I should resist the impulse to post this, but I won't.
Do these clones have any idea how stupid they look?
I hope this YouTube message from Zohran Mamdami is everywhere on the internet. Mamdami is the Democratic Party-endorsed candidate for mayor of New York if you've been distracted and had not heard. He's ahead in the November contest.
Just in case you missed it, here Mamdami takes a stand for his potential transgender constituents.
And he proves he is not afraid to go where so many pols are afraid to tred.
The ad, set to transgender artist SOPHIE’s “It’s OK to Cry,” opens with the story of Sylvia Rivera, a trailblazing activist who helped lead the Stonewall uprising and lay the foundation for the first Pride. It then traces landmarks of New York’s queer history ...
The ad serves as a masterclass for Democrats on how to talk about transgender people with empathy and conviction. Many of Mamdani’s own supporters may not know the history he highlights, and so it serves the purpose to educate his supporters in how to humanely talk about transgender people. Through this framing, he grounds his stance in moral clarity rather than political expedience—a rare trait in modern campaigns.
For voters on the fence, the ad demonstrates that his support for transgender rights isn’t a focus-grouped calculation; it’s a reflection of his core values. In doing so, Mamdani not only strengthens trust among progressives but also draws in those who may have felt ambivalent, offering them something increasingly scarce in politics today: authenticity.
Dems need to learn that when Republicans try to make you squirm because some of your supporters are their targets for hatred, you can either prove you are chickenshit or step up and stand up for the human dignity of all people. No alternative works. Dodging only makes you look unbelievable and untrustworthy to everyone.
The Donald thinks he can rewrite what happened in the past. He can't. When we choose not to enable this fascist project, that, too, is resistance.
... Estimates of the number of Native people living in North America and South America in 1490 vary widely, but there were at least as many as 50 million, and possibly as many as 100 million. In the next 200 years, displacement, enslavement, war, and especially disease would kill about 90% of those native peoples. Most historians see the destruction of America’s Indigenous peoples as the brutal triumph of European white men over those they perceived to be inferior.
Historians are not denigrating historical actors or the nation when they uncover sordid parts of our past. Historians study how and why societies change. As we dig into the past, we see patterns that never entirely foreshadow the present but that give us ideas about how people in the past have dealt with circumstances that look similar to circumstances today.
If we are going to get an accurate picture of how a society works, historians must examine it honestly, seeing the bad as well as the good. With luck, seeing those patterns will help us make better decisions about our own lives, our communities, and our nation in the present.
History is different from commemoration. History is about what happened in the past, while commemoration is about the present. We put up statues and celebrate holidays to honor figures from the past who embody some quality we admire.
Because Richardson is a real historian, she points out that the origin of today's Columbus holiday was as a response in the 1920s to the Ku Klux Klan trying to erase southern and eastern European immigrants. Those were the days when the Knights of Columbus functioned as a resistance organization!
As society changes, the values we want to commemorate shift. In the 1920s, Columbus mattered to Americans who opposed the Ku Klux Klan because celebrating an Italian defended a multicultural society. Now, though, he represents the devastation of America’s Indigenous people at the hands of European colonists who brought to North America and South America germs and a fever for gold and God. It is not “left-wing arson” to want to commemorate a different set of values than the country held in the 1920s.
What is arson, though, is the attempt to skew history to serve a modern-day political narrative. Rejecting an honest account of the past makes it impossible to see accurate patterns. The lessons we learn about how society changes will be false, and the decisions we make based on those false patterns will not be grounded in reality.
And a society grounded in fiction, rather than reality, cannot function.
I'm with her.
Photo by way of Dave Zirin from occupied DC.
What's so striking about George Retes' story of false arrest and abuse by ICE and/or other unidentified federal agents in Southern California is that he is absolutely clear that he's a person with rights. He's suing the federal government because he trusts he should expect accountability for what was done to him.
Civil rights in America have always been about one thing: holding power accountable when it strips people of their dignity and freedom. They are not privileges that government agents get to decide whether to honor. What happened to me wasn’t just a mistake—it was a violation of the very protections that our Constitution guarantees.
On July 10, I was on my way to work when ICE agents engulfed my car in tear gas, smashed my driver-side window, and pepper-sprayed my face. They dragged me out, threw me to the ground, and even while I was complying, one agent kneeled on my neck and another kneeled on my back as others stood by and watched.
I spent three nights and three days in federal custody. During that time, I was never told what I was charged with, was not allowed to shower despite being covered in tear gas and pepper spray, had no phone call to my family, and no access to an attorney. I was placed on suicide watch and missed my daughter’s third birthday. No explanation. No charges. No apology. One day, I was just told, “you’re free to go.”...
... [The Department of Homeland Security has] stated that US citizens are not being “wrongfully” arrested by ICE, that their enforcement operations are highly targeted, and that their personnel conduct due diligence to know who they are targeting. DHS also framed criticisms of the operation as “smears” against ICE officers, alleging such claims have contributed to an increase in assaults on law enforcement.
... DHS’s statement ignores reality and is designed to demonize and villainize people who don’t let the government trample over their rights, and aren’t afraid to speak the truth. ... The truth is that I am a US citizen and a veteran, and I will continue to pursue accountability for the rights that were violated that day.
This fight is not just about my case—it’s about ensuring that there is recourse when people are silenced, detained, or dehumanized by the very government meant to protect us. ...
Retes gave a detailed YouTube interview to Tim Miller of the Bulwark which you can watch or listen to. In his own words:
... I was just trying to get to work. Like I'm clearly not going to get there. So I'm just going to leave. Um, and so I get back in my car and they just surround my car, uh, I have agents on my left, my driver's side, my passenger side, agents behind my car, agents in front, just all yelling at me to do different things. The agents on the side are pulling on my door handles, banging on my windows, telling me to get out. Agents in the front of my car are telling me to reverse, to leave.
... like they're telling me to leave, telling me to get out and doing like contradicting each other. And I'm just there like coughing, trying to catch myself and just eventually my driver's side window shatters. And so ... , an agent sticks his arm through and pepper sprays me in the face.
[Miller] they just didn't ask you for ID, nothing?
... glass flew everywhere. I had glass in my leg. Uh, they pulled, they dragged me out of the car. Uh, threw me on the ground.
Uh, and I kind of just went with it. Like I wasn't fighting, like there was no point. I'm not stupid. Like I'm not going to fight 20 agents at once. Like that's stupid. Uh, so I kind of just go through with like, you just got to take it. ...
As much as it sucks, as much as this is stupid and this is shitty, it sucks. But you got to take it. ...
And so they dragged me out. They throw me on the ground. And I'm just trying to comply with them, letting them do whatever. And even though I'm complying and just letting them do whatever, an agent comes and he kneels on my neck and another agent kneels on my back.
Retes' account makes clear that immigration agents who hauled him away from this scrum didn't have any real idea why he'd been arrested. They were pretty soon able to verify his U.S. citizen status and that he worked as security at the farm where they held him. They didn't seem to know what to do with him, so they had him taken to Los Angeles' Metropolitan Detention Center. Authorities there also didn't seem to know what to do with him. Still covered with pepper spray, he was put on "suicide watch."
That Friday morning, they, they put me on suicide watch and, uh, they put me in this, uh, they put me in the cell. I'm naked, uh, in like a hospital dress and just a concrete bed with like a mattress, like a thin mattress. And, uh, they leave the light on 24 seven. Uh, there's a glass door and officers just always standing, like sitting out there, um, The psychiatric nurse comes and checks on me once a day.
And so from Friday morning to Sunday afternoon when I'm released, I'm literally in that cell, naked, just in that room. What the fuck? With a light on 24-7. ...
... eventually another officer comes up and he takes me downstairs. He gives me back my clothes.
They make me sign for my phone, my piercings, my watch and stuff. And that was it ... all they just told me like all the charges on you were dropped uh you're free to go uh and that was it ...
... After being in the military, after doing all that, through that entire process, I knew to just be calm. I've been through the mud. I've been through the fucking shit before, if I'm being honest with you. I know how to keep my cool. I know how to stay calm under pressure and all that really helped me. And just when I got released, ... I was really thankful if I'm being honest with you, like who knows what else could have happened ...
Retes was thrilled to be back to his home and his kids -- and he's still trying to figure out what it means that his own government could do this to him.
[Miller] ... What are you going to do?
Honestly, just... figuring out my life. Honestly, doing all this is a big responsibility as well. Just sharing my story, keeping it alive, letting it be known. ... Like some people just like this stuff happens to and they just want to forget about it or they just are scared that the government might retaliate. ... I'm not, I'm not afraid. I mean, I know I did nothing wrong. ... I know the facts for sure. And I'm a hundred percent confident in my, in my story.
... They can lie all they want. They can make all the tweets they want. They could try to live in their own reality, but the truth is out there. And when it, like, if they want to take it to court, I'm like a hundred percent in and I'm a hundred percent ready. ...
... Like I still love this country and a hundred percent love the army and I love that experience. I love the brotherhood and just the family I made and just the experience. It made me a better person.
It helped me grow. It taught me a lot. ... I know that just what's happening right now just doesn't define America. What's happening right now just doesn't define the flag that I wore, the flag that like we stand for...
... I have no problem still standing by the flag and standing by and believing in the constitution. ... it's really important. ... I think it's everyone's job to speak about it, to get involved because it's not just my rights that were violated. It could happen to you. Nothing's really stopping them really ... I think it's really important to speak out and just tackle this head on. For the government, it's like what they're doing is completely wrong, and I don't agree with them at all. It doesn't matter if you're left, you're right ... like it affects us all. ...
George Retes did not volunteer to be made a test case about whether federal agents can be held accountable for abuses done while carrying out the Homan/Miller/Trump immigrant deportation agenda. But here he finds himself. We all owe him for his courage to stand up for the freedoms he believes in.
According to her bio on the New York Times website, Kate Andrias is a professor of constitutional law and labor law at Columbia Law School, who studies the role of social movements in changing law. She seems very much the woman for the moment!
Andrias writes [gift link]:
The Constitution Doesn’t Belong to Trump or the Supreme Court
In case after case over the past eight months, a majority of justices on the Supreme Court have acquiesced to President Trump’s lawless and authoritarian actions, often without offering any explanation. The court has allowed the administration to summarily deport migrants to countries where they have no connection. It has condoned racial profiling by federal immigration officers. And it has suggested that it will jettison 90 years of precedent by holding that the president can fire, without cause, the heads of independent agencies. ...
... For the past two decades, Americans have watched the Roberts court dismantle constitutional rights and disable government from regulating in the public interest: overruling Roe v. Wade; invalidating limits on corporate campaign spending; striking down reasonable gun restrictions; and rolling back environmental safeguards.
But since the country’s founding, constitutional meaning has never emerged solely from an elite cadre of justices. Nor has judicial supremacy — what some call “juristocracy”— ever been the reality on the ground. When enough people have organized around a constitutional vision, they have managed to prevail even against a hostile Supreme Court.
Consider the fight for labor rights. During the early 20th century, the court repeatedly invalidated laws protecting unions; judges even jailed labor leaders who led strikes. When Congress, during the Great Depression, passed the National Labor Relations Act enshrining the rights to organize, bargain and strike, most observers believed the Supreme Court would deem the law unconstitutional. But workers organized to defend their rights, articulating a bold constitutional vision rooted in the First Amendment’s rights of free expression and association, the 13th Amendment’s promise of free labor and Congress’s regulatory authority. In the face of huge protests and strikes, and a threat from President Franklin Roosevelt to pack the court with more justices, the Supreme Court relented and upheld the statute. ...
Read it all for an introduction to another era in which the people had to overwhelm, democratically, another Supreme Court majority which tried to uphold an outmoded, cramped, and repressive former era of legal interpretation of American freedoms.
• • •
Meet a federal judge who is giving the Trump regime fits in DC.
• • •
Meanwhile the New Republic's legal commentator Matt Ford sees a truly dire precedent for the current moment.
Trump Is Following in the Footsteps of a Failed English King
Our Founders’ designs were studiously informed by the mistakes of King Charles I. Our president seems to want to repeat them. ...
...[Trump] would likely find a kindred spirit in Charles I, the seventeenth-century English king whose own taxation policies and preference for absolute rule led to civil war. Charles’s downfall during the English Civil War helped transition England from the divine right of kings to parliamentary supremacy. It also inspired the Founders as they built a republican government around rights and liberties on these shores. ...
Trump should probably note that the consequence to Charles I was loss of his head under an executioner's ax.
Free people don't take well to oligarchy and aspiring kings, though it may take us awhile to assert ourselves. Let us do so, firmly, without violence, knowing our forebears have shown the way.
A print copy can be found from Powells, an audiobook (that's what I read) from Audible. The San Francisco Public Library was also my source for a copy.
Bruce Neuburger has created a vivid history of the life and fates of his grandparents. Benno and Anna were prosperous middle class Jews living in Munich. Benno had served honorably, if without enthusiasm, as an over-age draftee in the German army in World War I. After that war, he built a business and invested in land. The family lived through the terrible postwar inflation of the 1920s and the political instability of the Weimar Republic. Times were sometimes bad -- and sometimes better -- for Germany's Jews and for Germans at large. When Hitler's Nazi movement came to power in 1933, the family could hope this was just another turn in twenty years of both prosperity and sporadic insecurity.
Nazi rule proved enduring and lethal for Jews. Jewish life -- both business and family -- was forced into smaller and smaller crevices of the society. Some of the younger generation quite rapidly decided to flee the looming catastrophe. Benno and Anna's children were among the very few who escaped to real security in America -- the U.S. in the 1930s was not a welcoming destination for Jewish refugees.
Benno held out a long time before listening to the entreaties of his children to join them across the Atlantic. By the time he was ready to uproot himself in 1939, German Jews had been forced into ghettos. Germany then invaded Poland, western Europe, and eventually Russia. Benno expressed his secret confidence to his friend that Germany would lose the war -- but he had lost all chance of escape.
And so he performed the one solitary act of resistance he could imagine: he wrote postcards denouncing Hitler and the Nazis and dropped them in the postal stream. This wasn't effectual, or even meant to be -- there were no addressees. But Benno had found a tiny way to speak his necessary truth. The book offers an imagined account to the first time he dared to do this:
At the corner, a young woman appeared. Benno looked down. He had an urge to turn away but thought that would look suspicious. The woman looked at him as she passed the corner.
Did she see the star? [the mandatory star of David sewn on his jacket] All he was sure of was that the mark was doing what it was meant to do -- rob him, rob Jews, of their last remnant of dignity. ...
[Benno Neuburger] looked down at the words he'd written in large letters where an address would normally be: "THE ETERNAL MASS MURDERER, HITLER, I SPIT ON YOU!" He put the card in the mailbox, turned, and walked back to his apartment.It took nearly a year for the Nazi postal service to figure out who was carrying on this treacherous practice. But he was caught, imprisoned, tortured, and, perhaps because of his veteran status, brought to trial rather than being summarily shot. A full judicial record survived which formed some of the raw material for his grandson's book.
The Nazi judicial records from the Berlin People's Court concluded:
Anna was killed the next day at the death camp at Treblinka, Poland. Bruce Neuburger makes no suggestion that the date of her murder had anything to do with the date of Benno's. The machinery of extermination just ground on for them both.Benno Israel Neuburger has been executed on Sept. 18th, 1942. The convicted offender denigrated the Fuhrer, and the National Socialist government and committed high treason against the German Reich.The Reich Ministry of Justice ordered fifty bright red posters announcing the execution of Benno Neuburger to be put up at visible locations in Munich.
• • •
The author/grandson, Bruce Neuburger, makes no pretense of writing a conventional academic history. He certainly consulted as many sources as he could find. The reunification of Germany after the 1990 collapse of the East German Soviet-aligned state led to release of the judicial and other records which enabled him to discover particulars about his grandparents' murders in 1942. Neuburger canvassed surviving family members. Recent German historians have also found many lost details of German Jewish resistance to Hitler.
On this information, Bruce Neuburger wrote a novelistic account of life and tragedy that honors the experience of his family and so many like them. He explains his aim and defends telling his family story his way:
In my effort to bring to life the people whose stories are told here and the social environment in which they lived, I have necessarily imagined situations and relationships beyond the facts that I acquired directly [through historical sources.] I have sought to use the knowledge I gained through extensive historical research and travel to reconstruct the drama of those times. I can promise you, the reader, that I have taken care to reflect the historical moments recounted here as accurately and truthfully as I can.Ever wonder what it was like to live under, stand against, and die under Nazi rule? This is a book to be read, experienced, and pondered.
To be honest, I don't know if any authority currently bans either of the two classics on the upper shelf lately. But if the banners were more literate, I'm sure they would.
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By placing these titles in my local Little Free Library, I'm participating in a simple local protest against the American right's desperate drive to control what we can read.
The whole thing is distasteful. Not so long ago, I voted for a proposition that was supposed to make California Congressional districts less gerrymandered. After living through the decade of 2000-2010 when pols had engineered incumbent protection districts of which only one changed parties over that span, voters were ready for a non-partisan redistricting commission. So we passed such an arrangement by initiative. And Congress districts were subsequently a little more fairly drawn according to proximity and affinity characteristics. Dems still won most of them, because California is a very Democratic state. But the voters got what we aspired to.
I'll outsource the explanation to that old curmudgeon columnist for the Los Angeles Times George Skelton. He doesn't much like Prop. 50 either, but he knows necessity when he trips over it.
[Prop 50 is] about exerting some control over unhinged President Trump. That would happen if voters across America next year flip the House of Representatives from Republican to Democrat, ending one-party rule of the federal government. Proposition 50 could help do that.
Does an obedient Republican Congress continue to allow Trump to walk all over it? Or does a new Democrat-led House exercise its constitutional duty to provide checks and balances over the executive branch?
This is what’s potentially at stake in California’s special election on Nov. 4.
... Trump pressured Texas Gov. Greg Abbott into orchestrating a mid-decade legislative gerrymandering of his state’s House districts, with the aim of gaining five more Republican seats. The president has also been browbeating other red states to rig their congressional lines.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom quickly retaliated. He asked an eager Democrat-controlled Legislature to draw up new House maps designed to gain five new Democratic seats, neutralizing Texas’ action.
... Unlike in Texas, Newsom needs the voters’ permission to resume gerrymandering. That’s what Proposition 50 does, along with granting voter approval of proposed new weird-looking congressional maps drawn by Democratic lawmakers.
... Proposition 50’s opponents contend Democrats can’t be trusted to keep the gerrymandering temporary.
And they’re hypocritically screaming about a “Newsom power grab” — without also pointing the finger at Trump and Abbott, who started this fight.
At its core, this is a brawl over raw political power. Forget any idealism.
... “Gerrymanders are a cancer and mid-decade gerrymanders are metastasis,” [opposition funder Charles] Munger wrote in a New York Times op-ed last month.
If Democratic politicians gerrymander California, he asserted, “then they lose the moral high ground.”
Well, if this is the moral high ground we’re living in under the Trump regime, I’d like to move to another level.
My definition of a moral high ground doesn’t include a Congress that won’t push back against a bully president who cuts back millions in research aid to universities because he doesn’t like what they teach, who sics his own masked police force of unidentified agents on California residents, who sabotages our anti-pollution programs.
... We should all play by the same rules — even if it unfortunately requires temporary gerrymandering. After Trump leaves, we can return to the high road.
Okay, I admit it. I am thrilled that the new scheme might endanger GOP Rep. Darrell Issa, millionaire car alarm crook and entrepreneur, whose tenure in Congress has been far too long.
But largely, I just think Californians have to do it to attempt to preserve some check on Trump's autocratic rule.
YES on Prop. 50
By now you've probably heard the story. MAGA is seeking its revenge against modern America by attacking cities and their inhabitants. Lawyer and activist Jay Kuo recounts the attack by Donald Trump's goon squad on a Chicago apartment building this week:
... federal authorities, including agents from ICE, the ATF (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives), and the FBI sought to make good on Donald Trump’s recent threats against U.S. cities.
In the dead of night, they swarmed a residential building in Chicago, even dropping in from Black Hawk helicopters like some sort of special commandos going after dangerous terrorists. They indiscriminately broke into people’s apartments and yanked them from their beds. Some residents were naked. They ransacked apartments and even zip tied small children. Some U.S. citizens were detained for hours.
... The justification for this blatantly illegal and unconstitutional assault is a familiar one. The regime claims it was going after drug traffickers and gang members. But once again, it offered no proof. We just have to take their word for it. Authorities seized people first, without probable cause, treating merely living in the same complex as suspected undocumented migrants as a crime.
Eboni Watson, neighbor
... “They just treated us like we were nothing,” [resident Pertissue] Fisher said.She had come out to the hallway in her nightgown around 10 p.m. Monday, where armed ICE agents were shouting “police.”
“It was scary, because I had never had a gun in my face,” Fisher said. “They asked my name and my date of birth and asked me, did I have any warrants?”—apparently meaning outstanding warrants for her arrest. “And I told them, ‘No,’ I didn’t,” she responded.
Fisher relayed that she was handcuffed and only released some five hours later around 3 a.m. ....
It's no surprise that this sort of government terrorism, backed by panic among the ignorant, has been a recurrent feature of U.S. history. After World War I, the country was unsettled. An unpopular foreign war and oligarchic exploitation of the country's workers provoked protest from society's underclass and fright in the ruling class. Might there be Reds under the bed? David R. Lurie describes what came next:
Out of control federal agents invading the nation’s cities and kidnapping people en masse, a president and his cronies fomenting public anger and fear of immigrants, and dissent suddenly declared to be an illegal threat to national security.
All of that is happening now. But it also happened in 1919, at the height of what came to be called the first Red Scare, when a young J. Edgar Hoover and his new federal police force led a crackdown on dissent, focused on “radical” Americans born abroad.
Hoover and then-Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer had plans to use another tool now favored by the Trump regime — mass deportation. But while Hoover and Palmer did succeed in silencing prominent dissenters, their deportation scheme largely came undone as the public became increasingly revulsed by the government’s performative cruelty and lawlessness.
... But as the weeks and months proceeded, something else began to happen. Members of the American public, who previously seemed to agree with the mob that jeered at [defiant anarchist Emma] Goldman, began to change their minds as evidence emerged of the brutality and lawlessness of the G-Men. And the deportation scheme ended up failing. Out of 6,396 cases Hoover brought, fewer than 600 ended in deportations.
The people can be misled to applaud injustices for a season; we can also repudiate injustices. A recent report found that attempts by MAGA TV drunk and Trump's U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro to charge protesters as felons in occupied Washington, DC, were collapsing at an unheard of rate. Grand juries made up of fellow Washingtonians refuse to indict.
We don't like this cruel BS. We can turn the tide. We've done that before. No Kings on October 18!
• • •
I thought it might be interesting to share how the 1919 Palmer raids played out for someone I once knew who was caught up in them.
In that year, Dorothy Day was swooped up in the general lawless repression in Chicago. Today Dorothy is remembered as a founder of the Catholic Worker Movement and potential Roman Catholic saint. Then she was a drifting, loosely leftist, young intellectual. Being a young woman, her experience of the Palmer raids was different from that of male workers and agitators. She recounts this in From Union Square to Rome, a 1938 autobiography.
On wandering back from an aimless year in Europe after the war, she discovered:
... The Socialists were too dull. They had too little vitality as far as I was concerned, and my allegiance for the most part was with the I. W. W.’s whose ideas in regard to solidarity and direct action appealed greatly to my youth.
It was about this time that I had my second jail experience. ... I was associated at that time with some I. W. W.’s who had their headquarters on West Madison Street, Chicago. Across the street from their printing office was an old rooming house where a great many of them stayed, and where in true Wobbly fashion they had an everlasting pot of Mulligan on the fire. Everyone who came in was supposed to contribute to the pot whether it were a bunch of carrots, a piece of meat or a few pounds of potatoes. It was kept going from week to week, and when the funds were low the boys used to beg from grocers in the neighborhood. Those who had funds took care of their companions who had none, and there was a good spirit of comradeship. Their slogan was “An injury to one is an injury to all” and their sense of solidarity went even into housekeeping details.
... One day I opened the paper to find [a female acquaintance in these circles] had taken bichloride of mercury and was in the city hospital. They managed to save her life but when she was released from the hospital she went straight to the I. W. W. lodging house where she knew she would be taken in. I went over to see her in the evening to bring her food and planned to stay for the night with her. She was still ill and very much depressed and not altogether happy that they had dragged her back from death.
We were undressed and getting into bed when a knock came at the door and four men burst in telling us that we were under arrest for being inmates of a disorderly house. ... we were alone. It made no difference that radical headquarters all over Chicago were being raided and wholesale arrests being made. We could not feel that we were a part of a movement that was suffering persecution. Perhaps we were not sufficiently indoctrinated.
It had not occurred to us that it was unconventional or unseemly to be staying in a lodging house on West Madison Street. ... The ugly fact remained that we were two young girls arrested by four plain-clothes men who refused to leave the room while we got up and dressed for fear we would try to get away by the fire-escape. These were the days of the Palmer red raids when no one was safe. Those were times of persecution for all radicals. ...
Dorothy found her subsequent jail experience both brutal and enlightening.
... It was just a case of our knowing that these things were occurring every day and yet not realizing that they could occur to us. We were booked on the charge of being inmates of a disorderly house. We were not allowed to use the telephone to get in touch with a lawyer or our friends, although according to law we should have had this privilege. ...
... Before I had merely read about prison life and had agreed with Tolstoi that such punishment of criminals was futile when we were guilty for permitting such a system as ours to exist and that we, too, should bear the penalty for the crimes committed by those unfortunate ones. We all formed part of one body, a social body, and how could any limb of that body commit a crime alone?We were photographed and finger-printed and finally taken to the morals court. Before we were placed in the detention pen we were examined for venereal diseases. When men are arrested during a red raid the police can express their brutality with rubber hoses and blackjacks. They can show their scorn and contempt for those who are trying to “undermine” our present system by kicking and beating them until their victims are a degraded mass of quivering flesh.
They show more gallantry in regard to the women. They have a more subtle way of affronting their sensibilities. They can charge them with being prostitutes, make them submit to degrading physical examinations, and throw them into the company of those whom they feel should degrade them. But I felt more horror of the police and that police matron during this experience than I did of the [street walking] women. The women did not disgust me, it was their profession that disgusted me. They themselves may have been superior, as human beings go, to their captors. There was no pride or hypocrisy among them.
The prostitutes Dorothy was jailed alongside worked for pimps who quickly bailed them out. Dorothy and her friend were locked up for several further days before a reporter friend who had discovered their incarceration managed to get them out.
Her short jail time reinforced Dorothy's conviction about whose side she was on.
Environmental and climate advocate Bill McKibben points out that the planet-wide shift to harness energy from the sun is not only transforming how we produce heat and power cars. It is also changing how war is waged.
It's hard to drone a solar panel.
The war in Ukraine may be adding resilience to the list of clean energy's virtues.
As I write this, the Orsknefteorgsintez refinery in Orsk, Russia is ablaze. It sits 1,400 kilometers from the border with Ukraine—in fact, along the border with Kazakhstan. The refinery has a capacity of 6.6 million tons of oil yearly, and among other things it’s one of two refineries capable of producing the jet fuel used by the country’s strategic bombers.
The best reason for nations to switch to power from the sun and wind is that it will reduce, by some degree, the severity of the climate crisis (and save millions of lives lost each year to pollution). The second best reason is that it’s cheaper than fossil fuel, and any nation who doesn’t shift will be stuck with an economy running on expensive energy. But it seems to me—not a military analyst, but a fairly good tea-leaves reader—that the war in Ukraine may be adding a third to the list: its comparative invulnerability to attack.
As the world has begun to figure out, something important has happened amidst the carnage of Russia’s immoral invasion: warfare has changed forever, with the small drone quickly replacing much of the military hardware we grew accustomed to in the 20th century.
Drones have been ubiquitous along the front lines, where the no-man’s zone between the armies is lethally patrolled by squadrons of drones able to take out tanks, troop transports, and pretty much anything else—that explains much of the stasis of the last two years; the competing forces are largely pinned down.
The Russians, of course, have also been using drones to attack civilian assets—every night a new sortie, mixed in with missiles, seems to take out kindergartens, hospitals, and old folks homes. An early target was Ukraine’s energy sources, in an effort to freeze the fight out of the nation. (Currently the Russians seem to be playing dangerous games with the offline nuclear power plants not far from the front lines). But as we head into yet another war of winter, Ukraine hangs on—and more than hangs on.
Over the course of the war, by sheer necessity, Ukraine has developed a formidable drone industry, and increasingly it is using them against a singular set of targets: the oil refining and transport infrastructure spread out across its sprawling foe. Russia has formidable air defenses, of course—Ukraine couldn’t fly a bomber across 1,400 kilometers of the country’s airspace to bomb a refinery. But the small and comparatively slow drones have proved equal to the task. ...Russia can, and does, shoot rockets at the centers of Ukrainian civilian life. But Ukrainians, motivated by necessity and determined courage, have found, at least for the moment, an answer that sustains their embattled nation with sun power they have developed themselves. The war is making oil refining and coal burning obsolete and perilous technologies to depend on.
...The general lesson to be drawn from this, it seems to me, is that centralized and complex energy facilities are now sitting ducks for drone attack, and that that will certainly alter military calculations going forward. A refinery, for instance, is one of the most complicated machines humanity has ever constructed, often covering hundreds of acres. It’s filled with highly complex equipment and highly flammable hydrocarbons; hit one corner with a drone and the flames and the damage are likely to spread quickly. Not far behind—as Ukraine has learned to its sadness—are coal and gas-fired power plants—expensive infrastructure that can take months or years to rebuild as your citizens shiver.
By contrast, solar farms and wind turbines are scattered, which makes them harder to hit, and relatively simple to fix. Silicon doesn’t explode when it’s hit: a drone may take out some panels, but they are easy to switch out for new ones. And individual rooftop installations are too small to be systematically attacked. ...I'm sure McKibben would agree that it would be far better if Russia hadn't made war on its proud, self-reliant neighbor. But since Russia has, we can marvel at how Ukrainian innovation is showing how a small nation can preserve its independence by adopting the energy source of the future.
Too often, war midwifes scientific advances that only kill more efficiently. There is so much death in Ukraine, but also so much life.
Where decent people saw a frightening political murder, disgusting people saw an opportunity to stir and enlist hatred for political purposes.
Unhappily, it's fair to say that Charlie Kirk's Republican funders and political sponsors (but not the woman who loved him) got one bit of what they'd paid for after his untimely demise: yet another chance to stick it to transfolk and other gender nonconforming people.
Journalist Parker Molloy reports on the terror unleashed.
... While the Heritage Foundation manufactures fake statistics to paint trans people as violent terrorists, actual terrorism is happening in the real world—and it’s targeting LGBTQ people.
In the week following Charlie Kirk’s death, there have been at least two attempted terrorist attacks explicitly planned as “revenge” against the LGBTQ community. Not revenge against any actual suspect or accomplice. Not revenge based on any evidence. Just revenge against random gay and trans people for something they had nothing to do with.
In Phoenix, a 49-year-old named Treven Gokey was arrested after threatening to shoot up a gay bar. He told police he wanted to be “a martyr for Charlie Kirk” and that “radical left violence breeds a far-right response.” When officers asked him about recent violence, he said it made him want to “harm others” to send a message. He’s now sitting in jail on a $250,000 bond, charged with making terroristic threats.Meanwhile in Texas, Joshua Cole posted on Facebook about an upcoming Pride parade in Abilene: “fk their parade, I say we lock and load and pay them back for taking out Charlie Kirk.” He added, “theres only like 30 of em we can send a clear message to the rest of them,” before suggesting they go “hunting fairies.” The FBI arrested him the day before the parade. During questioning, he admitted he “did not believe that the gay pride event should be allowed.”
... Heritage claims — based on absolutely nothing — that “transgender ideology” drives violence. But in the real world, it’s anti-LGBTQ rhetoric that’s inspiring actual terrorist threats. These men didn’t need evidence that LGBTQ people were involved in Kirk’s death. They didn’t need facts. All they needed was the permission structure that years of demonization had already built.
And that permission structure got reinforced immediately after Kirk’s death. Conservative media blamed “the left” before anyone even knew who the shooter was. The day after the assassination, bomb threats forced evacuations at the DNC headquarters and multiple HBCUs. The apparatus of rage was already primed and ready — it just needed an excuse.
Cole, by the way, had already been arrested for making terroristic threats back in 2019. The court noted his “prior criminal history” and said his release would pose a “serious danger to any person or the community.” But sure, let’s create a new terrorism category for trans people who, according to actual data, commit less than 0.1% of mass shootings. ...
Meanwhile we're in a "government shutdown" because Republicans refuse to present a budget that enough Democratic senators will vote for to overcome a filibuster. The media mostly focuses on the vicious cuts that Republicans are trying to make to health care, cuts which Democrats reject.
But the Republican plan also includes poison pills designed to erase and even destroy trans lives and life. Erin In The Morning reports:
... There is one promising sign for LGBTQ+ people in all this: Democrats, by refusing to cave to Republican demands on both the full-year appropriations bills and the continuing resolution, have shown a degree of backbone critics often accuse them of lacking. ... When talks eventually turn back to funding the government for the full year, there’s hope that Republicans may steer clear of poison pills like the anti-LGBTQ+ riders that risk blowing up the process altogether.
... Still, there’s reason for concern that the pressure of a shutdown could push Democrats to cave on key constituencies—LGBTQ+ people chief among them. The memory of last year looms large. When Republicans laced the House version of the National Defense Authorization Act with anti-trans riders, Democrats in the Senate, having control of that chamber at the time, had the chance to strip them out. Instead, leadership folded: they refused to allow a vote to remove the provisions and passed the bill intact, cutting off TRICARE coverage for gender-affirming care for the children of servicemembers. For many trans advocates, it was a stinging betrayal.
Now the fear is of a repeat—only worse. This year’s House NDAA goes even further, piling on a military bathroom ban, a sports ban, a coverage ban, and more, and the same fears hold true for negotiations over the bills funding the federal government for the next year.
... Republicans—Trump chief among them—have made clear that anti-trans provisions are on the table for the full-year appropriations fight. In recent days, Trump used both a Truth Social post and a grotesquely offensive deepfake video of Chuck Schumer to hammer Democrats, accusing them of protecting transgender people in the shutdown fight and vowing to walk away from negotiations unless they conceded ground. On Capitol Hill, several Republican members echoed the line, blasting Democrats for supposedly backing “taxpayer-funded transgender surgeries” in the federal budget—a talking point pulled straight from the party’s broader anti-trans playbook.
But backlash can go either direction. This report continues:
At least one source told Erin In The Morning that congressional offices were inundated with calls from LGBTQ+ constituents on Tuesday demanding that their rights not be bargained away in the final FY26 appropriations deal. ...
... call your congressmembers and demand that any negotiations over funding the government for the next year must not include anti-LGBTQ+ provisions pushed by Republicans in power.
Republicans needed a scapegoat to blame for the vicious harm they want to inflict on us all; trans people have been drafted to serve that function. They can't really be so afraid of such a tiny, less than 1 percent fraction of the 330 million of us, can they? Oh gosh, apparently they can and want everyone to share their fears. And beat up on the bogey, metaphorically and sometimes actually.
It's on all of us to ensure that MAGA can't pick off one tiny segment of our American body on the way to injuring all of us.
Too tired today to write a think piece, so I'll just pass along a couple of recent found-images in completely different resistance styles.
In both cases, they embody hope for this tired old republic: that we the people will assert ourselves as the legitimate rulers of ourselves, not subject to whims of a doddering old phony and his rich and craven sycophants.
That is all.
Last July, I explored the NPS gift store near Civil War-era Fort Point under the Golden Gate Bridge. I wanted to see whether the Trump regime's attempt to whiten and sanitize American history had yet determined what was offered to the public.
The Warming Hut then boasted a full wall bookcase with an attractive display of hardcover historical books, including plenty that highlighted slavery in the early American life of the Golden State and the fate of local indigenous residents.
The good news: the Trump regime has not completely displaced serious historical materials with snow globes and commemorative mugs for tourists. The bad news: the effort to offer meaty historical books is much diminished.
The true delight to me on my previous visit had been the broad collection of children's books at the site. (My inheritance from my childrens' librarian mother is showing.) What survives is still impressive:
The National Park staff here seem to be trying to retain their integrity as educators of the public -- and hanging on, carefully. I fear for what the coming government shut down will do to this historical park.
[The text which follows is a transcription of Beinart's video.]
So, at the heart of this period in the Jewish year, between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, what we call the Yamim Noraim, is the basic idea that human beings are judged, that we don’t know how that judgment manifests itself in the world, but there’s a faith, a fundamental belief that there is some kind of accounting, there is some kind of reckoning, ultimately. And that notion fills me this year with a sense of really tremendous fear because I know that I have been inadequate to the monstrous evil of this period: the genocide in Gaza and the destruction of liberal democracy in the United States.
There are so many times when I’ve just decided to turn away because it was easier to not look at the images, or to not participate in actions of protest that I could have done, just because I had other things that I wanted to do more, that were easier for me, that were more fun for me, so I really tremble at my own accountability for this. But I guess I also take some kind of comfort in the notion that there may be some collective accounting, some collective reckoning.
Again, many of the prayers that we say during these High Holidays are in the plural. And when I think about collectively, in the Jewish community, and more generally in the United States, I do take some kind of comfort in the sense that there will be some kind of accounting, because the level of cowardice that we see around us is just beyond my wildest imagination. It’s beyond my wildest imagination.
I mean, Donald Trump is a fundamentally kind of deranged and deformed person, someone who just doesn’t seem, I think, to really, really understand very basic ideas like the rule of law, right? But many, many other people around him do. I mean, we know this because many of the people who are his most fanatical supporters now—J.D. Vance, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio—they said earlier on, when they weren’t so afraid of him, they said, this man is a pathological liar, this man wants to be a dictator. We know that they believe these things. We know that they can see these things. These things are obvious, right? They’re not subtle.
I mean, I almost chuckle now at the idea that Donald Trump was really concerned about antisemitism when he used antisemitism as the pretext to try to cripple the independence of American universities. Because we now see that Donald Trump doesn’t need any pretext at all. I mean, when he says that we should shut down television networks just because they criticize him, or that the Justice Department should investigate people just because they’re his political opponents, he doesn’t even need any pretext, right? It’s just the fact that they are limiting his power, and he wants dictatorial powers. That’s really all he needs.
And when I see virtually the entirety of the Republican Party going along with this—you know, the Republican Party has always, you know, for as long as I can remember, liked to talk about appeasement, liked to talk about cowardice, always imagining themselves as the kind of the Churchills, the manly men, the people who could be counted on in the moment of peril to stand up to the forces of evil. You know, I mean, what an utter irony that has turned to be, right?
Because it turned out that there is no greater group of appeasers, no greater group of cowards, than the people in the modern Republican Party today, who, because they’re afraid of Donald Trump, afraid that he could get them to lose their job, or afraid that he might go after them personally. Because, after all, Donald Trump goes after Republicans too, right? He’s going after John Bolton because John Bolton had the temerity to criticize him. These people who constantly talk about how tough they are and how manly they are, how they hate appeasement, and how they accuse their opponents of appeasement because they support diplomatic deals with Iran or other countries, now actually turn out to be willing to appease Donald Trump, even when he’s systematically moving to destroy equality under the law, which is the foundation of a free society, right, by basically just using the organs of the state in whatever ways he can to punish his political opponents, to prevent the possibility that people will be able to openly criticize him, and that the other party might be able to beat him in an election.
And beyond that, I look at the organized American Jewish community. I mean, just go to the websites of the most powerful American Jewish organizations: AIPAC, the Anti-Defamation League, the Conference of Presidents of American Jewish Organizations. Would you realize that American democracy is in peril? Would you realize that the Trump administration is trying to create an authoritarian state? No, you would see virtually nothing of that because these organizations care really only about one thing: about maintaining unconditional U.S. support for Israel. It’s much more important to them that America maintains unconditional support for Israel than that America remains a liberal democracy. They would actually prefer an authoritarian America that supports Israel unconditionally than a liberal democratic America that changes its policy on Israel.
And the evidence is right in front of you. Just look at what outrages them. Look at what they focus their political attention on. It’s about maintaining unconditional support for Israel. It’s not fighting for liberal democracy. It’s not opposing Donald Trump’s obviously, nakedly obvious efforts at creating an authoritarian, tyrannical state. I take some comfort in the notion that those leaders in our community, as well as those Republicans in Congress, as well as those business leaders, and people in industry, and some of these university presidents, that all of them will be judged.
I think we’re already in terrible, terrible times, and probably heading for worse. And so, I think there is a Jewish tradition, in moments of great pain and trauma, of taking refuge in the idea that we believe in a God who judges, and that there is some kind of cosmic justice, even if we can’t understand it, even if we may not live to see it. And from the depths of my being, I hope that there is an accounting, that there is a reckoning, there is a judgment for the profound moral cowardice that is allowing the evil that is taking place, both in the destruction of Palestinians in the genocide in Gaza, and the destruction of the basic principles of liberal democracy in the United States.
And I feel grateful that I have some modicum of faith because it’s that faith that gives me the belief that there will be a judgment and also reminds me that I need to redouble my efforts.
I need to make a much, much more concerted effort to be part of the struggle against these forms of evil, both in Israel and Palestine that my government is complicit in, and the evils that my government is complicit in in the United States.
That, all of us need not give in to despair, to not look away, to look this in the eye, and do whatever possibly we can to fight against this evil, which most Americans don’t want. Most Americans don’t want. And just say to ourselves, are we really a country that could allow the likes of Donald Trump to destroy all the things that are most precious in the country, really? Are we that kind of people? I would think that we’re better than that.
And it’s my hope that one day we will be worthy of having said that in this moment, conscious of the accounting and the reckoning that we believe will come, that we tried to acquit ourselves better in the year to come.
Yesterday St. Aidan's Episcopal Church in San Francisco hosted a memorial Eucharist for Vicki, one of the most versatile humans I've ever encountered. From the Naval Academy at Annapolis, through service in Vietnam, later in the US Foreign Service, then a transition, and finally the Episcopal Diaconate and building Transepiscopal, she was one caring, funny, brilliant and humane woman.
As those who frequent this blog know, I make a practice of photographing little public political demonstrations whenever I can. I literally know of no one who I encountered more regularly at these events over the last 15 years in the San Francisco Bay Area than Vicki. Like me, even though the particular cause might seem hopeless, she believed in showing up, in witnessing, never knowing exactly what might come of it.
Here are few of these:
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| In 2010, standing with the hotel workers of Local 2 UniteHERE |
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| At an interfaith gathering in Berkeley in 2010 on the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks |
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| On Vicki's home turf in the North Bay in 2015, speaking out against a risky plan to move crude oil by train through the 'hood. |
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| Reminding the Bay Area of the needs of unhoused people as San Francisco upended itself for the Super Bowl in 2016. |
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| Calling out Israeli atrocities against Palestinians in Gaza -- in 2018 |
[I learned] a truth as basic and immutable as the fact that water freezes below thirty-two degrees Fahrenheit: race was the key in which much of American politics and certainly all southern politics was played. It was really very simple: the Democratic candidate needed 90-plus percent of black votes to win. ... Since [the 1964 Civil Rights Act] no Republican candidate has broken 17 percent with African American voters, and by 2016 only 3 percent considered themselves Republicans. ...
... the Nixon White House had laid out the path to electoral success by maximizing white grievance and suppressing the African American vote through a combination of manipulation, lies and legal challenges. It was the road that the Republican Party took in the Trump White House. ... Race has defined the modern Republican Party.Since the 2024 presidential election, many pundits have attempted to muddy the question of whether the Republican Party is still the overwhelmingly racist formation that Stevens describes, but the best data we have suggests that little has changed despite whatever gestures Trump and his crew make. (Take a look at the cabinet, for example; bet you can't name his HUD appointee, the usual Black slot ...)
• "Family values" was never a set of morals and values that the Republican Party really desired to live by ... it was just another weapon to portray those on the other side as being out of the mythical American mainstream. ...All, I think, commonplace understandings four years on from the publication of this book and among the folks to whom I relate personally here on the Left Coast.
• The professional politicization of Christianity as a right-wing force was always more about the acquisition of power than a commitment to Christianity. It was where the commercialization of Christianity meets the politicization of Christianity. ...
• The Republican Party is held aloft by a large, powerful, and ever growing industry of deceit. The purpose of much of conservative media is to lie to their audience. ...
• The most distinguishing characteristic of the current national Republican Party is cowardice. The base price of admission is a willingness to accept that an unstable pathological liar leads it and pretend otherwise. ...
When [Republican Pennsylvania Congressman] Tom Ridge [on the eve of his campaign for governor] was facing a decision on how to vote on the 1994 assault weapons ban, I'd like to say I urged him to vote for the ban ... I didn't, nor did I advise him to vote against it. I never thought my role was to remind clients of deeply held beliefs. ... I cared about one thing -- winning -- and had every reason to believe it would mean we'd lose.I get this. I can't say I ever differed from a plausible candidate I was working for on a matter of such consequence, though I'm not sure about that. But I certainly worked at least one campaign without any belief that my candidate would be a net gain to city and society if we won; I wanted the experience of working in a well-funded operation of a particular sort in order to increase my campaign skills, win or lose. That campaign work was about me, not the candidate. Such is extremely common among political operatives, however little we admit this to ourselves.
Erudite Partner's latest article for TomDispatch is online today.
Going Backwards on Rights with Trump
Or Just Around in Circles?Warning: dangers in the mirror are often closer than they may appear. In other words, the next few paragraphs may seem to be hyperbole but are, in fact, expressions of reality (animated by a cold fury).
On September 8, 2025, the Supreme Court did its best to murder what’s left of civil rights in this country. As Charlie Savage of the New York Times reported, in an unsigned 6-3 ruling, it overturned a lower court’s order forbidding ICE and the Border Patrol in Los Angeles from stopping, interrogating, and detaining people based on any of four factors: “apparent race or ethnicity; the fact that they speak English with an accent or speak Spanish; their presence at particular locations like farms or pickup sites for day laborers; and the type of work they do.”
Those six conservative justices might as well have stood in front of the court and set fire to the 1964 Civil Rights Act ...
Martin Luther King looks on as President Lyndon Johnson signs the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
At one point in her youth, the E.P. thought about becoming a lawyer. She decided she had better things to do with her life, but she did, much later, become a genuine expert on the development of the international law which outlaws torture. And she knows whereof she speaks when she eviscerates the lawlessness of the Trump regime.
