Affinity
Art, Fun, & Nonsense.
Denver Police Commander Tony Lopez (YouTube).
Free speech, now illegal without a permit, so sayeth the cops.
Protesters at the Denver airport over the weekend were told by police that it was illegal to exercise “free speech without a permit.”
Denverite reported that over 200 people gathered at the Denver International Airport on Friday to protest President Donald Trump’s executive order banning travel from seven majority-Muslim countries.
In video posted to YouTube, Police Commander Tony Lopez can be seen advising demonstrators that they are in violation of the law.
“Stop doing anything that could be construed as free speech without a permit,” he explains.
I expect this glurge of nonsense just spilled out without thought, but still, it points to the ongoing lashing of the whip aimed at all those who protest. Of the 200 protesters in Washington who were hit with felony charges, one case has been dropped. The others are facing prison a/o outrageous fines of $25,000 dollars. Land of the Free. Right.
Via Raw Story.
© C. Ford.
Marcus wanted to know what was on the flip side, and this is it for now. The pants must be finished today, to be worn into town tomorrow. That ought to be fun – I’ll be at the pain clinic, which is, naturally, mostly populated by older people who listen to Fox news in the waiting room at a deafening level. Must remember headphones…
No Nazis. No Fascists. Fuck them all.
by Ellis Rosen.
If you missed it the first time I posted, visit this time: Resist!
Fuck, this is taking a while. Oh well, still have tomorrow! :D Click for full size.
© C. Ford.
Click for full size.
© C. Ford.
Malia Obama (Pinterest)
Malia Obama has chosen to stand with Standing Rock.
A group of 100 people gathered in Park City to protest the revival of the project by new U.S. President Donald Trump. Despite freezing temperatures and heavy snowfall, Malia Obama joined the protester who were holding up signs that read: “Exist. Resist. Rise.” and “Impeach corporate control,” according to the Daily Mail.
Along with protesting the construction of the pipeline, which will disturb sacred grounds and introduce contaminants into the local water supply, the group was protesting the festival sponsorship by Chase Bank, which is invested in the pipeline. The rally was held in front of the Chase Sapphire on Main lounge.
Courtesy MSNBC via YouTube.
Chairman Archambault on MSNBC: ‘President Is Circumventing Federal Law’.
Standing Rock Sioux Chairman David Archambault II was more surprised at the rapidity with which Donald Trump signed presidential memoranda purporting to speed up the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) and reinstate the Keystone XL pipeline than he was by the act itself.
“We were prepared for President Trump take a run at everything we have accomplished in the last two years,” Archambault told Tamron Hall on MSNBC on Wednesday January 25, the day after Trump signed a Presidential Memorandum attempting to move DAPL along. “This nation better start bracing itself for what’s to come if in the first four days we’re witnessing him using an executive order to circumvent federal laws. It’s not right, and it’s something we better get ready for. I was disappointed that it came this soon, because we had worked so hard for the last two years.”
The tribe wants closer study of the pipeline’s potential effects on water supply, sacred sites and treaty rights, he said, and Trump is trying to do an end run around such statutes as the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).
“The troubling thing is that this president is circumventing federal law,” Archambault said. “We have Treaty rights, we have water rights with our Winter’s Doctrine, we have NEPA.”
The Keystone XL Pipeline Will Create Just 35 Permanent Jobs. Don’t Believe the Lies.
For those who still insist fossil fuels are the future, the Trump administration represents a new day for some old ideas. In an early sign of things to come, the president showed his faith in big oil when he signed documents Tuesday pressuring federal agencies to support construction of the Dakota Access and Keystone XL oil pipelines. Each of these projects faced enormous protests and was put on hold by the Obama administration because of legitimate environmental and due process concerns.
Congressional Republicans frequently howled at far less heavy-handed exercises of executive power under the previous administration. Today, they applaud Trump’s move on the mistaken premise that these pipelines are good investments. Not only will these projects not create long-lasting jobs – as CNBC, not exactly an anti-corporate mouthpiece, has noted: “Pipelines do not require much labor to operate in the long term” – they will further delay the inevitable transition to clean, renewable energy our economy needs and the American people demand.
Standing Rock Chairman Archambault Sends Strong Letter to Trump.
Editor’s note: Reaction was swift and strong when President Donald Trump signed a series of Presidential Memoranda and Executive Orders designed to move the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) forward and revive the Keystone XL pipeline. The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe responded immediately, and on January 25 Standing Rock Chairman Archambault wrote a letter to Trump explaining the legal constraints, the support that the Environmental Impact Statement and the tribe have, and the need for a leader-to-leader meeting. The full text is below.
DAPL Profiteers Steal Marty Two Bulls Designs.
You’ve probably seen and shared at least one of the many brilliant political cartoons by Marty Two Bulls at some point in time. Marty Two Bulls—an artist from the Oglala Lakota Nation—has been drawing political cartoons with great success for many years. His work has long been a staple on the pages of ICTMN. He’s known for bringing clever humor and hilarious imagery to hot, controversial issues: most recently the anti-DAPL movement in Standing Rock.
But now, you might see his work in places it shouldn’t be: dozens of t-shirt sellers who are hoping to make a buck from the #NoDAPL campaigns have ripped off Marty Two Bulls designs and been using them to sell t-shirts of their own with no credit, profit, or acknowledgement offered to the artist. Now, Two Bulls has taken the matter into his own hands. In addition to filing dozens of reports to stop production of the rip-offs, he has decided to sell t-shirts of his own.
The design thieves are mostly from overseas with no connection to Native country.
“So far I caught over 20,” Two Bulls said, “I go online, I search terms like #NoDAPL and Water is Life on Facebook, and there they are.”
Marty is an amazingly talented artist, and one of the best political cartoonists in the world, he’s brilliant. Please, if you want to show support for Standing Rock, take the time to make sure your item is coming from the actual artist. Most artists aren’t rolling in money, and this theft hurts, one more than one level. Marty is trying to do something for his people, and if you want to help, and like his artwork, please buy from Marty Two Bulls.
On a small island off Canada’s west coast, a group of people is rebuilding ancient clam gardens.
For thousands of years, indigenous people all along the Pacific Northwest coast have cultivated clams by manipulating beaches to encourage the growth of more and bigger shellfish. These clam gardens supply a reliable and abundant source of nutritious food year round.
Russell Island is part of Canada’s national park system and one of two clam garden restoration sites. Parks Canada, together with the W̱SÁNEĆ and Hul’q’umi’num Nations have undertaken the five-year restoration project. Building a garden looks simple on the surface, but it takes ingenuity, a deep understanding of beach ecology, and patience—building is only possible during super-low tides, giving volunteers a short window of opportunity.
(photo by Chim Pom)
Japanese art collective Chim↑Pom, known for their provocative, politically-charged artwork, has built a tree house along the U.S.-Mexico border. It was built in a private backyard in Tijuana’s Colonia Libertad neighborhood and offers views of the border separating Mexico from the United States
Earlier this month the art collective tweeted out two pictures of the tree house being built. But now, as Carolina Miranda from the LA Times details, it’s been completed and is quite popular among the local kids. Chim↑Pom gained access to a private backyard simply by knocking on the owner’s door and asking for permission. The owner said yes.
The words “U.S.A. Visitor Center” are printed on the the tree house, which was built in response to President Trump’s dedication to build a wall along the border. But it was also built for Chim↑Pom member Ellie, who is currently barred from entering the United States after someone she was traveling with jokingly indicated on a customs form that he was involved in terrorist activities. (Note: Do not joke about terrorism with custom officials. They don’t think it’s funny). “Ellie can’t go into the U.S., so she sees it from here,” says Ryuta Ushiro, the group’s leader.
CREDIT: Images via Twitter.
There’s a good alt on the rise!
…If anyone should know that it is, as a practical matter, impossible to force a willful individual to stop tweeting, it’s President Donald J. Trump. So perhaps he was least shocked of all to see that, on Tuesday night, a new handle popped up on Twitter: @AltNatParkSer.
By way of introduction, the anonymous founders tweeted: “Hello, we are the Alternative National Park Service Twitter Account activated in time of war and censorship to ensure fact-based education.”
The account is less than a week old. It has issued over 300 tweets — on the Trump White House, on climate change, on the importance of peer-reviewed and factually-accurate science — and racked up 1.24 million followers in the process.
Within days, at least a dozen Twitters claiming to be the rogue employees of the government agencies for which they work appeared, describing themselves as the “unofficial resistance”: @RogueNASA, which already has 628,000 followers; @altUSEPA whose bio reads “Environmental conditions may vary from alternative facts” already has 184,000 followers; @RoguePOTUSStaff, allegedly tweeting from “inside the White House,” has a follower count of nearly 60,000. The National Weather Service, the State Department, the Food and Drug Administration, the Department of Education, the U.S. Forest Service, the National Institutes of Health, the Department of Agriculture, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Federal Aviation Administration, the Department of Health and Human Services,: all have alternative accounts with thousands of followers a pop.
The tone is tongue-in-cheek, but the messaging is clear: Climate change is real. Facts are facts. The public has the right to know the truth. Science should not be dictated by politics. Attempts to silence official means of communication will only spark alternative means of communication. It’s a fitting act of rebellion under a president so taken with Russia: Resistance to Trump, via samizdat-com.
There’s also something satisfying about seeing the word “alternative” used against Trump and not for him, seeing as it was recently adopted by Kellyanne Conway as a modifier for “facts” (her way of defending White House press secretary Sean Spicer’s blatant falsehoods about, of all things, the size of the crowd at Trump’s inauguration) and co-opted by neo-Nazis as half of their more media-friendly, less-obviously-fascist title of choice, “alt-right.” The alt-NPS Twitter teams give “alternative” back to the public, for its correct use.
[…]
Trump and his ilk, like Breitbart-alum-turned-chief-strategist Steve Bannon, stoke distrust in the mainstream media like an abusive boyfriend insisting that no one else in your life really wants what’s best for you like he does. When the president is a pathological liar who does everything within his power to prevent government agencies from arming the public with accurate information, something as simple as telling the truth becomes a radical act.
The Trump administration’s efforts to deny readily apparent truths is, as Masha Gessen writes, a means of “assert[ing] power over truth itself.” But these rogue Twitter accounts are a means of asserting truth over power itself. They are a way of announcing to the president — who is surely paying attention, considering how much time he spends on Twitter — that facts will not quietly be dethroned by fiction.
VIVE LA RESISTANCE!
Dan Savage (MSNBC).
Savage announced that he’s launching Impeachthemotherfuckeralready.com, where like-minded people can buy merchandise to display their campaign shorthand.
“I didn’t think I’d see a worse president than George W. Bush in my lifetime,” Savage wrote. “But here we are. So I’m bringing back ITMFA buttons and adding T-shirts and, yes, red hats to the ITMFA collection.”
He also added that the money raised will be donated to the American Civil Liberties Union, Planned Parenthood, and the International Refugee Assistance Project.
“We’re in for a long and ugly four years, readers,” he continued. “Let’s raise some money for groups fighting Trump, let’s bring ITMFA back into our everyday vocabulary, and let’s remember that we—people who voted against Trump, people who want to see him out of office as quickly as possible, people who are appalled by this and this and this and this—are the majority.”
The U.S. Department of Defense had an interesting tweet yesterday:
From refugee to #Marine. @USMC Cpl Ali J. Mohammed takes the fight to the doorstep of those who cast his family out.https://t.co/oSXWGrzsL7 pic.twitter.com/UVlWsaESic
— U.S. Dept of Defense (@DeptofDefense) January 25, 2017
“From refugee to Marine,” the tweet reads. “USMC Cpl Ali J. Mohammed takes the fight to the doorstep of those who cast his family out.”
The tweet then links to an article on the Marines’ official homepage that explains how Mohammed and his family came to the United States after being targeted by Iraqi insurgents for their role in helping the U.S. government during the Iraq War.
Mohammed subsequently enlisted in the Marines in 2014, and is now serving in Iraq as “a translator with an SPMAGTF Advise and Assist team that supports Iraqi forces as they fight to oust ISIL from their country.”
It’s not known whether the DoD’s social media manager sent out this particular story on Wednesday to tweak the president, although the timing is interesting given Trump’s expected new policy on Muslim refugees that would have barred Mohammed from ever entering the United States in the first place.
This is activism. Small, subversive activism, and I hope to all hells that we see much more of it, and people gather their spines and stand up against the fascist regime. This is one tiny facet of the most important thing – refusing to other, seeing human beings as human beings. I don’t know who tweeted this story, but I’m thankful, and this small act put a smile on my face, and kindled a tiny flame in my heart.
Via Raw Story.