The Natives React guys have a lot of interesting things to say, and some good guests as well. I’ve always loved the use of humor to educate.
Pervert Justice
Just another Freethought Blogs site
The Natives React guys have a lot of interesting things to say, and some good guests as well. I’ve always loved the use of humor to educate.
Apparently athletes who believe in justice will be no more or less welcome on this year’s US Olympic team than racist athletes. From the Fort Worth Star Telegram:
Athletes at the United States Olympic trials will be allowed to take part in racial and social justice demonstrations, including taking a knee during the national anthem.
Athletes can kneel during the anthem or hold up their fist on the podium. The latter was famously done as a Black Power salute by track-and-field athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos during the 1968 Olympics at Mexico City.
Wearing a hat with phrases such as “Black Lives Matter” or “Trans Lives Matter,” or words such as “equality” or “respect” will also be allowed. Furthermore, the committee is letting athletes speak about equity and equal rights for “Black, Indigenous, and People of Color individuals, or other historically underrepresented, marginalized or minoritized populations.”
They’re letting athletes have opinions, and even to say them out loud. Isn’t that sweet? I wonder what Tommie Smith & John Carlos would say?
Tommie Smith & John Carlos just medaled in the 200 meter sprint and yet they wanted more.
Yeah, probably that. Always wanting more, always wanting better. When will they learn that the US has already fulfilled its promise and its time to shut it down lest including too many people spoil our hallowed equality? Next thing you know, athletes at the winter Olympics in 2022 will be wearing hats saying, “Feed the hungry,” or “Health care for all”.
Professional historian of lynching and mob violence Guy Lancaster has an article up at HistoryNewsNetwork.org that interprets the mob violence of 1/6/2021 not through the lens of rebellion, insurrection, sedition, and treason, but through the lens of lynching. I think it’s a great read, although I would caution that I don’t think it’s appropriate to ignore the currently-dominant interpretive framework of 1/6/2021 as an insurrection. Lancaster’s work (at least according to me) should be additive rather than substitutive.
Why does Lancaster see lynching in the events of 1/6? Well, some aspects are easy: they were looking for people to publicly execute, AOC, Nancy Pelosi, and (not least!) Mike Pence to name just three. They had set up a makeshift gallows (which may not have been sturdy enough for actual executions, though the mob clearly had effective means for murdering others at their disposal). They were white as fuck. But there’s much more than that.
Thought 1:
Though I have been writing about it and many others have too, it’s still useful to note this AP story on the double standards in treatment between BLM protesters and Trump’s mob. It’s well researched and well reported. One useful excerpt:
I and others have mentioned, of course, the vastly different treatment given to BLM protesters when it was thought they might inflict property damage and yesterday’s insurrectionists. There are numerous reports, including from Newsweek, about how law enforcement had plenty of information leading them to predict that the publicly-planned January 6th event would become violent. They even had good reason to fear there would be violence against people, not just property. For a variety of reasons, they did not take seriously the need for event security or even security on Capitol Hill. One reason is particularly interesting: they feared it would be even worse if they acted to prepare defenses against violence. Why? Here’s Newsweek’s take:
The Proud Boys and other so-called alt-right have often maintained that they aren’t Nazis. For instance, in 2017 before, during, and after the Charlottesville travesty where the Proud Boys and their allies and fellow travelers shouted “Jews will not replace us!” they also insisted to the media that they were neither anti-semitic nor Nazis.
Well, apparently not so much. I know. You’re shocked.
Incredibly powerful, must-watch moment.
Thank you, @esglaude.pic.twitter.com/rT5CIGJU9O
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) August 6, 2019
I first became politically active when the Oregon Citizens’ Alliance put a citizen’s initiative on the ballot to declare in law that “homosexuality” was “abnormal, wrong, unnatural, and perverse”. Measure 9 was itself an abomination, one that treated anti-discrimination laws as if they were discrimination against bigots, which was somehow supposed to be an unconscionable thing, what with how unfair that would be to the bigots.
Measure 9 lost. The OCA (which then featured Scott Lively as its highly visible 2nd in command) lost. But that doesn’t mean that queers “won”. We spent money and energy and made ourselves visible, made ourselves targets, so we could be attacked intensely for an election season in the hopes that sacrifice would make us safer after the election season. That isn’t victory. Honestly, it was a lot like being in abusive relationship, something I knew a lot about, and provoking abuse as the “walking on eggshells” phase of the relationship grated horribly on one’s nerves. Sometimes one’s fears of what abuse comes next are worse than the actual abuse when it occurs. I had to reasonably fear being killed by my abusive partner, but as it turns out, I was never murdered.
While there has been little to report in local law enforcement developments related to the white efforts to terrorize & sabotage Sipekne’katik Fist Nations lobster harvesters in Nova Scotia – I was hoping for, but not exactly expecting, some arrests on Monday which have not yet materialized as of Tuesday night – there was a noteworthy parade of support nearby. I wish I could say that it was organized by white Nova Scotians on the right side of justice, but it was from a neighboring Mohawk community’s “Peacekeeper” group. Coverage is from the Chronicle-Herald, who is an invaluable local journalism resource covering the attacks on the Sipekne’katik First Nation and the legal/political disputes over treaty rights. I’ll try to keep linking to their stories as they become available. This one I flagged on Monday, but thought I wouldn’t write about it until there were arrests in Friday night’s arson (or the arson from Tuesday the 13th, or, well, any of the violence and arson dating back a month now. But I decided that the lack of law enforcement news shoudn’t keep me from reporting this good news any longer.
Kahnawake Mohawk Peacekeepers provided an escort car at the front of the convoy and another at the rear, said Constable Kyle Zachary of the Kahnawake police force.
The highways remained open, but the convoy did cause “a little bit of an intentional slowdown to draw attention to the situation,” Zachary said.
The Saturday blaze in Middle West Pubnico was set days after police confirmed two raids on lobster facilities had taken place by several hundred commercial fishers and their supporters to protest against a “moderate livelihood” lobster fishery launched by the Sipekne’katik…
Feel free to read the rest at the Chronicle Herald, & I’ll post more when it is available.
It is long settled in Canadian law that the federal government owes a fiduciary duty to the indigenous peoples of lands now governed by Canada. The meaning of fiduciary duty changes with the specific nature of the relationship between the person owing the duty and the beneficiaries of that duty, but in the context of Canada’s federal government and the indigenous peoples of Canadian land, whether it’s permitting the exercise of treaty rights or engaging in so-called “meaningful consultation” or other duties, Canada’s actions have been far more in breach of those duties than they have been consistent with them.
Nonetheless, one specialist finds the particular lack of care with respect to M’kmaw fishing rights and physical safety to be noteworthy even among all those other violations we might list. The analysis of Adam Bond: