Some bright spots, and boy do we ever need them. I hate sitting down at my desk every morning, because the tide of hatred and bigotry just gets bigger. I’ll be trying to track the resistance as well as all the fascism. I’m sure to miss things, so feel free to let me know about what’s going on.
“KILL KILL KILL BLACKS” written inside a bathroom late last week at the Sligo Creek Elementary School in Silver Spring, Maryland. One student reported the incident to their teacher, who apparently didn’t inform the school’s administration, which only learned about the graffiti after a member of the building service crew found it and reported it.
Two officials in West Virginia have come under fire for sharing racist messages about First Lady Michelle Obama.
According to WSAZ, a message about the current first lady was shared thousands of times after it was posted on Facebook by Clay County Development Corporation Director Pamela Taylor.
“It will be refreshing to have a classy, beautiful, dignified First Lady in the White House,” Taylor wrote. “I’m tired of seeing an ape in heels.”
Clay Mayor Beverly Whaling reportedly praised Taylor’s post, writing, “Just made my day Pam.”
[…]
For Taylor’s part, she insisted to WSAZ that she had already been reprimanded by the Clay County Development Corporation, which is funded by taxpayer money.
Taylor argued that the incident had been turned into a “hate crime against me.”
Emphasis is mine. These are the people we are dealing with. These are the people we supposedly need to be nice to, understand, and build bridges to, along with the sympathy, tea and cookies. NO. Fuck No. I’ll set fire to bridges, but I’ll be damned if I’ll make one conciliatory gesture to these evil people.
Via Raw Story. And to this continuation, we can add the following: “These f*cking monkeys would be hanging if I saw this sh*t,” * Donald Trump supporters partied in KKK garb to celebrate election.
Nizam (Facebook).
Fariha Nizam, a 19-year-old college student from Bellerose, Queens, was taking the Q43 bus en route to her Manhattan internship on Thursday morning when she says a white, middle-aged couple approached her, yelling that she must take off her hijab.
“The woman was doing most of the talking and she was basically telling me that I wasn’t allowed to wear it,” Nizam told us on Friday, three days after Donald Trump, a candidate who has stoked Islamophobia and called for a ban on Muslims, was elected President. “She was telling me to take that disgusting piece of cloth off of my head, telling me it’s not allowed anymore.”
[…]
But Debjani Roy, deputy director at the anti-harassment nonprofit Hollaback!, said Friday that many women don’t feel comfortable contacting the police. Taking this into account, she said, there’s plenty that New Yorkers can do if they witness a hate incident unfolding. “What we have always pushed for as an organization, and is more important now than ever, is bystander intervention,” she said. “We have a role to play as community members to support and help provide some sense of safety for people who are directly targeted.”
Hollaback! has developed what they refer to has the “Four D’s Of Bystander Intervention”: directly intervene, distract, delegate, and delay.
If stepping between victim and harasser “isn’t the safest thing to do,” Roy said, distraction is a good alternative. “That could be pretending you are lost and asking for directions, or sitting next to the person and pretending you know them,” she said. “Then the person who is doing the harassing is disrupted.” Delegating might involve getting up and speaking to the bus driver. The fourth response, “delay,” might involve stepping up to the victim and talking to him or her after the incident.
In Nizam’s case, she said, fellow bus riders could have done more. “As much as I appreciate that people were asking [the couple] to stop, I wish there was more of an active effort. There wasn’t someone literally getting between me and this woman,” she said. “I didn’t see anyone telling the bus driver he needed to stop, or calling the police.”
With open bigotry and racism now presidentially approved, intervention is more important than ever, on all fronts. If you aren’t aware of the Bystander Effect, now is a good time to learn. We all need to gather our courage, and work together to get a very firm message across to all the bigots: this will not be tolerated. There’s good information and advice: Hollaback!, Guide for Bystanders, and The Gothamist. These techniques are applicable no matter where in the world you are. It is time for us all to stand up, and stand against those who are intent on harm.
(Gretchen Robinette / Gothamist).
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.
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.
Courtesy Dr0ne2bewild Shiyé Bidziil/Vimeo.
Energy Transfer Partners has gone so far as to build its drilling pad for tunneling under the Missouri River at Lake Oahe, even though it still awaits the necessary easements.
The U.S. Department of Justice is about to announce next steps on de-escalating the standoff regarding construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline, according to the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe.
“Today, the Department of Justice announced in federal court that it will be announcing the next steps on a ‘path forward’ for the Dakota Access Pipeline crossing at Lake Oahe,” said Standing Rock Sioux Chairman David Archambault II in a statement on November 10.
Energy Transfer Partners is refusing to stand down on its construction plans despite two requests from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers that it do so.
The company, builders of the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL), said on Tuesday November 8 that it planned to begin drilling in two weeks—even though at the moment it does not have the easements necessary for it to tunnel under the river legally.
Full story at ICTMN.
The white supremacist assholes at Daily Stormer have a list of of people who tweeted their dismay, upset, and fears about the election, with this added on:
You can troll these people and definitely get some of them to kill themselves.
Just be like “it’s the only way you can prove to the racists that Hillary was right all along.”
“Mass Suicides After Trump Victory” would be a headline the media would play up, but all it would do would demoralize the left even further.
GOGOGOGOGOGOGO!
If you’re on Twitter, consider putting blocks in place, taking a break from it, or if not that, be forewarned about harassment, and if you need help, please, please, reach out. There’s an extensive list of health resources here.
Students at the University of Pennsylvania were subjected to a GroupMe group called “N*gger lynching.” But Penn officials have learned that the group was started by students in Oklahoma. Raw Story has been compiling a list that is currently just under 100 incidents of assault, overt racism and intimidation coming from Donald Trump supporters following the election. They range in severity from hurtful to criminal. From signs over water fountains saying “white” and “colored” to a 10-year-old girl having her genitals grabbed by a boy in school because the president told him he could do it.
“Earlier today a number of Black freshmen students at Penn were added to a racist Group Me Account that appears to be based in Oklahoma,” Penn said in a statement. “The account contains violent, racist and thoroughly repugnant images and messages. Our police and information security staff are trying to locate the exact source and see what steps can be taken to cut the account off. Staff in the office of VPUL are trying to determine exactly how many students were impacted and how best to provide support.”
The Daily Penn also reported that black freshmen were added to another group called “Mud Men” and “Trump Is Love.” Both groups had explicit and racist messages. While those responsible may have done this to silence students of color it has only empowered them. The paper reports students are now organizing.
Scare tactics will not work. No student of color at @Penn that I've spoken to is anything other than resolute. They won't succumb to fear. pic.twitter.com/TQfhbw6rqY
— Sam White (@samwhiteout) November 11, 2016
Via Raw Story. Don’t be one of those idiots who tries to tell me it really won’t be that bad. It already is.
Sarah Palin.
…According to reports, former Alaska governor and vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin is a top contender for secretary of the interior.
Trump mentioned he would like to appoint Palin to a position within his administration when she endorsed him in January 2016.
[…]
It looks like that role might be secretary of the interior, according to Politico. The secretary of the interior leads the Department of the Interior, responsible for the nation’s public lands and natural resources. The department oversees land, water and other natural resources, protects fish and wildlife and preserves the environment and historic places around the country. The department also coordinates relations with tribal communities and island territories.
Palin has developed a political platform based on making the U.S. energy independent.
“Energy is my baby,” she said in an interview with CNN in September 2015. “Oil and gas and minerals – those things that God has dumped on this part of the earth for mankind’s use instead of us relying on unkind foreign nations for us to import their resources.”
[…]
Other contenders for Trump’s secretary of the interior pick include Forrest Lucas, the founder of Lucas Oil, Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin and venture capitalist Robert Grady, among others.
Via Raw Story. The Southern Poverty Law Center has an article up about the Trump Team, and to say it’s a nightmare is an understatement. Every corrupt, hateful person you can think of, they are there. Politico is also covering this.
I barely have words here. It doesn’t really matter who is appointed, whoever it is will go full scale rapacious, ensuring we have land which cannot support life, and water that is poisoned. Congratulations, all you fucking Trumpidiots,* you’ve signed the beginning of our death warrant.
* Yes, if you voted for a third party, wrote someone in, or abstained, you are a Trumpidiot. No, I’m not letting you off the hook. This was a binary choice, that was blindingly obvious, and no one can honestly deny that. Rather than do the right thing, you made a conscious decision to do the wrong thing. Your little act of rebelliousness may have given you satisfaction at the time, but I hope with all my heart it has been slammed home to you what you have done, the immense wrong you have helped to perpetrate against millions of people; against our planet, and all the life on it.
"Hey Nigger. Pick that up. Keep my streets clean," said the emboldened white Trump supporter to this Black woman in Indiana. pic.twitter.com/RQjFnbiVRx
— Shaun King (@ShaunKing) November 10, 2016
Shaun King has been tracking hate incidents, which are piling up at an alarming rate. I read about 30 something of them in this article at Raw Story, and I just can’t take anymore. The tweet I posted above is one of the milder ones. This is, I don’t know, I don’t have a word. Nightmare sounds positively pleasant in comparison to what is taking place now. Going by the words and the actions of all the Trumpians, and the children of those toxic people, they’d be just great with concentration camps. They are already busy treating people as worse than animals, they are treating people as things, and that always leads to the greatest of ills.
https://www.facebook.com/rayalexandertv/videos/10207493761174137/
The group “Parents of York County School of Technology Students” said on Facebook that members had received reports that “Trump’s presidential win was announced at school today amidst chants of ‘white power.’ That white students referred to other races as their slaves, and at some points even spit on those students.”
[…]
Social media accounts collected by WHP indicated that the racial tensions had caused fights at the school. One student said that she had her breasts grabbed by another student who claimed “it was his right.”
The school confirmed to WHP that the incidents were being investigated. Via Raw Story.
Racist graffiti at Maple Grove High School also supports Donald Trump (Facebook).
Just hours after Donald Trump won 2016 presidential race, students at Maple Grove High School returned to class to find racist messages inspired by the GOP candidate.
On Wednesday, a father of a Maple Grove student posted on Facebook images of graffiti that were taken by his son.
“He does not feel safe at his own school any more,” Fred Ndip said. “I am not sure what to tell him!”
The photos show a locker door with large letters that read: “F*ck N****rs”
Other messages on the door included: “F*ck all porch monkeys,” “Whites only” and “White America.”
The words “Trump Train” were also on the door.
[…]
“I went in and looked on the bathroom door and honestly was in shock. That’s the first time I honestly felt like crying at school,” junior Moses Karngbaye told WCCO. “I just walked back to class with my head down, I was like I can’t believe people actually took the time out of their day to write something this offensive.”
Karngbaye said that he took photos of graffiti that said “All you ‘N’ go back to Africa” and “Now the white people are going to take over.”
In a statement on Wednesday, Osseo Area Schools confirmed that the photos were real, and that an investigation was underway.
Via Raw Story.
https://www.facebook.com/immigrationtalk.mexicanamerican/videos/1144505275587036/
For those wondering how Donald Trump could ever have won a state like Michigan after it supported Barack Obama this video explains a lot.
A small group of students at Royal Oak Middle School in Detroit, Michigan broke out into chants of “Build the wall” the day after the election, according to The Detroit News.
According to a Facebook video of the event that has now gone viral, “Latino children were crying.” Dee Perez-Scott, who posted the video, said, “the taunts, the “Build that Wall” with such bullying power and hate from children to children. Just Horrifying!”
“We addressed this incident when it occurred. We are addressing it today,” Royal Oak Schools superintendent Shawn Lewis-Lakin said in a statement today. “We are working with our students to help them understand the impact of their words and actions on others in their school community,” the statement continued.
As of Thursday morning, officers from the Royal Oak Police Department have been on hand and will be throughout the day, Lt. Keith Spencer said.
Via Raw Story.
Doll hanging from noose at Canisius College (Twitter).
Students at a western New York college are alarmed after they found a black doll hung in effigy on campus — and they wondered whether racial harassment will grow worse with the election of Donald Trump.
The doll hanging from a noose was discovered Wednesday in an elevator at Canisius College in Buffalo, where the student government has promised to address the incident, reported WKBW-TV.
A black student-athlete told the TV station he was considering leaving the campus, saying he’d experienced similar racist bullying since enrolling at Canisius, where 71.9 percent of students are white and 6.9 percent are black.
The college president said Canisius would investigate the incident and punish anyone responsible for the “stupid act.”
Several students told the TV station they feared racial harassment would grow worse with the election of Trump as president.
About 90 miles away, in Wellsville, New York, residents painted over swastika graffiti found on a baseball dugout in town.
[…]
Swastika graffiti, including the words, “Sieg heil 2016,” was also spotted on a building Wednesday in Philadelphia.
Via Raw Story.
I would really like to think that every single person who voted for Trump was deeply ashamed by what they have done, that there was an ounce of decency in them somewhere, but I can’t think that, because this is what they wanted. This is the poisonous shit you have force fed your own children. You should be beyond shamed, but you are not.