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.
Source: Twitter.
The above, and all like it, are being normalized as you read this. There’s an almost feverish desperation in the attempts at normalizing Trump, his appalling choices for the cabinet, his complete lack of policies, his complete lack of knowledge and experience, and his openly bigoted, violent fans. The core of white supremacy is being steadfastly ignored, as is the fact that America has gone fascist. As Giliell pointed out:
Yes, and it’s going to get normalised. I studied my country’s history well. Nobody would have stood for the Reichspogromnacht in 1933 and people just thought that it wasn’t too bad. By 1938 they cheered on as the Synagogues burned.
We’re right there, right now. I’m already seeing people deflecting in an attempt to ignore what’s happening right in front of them; people are continuing to talk about how liberals and minorities must build bridges; people are busily trying to convince themselves and everyone else that everything will be fine, nothing unusual at all, no. There’s even an attempt by people trying to say just how good a Trump presidency will be for women. A little reminder here:
(Gretchen Robinette / Gothamist).
We’ll start with Alternet. This is going to be a long post, so grab your drink of choice.
Domenico, via Flickr.
Serial retirer and Japanese animation legend Hayao Miyazaki, in a new special that aired yesterday on Japanese television, announced that he is working on a 13th feature-length film. In an interview, the director of Spirited Away and Howl’s Moving Castle says he is “not satisfied” with his first CGI film, a short called Boro the Caterpillar. According to NHK’s film, The Man Who Is Not Done: Hayao Miyazaki, the filmmaker has had a change of heart and submitted a proposal to Studio Ghibli for a feature-length version of the story in August.
[…]
At the end of the special, he proposes the feature Boro, outlining a completion date of 2019, just before the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. The 76-year-old wonders aloud, “Maybe I’ll be alive?”
Miyazaki will be 78 when the film is finished, and faces the possibility that he might die before then with a signature stoicism. “I think it’s still better to die when you are doing something than dying when you are doing nothing,” he says in another scene. “It’s better to think about not dying when you die.”
From Lofty: Coincident with The Trumpening, the Snowball Tree started to weep its petals all over the path to the clothes line. I haven’t felt like marring the carpet yet, so I’ve cleared a temporary path instead. Click for full size.
© Lofty, all rights reserved.
Blue Jay, click for full size.
© C. Ford.
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.
There’s a whole lot more bad news ahead, so let’s have a nice porcupine break, and see that sharing corn on the cob is just out of the question.
A scene from 1984 by George Orwell @ Nottingham Playhouse. Directed by Robert Icke. ©Tristram Kenton 09/13.
Donald Trump announced on Sunday that he would be appointing former Breitbart boss Steve Bannon as his official chief strategist — and a leading white nationalist couldn’t be happier about it.
Reacting to the news of Bannon’s appointment, white nationalist Richard Spencer gushed on Twitter that he was in the “best possible position” to implement long-term strategy inside the Trump White House.
Spencer, who first coined the term “alt-right” last decade with his website Alternative Right, believes that America should work to eject all non-white races from our borders and make the country into a giant “safe space” for white people. He believes that Bannon’s appointment means that the Trump administration will push the country more in a direction favored by white supremacists like himself.
Spencer’s fellow white nationalists were similarly giddy about the appointment, and one of them gushed that Bannon would be the perfect “Minister of Propaganda” for the Trump administration.
Former Breitbart editor Ben Shapiro, for instance, has called Bannon “a legitimately sinister figure” who pushed the website to “openly embrace the white supremacist alt-right.” Additionally, former Breitbart spokesman Kurt Bardella, meanwhile, has said that Bannon represents “a worldview that is incredibly dangerous and divisive.”
The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) sent out an email alert Sunday night that explained Bannon’s ties to the racist, antifeminist alt-right and white nationalists. Here are a few of the things they listed:
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).
(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.
