It’s Day 1 of Black History Month and We Whites Are All Going to STFU and Listen.

At least here at Death to Squirrels, we are. Because (1) listening to (and boosting) Black voices is important, and (2) no one learns anything while they’re busy talking. Or blogging. Whatever. You know what I mean.

Today, I share with you a powerful piece from the January+February 2022 Issue of Mother Jones by Lori Teresa Yearwood, titled “I Escaped the Trauma of Homelessness—Only to Face Your White Savior Complex.” [CONTENT NOTE: sexual assault and other egregious violations of autonomy; police, pastors and others behaving cruelly; homelessness: mental health (mis)diagnoses and stigma; trauma.]

photographic image of Lori Teresa Yearwood standing in front of a pond or strem with birds around it. She is wearing a beautifuolly embroidered red sweater and smiling.Lori Teresa Yearwood
(image: Niki Chan Wylie via Mother Jones)

I hope that you will read it, and if it makes you uncomfortable, that you will sit with that discomfort, and learn everything you can from it.

MLK Day 2022: A Different Voice.

Today is Martin Luther King Jr. Day in the United States, a federal holiday.

As longtime readers may recall, it has long been my tradition to post one of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s lesser-known speeches: Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence. He spoke these words at Manhattan’s Riverside Church on April 4, 1967, a year to the day before he was assassinated at the age of 39. If you are not familiar with it, you can read the speech here, along with some of my thoughts on why it is so important, and still very relevant today.

Go ahead. I’ll wait here…

Oh good! You’re back! (I love you people. ♥)

This year, I thought I’d do something different. I would like to post instead some of the words of Bernice Albertine King.

Bernice A. King, Chief Executive Officer of the King Center and daughter of Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King, in Austin, Texas on April 9, 2014. She is pictured reading a quote from her father, before remarks by former President Bill Clinton.Bernice A. King, lawyer, minister, CEO of The King Center in Atlanta and daughter of Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King.
She is pictured here reading a quote from her father before remarks by former President Bill Clinton, in Austin, Texas on April 9, 2014.
(Photo: Eric Draper, via LBJ Foundation under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.)

Bernice King is the youngest child of the Reverend Doctor and Coretta Scott King. She was 5 years old when her father was killed. Her activism has followed in the footsteps of both of her formidable.

Bernice King is a Christian minister, like her father. Also like her father, she tethers the religious ideas in her speeches to secular ideas of justice, compassion and love. And as I’ve noted before, this practice functions to bolster arguments for the religious-minded, but it neither negates nor replaces secular ones.

Speaking as a die-hard atheist, I believe without a doubt that I have more in common with the values of Beatrice King than I do with many prominent atheists. (If you’re a regular reader on this network, as especially if you’re a longtime fan of PZ’s, you know likely know exactly who I’m talking about. And if you don’t, consider yourself fortunate.) I also believe in the critical importance of boosting Black voices, particularly Black women’s voices.

See if you don’t agree that Bernice King’s voice speaks as powerfully to the Social Justice Warrior in you as it does to me.

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Transgender Day of Remembrance.

Today is Transgender Day of Remembrance. If the Rittenhouse verdict was not a traumatic enough reminder for you that Murrikkka is The Greatest Country in the World™, today we mourn 46 trans or gender non-conforming people who were killed this year. That makes 2021 the deadliest year on record for anti-trans murder.

#SayTheirNames

Tyianna Alexander, Samuel Edmund Damián Valentín, Bianca “Muffin” Bankz, Dominique Jackson, Fifty Bandz, Alexus Braxton, Chyna Carrillo, siblings Jeffrey “JJ” Bright and Jasmine Cannady, Jenna Franks, Diamond Kyree Sanders, Rayanna Pardo, Jaida Peterson, Dominique Lucious, Remy Fennell, Tiara Banks, Natalia Smut, Iris Santos, Tiffany Thomas, Keri Washington, Jahaira DeAlto, Whispering Wind Bear Spirit, Sophie Vásquez, Danika “Danny” Henson, Serenity Hollis, Oliver “Ollie” Taylor, Thomas Hardin, Poe Black, EJ Boykin, Taya Ashton, Shai Vanderpump, Tierramarie Lewis, Miss CoCo, Pooh Johnson, Disaya Monaee, Briana Hamilton, Kiér Laprí Kartier, Mel Groves, Royal Poetical Starz, Zoella “Zoey” Rose Martinez, Jo Acker, Jessi Hart, Rikkey Outumuro, Marquiisha Lawrence, and Jenny De Leon.

I also think about Silvia Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson, and their legacies. If you don’t know who they were, you can start at those links.

My heart breaks. Again.

FBI raids NYPD. LOL. UPDATED.

UPDATE: Ed Mullins has resigned his position, at the request of SBA’s board. The original Daily News article has also been updated with this paragraph:

[Mullins] is an outspoken backer of President Donald Trump and visited Trump at the White House in February 2020. He grabbed headlines in July 2020 for giving an interview on Fox News with a QAnon coffee mug in the background.

Quelle surprise.

__________

ORIGINAL POST:

Now here’s something you don’t see every day.

 

New York Daily News logo with "breaking news" banner

FBI raids suburban home of NYPD sergeants’ union head Ed Mullins and Manhattan headquarters

FBI agents are seen carrying boxes with evidence after raiding the Sergeants Benevolent Association headquarters in downtown Manhattan early Tuesday morning. (Luiz C. Ribeiro/for New York Daily News)

FBI agents are seen carrying boxes with evidence after raiding the Sergeants Benevolent Association headquarters in downtown Manhattan early Tuesday morning. (Luiz C. Ribeiro/for New York Daily News)

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Mexico! 🎉

(via e-mail breaking news alert):

Mexico decriminalizes abortion, a dramatic step in the world’s second-biggest Catholic country

The [Mexican] Supreme Court’s decision makes Mexico the most populous country in Latin America to permit the procedure. The ruling comes as Texas, just across the border, tightens restrictions. The decision reflects activism by a powerful feminist movement, as well as concern about women dying or suffering harm from illegal abortions.

Read more [@ WaPo]

While this Republicans (politicians and citizens alike) become more like the Taliban every day, a “powerful feminist movement” in Mexico has succeeded in moving the needle in the opposite direction. And they did so by centering those who are dying and being maimed by illegal abortions – a terrible price to pay for the living to obtain the basic human right to bodily autonomy.

But it’s just not “civil” to discuss such ugliness in polite society! We simply must keep the discourse around abortion rights calm, reasoned and as removed from reality as possible, as we sit around discussing abstract concepts like “choice” over tea. Because that’s really been working so well for us! [/snark]

Wasn’t I just ranting about this very thing on Sunday? Why, yes! Yes I was!

And I said:

The only thing “civil” attempts at persuasion accomplish is allowing sadistic misogynists to continue pretending that picture [of Geraldine Santoro taken in 1964 by police who found her dead after a botched attempt at self-aborting] does not capture exactly what they are doing.

I wonder how many (more) unnecessary deaths and senseless maimings it will take for U.S. Republicans to reverse course? It seems we will also need a powerful feminist movement. More powerful, even, than the Catholic Church in Mexico.

Anybody got one of those lying around?

Hey, can we get some of that up in here?

[CONTENT NOTE: sexual harassment, sexual assault, rape and rape culture.)

You know, I have not been able to write about Afghanistan, and this is mainly because I have not been able to think coherently about Afghanistan.* See, I get flooded with All the Feelz, and flashbacks to the war crimes of the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld-Rice regime, CIA black sites, serious debates at the highest levels of government and across mainstream media platforms about the pros, cons, legality and morality of torture FFS, and every single evil spawned from U.S. conservative war lovers** since the events of 9/11, which were traumatic enough for me thankyouverymuch, and right up to and including the suicide bombing at a Kabul airport gate today.

Nevertheless, I was struck by a sentence in this morning’s New York Times email briefing:

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