Greg Abbott's theater of bigotry

Things I didn't have a mental picture of, but am glad to have learned -- from basketball great and good man Kareem Abdul Jabbar: 

Wudu is the Muslim ritual of washing before prayer, which we do five times daily, at dawn, midday, afternoon, sunset, and night. We begin by saying “Bismillah,” which means “In the name of God,” then wash our hands to the wrist three times, rinse the mouth and nose, wash the face, wash our arms to the elbow, wipe the head and ears with our wet hands, and finally wash our feet to the ankles. It takes just a couple of minutes but is an essential and sacred part of our religious practice.

While wudu can be done in a restroom sink, it’s hardly ideal, and some public spaces, such as universities and hospitals that serve diverse populations, provide dedicated stations as an accommodation to Muslims. That is what two airports in Texas (Houston and Dallas-Fort Worth) have done, to little fanfare or controversy until Governor Greg Abbott decided to make it his personal crusade to end this small act of courtesy. Earlier this month, Abbott sent a letter to Dallas-Fort Worth, which was planning a second station, threatening to cut off grants to the airport if it went ahead with the project, calling such facilities “illegal” and a form of “discrimination.”

Kareem's short paragraphs explain what I used to see around the corner from my mother-in-law's apartment in Manhattan -- lines of cabs parked every which way while their drivers ran briefly into the Islamic Center on the corner ...

Texas should be as bigoted as possible if you are the Republican governor. So Abbott, running for reelection, grandstands against his Muslim citizens. He won't admit that this is just ugly hate theater.  

Abbott ... he should know better. As a paraplegic who has been confined to a wheelchair since 1984, he needs special accommodations on a daily basis. When he goes to Houston or Dallas-Fort Worth airports, he surely uses the ramps designed to make life easier for disabled people like him. Why, then, is he so eager to make life harder for other people who need accommodation, in this case Muslims?

Biden talks climate

Here's another video that I am surprising myself by posting. In this interview, Joe Biden explains at length what his administration would do to about climate change -- and he knows what he is talking about.

 

He's able to be specific; he understands much of what needs to be done (way more than I do, but he wants the job). After five minutes of introductory talking points (solid, correct, not very new)  he plunges into how his administration would act urgently and forcefully to ensure federal contracts serve to push full electrification. He can talk intelligently about batteries and electric charging stations. And then on he goes into what effort to combat climate disaster will mean to agriculture, to investment in domestic infrastructure, and to scientific research. And on he goes.

I even learned something from glancing at a few of the comments about this video. One viewer observed:

I just realized that Joe's biggest problem is that he knows way more than he can get out when he wants too. This can happen when your brain works faster than your mouth does.

This rings completely true to me. My father was a stutterer who largely managed to cover his occasional disability. And he was a smart guy. But not being a political candidate, he'd seem to recognize when his disability would be about to prevent him from saying what he wanted to get said. Then he would retreat to short aphorisms. 

 

Biden chose a path that requires him to speak, whether he can get out what he knows or finds it hard to catch up verbally to what he wants to say. Mostly he succeeds. The famous Biden gaffes seem to be occasions when his brain gets ahead of his voice.

Take a look for yourself.

DNC roundup

Barack and Michelle Obama told it like it is. Kamala Kamala'd. We were offered short bits with the primary aspirants who didn't make it -- this reminded me how I enjoyed the early stages of the primary when the herd was trying to show us visions that were new and attractive. And then Joe Biden promised decency ... and caring ... and order ... and competence. And since we're suffering from a complete lack of all those qualities, the speech was surprisingly effective.

 

But this young man's testimony broke through for me. He stutters. Joe Biden grew up with a stutter and according to 13-year old Brayden Harrington was able to assist and inspire him to speak publicly.

 

My father shuttered. Mostly, as an adult, he'd learned to avoid triggers. But every once in a while, a gap between his thoughts and his ability to utter them would seem to entrap him. All that would come out of him at those moments were sounds without form. Then he'd get hold and speak what felt a flattened version of what he meant to say. 

I think concern that his disability might take hold made him the frequently remote man he was. 

I like the idea of a president whose life is a support to people with this challenge. It's not everything, but it is something.

Disabled citizens can be pushed out -- or pulled in -- to the polls

Many states governed by Republican majorities have implemented electoral administration laws that make it harder for poor people and people of color to vote. We tend to picture long lines created by too few and poorly staffed voting locations as well as various demands for forms of identification that some citizens can't produce.

We might not have thought so much about how these impediments fall on citizens with various disabilities. According to a paper prepared for a Presidential Commission on Election Administration:

There are at least 35 million voting-age people with disabilities in the United States, representing 1 out of 7 voting-age people, and the number is likely to grow with the aging of the population. People with disabilities have lower voter turnout than people without disabilities. ... the adjusted disability gap [fall off from levels among similar able bodied people] is close to 12 points in each year.

Broken down by major type of disability, the turnout was lower in 2012 among people with visual, mobility, and cognitive impairments, but people with hearing impairments were as likely as people without disabilities to vote. Turnout was also low among those who reported difficulty going outside alone, or difficulty with daily activities inside the home. The disability voting gap is due in part to lower voter registration, but is due more to a lower likelihood of voting if registered. ...

Given the number of people with disabilities in the United States, these results imply that there would be 3.0 million more voters with disabilities if they voted at the same rate as otherwise-similar people without disabilities. ...

So what sort of restrictions prevent disabled adults from voting? Not surprisingly, demanding a driver's license leaves a lot of people out. Alternative forms of ID usually cost money and/or visits to distant government offices. Disabled people are more likely than the able-bodied to be unemployed or just poor, so costly administrative hoops make for a greater burden. So does requiring travel to a distant polling place or requiring a wait in line. And then, for some, there's the issue of simply getting in the door, as illustrated by the photo above from the Justice Department Civil Rights division.

In truth, there is not much data about what measures would help make it easier for disabled citizens to vote. According to advocate Susan Mizner of the ACLU:

"People with disabilities are just left off the studies," often due to simple barriers to accessibility, Mizner told Vox. For example, she said she’s unaware of a voter access or opinion survey that includes deaf voters, who need to be accessed via TTY or video-conferencing services.

Without this information, it’s difficult for disability rights organizations to compile the necessary evidence to develop a unified strategy (like a class-action suit) to challenge barriers to electoral participation.

It doesn't have to be this way.

According to Nicole Kief, also of the ACLU, Rhode Island

is the first state to say, in writing, that voters with disabilities must have full and equal access to online voter registration. ...

People who are blind or low-vision, people who can’t use a mouse or keyboard, and people with cognitive or learning disabilities would all have trouble using a website that was not set up to be accessible. ...

[The state has written new rules.]

• Experts on disability access to websites must be included in the development of the site and must verify that the site is useable for people with disabilities before it is made public.

• The site must follow certain accessibility standards set by the by the World Wide Web Consortium (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 compliance level AA for you tech geeks).

• The site must comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act, which requires all state and local governments to provide equal access to government programs and communications with the public.

All states should be emulating what Rhode Island has done here -- California's online registration form is the only other state that currently meets these standards.

The Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division, Disability Rights section publishes an exhaustive checklist for how to make voting locations compliant with the American Disability Act. Now it is just a matter of getting thousands of local governments in 50 states to comply with the requirements. Failure to comply amounts to pervasive vote suppression.

And then, not everyone died ...

For a long time, my San Francisco gay male friends thought everyone they knew would die of AIDS. Hundreds did. Young medical workers in training at San Francisco General sometimes lamented they would never treat anything except complications of AIDS, fruitlessly. And then, suddenly, the "triple cocktail" started saving lives and gradually additional medicines were invented. And for some, AIDS became a condition to live with, not a death sentence.

Last Men Standing Trailer from San Francisco Chronicle on Vimeo.

This is about the survivors, whether living with the disease or living with the ghosts of those who died, or both. It is beautiful. Many of the scenes were filmed in our church which once performed scores of funerals for those who didn't make it.***But some people do still contract AIDS ... and not all get the life saving treatments. At the end of last month, the Centers for Disease Control issued a report on the enduring plague.

If you’re a white American woman, your risk of being diagnosed with HIV is pretty small, lower than the odds of dying in a car crash. If you’re a gay black man, the chances of getting an HIV diagnosis are closer to a coin flip.

Bloomberg

The virus forges on ... enabled as it always has been by poverty, racisms, ignorance and human desperation.

Stop! Are you going to run me over?

My ten-day duration head cold just won't quit, so today I offer only this intriguing video of an effort to increase compliance with disabled parking regulations.
I think this would scare the bejesus out of a driver who tried to occupy the wrong space unaware. Nice to run across something in which Russians are, benignly, leap-frogging us in their use of technology.

What would you do, if this turned up in a mall near you?

H/t Time Goes By for this one.

It is up to us to demand better training and more treatment

When they don't know what to do ... when our cities and towns don't provide treatment facilities ... police too often shoot. There are remedies.

More than half of all suspects shot and killed by police were suffering from mental illness.

And there are over 300,000 American in prison today that have a mental illness diagnosis – this is crazy.

There is a critical and immediate need for treatment of mental health through a public health system, not the barbaric criminalization of it mental illness we currently see happening all over the United States.

Learn more.

Lots to do to end police violence

Activists who are part of the movement against violence inflicted on Black individuals and communities have offered a list of remedies they call Campaign Zero. This effort is wider, more of a coalition effort than Black Lives Matter, which leads a vibrant cri de coeur that inspires Black people to come together and assert their simple right to be. Campaign Zero gives everyone who will listen lots of specific campaign objectives that might help.

An easy deflecting response to demands for change is always "what do you people want, anyway?" We've been given an extremely comprehensive list. I'll crib a summary from Molly Weasley at Daily Kos as she's done a good job of catching some details of a program that has multiple local, state and federal components.

End broken windows policing. This calls for an end to the decades-long focus on policing minor crimes and activities, especially in neighborhoods with people of color. Also addressed are the need for different approaches to those with mental health issues and an end to racial profiling.

Community oversight. This calls for an all-civilian oversight structure with discipline power that includes a Police Commission and Civilian Complaints Office. Both offices would have specific responsibilities and across-the-board power.

Limit use of force. This solution seeks to establish standards monitor how force is used.

Independently investigate and prosecute. Among other recommendations, this point seeks a permanent Special Prosecutor’s Office at the state level to investigate any police shooting.

Community representation. This calls for officers to be a more accurate representation of the communities they serve.

Body cams/film the police. This would require and fund body cameras as well as dashboard cameras. All citizens would have the right to record police interactions on a cell phone, and police would not have the right to confiscate that phone, as is the case in some states.

Training. This calls for rigorous and sustained training, especially about racial bias.

End for-profit policing. This calls for an end to quota systems and limits fines for low-income people.

Demilitarization. This seeks the end of the sale of military weapons to the nation’s police forces.

Fair police union contracts. This seeks to rewrite police union contracts that create a different set of rules for police, and asks that disciplinary records be open and accessible.

Different pieces of this will take center stage in different localities, depending in part on who lives where and what the power relations are between various communities. Where Black people and other people of color are numerous and are able to exercise political influence (usually but not always by voting), it might be realistic to focus on police recruitment, training and community oversight issues. Where Black people have little power (almost all state level decisions), the core issues are likely to be for-profit policing, demilitarization (police don't have to acquire all that armament) and "police rights" deals that negate their duty to serve the people by protecting individual officers rights as employees.

Getting and keeping the Justice Department on the side of widespread oversight is unequivocally a political issue. Minimally, we can't afford a Republican president or an indifferent Democratic one.

Police have been substituted for a mental health system in most of our urban areas. A huge fraction of police violence happens when a mentally disturbed person confronts insecure officers with a military mindset equipped with badges, tasers and guns. Police also kill disabled personsdisproportionately. This is worst in communities of color, but our failure to fund services to the mentally ill happens everywhere.

As a fix, body cams are tricky. As police have usually done with requirements they display their badges at all times so we at least can know who did the bad deed, officers will figure out how to avoid the scrutiny they create. They will also fight to ensure that review of film is limited to their peers and it is never released to the public. Yet having the political fights over these issues seems a good way to build the struggle. It matters when majorities say "Hey -- that's not right!"

There's so much more. None of us lack for something to do.

Move-On is moving

President Obama -- stand up for people who need Social Security, Medicare, and I'll add Medicaid!

This is a tough ad. Let's help get it out there.

Riot weather

After San Francisco's 7.1 earthquake in 1989, a friend who writes comic theater started a new movement, the Society for the Prevention of Seismic Events (SPSE). In those pre-internet days, this concept "went viral" in the way that gripping innovations did in those days: soon lots of Bay Area cars sported bumper stickers for this humorous response to fear, destruction and disruption.

I think about this as I read and listen to commentary on the awful riots in British cities last week. (Previous post on this topic.) The prosecutions and pontificating, the mourning and the recriminations, seem to me just as likely to prevent such eruptions as the SPSE was to prevent further earthquakes. People who've ever seen a riot on the ground know that, in the moment, riots consist predominately of ordinary people milling about and acting stupidly, swept along on a high tide of less than rational feeling that can seem to participants much like a party.

Open Democracy shared impressions from a Londoner, Nick Smith, who writes as Motown. He passed through this scene while trying make his way home from work.

Walworth Road - Only Fools no Horses
... I decided to head further down the street. There were a lot of people out on the street, but relatively few involved in looting. There were a lot of people (my estimate is 30% of people there) who looked as though they were just in the wrong place at the wrong time (like the two girls and the guy on the bike in front of the bus).

It wasn't really a scary environment, I'm not saying that people weren't frightened, but I think a better description would be shocked and disgusted. I saw a middle aged woman walking with her elderly mother through the worst hit area and they were obviously concerned, but I (and I hope they also) didn't feel that they were unsafe.

It sounds stupid to say it, but the atmosphere amongst everyone else seemed like carnival - I actually saw a girl getting chirpsed (chatted up). There were plenty of people (my estimate is maybe as many of 50% of people there) hanging around, fascinated by everything and enjoying watching the 'entertainment'. They didn't seem to be in the wrong place, they wanted to be there and to see what was going on.

I got the feeling that they wouldn't get involved in smashing any shops in, but if there were goods dropped by looters, they wouldn't hesitate to pick them up and I actually witnessed this later on. Lots of these onlookers were females and young kids (10-13) and they came from ALL races. I didn't notice any racial tension, Walworth is a very diverse area and white and blacks were mixing together whether that was in watching or in looting. ...

I'm really angry about ALL of those involved.

A messy situation, confusing, ripe for injury -- whether inflicted by the smash and grabbers or by law enforcement reasserting control -- but not terribly frightening at this location. That's most of a riot as seen on the ground. Post riot commentary from the heights of politics and the media invariably reads false if you've ever seen such a thing.

Social scientists naturally have weighed in on when we should expect urban riots. Their conclusions are pretty straightforward.

The connection between joblessness and violence comes to life in a timely August research paper Austerity and Anarchy: Budget Cuts and Social Unrest in Europe, 1919-2009, which found "a clear positive correlation between fiscal retrenchment and instability." Authors Jacopo Ponticelli and Hans-Joachim Voth examined the relationship between spending cuts and a measure of instability they termed CHAOS -- "the sum of demonstrations, riots, strikes, assassinations, and attempted revolutions in a single year in each country."

Their conclusion: Austerity breeds anarchy. More cuts, more crime. ...

My emphasis.

We could wish that Republicans and the President would think about this as they slash budgets and refuse to tax the rich in the midst of economic carnage. But actually, conservatives rather like the riots that ensue from fiscal austerity: to them, disturbances just prove that the poor are undeserving.

Urban riots have a lot in common with weather: when the right combination of temperature and moisture come together, storms can gather force and break explosively. When the right (wrong) combination of unemployment, misery, and alienation coincide, riots become possible, even likely. At any given time and place, it's hard to predict whether the storm will break, but given the prerequisites -- youth unemployment amid social squalor and hopelessness -- the potential is very much there.

Photo from Motown.

Earthquake, tsunami and human adaptations

Here's comes Yukio Edano, Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary (what's that?), again with his deadpan delivery of the latest announcements about whether those earthquake- and tsunami-damaged nuclear power reactors are on the way to turning themselves into dirty bombs. I've been watching the CNN feed of English language news on NHK World off and on since Friday.

And behind him, there's the Japanese Sign Language (JSL) interpreter. Is this participant in the press conference the norm on Japanese TV? I don't know. I like the idea that if Mr. Edano ever admits that it is time to hit the panic button, at least deaf people will have a chance to run as much as the hearing.

According to the linked article on JSL, the widespread use of the language has led to

a subtle cultural change in views about the Deaf in Japan evolved. The long-standing concept that "deaf" only means "people who can't hear" emphasized a physical impairment as part of a biomedical disease model; however, this was gradually replaced by a slightly different paradigm. "Deaf people" were more often identified as "people who use Japanese sign language."

Interesting.

I have no idea where to find believable information about the Japanese nuclear plants. Probably at this point, nobody knows all we'd like to know and some of the people who know a lot have incentives for not telling. One source that may be trustworthy is the Union of Concerned Scientists' "All Things Nuclear."

It's never hard for a San Franciscan to imagine the horror a quake might leave behind. Clearly rescuers will keep finding bodies for days. I ache too for the living survivors. They may have lost family and friends; they will certainly have to endure hardships before any semblance of normal life returns.

We count on terra firma under us. The knowledge that land and sea can rise up, seemingly against us, must leave inner marks.

Blindness, not insightful

As far back as I can remember, my grandfather was legally blind. With his glasses, I think he could perceive shapes when he held things next to his nose. But he didn't live in the world of the sighted. Every day he got up, bathed, dressed himself, tied his tie -- and retreated to the woodworking shop he'd set up in the attic which was the focus of his life in retirement. If I was very quiet, stayed in a corner, and promised not to move anything, I'd be allowed to watch him use a bandsaw, a drill press, and a table saw, as well as hand tools. He made kitchen utensils, furniture, and best of all, jigsaw puzzles for me. His being blind meant he had to move carefully and deliberately with dangerous tools, but it certainly didn't stop him.

So when my partner came home from a movie multiplex reporting that supporters of the National Federation of the Blind had been flyering in protest of a new film called Blindness, I was interested. Apparently the movie's plot is pretty simple: a mysterious disease starts making people blind. Locked away together in quarantine, the newly blind are unable to dress themselves, and are reduced to defecating on themselves. They then replicate the story of violent social disintegration in the novel Lord of the Flies, finally discover they can emerge from their prison, and mysteriously recover their sight without explanation. Pretty thin stuff -- and a load of defamatory drivel that reinforces fears and misconceptions about blindness that make real blind people's lives more difficult.

From NFB's flyer:

• Blind people are responsible; a sense of responsibility is not in any way related to visual acuity.

• Blind people can care for themselves both physically and emotionally.

• Blind people are conscious of the importance of hygiene and personal appearance; they do not live in filth and squalor.

• Blind people can successfully travel; they are not generally disoriented or wandering without direction.

• Blind people are unique individuals; they are not without identity.

• Blind people are active in society, not isolated from others and the world.

• Blind people can perceive their surroundings and exercise judgment.

• Blind people are as dignified and conscientious as their sighted peers.

Thanks for saying it, NFB. Thanks for my grandfather!

We have a "special responsibility" to disabled people

Long before Sarah Palin and her child (the one born last April with Down Syndrome) were even a gleam in John McCain's ambitious eye, I ran across this video in which Barack Obama describes what he would do about federal policies that assist physically and otherwise challenged people.

I have to say that I was surprised by the quality of it. The man knows the subject; he actually knows what is he talking about. And he has a concrete command of what government can and should do to assist disabled folks taking their rightful place in society. It is absolutely worth watching. [3:40]

Some of the assumptions that underlie his policy proposals:

• "We must build a world free of unnecessary barriers, stereotypes and discrimination."

• "Every nation has a special responsibility to look after those who can't live on their own."

• "We must support independent community-based living for anyone who chooses it."

Take the time to watch this. You'll be impressed. For Barack Obama, disabled people are not some "special interest" or suitable object of charity; disabled people are part of the national "we."