres tall. I am sure my mother thought it was just some nerdy science fiction book, but the sex went way beyond anything I was allowed see on television or film.

The Stone That Never Came Down – by John Brunner. I keep forgetting the name of this book, so here it is for future reference. I remember reading it but I do not remember what it was about.

The Cosmic Connection – by Carl Sagan. I loved this book and the beautiful cover. I remember carrying it with me to class so I could read it during the day.

The Dispossessed – by Ursula K. Le Guin, a pro-anarchist novel that I adored.

Riddley Walker – by Russell Hoban. A post-apocalyptic England with a post-apocalyptic English to match. Until I made this list I had no idea it was the same author who wrote “Bread and Jam For Frances”.

Linden Hills – by Gloria Naylor. The second best book about fake people. The first is “Main Street” (1920) by Sinclair Lewis.

Leonardo da Vinci – by Kenneth Clark. What a beautiful cover! Of course it helps when Leonardo da Vinci does your cover art.

On the Nature of the Universe – by Lucretius. I had this book on my desk at work because it was what I was reading on the train at the time. But because it was not from the Approved Reading List (John Grisham, etc) people at work thought I was strange.

– Abagond, 2018.

See also:

• books
• How to talk to white people* – more on the Approved Reading List
• Tolkien
• In memoriam: Ursula K. Le Guin
• John Brunner: Stand on Zanzibar
• Leonardo da Vinci

531

 

Reconstructing the Gospel

“Reconstructing the Gospel” (2018) by Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove is subtitled “Finding Freedom from Slaveholder Religion”. All Christian churches in the US, both North and South, Black and White, past and present, have been shaped by slavery to one degree or other.

Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove grew up in North Carolina as a White Evangelical Protestant and graduated from Duke Divinity School. His life was changed when he met Rev. William Barber, a Black pastor who is trying to pick up where Martin Luther King Jr left off.

I was hoping Wilson-Hartgrove would help me understand that thing where some of the most openly religious White people are also the most racist. He kind of did, but the book is more anecdotal autobiography than analytical history or sociology.

Slaveholder religion: Slavery was such a huge moral fact in the US that it affected all churches. White churches in the South were the most affected, of course, but no one got away clean. And even though the slaves were freed and the laws changed during Reconstruction, most churches went right on unreconstructed, same as they ever were:

• divided by race,
• making a big deal about sin in terms of sex, and
• not speaking out against the injustices of society.

These features come not from Holy Scripture but from a time when churches bowed to the interests of slaveholders.

Divided by race: This feature alone, if nothing else, means White Christians will receive a different message than Black Christians – from the Bible verses quoted to songs sung to issues considered burning. White Evangelicals make a big deal of abortion and same-sex marriage but not, say, poverty or racial inequality. That is no accident.

Their hearts have been shrivelled since slave times.

Most churches in the US were fine with slavery. Presbyterians did not split over the issue till 1838, the Methodist Episcopalians not till 1844, and the Baptists not till 1845. And even then, most churches in the South remained on the side of slavery.

Power structure: Christians churches are seen as providing a moral foundation for their believers – and yet by and large, at least in the US, they side with the powers that be, making them a conservative force. Religion becomes, at its best, limited to the personal.

Hearts: For Whites it has led to the Shrivelled Heart Syndrome, which on this blog has been called “lack of empathy” and “hearts of stone”. That makes it hard for Whites to listen to Black people and take them seriously. On top of that, Whites think they know better than Blacks, which makes it harder still.

With all this in mind, Wilson-Hartgrove:

1. Listens to Black people and takes what they say seriously, despite his upbringing.
2. Attends a Black church. Black churches on average are less affected by slaveholder religion.
3. Sings their songs, and not just at church, to learn and practise their message. He especially likes “I Will Trust in the Lord” (hymnal page pictured below).
4. Protests, putting his body on the line against injustice, racial and otherwise. He took part in Moral Mondays.

– Abagond, 2018.

See also:

• books
  • John Fea: Believe Me
• Black ministers who have called out injustice:
  • Rev. William Barber
  • Rev. Jeremiah Wright
  • Dr Martin Luther King Jr
  • Malcolm X
• Moral Mondays
• White Evangelical Protestants
• Southern Strategy
• Reconstruction
• The hearts of White people, part 2, part 3
• More on Fake White Christianity:
  • Walker’s Appeal
  • Frederick Douglass: What to the Slave Is the 4th of July?

564

Davianna Simmons

Davianna Simmons (c. 2010- ) is a Black girl in Chicago. When she was three the police held a loaded gun to her chest. They also held a gun to her grandmother’s head and were shaking, hitting and slamming her mother repeatedly against the wall. Her mother was already handcuffed. And Davianna saw and heard one officer destroying her dolls. That was on August 29th 2013. She is now eight.

Surely her mother was some kind of dangerous criminal, right?

No. She was not even on the arrest warrant as a suspect.

Surely they were harbouring some dangerous criminal?

No. A neighbour was trying to get back at them and lied to the police telling them a wanted drug dealer was living there.

Surely the police explained their mistake and apologized?

No.

Surely the police had forgotten their training?

No. The Chicago police have no policy or training in regard to children and how their actions affect young minds.

Surely the Chicago police are going to change that, right?

No. They are putting in place reforms in the wake of a Department of Justice review, but that is not one of them. The city council’s finance committee ageeed to pay $2.5 million to the family and their lawyers, but that is no skin off their nose: city taxpayers will pay for it.

Surely the little girl is all right now?

No. She has nightmares, waking up in the middle of the night screaming, “The police are coming!” She used to be outgoing and friendly, even to the police, but now when she sees a police officer she runs and screams. She is afraid of sirens too. Dr Niranjan Karnik, a pediatric psychiatrist at Rush Medical Center, says she is “one of the worst cases of child Post Traumatic Stress Disorder” he has ever seen. When soldiers came back from the First World War with PTSD it was called shell shock. And they were grown men.

She will probably need psychiatric help into adulthood. Thus the large settlement.

This is the same police force that arrested a ten-year-old in a video that went viral the other week.

During pre-trial hearings the police lied and the city held back evidence they were required to turn over. Even the judge was outraged.

Al Hofield, Jr, the family’s lawyer:

“Between 2012 and 2015, roughly 1 out of 10 lawsuits the City settled involved someone younger than 18. This has got to stop. And I will continue to file these cases on behalf of young children of color until CPD makes it a priority to protect them. Right now, it is not even on CPD’s radar.”

In 2017 the Department of Justice found that Chicago police have a pattern of practice of excessive force against those under 18 and are failing to hold officers accountable. To date no reforms address this.

Hofield:

“Tragically, it’s not just federal policy that’s causing trauma to children of color right now; it’s our own CPD and City of Chicago that’s failing to protect them.”

– Abagond, 2018.

Source: mainly Google Images and the Chicago Defender (2018).

See also:

• Aiyana Jones
• Zaatari refugee camp
• Trump’s zero tolerance immigration policy
• also the Chicago police:
  • Laquan McDonald
  • Rekia Boyd
  • Ronald Johnson
  • Fred Hampton
• also Chicago:
  • Art Jones – a neo-Nazi running for Congress as a Republican

545

Ritchie Family: American Generation

Remarks:

In 1979 this song went to #6 in Belgium, #8 in the Netherlands, #28 in Germany and #49 in Britain. It did not chart on the US pop or R&B charts. The video is from Dutch television. There are also videos of them on German and Italian television. I found the song by way of a Brazilian YouTube channel.

I assumed they were continental Europeans, not even British. And that was before I knew how the song charted or that the video came from Dutch television. I was mainly basing it on the song: the lyrics seemed limited and the title did not seem like something an actual person from the US would think of.

As it turns out, they are from the US! But it is like that Avalanches video: what you can see is US American, but the mind behind it is not. The Ritchie Family is a girl group created by a French record producer. They are not even sisters or cousins.

See also:

• songs, the 1970s
• The Avalanches: Because I’m Me

Lyrics:

Aah, aah, aah, aah, generation
Aah, aah, aah, aah, generation

American generation, American generation
Founded on the beat, there’s disco in the street
We boogie as we go to funky radio
Finding summer fun
That’s rooted in the drum
Let everybody come, aah

American Generation, American generation
Grooving to the bass, it shows on every face
That life’s a festival, so try some letting go
The future bears a change
There’s music in our veins
We’ll never be the same, ooh

(Instrumental Interlude)

Aah, aah, aah, aah, generation
Aah, aah, aah, aah, generation

American Generation, American generation
Grooving to the bass, it shows on every face
That life’s a festival, so try some letting go
The future bears a change
There’s music in our veins
We’ll never be the same, ooh

(Instrumental Interlude)

Aah, aah, aah, aah, generation
Aah, aah, aah, aah, generation

Source: letras.mus.br.

Michael Eric Dyson: What Truth Sounds Like

“What Truth Sounds Like” (2018) by Michael Eric Dyson uses the meeting between Robert Kennedy and James Baldwin in 1963 as a springboard to talk about 2018.

Subtitle: RFK, James Baldwin and Our Unfinished Conversation About Race in America

In 1963 Robert Kennedy met James Baldwin to talk about race in the US. Baldwin brought along Lorraine Hansberry, Lena Horne, Harry Belafonte, Kenneth Clark, and others. There is only one chapter on the meeting!

Dyson spends most of the book comparing the 1960s to the 2010s:

• Robert Kennedy and Hillary Clinton,
• James Baldwin and Ta-Nehisi Coates,
• Harry Belafonte and Jay-Z,
• Muhammad Ali and Colin Kaepernick,
• The Civil Rights Movement and Black Lives Matter,
• etc.

He compares how Blacks speak out – or do not – and how Whites listen – or do not.

Burden of representation: Black public figures have the right and the duty to speak out and take a stand:

“All of this seems foreign to folk who don’t depend on their sports stars or their entertainers to double as part-time spokespeople for the race. Taylor Swift carries no such burden; neither does baseball superstar Bryce Harper.”

Whites expect Black public figures to help less fortunate Blacks (the social service model), but not to call out Whites (the social conscience model). That is why President Trump called Colin Kaepernick a “son of a bitch”.

On Bobby Kennedy:

“Whatever his faults, or limits, Bobby Kennedy was committed to getting into a room and wrestling with the demons of race. Over 50 years later, we find it hard to follow his example, and our failure dooms us to untold suffering.”

On Muhammad Ali:

“Ali’s vision of America was more compelling, freer, truer, more capacious than the cramped, crabby, clubby visions of white racial nationalism.”

In comparing Ali to Kaepernick:

“extolling Ali’s courage as a spokesman for truth while pillorying those who dare tell the truth now is a rejection of Ali too.”

Dyson’s recommendations:

• read: James Baldwin, Robin D. G. Kelley, Farah Jasmine Griffin.
• vote for: Kamala Harris, Andrea Jenkins, Ras Baraka, Eric Holder.
• listen to: Beyonce, Jay-Z, Kendrick Lamar, Rapsody.
• watch: “Black Panther” (2018).

The last chapter is “Wakanda Forever”. Despite the cheesy title, it is by far the best part of the book. It serves as a capstone to the book but can be read on its own.

Dyson:

“In Wakanda [the fictional land of the ‘Black Panther’ film], we finally get the chance to just be – like white folk can, and do, every day of their lives.”

“Wakanda matters because black lives don’t.”

“Wakanda is so appealing because having to explain ourselves to those who doubt us – doubt our minds, doubt our motives, doubt our goodness, doubt our undoubtable hugeness, doubt our epic and oracular and spectacular blackness – plain wears us out.”

“Wakanda is where Trayvon reigns as a King. As a Warrior. Most important, as a Man. Because he made it past a youth that is forever in peril in a culture that doesn’t prize our breathing.”

– Abagond, 2018.

See also:

• books
• Michael Eric Dyson
• Baldwin-Kennedy meeting
• When Hillary Clinton met Black Lives Matter – Dyson talks about this meeting too
• James Baldwin / Ta-Nehisi Coates
• Muhammad Ali / Colin Kaepernick
• Black Panther
• Trayvon Martin

534

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (1989- ), a Bronx educator, defeated ten-term Congressman Joe Crowley, even though he outspent her ten to one with the help of Wall Street. It is making news even in Mexico and Brazil.

On June 26th 2018 she won the Democratic Party primary for New York’s 14th Congressional District. If she wins the general election in November, which seems likely (it is a Democratic safe seat), she will be the youngest woman ever elected to Congress. She is just 28. She could become senator, governor, president.

New York’s 14th District takes in parts of the Bronx and Queens in New York City. It is a place where Uber drivers, waitresses, and cleaners live – and where the prison on Rikers Island stands. It is 18% White and 50% Latino (mainly Puerto Rican), but has always had a White representative.

Her mother is from Puerto Rico, her father from the Bronx. She comes from a family of groundskeepers and has a degree in economics and international relations from Boston University.

From her campaign ad:

“This race is about people vs. money. We’ve got people, they’ve got money. It’s time we acknowledge that not all Democrats are the same. That a Democrat who takes corporate money, profits off foreclosure, doesn’t live here, doesn’t send his kids to our schools, doesn’t drink our water or breathe our air, cannot possibly represent us.

“What the Bronx and Queens needs is Medicare-for-all, tuition-free public college, a federal jobs guarantee, and criminal justice reform. We can do it now. It doesn’t take a hundred years to do this.

“It takes political courage.

“A New York for the many is possible.

“It’s time for one of us.”

She worked for Bernie Sanders when he ran for president in 2016. It showed her that grass-roots campaigns were still possible. Like Sanders, most of her money comes from small donors and she is unashamedly left-wing. Unlike Sanders she is race conscious.

She belongs to the Democratic Socialists of America, the largest socialist party in the US. Black Lives Matter of Greater New York was an early supporter of hers.

Protest: She took part in the Standing Rock protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline and, earlier this week, the protests at the Mexican border against President Trump’s zero tolerance immigration policy.

Criminal injustice: She understands how public prosecutors are in bed with the police, the trouble with money bail, and how the prison industrial complex profits off of too many people being in prison.

On the Democratic Party:

“What I see is that the Democratic Party takes working class communities for granted, they take people of color for granted and they just assume that we’re going to turn out no matter how bland or half-stepping these proposals are.”

She sees the Latino vote as a sleeping giant.

She says that in a country as rich as the US, everyone should have good education and health care. The reason that sounds like a pipe dream is because of the Reagan, Bush, and Trump tax cuts. #BillionaireLivesMatter.

– Abagond, 2018.

See also:

• Bernie Sanders
• Standing Rock protests
• Trump’s zero tolerance policy
• race conscious
• mass incarceration
• bail
  • Kalief Browder

519

Trump v Hawaii

Trump v Hawaii (2018) is the US Supreme Court decision that upheld President Trump’s Muslim travel ban. On July 26th 2018 the highest court in the land upheld it in a straight party vote, 5 to 4.

The currently banned. Via Politico.

The ban, in its current form, Trump’s third attempt, prevents anyone new from entering the US from five Muslim-majority countries – Libya, Syria, Somalia, Yemen, and Iran – along with North Korea and government officials (and their families) from Venezuela.

The ban will last as long as Trump wants. He can add other countries. All he has to do is use the magic words – national security – and the Supreme Court will not second guess him. Even if he makes it crystal clear in public comments that it has little to do with national security and everything to do with his Islamophobia – or whatever brand of fear and hatred he chooses to push.

This is just how the Supreme Court wound up backing President Roosevelt’s decision to send Japanese Americans to prison camps. In Korematsu v United States (1944) the government argued that it was necessary for national security. That turned out to be a lie, as the government’s own records would later prove, but the Supreme Court bought it.

Trump himself expected the Supreme Court to go along with his ban in just this way. He told “Good Morning America”:

“What I’m doing is no different than FDR [President Roosevelt] … one of the most highly respected presidents.”

Justices Sotomayor and Ginsburg in their dissent also compared the case to Korematsu. But Justice Roberts, speaking for the Republican majority, distanced their decision from Korematsu by overturning it and calling it “morallly repugnant”.

The Republicans on the Supreme Court are not “economically distressed”. They are not “low-information”. They do not face re-election or have any reason to fear Trump’s tweets. They fit none of the it’s-not-about-racism excuses Whites make for Trump supporters. This is just who they are. Trump is now the new normal.

Justice Sotomayor in her dissent:

“The United States of America is a Nation built upon the promise of religious liberty. Our Founders honored that core promise by embedding the principle of religious neutrality in the First Amendment. The Court’s decision today fails to safeguard that fundamental principle. It leaves undisturbed a policy first advertised openly and unequivocally as a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States” because the policy now masquerades behind a façade of national-security concerns. But this repackaging does little to cleanse Presidential Proclamation No. 9645 of the appearance of discrimination that the President’s words have created. Based on the evidence in the record, a reasonable observer would conclude that the Proclamation was motivated by anti-Muslim animus. … The majority holds otherwise by ignoring the facts, misconstruing our legal precedent, and turning a blind eye to the pain and suffering the Proclamation inflicts upon countless families and individuals, many of whom are United States citizens. Because that troubling result runs contrary to the Constitution and our precedent, I dissent.”

– Abagond, 2018.

See also:

• Donald Trump
  • Muslim ban
  • “It’s not about racism”
• Japanese American internment
  • Korematsu v United States
• Sonia Sotomayor
• Vine Deloria, Jr: Conquest Masquerading as Law – the Supreme Court and Indian treaties

538

US history in 100 pictures: stolen rosaries

The 43 rosaries (Catholic prayer beads) shown above were found in the trash at the US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) centre in Ajo, Arizona. Border patrol had taken them from people who had crossed the Mexican desert into the US without the right papers.

Anthony Oliveira (@meakoopa) on Twitter:

“Thinking about my mother, an immigrant, from whom you could take no object whose loss would cause her greater distress in a crisis than her rosary. America is a monstrous nation.”

Arithanas on Tumblr:

“The first one in the left corner: It’s a first communion rosary, and it’s not cheap.”

“The black one in the first line: That’s a widow rosary and it’s old.”

“The white one in the second line: is a commemoration rosary. It has a miniature picture in the round part. I haven’t seen that since the 70’s.”

“In the third line, multicolor one: It’s an Anima mundi, I have only seen those in the hands of Rosary ministery’s old ladies. The oldest ones are from the 80′s after Juan Pablo II came to Mexico for the first time. It’s one of the old ones, I know because the crucifixes are different.”

“The third one on the fourth line: Red and gold. The style is old, the metal is dark, that’s a 50′s rosary, probably a quinceañera one (or it’s maybe older, from the 40′s when the brides carried red roses with their offerings).”

“The fifth one on the fourth line: It’s a quinceañera rosary with Ignatius’s tear. The style is old and in my part of Mexico is orphan girls who used it. At least it was when I was young.”

“The third one of the fifth line: the blue one with the anchor. That one I have only seen in Veracruz and it doesn’t look new.”

“The fifth one on the fifth line: That’s a 90′s wedding rosary. Black and white patterns were popular on that date.”

“The fourth one on the last line: That’s a first communion rosary from the 30’s. It’s delicate and most probably silver.”

I cannot confirm the truth of what arithanas says, but something very much like it is bound to be true.

Not just rosaries: The CBP uses one excuse or other to take nearly everything you and your children have: food, water, birth-control pills, combs, toothpaste, Bibles, dolls, lollipops, pacifiers, belts, shoelaces, even prescription glasses, mobile phones, and identity papers.

Tom Kiefer took the picture. He is a photographer who worked as a janitor at the CBP in Ajo:

“I’m an artist and saw this stuff [being thrown out] and thought it was important to make a record of this. I couldn’t in good conscience let it go to the landfill.”

He collected rosaries, combs, toothbrushes, etc, from 2007 to 2014 – the Bush and Obama years, well before Trump.

Piles of shoes at Auschwitz, c. 1945.

Godwin’s law: Some compare the rosaries to the piles of shoes found at Nazi death camps. Maybe that sounded hysterical in 2015 when it was first made – but now look where we are.

– Abagond, 2018.

Sources: especially, arithanas (2018), Anthony Oliveira (2018), New Yorker (2017), PRI (2015), Tom Kiefer.

See also:

• US history in 100 pictures – this is the first in a sometime series
• Trump’s zero tolerance policy
• separation of children
• Holocaust
• Arizona
  • a brief Chicano history
  • HB 2281: Arizona’s law to ban ethnic studies
  • Arizona SB1070
  • Books banned from Tucson classrooms
  • Tom Horne
• The hearts of White people, the science

567

Neil Diamond: America

Remarks:

This went to #8 on the US pop chart in 1981. Just a reminder that immigrants and refugees do not have to be seen as a threat to the US.

See also:

• songs, the 1980s
• Eagles: The Last Resort – a different sort of song about America
• Barbra Streisand: The Way We Were – a song by a high school classmate
• Statue of Liberty – featured in the video as a symbol of immigration
• models of US society:
  • cosmopolitan
  • pathogenic

Lyrics:

Far,
We’ve been traveling far
Without a home
But not without a star

Free,
Only want to be free
We huddle close
Hang on to a dream

On the boats and on the planes
They’re coming to America
Never looking back again,
They’re coming to America

Home
Don’t it seem so far away
Oh, we’re traveling light today
In the eye of the storm
In the eye of the storm

Home
To a new and a shiny place
Make our bed and we’ll say our grace
Freedom’s light burning warm
Freedom’s light burning warm

Everywhere around the world
They’re coming to America
Ev’ry time that flag’s unfurled
They’re coming to America

Got a dream to take them there
They’re coming to America
Got a dream they’ve come to share
They’re coming to America

They’re coming to America
They’re coming to America
They’re coming to America
They’re coming to America
Today,
Today,
Today,
Today,
Today

My country ’tis of thee (today)
Sweet land of liberty (today)
Of thee I sing (today)
Of thee I sing
Today, Today, Today
Today, today……

Source: AZ Lyrics.

Permit Patty

Alison Ettel (1973- ) is better known to Twitter as #PermitPatty, the White woman in San Francisco who called the police on an eight-year-old Black girl for “illegally selling water without a permit.”

Law and order: Last month it was BBQ Becky, Jennifer Schulte, another middle-aged White woman, just across the bay in Oakland. She called the police on a Black family which was having a cookout in Lake Merritt park with the wrong kind of barbecue grille. The police, to their credit, checked to make sure she was not losing her mind.

Ironies abound: Ettel, as it turns out, is the head of TreatWell Health, which sells medical marijuana (cannabis, weed, pot, THC) for dogs. Four years ago she was doing it without a permit.

War on Drugs: While Permit Patty was making money selling marijuana, not always with a permit, Black men were regularly getting arrested for having marijuana. Whites and Blacks use marijuana at about same rate, but Blacks are nearly four times more likely to be arrested for possession. It has led to mass incarceration, family separation (the White Liberal sob du jour), and the creation of an underclass.

Ettel in 2016 at a Women Grow conference for (White) women in the marijuana industry.

Viral video: While she was calling the police, the girl’s mother caught it on video as Ettel tried to hide.

Mother: Don’t hide, the whole world gonna see you boo.

Ettel: Illegally selling water without a permit?

Mother: On my property.

Ettel: It’s not your property.

That was on Friday (June 22nd 2018). On Saturday the mother posted it on the Internet, where it went viral, invoking the wrath of Black Twitter, which outed Permit Patty as Alison Ettel, dragged her, and urged a boycott of her business.

The girl was selling bottles of cold water to baseball fans on a hot summer day in front of the apartment building where she has lived all her life. It is near AT&T Park, where the San Francisco Giants were then playing the San Diego Padres. It is also near Ettel’s office. She had opened her window – because it was hot.

Ettel:

“They were screaming about what they were selling. It was literally nonstop. It was every two seconds, ‘Come and buy my water.’ It was continuous and it wasn’t a soft voice, it was screaming.”

She called building security on them. When they said they could do nothing, she called the police.

Ettel says she only “pretended” to call the police (they never showed up). And that it “has no racial component to it”, that she is the one who is being “discriminated against.”

White people calling the police on Black people for little stuff like this has been making the news lately. Starbucks is the famous example. The thing has an air of ill will to it given that White people know that police officers can be violently racist.

Some blame it on the Trump Era, but Starbucks, Permit Patty and BBQ Becky are all based on the Left Coast, one of the most anti-Trump parts of the country.

– Abagond, 2018.

See also:

• Starbucks
• White Americans
  • White Liberals
  • Donald Trump
• law and order
  • the police
  • family separation
  • War on Drugs
  • mass incarceration
• Why crime statistics cannot be trusted – about marijuana and race
• The Eleven Nations of North America – the Left Coast, etc.
• Twitter

557

Antwon Rose

Antwon Rose Jr (2001?-2018) was an unarmed Black boy in the US shot in the back three times by a White police officer. That was on June 19th 2018 in East Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Rose was only 17 with a year still to go of high school.

Video: A neighbour caught the shooting on her mobile phone. It shows Rose and another “man” running from the police. After three shots are fired, Rose falls and the other runner gets away. The police are still looking for him.

The police had pulled over the car Rose was in. It matched the description of a car that was seen at a drive-by shooting just 13 minutes before. When the police arrested the driver, Rose ran.

The police think it was the right car – even though they let the driver go after questioning.

Police say they found two guns in the car, but no gun on or near Rose.

Michael Rosfeld is the killer cop. He had been sworn in just 90 minutes before the shooting – and is now already on paid leave. He has eight years experience, five of them at the University of Pittsburgh, where one officer said he was “a fucking nut job.”

Investigation/cover-up: Allegheny County homicide detectives are looking into the shooting. After two days they still had not questioned Rosfeld – a bad sign.

Stephen Zappala Jr, the county district attorney, will determine whether the shooting was “justified” based on their findings.

How can shooting someone in the back be justified?

Coleman McDonough, the county police superintendent, put it this way:

“It’s very complex, there are a lot of dynamics. There is something called a reactionary gap between the time a human perceives a threat and is able to act on it. Things happen, people turn around and things. I’m not saying that any of that applies to this situation because it’s too early and we can’t make judgements.”

Pennsylvania law allows the police to shoot to prevent death or serious bodily injury.

Shaun King, the Black Lives Matter activist, has friends who knew Rose. By all accounts Rose was a good kid. He will be hard for the press or the police to demonize.

Protests are growing.

In 2016 Rose wrote this for English class:

I AM NOT WHAT YOU THINK

I am confused and afraid
I wonder what path I will take
I hear that there’s only two ways out
I see mothers bury their sons
I want my mom to never feel that pain
I am confused and afraid

I pretend all is fine
I feel like I’m suffocating
I touch nothing so I believe all is fine
I worry that it isn’t though
I cry no more
I am confused and afraid

I understand people believe I’m just a statistic
I say to them I’m different
I dream of life getting easier
I try my best to make my dream true
I hope that it does
I am confused and afraid

– Abagond, 2018.

Update (June 27th): Rosfeld is being charged with criminal homicide. From USA Today:

“The criminal complaint says Rosfeld first told investigators Rose moved his hand toward Rosfeld and appeared to be holding something ‘he perceived as a gun.’ Later, Rosfeld told investigators he did not see a gun and he was not sure if the teen’s arm was pointed at him when the fatal shots were fired.”

Police say they found the other person who ran: Zaijuan Hester. They are charging him with the drive-by shooting.

See also:

• Unarmed Black Americans killed by police in 2018
• Walter Scott – also unarmed, shot in the back, by:
• Michael Slager
• killer cops

523

Unarmed Black Americans killed by police in 2018

Protest in New York City against the death of Stephon Clark, March 28th 2018. (REUTERS/Gabriela Bhaskar, via PBS)

Killed so far in 2018: 14
Last update: October 2nd 2018.

A very incomplete list of unarmed Black people killed by police so far in the US in 2018:

Those I have done posts on have a bolded link.

format: date: name, age, town, state, cause of death.

1. January 20th 2018: Arther McAfee Jr, 61, Longview, TX, Gunshot.
2. February 13th 2018: Ronnell Foster, 33, Vallejo, CA, Gunshot.
3. March 14th 2018: Shermichael Ezeff, 31, Baton Rouge, LA, Gunshot.
4. March 15th 2018: Cameron Hall, 27, Casa Grande, AZ, Gunshot.
5. March 18th 2018: Stephon Clark, 23, Sacramento, CA, Gunshot.
6. March 22nd 2018: Danny Thomas, 35, Greenspoint, TX, Gunshot.
7. April 8th 2018: Juan Markee Jones, 25, Danville, VA, Gunshot.
8. May 14th 2018: Marcus-David L. Peters, 24, Richmond, VA, Taser.
9. June 11th 2018: Robert Lawrence White, 41, Silver Spring, MD, Gunshot.
10. June 19th 2018: Antwon Rose, 17, East Pittsburgh, PA, Gunshot.
11. June 20th 2018: Anthony Marcell Green, 33, Kingsland, GA, Gunshot.
12. July 7th 2018: Rashaun Washington, 37, Vineland, NJ, Gunshot.
13. July 27th 2018: Cynthia Fields, 60, Savannah, GA, Gunshot.
14. September 6th 2018: Botham Jean, 26, Dallas, TX, Gunshot.

For now I am following the Washington Post database. Be warned that their overall number of unarmed Blacks killed seems suspiciously low. They count holding toy guns and shower heads as being “armed”.

If you know of any police killings of unarmed Black people by the police in 2018, please tell me in the comments below. Thanks!

I will update this post throughout the year.

– Abagond, 2018.

Source: Washington Post.

See also:

• This same list in: 2015, 2016, 2017
• The extremely incomplete list of unarmed Blacks killed by police – for those killed since 1964. It has maybe a tenth of all such cases – the tip of the iceberg.
• Lynching statistics by race and year: 1882-1968
• Phantom Negro Weapon

zero tolerance immigration policy

June 12th 2018, McAllen, Texas: Mother and child: After fleeing the violence in Honduras a month ago, crossing Mexico, and crossing the Rio Grande on a raft, a two-year-old girl cries as US Border Patrol searches her mother. (John Moore/Getty Images)

The zero tolerance immigration policy (2018- ), also called family separation, was rolled out in the US in April 2018 by Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Over this past Father’s Day weekend it has become infamous for separating children from parents who cross the south-western border, putting the children in cages.

An Ipsos poll on June 14th and 15th asked 1,000 people in the US age 18 or over if they agreed with this:

“It is appropriate to separate undocumented immigrant parents from their children when they cross the border in order to discourage others from crossing the border illegally.”

Overall:

• 27% agreed,
• 56% disagreed,
• 17% unsure.

By party:

• 46% Republicans agreed,
• 29% Independents,
• 14% Democrats.

Only 32% of Republicans disagreed!

The policy is opposed by the United Nations, the American Academy of Pediatrics, 300 US Catholic bishops, First Lady Laura Bush, the Southern Baptist Convention, and even Franklin Graham.

President Trump blames the Democrats for the policy. President Obama did separate some children from their parents at the border, but not as a general practice – he thought it would be unworkable.

It is unworkable: it is already overloading the courts and makeshift prisons down in Texas. Due process of law is more in form than substance. Tent cities are being set up to handle the overflow.

There is nothing in the law that requires it. It is a choice made by Trump, something he could end at any time.

Refugee crisis: the US is dealing with a refugee crisis coming from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador, three countries it has screwed up. The moms and pops are fleeing the drug violence and failing states down there.

Catch and release: Under Obama they were allowed to seek asylum, a right under international law, whether you have the right papers or not. While the US government sorted out a family’s claim, it was kept together at a detention centre. If the claim did not hold up, they were deported as a family. The right-wing calls this “catch and release”, as if they were animals.

Zero tolerance: Under Trump the parents are charged with the crime of entering the US without the right papers, even when seeking asylum. They are sent to jail while their children are sent to Health & Human Services (HHS) – thus the tents and cages. Since there is no system in place to make sure children are returned, parents can be deported without them. And HHS has already lost at least 1,475 children, some of them almost certainly to traffickers.

Ports of entry: Trump’s government says asylum seekers should present themselves at “ports of entry”, like a checkpoint. In practice, though, you can still be arrested and separated from your children.

Trump says he is trying to protect the country, that without borders there is no country. Somehow, in the days before Trump, the US managed to take in millions of people from all over the world, many of them refugees seeking a safe haven – just like the Hondurans, Salvadoreans and Guatemalans of today.

Trump is not protecting the US – he is protecting White rule.

– Abagond, 2018.

Update (June 20th): President Trump is going to sign an executive order to temporarily undo the family separation part of his border policy.

Update (June 21st): The executive order replaces family separation with family detention – Mommy & Me Jail instead of Baby Jail, as comedian Samantha Bee put it. And it does nothing for the thousands of children already separated from their families. It also keeps in place the policy of arresting everyone who crosses the border without papers as if they were murderers, rapist, and drug dealers.

Successful drug dealers are not crossing the Rio Grande or the desert with little children. They can afford fake documents and an air-conditioned car.

See also:

• separating children from parents – this is hardly the first time the US has done this to people of colour
• other bits of US immigration that breaks up families:
  • deportation raid
  • ending “chain migration” – a Trump proposal
  • Chinese Exclusion Act
  • Angel Island
• Donald Trump
• Jeff Sessions
• 2042
• The Statue of Liberty