The story for the top photo is at Raw Story. The stories for the rest can be found at BuzzFeed.
Affinity
Art, Fun, & Nonsense.
(Juan, CC BY-NC).
The Southern Poverty Law Center has a very in-depth look, following a survey, on the impact the presidential campaign has had on the nation’s schools, particularly the impact on students, and the impact on teaching. Normally, teachers take advantage of a presidential campaign to teach on a variety of subjects. That’s not the case this time. Many teachers are afraid to bring it up, because of the incitement it causes, which ends in harassment and bullying of some students, and other teachers are at a loss to explain to their students why this campaign was so utterly filthy, with none of the ideals and high standards they are taught about. Many teachers are heartbroken, seeing the profound fear many of their students have, even in kindergarten. The article is a long one, and there’s a .pdf available, and a link to full comments at the main page.
Every four years, teachers in the United States use the presidential election to impart valuable lessons to students about the electoral process, democracy, government and the responsibilities of citizenship.
But, for students and teachers alike, this year’s primary season is starkly different from any in recent memory. The results of an online survey conducted by Teaching Tolerance suggest that the campaign is having a profoundly negative effect on children and classrooms.
It’s producing an alarming level of fear and anxiety among children of color and inflaming racial and ethnic tensions in the classroom. Many students worry about being deported.
Other students have been emboldened by the divisive, often juvenile rhetoric in the campaign. Teachers have noted an increase in bullying, harassment and intimidation of students whose races, religions or nationalities have been the verbal targets of candidates on the campaign trail.
Educators are perplexed and conflicted about what to do. They report being stymied by the need to remain nonpartisan but disturbed by the anxiety in their classrooms and the lessons that children may be absorbing from this campaign.
Two responses from teachers illustrate their dilemma. A teacher in Arlington, Virginia, says, “I try to not bring it up since it is so stressful for my students.” Another, in Indianapolis, Indiana, says, “I am at a point where I’m going to take a stand even if it costs me my position.”
From Ice Swimmer, click for full size. Achingly beautiful, these.
© Ice Swimmer, all rights reserved.
Lupulin on hop flower. Click for full size.
© C. Ford.
© C. Ford.
Wild Turkey, click for full size.
© C. Ford.
Photos on Twitter by Nico Villareal.
Gay Pride Flags Reported Burned In Rochester, N.Y.
Swastikas Drawn in Boys’ Bathroom at Westland Middle School. * Police probing Trump graffiti, swastikas at Bucks high school.
Screen grab.
Reports of racist graffiti, hate crimes post-election.
This is just a bit, the tip of the proverbial iceberg. I’m going to keep documenting these incidents, it’s no good hiding our collective heads in the sand, and there’s going to be plenty to point to as some white liberals keep bleating about how it had nothing to do with racism, no sir, and we really need to be nice to those poor white racists.
Pro-Trump graffiti found at Episcopal Church of Our Savior in Silver Spring, Maryland.
WJLA reported that the vandals struck Episcopal Church of Our Savior in Silver Spring on Saturday night. A sign reaching out to the Hispanic community was defaced to read: “Trump Nation whites only.”
The message was also scrawled on one of the church’s exterior walls.
Church Rector Robert Harvey told WJLA that the church membership consisted of about 80 percent immigrants, including people from more than 50 countries.
“They’re afraid,” Harvey explained, noting that church members were aware of the countless incidents of racism across the country following Trump’s election.
Harvey said that two white men were seen yelling racial slurs at Latina women across the street from the church last week.
Via Raw Story.
New School dorm doors – screen capture.
Students at New York City’s New School — which bills itself as “A Progressive University” — woke Sunday morning to find Nazi symbols scrawled on their doors, reports NY1.
According to the father of one Jewish student whose door was defaced, his daughter has three roommates including one who is also Jewish and another who is Hispanic.
Although security scrubbed the offensive symbols off of four door, students at the school are not taking it lightly.
“It just shows that this can happen anywhere,” said student Nina Houghton. “Hatred is rampant. Anyone can be a victim of it.”
“I think more than anything it felt very violating and personal because it happened in a space where we live, where we hang out, where we sleep,” another student, Ashley Luna added. “It’s the place where we’re supposed to feel the most safe in the city while we’re away from our families.”
Via Raw Story.
The rich are busy with survivalism, not only buying insanely expensive luxury bunkers, but a whole survivalist community is going up in Texas. (Where else?) Oh, pardon me, they refer to it as a long-term sustainability community, not a survival community. This is a country club based community, with capacity for about 1,600 people. I imagine we’d be talking rich white people here. I’m not in the least rich, and I’m not all the way white, but I’ve had a longstanding interest in sustainability, especially when it comes to Indigenous people having their land stolen over and over, and their ability to sustain themselves ripped away in order to give yet more to people who don’t give one shit about sustainable resources. Now it looks like sustainability and clean energy are really only for those who can afford it, and are allowed into the country club. I’d be willing to bet that every asshole who buys into this place has fought any initiative on climate change and clean energy tooth and fucking nail.
Trident Lakes is a 700-acre, $300 million development that’s billed as a “lavish country-club community” that’ developers say is “part private resort, part safe haven.” Trident Lakes CEO Jim O’Connor and spokesman Richie Whitt said the 400 planned condos will be able to house about 1,600 people total. The condos will range from 900 to 3,600 square feet in size and feature underground floors.
O’Connor understands there may be an inkling to look at Trident Lakes as a “doomsday survival community,” but said he doesn’t view his development in such terms. “We’ve evolved it into long-term sustainability instead of a survival community,” O’Connor said. “The concept is to build a community that will last two centuries or longer. That means we’re looking at designs that include earth structures that won’t be exposed to the elements.” Part of that longevity feature is building most of the condos underground.
O’Connor plans to make the community sustainable by including “off the grid” sources of food, water and energy. Communal greenhouses, an air purification system and even a DNA vault are also planned for the community.
On the upscale side of Trident Lakes, O’Connor plans on adding an equestrian center, polo fields, zip lines and gun ranges. Retail shops, restaurants and a row of helipads are also in the works. O’Connor and Whitt haven’t disclosed a set price to move into the community yet. Whitt said the condos will be comparable to owning a second home.
[…]
“We’re looking into using different energy sources and innovative amenities,” O’Connor said. “This is not only a place to go in an emergency, but also a place people can enjoy living in year round.”
Via Houston Chronicle.
This picture was taken in Pittsburgh California. My sister texted this to me 10 minutes ago.Our democracy is being tested even in California pic.twitter.com/gDLKw54Lox
— James Thompson (@JETBallin) November 13, 2016
Police in Pittsburg, California said on Sunday that they were taking “legal action” to remove a sign that advocates for lynching black Americans.
Via Raw Story. In other news from the beautiful blue state:
Two actors from the HBO comedy series Silicon Valley were accosted and threatened by a pair of Trump supporters in a Los Angeles bar on Friday night.
Huffington Post reported that Kumail Nanjiani said in a series of tweets on Saturday that he and co-star Thomas Middleditch were left shaken and unnerved after the encounter, which nearly escalated into violence.
“Was at a bar last night with @Middleditch. At the end of the night, 2 white dudes, 20’s, who’d been there for hours came up to us,” wrote Nanjiani.
“‘We’re big fans of you guys. (To Thomas) I trolled you on twitter yesterday.’ He goes on to say how we’re wrong about Trump,” he continued.
“I go ‘Hey we don’t wanna discuss politics right now,’” Nanjiani recounted. “His friends goes ‘oh they’re cucks.’ Then starts yelling at us. ‘CUCKS CUCKS CUCKS!’”
“Cuck” is short for cuckold — a man whose partner is unfaithful. The term has been picked up as an insult by men’s rights activists, white nationalists and internet trolls.
Nanjiani continued, “He starts getting in my face. Thomas puts his hand on the dude’s chest to stop him. ‘Don’t touch me you cuck. Wanna go outside?’”
“At this point, the bouncer runs over, grabs them, kicks them out. The bartender is awesome & apologetic. Thomas & I are stunned,” he said. “This happened at a bar in LA surrounded by ppl. I can’t imagine what it must be like to be someone who looks like me in other parts.
We have our work cut out for us, don’t we?
Via Raw Story.
Kali Holloway has an excellent article up at Raw Story: Stop asking me to empathize with the white working class. Here’s just a bit of it:
[…] Trump stoked racial hatred, but he didn’t invent it, so stop acting like he did because it makes you feel good. The irony of this whole thing is that Trump knew better than a lot of “good” white folks—even recognized as well as folks of color did—how much white power and supremacy means to white people. From day one, he bet that it would be enough to get him elected. He ran a brilliant campaign, in a country where a brilliant campaign can almost solely consist of telling white people they might not be on top forever. He called it. Credit where it’s due.
The only surprise to come out of this election is how many, and how quickly, white people want us to empathize with the people who voted against our humanity, our right to exist in this place. Even before the election, the Washington Post actually had the audacity to berate us for not crying for the white working class. In the days since Trump won, the number of articles urging everybody to be cool to Trump’s America, to understand what they are facing, to hear their grievances, has added insult to injury. Bernie Sanders issued a statement saying Trump “tapped into the anger of a declining middle class that is sick and tired of establishment economics, establishment politics and the establishment media.” I read it at least three times and couldn’t find the words “white supremacy” anywhere in it.
Please miss me with all this nonsense. I’m not even going to get into how this is based on an easily refutable economic lie, especially since others have already spent precious time they’ll never get back breaking this down. But even if it was true—and I am well aware of what’s plaguing the white working class, from substance abuse to suicide to a loss of manufacturing jobs—I refuse to take part in the endless privileging of white pain above all others. (Martin Gilens, who has studied this stuff going way back, notes that when the media face of poverty is white, this country suddenly gets a lot more compassionate.) Latinos and African Americans remain worse off than the white working class—which is still the “largest demographic bloc in the workforce”—by pretty much every measurable outcome, from home ownership to life expectancy. Where are these appeals for us when we protest or riot against the systemic inequality we live with? Where are all the calls to recognize and understand our anger?
For hundreds of years, white people have controlled everything in this country: the executive office, Congress, the Supreme Court, the criminal justice system, Wall Street, the lending institutions, the history textbook industry, the false narrative that America cares about liberty and justice for all. But I need to understand white feelings of marginalization because a black man was in the White House for eight years? Because political correctness—a general plea for white people not to be as awful as they have been in the past— asked that white people put more effort into being decent than they felt up to? Because white folks didn’t like that feeling when politicians aren’t singularly focused on the hard times and struggles of their communities? Audre Lorde said (I wonder if that woman ever got sick of being right), “oppressors always expect the oppressed to extend to them the understanding so lacking in themselves.” For a people who have shamed black folks for supposedly always wanting a hand out, for being a problem of the entitlement state, I have never seen people who so firmly believe they are owed something.
Let me pass along some advice black folks have been given for a long time: stop being so angry and seeing yourself as a victim, and try pulling yourself up by your bootstraps. That’s really all I have for you right now, this re-gifting of wisdom. […]
I’ll stand with Ms. Holloway here, and I stand by Iris, too. Over at Death to Squirrels, I said that my days of empathizing with cons of any stripe are over, and they are. White people have gone full court whiny now, wanting everyone to pat them on the head and say, yes, yes, you have it so bad, darling. No. Even liberal white people are getting in on the Whine Wagon. “But you have to be nice to them! They’re just misunderstood!” My response to that? The fuck I do, and the fuck they are.
Before I go on, the standard disclaimer: no, all white people aren’t awful. No, all white people aren’t unrepentant bigots. No, all white people are not willfully ignorant assholes. Yes, lots of white people get it.
This nonsense of “you must have empathy for them, you must!” needs to stop, right now. The people who voted Trump into the position of president-elect did so for specific reasons, but the primary one is exactly what Ms. Holloway said: power. White people are all about power, and they love their privilege. Of course they listened to a fucking gold-plated idiot who told them their power as Mighty Whitey was slipping. They’ve already felt that, and yep, they’ve been very upset about it, and grabbed onto Trump with a death grip in order to get firmly ensconced on top of the people pile once more. I have no idea why white liberals have latched onto the tone argument; Trumpoids have no interest in anyone being nice and understanding, they want obeisance and submission. They want to be what they always have been in this country – lords of the manor. They want to be able to spit, sneer, and be in a position of authoritative judgment of all others. White cons have no use whatsoever for white liberals, either, so that makes the tone argument even more inexplicable.
I’ll be 59 in a matter of days. I grew up in the ’60s and ’70s. Tumultuous times, rife with change, change for the better. There was such hope in the ’70s, people had such faith in the future. This is not what we were dreaming about. The 80s saw the serious rise of conservatism once again, especially Christian conservatism. I’ve been around for the whole thing, and decade by decade, cons have gotten worse, more extreme, more hateful, more spiteful, more poisonous. It’s not a surprise the white wall of conservative xianity took their one chance to power, nor is it surprising that white supremacists have wrapped themselves around Trump like a cloak. All that, I understand. I don’t like it at all, but I understand it.
What I don’t understand is this hand-wringing call for sympathy, tea and cookies. No. No, no, no. When have Christian Cons every had empathy for anyone except themselves? When have white supremacists ever had empathy for anyone except themselves? Christian Cons and white supremacists are evil people, perfectly willing commit themselves to evil to gain their goals. We’re dealing with one of those acts of evil right now. They did the proverbial deal with the devil in order to get closer to all the things they want, and what they want, more than anything, is to stomp people into submission, one way or another. They want to stomp all those feminist sluts into the ground, removing any sort of bodily autonomy, unless it happens to be their bodily autonomy on the line, natch. “No More Uppity” might as well be their battle cry, along with the requisite god, guns, and bible business.
I haven’t recovered quite yet, but to anyone who thinks that “you gotta be nice to them” is some sort of strategy or argument, I have one response: Fuck No.
Kali Holloway’s full article is here, highly recommended. Also recommended: https://twitter.com/drskyskull/status/796916965956874241
Mother, Jennifer Reynaga — (NBC4 screen grab)
A Los Angeles area substitute teacher has been fired after a student recorded him taunting Latino sixth graders about the election of Donald Trump, telling them their parents were going to be deported, reports NBC4.
According to Jennifer Reynaga, she expected Latino students to be harassed after the election of Trump who made bashing immigrants,and Mexicans in particular, a cornerstone of his campaign.
“I would think the kids would do it, but I never thought a teacher would do it,” said Reynaga said in an interview.
The Reynaga family turned over the recording, captured with another student’s cellphone, to the school district where the unidentified substitute physical education teacher can be heard speaking to students at Bret Harte Middle School in South Los Angeles.
“If you were born here, then your parents got to go. Then they will leave you behind, and you will be in foster care,” the teacher can be heard telling Reynaga’s 11-year-old daughter.
When the sixth grader asked how Trump would find them, the teacher replied, “I have your phone numbers, your address, your mama’s address, your daddy’s address. It’s all in the system, sweetie.”
Emphasis mine. So, this is adulthood, is it? A person supposedly mature enough to be trusted with children? Apparently, all those people who decided to cast a vote for Trump are immature assholes who represent a clear danger to others. This ‘teacher’ has been fired, but it’s not enough. Such incidents also need to see charges and arrests. Here in the lost country, it’s perfectly okay to abuse the hell out of people who are simply trying to keep water clean, to arrest them and charge them for doing nothing at all, but someone who threatens children has nothing happen outside the loss of their job. Welcome to Trump Land indeed.
Another teacher is on the receiving end of a suspension, but for offending Trumpoids:
The Monterey Herald said that Mountain View High School placed teacher Frank Navarro on paid leave after a parent complained in an email about the lesson and statements that Navarro made in class.
Navarro — a 40-year classroom veteran and expert in Holocaust studies — said, “This feels like we’re trying to squash free speech. Everything I talk about is factually based. They can go and check it out. It’s not propaganda or bias if it’s based on hard facts.”
The school district, Navarro said, would neither reveal the contents of the complaint email nor go over the lesson plan with him to determine what the parent found problematic.
Mountain View/Los Altos High School District Superintendent Jeff Harding told the Herald that Navarro was originally suspended through Wednesday, Nov. 16, but he could return to the classroom as early as Monday.
“We are interested in getting Frank back in the classroom … we’re just trying to maintain our due diligence,” Harding said. “We have a heightened emotional environment right now with the election. It’s always a challenge to maintain a line in a classroom.”
Mountain View High School’s newspaper, the Oracle said that some of Navarro’s students that his lessons were “one-sided” and that he used language that Trump supporters would find offensive. Other students have defended the 65-year-old teacher, who has won multiple awards for his studies of the Nazi Holocaust.
[…]
“I’ve had Mexican kids come and say, ‘Hey, Mr. Navarro, I might be deported,’” he said. “Is it better to see bigotry and say nothing? That’s what the principal was telling me (during our conversation). In my silence, I would be substantiating the bigotry.”
Aaaaand:
“Your headscarf isn’t allowed anymore. Why don’t you tie it around your neck and hang yourself with it off of your neck instead of your head.”
The note was signed, “America!”
Full story here.