Jilly_in_VA
Jilly_in_VA's JournalThe Anti-Vax Trucker Convoy Made One Crucial Error in Messing With Oakland
Everything seemed to be going just peachy for the anti-vaccine trucker convoy’s triumphant return to California but then they went to Oakland.
The convoy participants made a crucial error when they decided to protest a local politician (who proposed an abortion bill they oppose) and rolled into the a quiet Oakland neighborhood of Rockridge last Friday. As chronicled in a YouTube video by Rise Images, the truckers were flipped off by Oaklanders, sworn at, had their progress stalled by a man just simply standing in the road and, of course, got their big rigs egged.
The counterprotesters were well-resourced, with supply lines amply filled with eggs ready to be hurled against chrome and the unvaccinated.
One trucker, angry at the yolk slowly oozing down the side of his truck, got into a face-to-face with a mask-wearing resident who was happily tossing eggs.
“Hey you got a problem?,” the enraged trucker asked the resident before adamantly telling him to “Get the fuck out of here.”
“No,” the resident replied coolly.
As the trucker walked away in a huff, the masked man calmly continued to pelt his truck with eggs. Attempting to enact revenge for the attack, the trucker pulled out his most fearsome weapon, and began to blare his horn. In response the counter-protestors pulled out a full flat of eggs and, well, I’m sure you can put two and two together.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/v7da78/the-anti-vax-trucker-convoy-made-one-crucial-error-in-messing-with-oakland
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Read on. It gets better.
The 19th-Century Woman's Secret Guide to Birth Control
IN 1878, SARAH CHASE WAS on the lecture circuit. A graduate of a homeopathic college and a single mother, Chase made her living in Manhattan giving talks at community spaces around the city and, afterwards, selling what contemporary police reports and newspapers called “vile articles,” including sponges, syringes, and instructions for how to, in the parlance of the era, “bring down the menses,” in other words, induce an abortion.
Examples of the kind of ad hoc birth control devices that Chase sold are now on display at the Dittrick Museum of Medical History at Case Western Reserve University, where visitors can peruse objects and exhibits covering ancient times to the present that demonstrate that women have always shared information about how to control their reproductive health—and others have always tried to stop them.
In the 19th century, Chase’s livelihood raised the hackles of one of the most infamous anti-birth control crusaders of modern times: Anthony Comstock, the lobbyist behind the eponymous laws that criminalized selling birth control in 1873. In an episode chronicled by Andrea Tone in Devices and Desires: A History of Contraceptives in America, Comstock set up a sting operation to catch Chase in the act and promptly served her an arrest warrant.
This was the wild west era of birth control and abortion, the period after Comstock’s laws went into effect in 1873 and before Margaret Sanger’s clinics in the 1910s. A cursory, top-down look at history suggests that in this period, birth control was illegal, abortion was unheard of, and women were at the mercy of biology when it came to controlling their reproductive fates. Indeed, in 2017, a journalist stated on NPR that abortion was not a part of American life in the 19th century because the word “abortion” appeared in no newspapers from that time (an assertion that was later corrected thanks to an outcry from historians).
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/19th-century-birth-control-dittrick
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I hope Anthony Comstock is STILL burning in hell!
College Applicants Are Avoiding Schools in Anti-Abortion and Anti-Trans States
Prospective college students once interested in schools in states like Texas and Florida are now scratching those options off their lists, college counselors across the country told Politico in a recent series of interviews.
“Students have told me, ‘I really want to go to Texas [the University of Texas at Austin], but I’m taking them off my list,’” college admissions consultant Christina Taber-Kewene told Politico. Taber-Kewene is based in New Jersey and primarily works with students living in the Northeast. “They’ll say, ‘I don’t want to go to school in a state where I won’t have reproductive rights access.’” She added that some students have told her they “don’t want to send money to a state” that’s banning abortion.
Venkates Swaminathan, founder and CEO of the college consulting company LifeLaunchr, told Politico he’s seen a “much greater number of students who say they don’t want to go to public [schools] in Florida,” and that “students will say they don’t want to support that state and don’t feel safe there.” Florida’s recent anti-LGBTQ law known as the “Don’t Say Gay” law may not directly impact universities in the state, as it focuses on K-12 education, but institutions of higher education in conservative states often face threats and punishment from their state governments over speech issues. It doesn’t help that the “Don’t Say Gay” law has increasingly become synonymous with the state of Florida itself.
Florida is one of several states that’s recently passed anti-LGBTQ and particularly anti-trans legislation, as several move to push gender-affirming health care out-of-reach and enact bans on trans student athletes, likely alienating prospective college students in the process.
https://jezebel.com/college-applicants-are-avoiding-schools-in-anti-abortio-1848837851
What If Unhoused People Designed Their Own Homes?
Unhoused individuals are often subject to “about us, without us” plans, which helps to explain what the industry calls the “service-resistant.” Israel Muñoz, who lived in a tent on and off for about five years before landing at Homefulness, explains that “very restrictive” rules kept him from traditional shelters: “The people humiliate you. That’s a reason a lot of people live in the streets instead.” At Homefulness, Muñoz feels part of a family, one that keeps him busy and away from his addictions. “Here it’s not like, ‘I’m the manager,’” he says. “If you got issues with anybody, we cancel everything and we sit down. The whole village.”
Homefulness began over a decade ago by renovating an abandoned bungalow and has slowly grown with volunteer architects and engineers. Eight residents will welcome at least a dozen more once fully occupied. By Gray-Garcia’s ad hoc accounting, building it cost over half a million dollars. None came from the usual “politrickster” and “philanthropimp” sources, she boasts, but instead largely from the “solidarity family”—a group, now numbering more than 100, of supporters and graduates of Tiny’s workshops deprogramming “folks with race and class privilege.” While donations to its 501(c)(3) are tax-deductible, Tiny insists, “this is not charity. It’s poverty reparations.”
“You don’t get to have any agenda-setting power just because you throw down a bunch of money,” says Cecilia Lucas, a lecturer in UC Berkeley’s Global Poverty and Practice program, who has been one such supporter for eight years. Lucas says the model of giving helps materially secure people “rethink your concepts of expertise and knowledge production.”
“There’s something really magnetizing about Tiny,” says Lucas, who has lectured with Gray-Garcia. Tiny approached the appearances as political performances, arriving in character as a homeless person who starts going through the garbage bins. Once the audience is sufficiently uncomfortable, they’re let in on the shtick. It’s a comment on “how people quickly get called insane and seen as trash,” Lucas says.
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2022/04/oaklan-homefulness-unhoused-homeless-housing-townhome/
He 'would be alive today': Police decision in Cedric Lofton case infuriates advocates
An employee at a Wichita, Kansas, juvenile center said a police officer changed his answers on an intake form for a 17-year-old who was in custody, potentially preventing the teenager from receiving medical care that, according to his family’s lawyer, would have saved his life.
Staff members at Sedgwick County Juvenile Intake and Assessment Center held Cedric Lofton down for more than 30 minutes during a struggle with authorities after his arrest around 1 a.m. on Sept. 24, 2021. Advocates have said the teenager, who was in foster care, had been experiencing a mental health crisis at the time.
Authorities said Lofton had been “behaving oddly” when he arrived at the center. The Wichita Eagle recently reported that, as a result, an officer initially indicated on an intake form that Lofton showed signs of “acute illness” and “intoxication.”
The officer then left to consult other officers on how to categorize Lofton’s state, Jodi Tronsgard, who oversees admissions at the juvenile center, said at a March 7 Sedgwick County Community Task Force meeting. When the officer returned to Lofton, he decided not to classify him as needing medical attention, saying, according to Tronsgard, “‘We are going to go with no.’”
Tronsgard continued: “So, he was informed that if you answer ‘yes’ to these questions, you have to leave and take the youth for a medical or mental health release. And then, hearing that, he goes and then responds ‘no’ to these questions.”
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/cedric-lofton-death-kansas-teenager-advocates-say-prevented-rcna25600
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Lazy bastard. Didn't want to take him for evaluation.
This high school is contaminated with lead. It blames the recycling plant next door
As the closing bell rings at Jordan high school, a cacophony of adolescent chatter nearly overpowers the mechanical noises that emanate from the metal recycling plant next door. Students hardly register the lustrous dust – laced with lead, chromium and other contaminants – that settles into the blacktop as they rush out the front gates.
For generations of Jordan students, the mounds of scrap metal behind campus are a familiar sight. The high school opened in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Watts in 1923, while the plant, owned by S&W Atlas Iron & Metal Co has been there since 1949.
“Nobody really complained about it, because I guess we just kind of had to get used to it,” said Diana Salvador, who graduated from Jordan high in 2019. But she’s horrified when she thinks back. “We would sit outside, eating lunch while they were throwing scrap pieces around. And we were breathing that air – inhaling lead.”
It’s only in recent years that local authorities started to grow concerned – linking toxic contamination on school grounds to the piles of metal detritus next door. Lab testing in 2020 commissioned by the school district and state authorities found dangerous levels of lead – a neurotoxin – and other heavy metals in the school’s softball field and inside classrooms. Test results reviewed by the Guardian revealed concentrations several times higher than what the US government considers safe for children.
Now, two lawsuits could push Atlas out, and allow Jordan high students to breathe a bit easier.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/apr/25/california-high-school-watts-pollution
The enormous stakes in the Supreme Court's "Remain in Mexico" case, explained
By Ian MillhiserElections have consequences. Or at least, they are supposed to.
When the American people voted to replace former President Donald Trump with now-President Joe Biden, that should have meant that many of Trump’s policies — including policies governing the US-Mexico border — could be abandoned and replaced by policies supported by Democrats. That is, after all, how democratic republics work.
But, nearly a year and a half into Biden’s presidency, a Trump immigration policy known as “Remain in Mexico” is still in effect. It’s in effect despite the fact that the Biden administration has twice taken the legal steps necessary to rescind it — or at least, the steps that were necessary before one of Trump’s judges got involved.
The fate of this Remain in Mexico policy is now before the Supreme Court in Biden v. Texas, a case that the Court will hear on Tuesday, April 26.
“Remain in Mexico” is the colloquial name for Trump’s Migrant Protection Protocols, which require many immigrants who seek asylum in the United States to stay in Mexico while they wait for a hearing. The Biden administration first announced that it was suspending this program in a June 1, 2021 memo from Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas.
Mayorkas’s June memo argued that Remain in Mexico drained limited border security resources, required diplomatic negotiations with Mexican officials that “draws away from other elements that necessarily must be more central to the bilateral relationship,” and forced many migrants to live in squalid conditions without “stable access to housing, income, and safety.”
That should have been the end of the policy, for at least as long as Biden is president. But then Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk decided to overrule Biden.
https://www.vox.com/23032702/supreme-court-remain-in-mexico-texas-biden-trump-immigration
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RepubliKKKans hate judges making laws...unless they agree with them
Prosecutor drops all charges against Pamela Moses, jailed over voting error
A Memphis prosecutor has dropped all criminal charges against Pamela Moses, the Memphis woman who was sentenced to six years in prison for trying to register to vote.
Moses was convicted last year and sentenced in January. She was granted a new trial in February after the Guardian published a document showing that had not been given to her defense ahead of the trial.
Moses was set to appear in court on Monday to find out whether prosecutors would pursue a retrial.
The central issue in her case was whether she had known she was ineligible to vote when a probation officer filled out and signed a form indicating she was done with probation for a 2015 felony conviction and eligible to cast a ballot. Even though the probation officer admitted he had made a mistake, and Moses said she had no idea she was ineligible to vote, prosecutors said she knew she was ineligible and had deceived him. Moses stood in the lobby of the probation office while the officer went to his office to research her case for about an hour, he said at trial.
The case stirred national outrage because it underscored disparities in the way Black people are punished for voting errors. Several white defendants elsewhere have been sentenced to probation for impersonating family members and voting on their behalf.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/apr/22/pamela-moses-prosecutor-drops-charges-memphis-tennessee
Angela Rayner: MPs hit back over claims of 'Basic Instinct' tactics to distract PM
Politicians have condemned a suggestion made in a newspaper that Labour's Angela Rayner tries to distract Boris Johnson in the Commons by crossing and uncrossing her legs.
The Mail on Sunday claimed some unnamed Conservative MPs said she tried to put the PM "off his stride".
Ms Rayner dismissed this as a "perverted smear" that showed women in politics faced misogyny every day.
A raft of politicians, including women Tory MPs, spoke out in support of her.
Conservative Caroline Nokes said too many female MPs of all parties had been "on receiving end of vile articles", while former minister Andrea Leadsom tweeted: "Really sorry Angela. Totally unacceptable comments and reporting."
Both Mr Johnson and Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer also criticised the comments, with the PM tweeting: "As much as I disagree with Angela Rayner on almost every political issue, I respect her as a parliamentarian and deplore the misogyny directed at her anonymously today."
Sir Keir added: "The sexism and misogyny peddled by the Tories is a disgraceful new low from a party mired in scandal and chaos."
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-61208037
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"Nice" to see this crap is not limited to the US, and yes, the Daily Mail is a horrible tabloid
Man charged with threatening Merriam Webster over gender definitions
A California man was arrested for making violent threats against the Merriam-Webster over the dictionary company's gender definitions, the Department of Justice announced Friday. Jeremy David Hanson, 34, from Rossmoor, California could face prison time if convicted for anonymously sending what authorities described as violent, "despicable" and "hate-filled" messages.
Between October 2 and October 8, 2021, Merriam-Webster received a series of "threatening messages and comments demonstrating bias against specific gender identities" on its website and submitted through its "Contact Us" page, according to a criminal complaint. After the threats, Merriam-Webster closed its offices in Springfield, Massachusetts and New York City, New York for five business days.
Under the dictionary's website definition for the word "female," Hanson allegedly wrote: "There is no such thing as 'gender identity.' The imbecile who wrote this entry should be hunted down and shot."
Through the website's "Contact Us" page, Hanson allegedly submitted the following message: "You [sic] headquarters should be shot up and bombed. It is sickening that you have caved to the cultural Marxist, anti-science tranny [sic] agenda and altered the definition of 'female' as part of the Left's efforts to corrupt and degrade the English language and deny reality. You evil Marxists should all be killed. It would be poetic justice to have someone storm your offices and shoot up the place, leaving none of you commies alive."
Authorities said Hanson used the handle "@anonYmous" to allegedly send the threats.
He is also accused of sending another message later to Merriam-Webster threatening to "bomb your offices for lying...."
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/jeremy-david-hanson-california-anti-lgbtq-threats-merriam-webster/
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Silly as well as hateful
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