Treading Water

The body ASC tried to bury at those crossroads has clawed out the grave and left them worse off than before. They face some difficult choices: try to woo back the reactionaries, and piss off the LGBTQI+ community even further; make a big show of inclusion, and start the long and difficult task of regaining the LGBTQI+’s community’s trust; or try to bury the body again, and risk an even bigger controversy at a later date.

That’s a four year old prediction at this point, so it’s worth circling back to. Has the Atheist Society of Calgary been embroiled in more controversy? [Read more…]

Richard Dawkin’s Discontinuous Mind

I mostly agree with Dawkins on this:

Everywhere you look, smooth continua are gratuitously carved into discrete categories. Social scientists count how many people lie below “the poverty line”, as though there really were a boundary, instead of a continuum measured in real income. “Pro-life” and pro-choice advocates fret about the moment in embryology when personhood begins, instead of recognising the reality, which is a smooth ascent from zygotehood. An American might be called “black”, even if seven eighths of his ancestors were white. …

If the editor had challenged me to come up with examples where the discontinuous mind really does get it right, I’d have struggled. Tall vs short, fat vs thin, strong vs weak, fast vs slow, old vs young, drunk vs sober, safe vs unsafe, even guilty vs not guilty: these are the ends of continuous if not always bell-shaped distributions.

Imposing discrete boundaries on something which lacks them is quite dangerous, indeed. It’s also necessary to survive: imagine if I had to stop and consider whether or not a portion of a wall could be opened via the application of force, and where that force should be applied, instead of going “looks like a door with a twist handle, lemmie twist it to escape the fire behind me.” Some level of imposed boundaries are a must, otherwise words cannot exist, but it’s also important to remember these are abstractions imposed for convenience instead of fundamental features of the universe.

As a biologist, the only strongly discontinuous binary I can think of has weirdly become violently controversial. It is sex: male vs female. You can be cancelled, vilified, even physically threatened if you dare to suggest that an adult human must be either man or woman. But it is true; for once, the discontinuous mind is right.

…. Oooo-kay. Dawkins is claiming that biology has a discrete boundary, between the vast majority of the subject that lacks discrete boundaries, and one small portion (sex determination) which has discrete boundaries on a fundamental level. This smells heavily of special pleading. What makes sex determination distinct from the rest of biology? [Read more…]

Get off Twitter NOW

[2022-12-9 HJH: If you caught this early, scroll to the bottom for an update.]

You remember Bari Weiss, right? She’s behind the “University” of Austin, an anti-woke school I haven’t discussed much but PZ has extensively covered. She’s also whined about COVID, complained about censorship of conservative voices at universities, but most of you likely learned of her from her fawning coverage of the “intellectual dark web.” Her resignation letter from the New York Times editorial board is exactly what you’d expect, given that background.

… a new consensus has emerged in the press, but perhaps especially at this paper: that truth isn’t a process of collective discovery, but an orthodoxy already known to an enlightened few whose job is to inform everyone else.

Twitter is not on the masthead of The New York Times. But Twitter has become its ultimate editor. As the ethics and mores of that platform have become those of the paper, the paper itself has increasingly become a kind of performance space. Stories are chosen and told in a way to satisfy the narrowest of audiences, rather than to allow a curious public to read about the world and then draw their own conclusions. I was always taught that journalists were charged with writing the first rough draft of history. Now, history itself is one more ephemeral thing molded to fit the needs of a predetermined narrative.

My own forays into Wrongthink have made me the subject of constant bullying by colleagues who disagree with my views. They have called me a Nazi and a racist; I have learned to brush off comments about how I’m “writing about the Jews again.” Several colleagues perceived to be friendly with me were badgered by coworkers. My work and my character are openly demeaned on company-wide Slack channels where masthead editors regularly weigh in. There, some coworkers insist I need to be rooted out if this company is to be a truly “inclusive” one, while others post ax emojis next to my name. Still other New York Times employees publicly smear me as a liar and a bigot on Twitter with no fear that harassing me will be met with appropriate action. They never are.

This received a bit of pushback from her peers at the time, which was rather remarkable given these were employees publicly critiquing their own boss. But I’m getting a bit distracted here, the key point is that back in 2020 Bari Weiss had a beef with Twitter. It was not only part of the woke left that was stifling conservative voices, in her opinion, it was the vector her employees used to slander her good name. I seriously doubt any of us paid much attention to that back in the day, as Twitter has long been a target of conservatives for allegations of “shadowbanning,” or reducing the visibility of certain tweets or Twitter users. Who cares about yet another conservative with a conspiracy-fueled grudge?

On Friday, a more unexpected sighting came in the form of Weiss, the conservative newsletter writer who was previously a New York Times opinion columnist. Weiss was in the San Francisco office that evening, speaking and “laughing with” Musk, two employees said.

By Saturday, Musk said Weiss would take part in releasing what he’s dubbed “the Twitter files,” so far consisting mainly of correspondence between Twitter employees and executives discussing their decision in 2020 to block access to a New York Post article detailing material on Hunter Biden’s stolen laptop. Now, Weiss has been given access to Twitter’s employee systems, added to its Slack, and given a company laptop, two people familiar with her presence said.

The level of access to Twitter systems given to Weiss is typically given only to employees, one of the people familiar said, though it doesn’t seem she is actually working at the company.

Oh. Oh dear. It gets worse, too! Remember the firing of James Baker? He was one of Twitter’s lead lawyers, until Matt Taibbi and Weiss realized who he was and accused him of preventing their full access of Twitter’s internal records. Which, of course he did! If you were going to give a third party extensive access to sensitive internal documents, you’d be daft not to have a lawyer present to ensure there’s no legal consequence. Which leaves us with the question: when Musk fired Baker, did he substitute in another lawyer to vet the access given to Weiss and Tabbi? Given his love of flouting the law, it’s a fair bet he did not. So it was basically inevitable a terrible situation would get worse.

A screenshot of Twitter's internal dashboard, showing details of the Libs Of TikTok's account.

This screenshot, shared by Weiss, set my hair on fire. Just by looking at it I can tell it’s an internal Twitter dashboard pointed at the Libs of TikTok account. Most of the identifying information has been cropped out, though that still leaves a lot behind. I now know Chaya Raichik uses a custom domain as her private Twitter email, which likely changed some time between April and December and is probably [something]@libsoftiktok.com. The image itself is a crop of a photo taken on an Apple phone on the evening of December 8th, so Raichik hadn’t been back on Twitter since she’d posted a tweet a day or two prior. Raichik has two strikes on her account, including a recent one for abusing people online; she has at least one alt account; and she’s blacklisted from trending on that platform, which is a good thing. Parker Malloy points out that, despite was Weiss says, this screenshot is evidence conservative accounts are given special treatment. The banner up top says that even if a Twitter mod thinks Libs Of TikTok has violated Twitter’s policies, that mod is not to take any action unless Twitter’s “Site Integrity Policy and Policy Escalation Support” team signs off on it. In other words Twitter has given Rachik a few Get-Out-Of-Jail-Free cards for policy violations, even though she’s a repeat offender.

Notice the faint text on the screen? Based on that, a former Twitter employee was able to conclude either Twitter’s current Vice President of Trust and Safety was logged in at the time, or someone with a similar level of access. Zoom in, and you’ll note the text follows the curve of the lens; in other words, that text was overlaid on the monitor and not the photo. Remember how Reality Winner was tracked down by the CIA because The Intercept didn’t purge the watermarks on a printed page? This is the same thing: by forcing the operating system to overlay this text on the screen, Twitter could track down anyone who leaked a screenshot or image of Twitter’s sensitive internal information. This isn’t an employee-only page Weiss is looking at, this is the equivalent of a Top-Secret document that the vast majority of Twitter staff aren’t trusted with. She’s one click away from learning when Raichik paid $8 for her verification mark, or what her email address is, or her phone number, or … reading all her private direct messages.

That, right there, is at least a two-alarm fire. About the only good news is that the person with this level of access is Bari Weiss. Sure, she could read the private messages of Democratic members of Congress, but her past in the media makes her unlikely to do much with that info. She’s probably not much of a threat, unless you’re a New York Times reporter.

Our team was given extensive, unfiltered access to Twitter’s internal communication and systems. One of the things we wanted to know was whether Twitter systemically suppressed political speech. Here’s what we found:

– Abigail Shrier @ 5:28PM, December 8th 2022.

THAT is a four alarm-er. Abigail Shrier is a former lawyer, but after her 2020 book she’s become an anti-LGBT crusader testifying before the US Congress and peddling misinformation. She’s published private information in an effort to shut down an LGBT club at a school and attempted to get two teachers fired as a result. Thanks to her legal experience, she likely knows how to push the limits of what is considered legal. And now, if what she’s saying is accurate, she’s got the same level of access to Twitter as Bari Weiss. She could read the private messages of any LGBT person or group on the platform, or learn of their phone number or private email address.

I’m not prone to alarm, but this news has me trying to ring every alarm bell I can find. Get the fuck off Twitter, as soon as humanly possible. That may allow someone to impersonate you in one-to-twelve months, but that’s better than giving these assholes a chance to browse your private messages.

=====

Alas, in my panic to bang this blog post out ASAP, I missed some details.

eirwin4903ZWlyd21u863, repeated over and over on all the screenshots from that internal tool.
– Dustin Miller @ 8:17 PM, December 8th 2022

this couldn’t possibly be new twitter head of trust and safety Ella Irwin (@ellagirwin) letting Bari Weiss rifle around in a backend tool that clearly says “Direct Messages” in the sidebar could it?
– tom mckay @ 9:26 PM,  December 8th 2022

Correct. For security purposes, the screenshots requested came from me so we could ensure no PII was exposed. We did not give this access to reporters and no, reporters were not accessing user DMs.
– Ella Irwin @ 10:22 PM, December 8th 2022

These watermarks are meant to prevent anonymous leaks. But usually this is for front-line people, like Customer Svc/tech support, etc. Weird it’d show up for the head of trust and safety, but elon is a paranoid dude.

Without any trustworthy explanation, this could be the head of trust/safety giving out her credentials for the non-production/testing environment. It looks so, so, so bad.
– Eve @ 12:55 AM, December 9th 2022

I’ll give Ella Irwin the full benefit of the doubt. Even though she was hand-picked by Elon Musk to be the head of Twitter’s Trust and Safety team, she did not let any third party access direct messages or any other private or personal information of Twitter users. Can she prevent that from happening in future, though? I’ve already mentioned the firing of James Baker. Matt Taibbi described his sins thusly:

On Friday, the first installment of the Twitter files was published here. We expected to publish more over the weekend. Many wondered why there was a delay.

We can now tell you part of the reason why. On Tuesday, Twitter Deputy General Counsel (and former FBI General Counsel) Jim Baker was fired. Among the reasons? Vetting the first batch of “Twitter Files” – without knowledge of new management.

The process for producing the “Twitter Files” involved delivery to two journalists (Bari Weiss and me) via a lawyer close to new management. However, after the initial batch, things became complicated.

Over the weekend, while we both dealt with obstacles to new searches, it was @BariWeiss who discovered that the person in charge of releasing the files was someone named Jim. When she called to ask “Jim’s” last name, the answer came back: “Jim Baker.”

“My jaw hit the floor,” says Weiss.

As I pointed out earlier, there’s nothing odd about Twitter’s legal council pumping the brakes in this situation. There’s no evidence presented Baker was hiding or manipulating anything. Taibbi describes Baker as a “controversial figure” later in the thread, which is an odd way of phrasing “he didn’t say nice things about Trump and was partially involved in the FBI’s Russia investigation, which made the US far-right declare him to be an enemy.”

One thing I didn’t point out is that Bari Weiss publicly shared private messages made by Yoel Roth on Twitter’s internal Slack. Yoel Roth is also a “controversial figure” for the US far-right, which was reason enough for Weiss to violate his privacy. It’s not a large leap from sharing the private Slack messages of a “controversial figure” to sharing the private Twitter messages of a “controversial figure,” and given the positive reception Weiss has gotten for her “reporting” from the US far-right I figure it’s only a matter of time before she asks. Best case scenario, Irwin says “no,” the conflict is escalated to her boss Elon Musk, and he’s not in a firing mood.

Thing is, despite Irwin’s claim that there’s no personally identifying information in those photos, I’ve already shown there was. Not a lot, admittedly, but it doesn’t speak highly of Twitter’s new Trust and Safety head that she didn’t realize how much a photo can reveal. On top of that, remember that Weiss and Irwin were communicating with one another. Irwin could have explained what the photos actually showed, but either did not do that or did so and was ignored by Weiss. If the latter starts asking for Twitter DMs, I’m not convinced Irwin will give much pushback.

So while we may have dodged a bullet there, more shots are planned and I’m not convinced future ones will miss. My advice remains the same: get the fuck off Twitter, ASAP.

Russia Has Invaded Ukraine

I had grand plans for yesterday. Then I spotted Twitter reacting to Zelensky’s last-minute plea for peace (here’s a snap translation). I spotted the rumours Russia would start bombing Ukraine at 4AM. I saw the Twitter reaction when Putin declared war on Ukraine, in the middle of a UN Security Council meeting no less. I saw the reaction as Russia launched an invasion on at least three fronts, rolling out tanks and bombing airports all around the country, an hour after the rumoured start time. The goal: regime change and mass executions. Like most of us, I didn’t see the warnings that an invasion was going to happen.

During a recorded speech at the State Duma on Dec. 2021, Vladimir Zhirinovsky, the ultranationalist leader of Russia’s Liberal Democratic Party, discussed Putin’s sham proposal to NATO. Zhirinovsky told fellow parliamentarians: “I liked one phrase from what the President said yesterday… he said that we won’t allow our proposal to result only in futile discussions… They either fulfill it, or we’re moving forward with another option… Let it be February 22, 2022 at 4 a.m.” Zhirinovsky added: “The year 2022 is the year of the tiger. It’s a breakthrough, a jump by the Russian tiger…This won’t be a peaceful year, but a year when Russia will become great again and everyone will have to shut up and respect our country.”

I woke to anti-war protests in Russia, and Russian celebrities condemning war, despite heavy pushback. Poland has opened their borders for Ukrainian refuges. Russian troops are trying to capture the Chernobyl nuclear plant have captured the Chernobyl nuclear plant, for dog knows what reason. “Mobile cremation units” now occupy a small part of my brain.

And Ben Shapiro found a way to blame transgender people for it all.

My grand plans for yesterday were scrapped, and replaced with a mad scramble today. I don’t have time to type up my usual thousand-word analysis of it all, so I’ll just leave you with this.

Stay strong, Ukraine.

Stay In Your Lane

Remember this old debate?

Dictionary Atheists disbelieve in gods and dislike religion, but that’s it. The fact that the universe is an uncaring place, that we’re products of chance and necessity rather than benevolence, that we only have each other to help ourselves through this life…none of that matters. So when you say that reason demands equality, when rationality dictates community, when justice ought to be part of the godless agenda, they reflexively throw out that dictionary definition to deny any expectation that there ought to be more to atheism than cussing out gods. They’re intellectual cowards who run away from the full implications of living in a godless universe.

So I get despairing letters from people who once saw atheism as a shining promise, and now see it as a refuge for the same old haters, the same old deniers, the same old reactionaries trying to use their received wisdom as a [tool] to silence new voices and new ideas. And sometimes I feel a little despair, too.

That’s PZ Myers from 2013. This “dictionary atheism” was often invoked whenever one of us wanted to pipe up about social issues. It was a call to stay in our lane.

[CONTENT WARNING: Transphobia]

[Read more…]

The Reviews Are In

And they paint a rather different picture of Shrier’s book.

The author’s incantation of the First Amendment does not sufficiently emphasize her red-blooded passion for true democracy, but for the seductive image of a hermetically sealed and patriarchally sound America, one regressively nostalgic for midcentury convention, order, and heroism. Irreversible Damage is Shrier’s own simpering cry to Make America Great Again. And as far as she is concerned, the beneficiaries of free speech’s historic privileges — shabbily enforced where trans voices have been concerned — can only be cisgender. In this dismal and limiting cognitive space where the First Amendment matters — but Shrier’s access to it matters most — the author can write as she pleases: baselessly and brutishly.

Sarah Fonseca. The Constitutional Conflationists: On Abigail Shrier’s “Irreversible Damage” and the Dangerous Absurdity of Anti-Trans Trolls, Los Angeles Review of Books. January 17th, 2021.

This review in particular had the biggest impact on me. I thought that Shrier’s book was primarily evidence-based, for loose definition of evidence. In reality, it sounds like Shrier’s book is best thought of as a “military action” of the “culture war.” Much as with abortion, the goal is to provide a secular mask to religious arguments. What little evidence Shrier brings is really an afterthought, a light window-dressing to distract from the core arguments. In essence there’s two separate layers of arguments going on here, and by focusing on only one I’m giving the impression that I have no rebuttal to the other.

Whether intentional or not, the engine of the “culture war” is a shift from an empiric epistemology, where evidence is weighed to determine the truth, to a form of cultural authoritarianism where the opinions of authority figures are weighed instead. Hall’s 2018 article is a good example of this. She presents the discussion over the healthcare of transgender youth as a he-said, she-said affair. On one side is Dr. Kelly Winters, who has been part of a WPATH advisory panel, presented academic papers on health care, and been awarded for her promotion of the health of transgender people. On the other is Walt Heyer, a preacher who detransitioned and has been an outspoken critic of affirmative care. It makes no sense to put these two on equal footing if we arrive at the truth via evidence and reason. Preachers and media talking-heads carry quite a bit of cultural authority, however, more than an obscure scientist would. Hence why Hall not only places similar weight on the opinions of both, she mentions Walt Heyer by name but not Dr. Kelly Winters; the former carries more weight than the latter, after all.

That review shifted my entire approach to Shrier’s book and Hall’s writing, and I’m glad I read it before going any further on the subject.

As a physician and a researcher who has dedicated my career to taking care of and understanding transgender youth, I recognized the book as bizarre and full of misinformation. I assumed it wouldn’t gain much traction. I was wrong.

I should have realized the internet has dramatically changed the way politically charged misinformation spreads. Online, it often doesn’t matter what’s actually true. The book, full of irresponsible journalistic practices and outright falsehoods, has taken off.

Dr. Jack Turban. “New Book ‘Irreversible Damage’ Is Full of Misinformation“, Psychology Today. December 6th, 2020.

This other review pointed out something rather important. For instance, you’d think that if you’re writing about transgender youth you’d want to talk to transgender youth, right?

Shrier’s book tells the stories of several young people who came out as transgender to their parents. The book claims that these adolescents and young adults were not actually transgender, but actually just confused. The problem is Shrier didn’t actually interview any of these people she wrote about.

The author’s note points out that she only interviewed their parents, who uniformly did not accept their children’s transgender identities. Many of them were estranged from their kids because the children were so hurt by their parents’ rejection. To actually understand the psychology of these young people, one would need to talk to them, not simply rely on stories from parents with whom they do not speak.

To make things worse, the author’s note explains that Shrier changed details in the book to ensure the transgender people she wrote about would not be able to recognize themselves. In doing so, she ensured they could not provide their side of the story or point out any inaccuracies in her reporting.

It’s ROGD all over again! Ask bigoted people for their opinions on subjects they’re bigoted about, and you’ll get bigoted and distorted answers. Summarize those answers in a scientific paper or an in-depth book, and you give false legitimacy to those bigoted beliefs.

Full disclosure: I didn’t stumble on these reviews on my own. Remember how Novella and Gorski of Science-Based Medicine promised a part two on the healthcare of transgender youth? They delivered, by giving Rose Lovell a guest post to discuss the book. She’s a doctor with relevant clinical experience, and she ended her review by pointing readers to the two reviews I shared above. Unsurprisingly, she reaches similar conclusions:

In total, I simply cannot recommend this book to anyone honestly seeking to understand transgender science and medicine. Shrier has written a book in an attempt to prove her specific point, not to explore the nuances of a complex field. While there may be some legitimate concerns (e.g., that of how to support those who choose not to continue to transition or to detransition), the overall narrative in Shrier’s book is so tainted by biased language and misinformation that it throws into question its own legitimacy. I am also very concerned that this book, and others like it, will continue to be used as a primary source in efforts to prevent transgender youth from accessing desperately needed medical care.

Rose Lovell. “Abigail Shrier’s Irreversible Damage: A Wealth of Irreversible Misinformation.” Science-Based Medicine, July 2nd, 2021.

Lovell goes into two arguments of Shrier in depth, then gives a quick gloss over a dozen-ish others. One of those caught my attention:

“Biology is a binary and differences of sex development (DSDs) are vanishingly rare”. False. DSDs are as common as 1 in 5,000 births, and increase to 1 in 200 or 1 in 300 if you include hypospadias and cryptorchidism. Biology is very, very well known to be a spectrum.

Ah, the sex binary. I’ve been on that beat for, what, seven years now? Others agree that sex is not a clear-cut binary.

Consider the multiplicity of features relevant to sex determination: chromosomes, genitalia, gonads, hormone levels, reproductive capacity, and so forth. In order to say that a transsexual after genital reconstruction surgery has under-gone a “sex change,” we must discount other features, including chromosomes, and select genitalia as definitive. But consider a person who has an XY karyotype and is morphologically female due to complete androgen insensitivity syndrome. It’s not clear whether this person is male or female. Indeed, there doesn’t seem to be a factual basis on which to arbitrate the question. But postoperative transsexuality seems exactly analogous. In both cases, there’s no fact of the matter as to what sex or gender the person belongs to.

Bettcher, Talia Mae. “Trapped in the wrong theory: Rethinking trans oppression and resistance.” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 39.2 (2014): 383-406.

It’s telling that Shrier asserts that sex is binary, even though it isn’t necessary to make her case. It underlines that her true focus is not the health of transgender children, but a cultural rollback to a more patriarchal time. Listen to her in other interviews, and she’ll make arguments about the damaging nature of smart phones and the internet, how LGBT terminology is confusing, and that parents should have primacy over decisions relating to children. Transgender children are being used as a wedge for a grander cultural project, much as opposing abortion is used as a wedge for opposing contraception. This is what the aforementioned engine is pushing.

I’m rambling a bit, though. I found all three reviews quite interesting, and can recommend them if you’d like to read more.

When Neutrality Isn’t

The details are a bit tough to track, so here’s a timeline.

June 15th, 2021: Harriet Hall publishes a book review of “Irreversible Damage” to Science-Based Medicine.
June 17th: That book review is removed by Steven Novella and David Gorski, as “we felt there were too many issues with the treatment of the relevant science, and leaving the article up would not be appropriate given the standards of SBM [Science-Based Medicine].”
June 17th: The book review is reprinted by Michael Shermer on Skeptic.com, with an editor’s note that reads in part:

While we have long admired the excellent work by the contributors at Science-Based Medicine on issues like vaccines and quack alternative medicine claims, they have long openly displayed a far-left progressive political bias that has compromised their otherwise stellar reputation as a trustworthy source. In science, facts cannot be bent or silenced by politics, however well intentioned, for nature cannot be fooled.

After June 17th: That paragraph of the editor’s note is removed, presumably by Shermer himself.

I’ll have a lot more to say on this, if my drafts are any indication, but first I want to circle back to the editor’s note by Novella and Gorski. Note that while they claim there are many issues with the science Hall presents, they don’t go into detail. In fact, what I quoted is all they have to say on the subject. In contrast, they spend several paragraphs defending their neutrality. A sample:

Already there are false accusations that this move was motivated by pressure from readers. This is not the case. SBM had and never will cave to outside pressure. We have endured a great extent of such pressure, including the threat of lawsuits and actual litigation.

If you’ve been part of the atheist/skeptic movement for a while, this is no surprise. Novella in particular has tried very hard to be politically neutral and “above the drama” when any major controversy comes up. The problem, as I’ve pointed out before, is that neutrality favours the status quo and the status quo is sexist. That a desire to avoid drama is easily exploited, as if bigots deliberately cause drama it grants them more control over the commentary.

We will leave the comments open for now and encourage full, open, and respectful discussion of the topic by anyone interested.

If you haven’t had your head clouded by a neutrality fetish, you know exactly how “respectful” the discussion has been. Transphobes have been recycling all the tired arguments about sports I’ve covered in depth before. They’re receiving a lot of pushback, thankfully, but transgender people and their allies should never be forced to defend their humanity.

Kudos to Novella and Gorski for retracting that book review, which was the right thing to do. But all they’ve done is turn a body blow into a slap in the face. They knew the science behind this review was dodgy, but kept silent on why to avoid stirring up drama, and in the process let the bigots fill the silence with their own spin.

This apologia for censorship is dishonest. Notice that the authors, Novella and Gorski, can’t be bothered to condescend to explain exactly what it is about the book review that made its deletion necessary as a matter of “quality control.” For some reason, it was impossible to allow discussion of the review and the book. The claim that the action had nothing to do with the bleats of the censors urging suppression of the discussion is not plausible.

Turning off comments is just a click of a button, and would have avoided the inevitable transphobic shit-show. Instead, they let it happen in the name of a “full, open, and respectful discussion” they must have known wouldn’t actually occur. Rather than help transgender people, they’ve left them and their allies to mop up the mess while only putting in a token effort to assist.

Guys, don’t do this.

The View from The Street

Whenever mass protests arise, I’m always indebted to the people and protestors who stand right in the thick of it. Hunter Walker, for instance, gave me quite a bit of insight into the Washington, DC. protests. For the Portland, Oregon protests, I got lucky and someone on this very network has been covering them.

1. yes, we’ve always had a few asshats in the crowd doing asshat-y things like throwing fireworks.

2. We actually didn’t have any of that last night, to the point where there was not even a single instance of coordinated banging on the fence to make noise (and not to damage the fence). Like, this shit was peaceful. 100% peaceful. No excuses peaceful. I was actually surprised we could get more than 1500 people down there for a protest like this, with real, legitimate grievances that would anger any caring heart, and have no one engaging in any of the behaviors that they’ve used to justify past attacks. No one at all. I was so fucking proud of us before the tear gas flew and chaos came down. This shit wasn’t even 1% on the protesters. This shit was all on the feds. All of it.

and,
3. Holy fuck, those assaults last night were BAD. Really bad. Mega bad. Even, if you’ll pardon the pun, MAGA BAD.

Crip Dyke has been on the case, which is amazing when you realize her ‘nym is quite literal.

And now we’re back where we started, with me telling you about the decision I had to make to stay and possibly be pushed away from the car, and because of my slower ability to flee inevitably coming into contact with cops that I **know** assault crutch users as if they were armed. If I fell, would I even be able to get up? Especially if the club was aimed at an arm or wrist?

I talk with BFF and she’s scared. We haven’t been together, but she has her own scary stories about how aggressive the cops have been tonight. She convinces me to get in the car. We’re sitting. We’re talking. We make the decision. We leave.

I felt bad retreating with others still facing the Feds’ rage, but it was the right decision.

Tonight was so bad.

If you’re listening to me, if you’ve been listening to me the past 11 days, I’m telling you, however bad the other nights have been, however much you thought those nights sounded scary, they weren’t tonight. Tonight was its own thing, a category to itself.

She has an extensive series on the protests, in fact. You can learn that expired tear gas was fired, watch as she ponders discomfort, cringe as she reveals the Feds were poisoning the air, enjoy a few flowers, witness a police-induced stampede, dream about glitter, observe people getting tear gassed without warning, sigh as people fall short, see the change that happens when Portland gets national press coverage or when the Mayor is nearby, listen to a detailed account of police violence, rewind back to when she was first tear-gassed as well as a first set of photos from the protests. It’s well worth your time.

I know it may not seem that way. Click on the first link to her blog, and you’ll see I’m only getting around to sharing these links a month after they were written. Why on Earth would I link to stale news, surely the protests stopped when the Feds pulled out?

The worst nights follow the same script: A large group takes to the streets calling for an end to police violence and systemic racism. A small fraction commits low-level crimes — often lighting small fires, graffiti-ing buildings and throwing fireworks or water bottles at officers. The police respond with force against the entire crowd.

Over the last month, demonstrators have been battered with batons as they left protests. Police have charged at crowds until they’re pushed deep into residential neighborhoods. Journalists have been shoved and arrested. Tear gas, while used more sparingly than in the early days of the protests, is threatened near nightly. And police regularly shut down protests by declaring them riots. That happened twice over the weekend, though police declined to intervene as far-right activists, some brandishing firearms, brawled with counter-protesters for hours on Saturday afternoon. […]

The mayor recognizes the problem with these scenes that play out on the streets of his city every night: non-violent protesters facing force as police respond to the misbehavior of a few. He just hasn’t found the answer.

“the weekend” referred to above is the weekend of August 22nd. The protests didn’t stop, we just stopped paying attention to them when the level of violence dropped to an “acceptable” level. As I type this, lawsuits are being launched against the US federal government over their behaviour in Portland. The events Crip Dyke documented continue to have resonance, and are due to be replicated elsewhere.

In fact it’ll probably happen this week. Jacob Blake was shot in the back seven times by the police of Kenosha, Wisconsin, as his three children watched on in horror. On day three of the protests against the incident, a gunman opened fire on peaceful protestors, killing two and wounding a third. By now, you shouldn’t be shocked at what happened next.

The apparent shooter, meanwhile, was seen on video walking away from the scene — his AR-style rifle clearly visible, his hands above his head. But Kenosha police who were responding to the reports of gunfire showed no interest in arresting or even questioning the man. Instead, they asked him for directions. “Is someone injured, straight ahead?” an officer asks him via loudspeaker. “Get out of the road,” said another.

He even approached an idling police car, going up close to the window, but then appeared to change his mind and walked away.

Brent Ford, 24, a photographer, witnessed the entire scene. “He had his hands up and they told him to get out of there, even though everyone was yelling that he was the shooter,” Ford told VICE News. “The police didn’t seem to hear or care what the crowd was saying.”

Yep, the police protected a murderer. After all, he was one of their own.

His connections to law enforcement, however, go beyond his vocal support of police on social media. In a statement to BuzzFeed News on Wednesday, the Grayslake Police Department confirmed that [the shooter] was a former member of the Lindenhurst, Grayslake, Hainesville Police Department’s Public Safety Cadet Program. According to a description that was recently removed from the department’s official website, the program “offers boys and girls the opportunity to explore a career in law enforcement” through “hands-on career activities,” such as riding along with officers on patrol and firearms training.

Along with the page describing the Public Safety Cadet Program, the organization’s official Facebook account was deleted after images from 2018 of a boy in a police uniform [resembling the shooter] began to circulate online.

Before he killed two people, he was apparently being thanked by the police for being there. Even as first-degree murder charges were announced against him, his actions were being obfuscated in order to make them easier to defend. And while I’m not aware of any Republican amounting an explicit defense, this is a party that celebrated two white people who brandished weapons against peaceful protesters, headed by a person who views all protestors as terrorists and fantasizes about torturing people he hates. They have innocent blood on their hands, and they’re likely to get a fresh coat of it.

We will NOT stand for looting, arson, violence, and lawlessness on American streets. My team just got off the phone with Governor Evers who agreed to accept federal assistance (Portland should do the same!) TODAY, I will be sending federal law enforcement and the National Guard to Kenosha, WI to restore LAW and ORDER!

Portland could easily become the new normal in the US. This makes Crip Dyke’s series all the more vital to read.

The Expanding Colony

I owe you an update to the fundraiser, but alas I instead got addicted to watching Twitter feeds for protest info. So let’s do this instead.

The thesis of Chris Hayes’ last book was that there were two police systems in the USA: that of “The Nation,” which behaves much as you’d expect, and that of “The Colony,” which is aimed at subjugating a subset of the populace through terror and pain. Citizens of “The Nation” don’t usually see what citizens of “The Colony” see, those visions are hidden both by design and a willful blindness. In the USA, for instance, police killed 1,028 people in the last year. Most are never heard of, like Steven Taylor or Breonna Taylor, both because of the sheer number of times it happens and because we’re taught to think of these deaths as “justified.” Aggressively swing a baseball bat in a Wal-Mart? That justifies the death penalty, without trial. Suspected of having drugs and next to someone firing at the police? Death penalty, no trial. Citizens of The Nation grasp what’s happening on an intuitive level, but because they rarely face reality this knowledge is allowed to slip to the back of their minds.

Every once in a while, though, The Nation gets a glimpse of what The Colony has to live with. Being forced to confront reality can lead to changes, but often those changes are incremental or incomplete, and The Nation comes up with excuses to turn its head away again. Looting and rioting? How dare these villains break the law! If only they followed the example of Martin Luther King, Jr. [Read more…]