Ajamu Baraka: "The United States is fundamentally unable to protect communities from state-sanctioned violence."

The police killing of Keith Scott in Charlotte is simply the latest evidence that the United States is fundamentally unable to protect communities from state-sanctioned violence. Therefore, I’m calling for an international response from agencies designed to monitor and hold accountable those responsible for human rights violations around the world.

https://ajamubaraka.squarespace.com/blog/2016/9/23/the-body-count-rises-a-call-for-international-oversight-of-us-police-killings

Our first year in selfies...

[gallery ids="1133,1134,1135,1136,1137"]

A year ago today...

I married the man who simultaneously makes me fall in love with him all over again, nearly every day, and who simultaneously drives me completely insane... also on a regular basis.

Paper Experiment 2

Charlie Hebdo poked fun at the victims of the Italy earthquake. Do you think CH went too far?

This was an answer to a question over on Quora.

Charlie Hebdo poked fun at the victims of the Italy earthquake. Freedom of speech includes the freedom to offend. But do you think CH went too far?

Charlie Hebdo goes entirely too far for me.

I will very likely never subscribe.

But did Charlie Hebdo go too far for anyone? Who gets to decide? Me? Why do I get to decide what is too far for someone else? I mean, maybe I do - but I’m not making that claim, and if someone else is, the onus is on them to explain why “going too far” for everyone ought to mean going too far for them, specifically.

Freedom of speech does include include speech that offends. It simply does. It’s very likely that a Hebdo cartoon that made fun of earthquake victims would, indeed, offend me. The thought of it offends me as I’m writing this answer, and I haven’t seen any issue of Hebdo, ever. (Again, I will very likely never subscribe.)

But no one was ever actually harmed by being offended. They’re simply offended.

People get to offend me. I don’t have to like it, and I can say it’s in extremely poor taste, and I will never subscribe, and I do say all of those things.

But I still don’t get to decide that if something offends me, it’s gone too far for everyone.

I only get to say it’s gone to far for me.

I love him...

Paper Experiment

I'm playing with the iOS app Paper again...

I didn't leave the Democrats; they left me.

This was originally a comment over on Google Plus, but maybe I can flesh it out a little more here.

This really is the fundamental problem. I left the Democratic Party with the authorization of force that gave then-president Bush unprecedented war powers, following 9/11.

It became clear to me in 2000-01 that the Democrats just... weren't the party I joined in 1988.

The party of Mondale is long, long gone, if it ever existed and it wasn't just a figment of my 18-year-old imagination and idealism.

The thing is, things have only gotten progressively worse since I left the party, and electing Democrats doesn't change any of that. Things get worse for human rights and foreign policy with a Republican in the White House - and they've gotten worse with the current, Democratic occupant.

But folks will continue to pat themselves on the back over trivial differences between the major parties.

The Green New Deal

The national party's campaign website (gpus.org) has a great summary of the Green New Deal that's worth a read. I'm working on downloadable flyers for folks to print to use for tabling, leafleting, etc.

Summary of the Green New Deal

The Green New Deal is a four part program for moving America quickly out of crisis into a secure, sustainable future. Inspired by the New Deal programs that helped us out of the Great Depression of the 1930s, the Green New Deal will provide similar relief and create an economy that makes our communities sustainable, healthy and just.

The Four Pillars of the Green New Deal

The Economic Bill of Rights

Our country cannot truly move forward until the roots of inequality are pulled up, and the seeds of a new, healthier economy are planted. Thus, the Green New Deal begins with an Economic Bill of Rights that ensures all citizens:

• The right to employment through a Full Employment Program that will create 25 million jobs by implementing a nationally funded, but locally controlled direct employment initiative replacing unemployment offices with local employment offices offering public sector jobs which are “stored” in job banks in order to take up any slack in private sector employment.Local communities will use a process of broad stakeholder input and democratic decision-making to fairly implement these programs. Pay-to-play prohibitions will ensure that campaign contributions or lobbying favors do not impact decision-making. We will end unemployment in America once and for all by guaranteeing a job at a living wage for every American willing and able to work.


• Worker’s rights including the right to a living wage, to a safe workplace, to fair trade, and to organize a union at work without fear of firing or reprisal.


• The right to quality health care which will be achieved through a single-payer Medicare-for-All program.


• The right to a tuition-free, quality, federally funded, local controlled public education system from pre-school through college. We will also forgive student loan debt from the current era of unaffordable college education.


• The right to decent affordable housing, including an immediate halt to all foreclosures and evictions. We will:
  
  
  
  • create a federal bank with local branches to take over homes with distressed mortgages and either restructure the mortgages to affordable levels, or if the occupants cannot afford a mortgage, rent homes to the occupants;
  
  
  • expand rental and home ownership assistance;
  
  
  • create ample public housing; and,
  
  
  • offer capital grants to non-profit developers of affordable housing until all people can obtain decent housing at no more than 25% of their income.
  
  
  
  


• The right to accessible and affordable utilities – heat, electricity, phone, internet, and public transportation – through democratically run, publicly owned utilities that operate at cost, not for profit.


• The right to fair taxation that’s distributed in proportion to ability to pay. In addition, corporate tax subsidies will be made transparent by detailing them in public budgets where they can be scrutinized, not hidden as tax breaks.

A Green Transition

The second priority of the Green New Deal is a Green Transition Program that will convert the old, gray economy into a new, sustainable economy that is environmentally sound, economically viable and socially responsible. We will:

• Invest in green business by providing grants and low-interest loans to grow green businesses and cooperatives, with an emphasis on small, locally-based companies that keep the wealth created by local labor circulating in the community rather than being drained off to enrich absentee investors.


• Prioritize green research by redirecting research funds from fossil fuels and other dead-end industries toward research in wind, solar and geothermal. We will invest in research in sustainable, nontoxic materials, closed-loop cycles that eliminate waste and pollution, as well as organic agriculture, permaculture, and sustainable forestry.


• Provide green jobs by enacting the Full Employment Program which will directly provide 16 million jobs in sustainable energy and energy efficiency retrofitting, mass transit and “complete streets” that promote safe bike and pedestrian traffic, regional food systems based on sustainable organic agriculture, and clean manufacturing.

Real Financial Reform

The takeover of our economy by big banks and well-connected financiers has destabilized both our democracy and our economy. It’s time to take Wall Street out of the driver’s seat and to free the truly productive segments of working America to make this economy work for all of us. Real Financial Reform will:

• Relieve the debt overhang holding back the economy by reducing homeowner and student debt burdens.


• Democratize monetary policy to bring about public control of the money supply and credit creation. This means we’ll nationalize the private bank-dominated Federal Reserve Banks and place them under a Monetary Authority within the Treasury Department.


• Break up the oversized banks that are “too big to fail.”


• End taxpayer-funded bailouts for banks, insurers, and other financial companies. We’ll use the FDIC resolution process for failed banks to reopen them as public banks where possible after failed loans and underlying assets are auctioned off.


• Regulate all financial derivatives and require them to be traded on open exchanges.


• Restore the Glass-Steagall separation of depository commercial banks from speculative investment banks.


• Establish a 90% tax on bonuses for bailed out bankers.


• Support the formation of federal, state, and municipal public-owned banks that function as non-profit utilities.

Under the Green New Deal we will start building a financial system that is open, honest, stable, and serves the real economy rather than the phony economy of high finance.

A Functioning Democracy

We won’t get these vital reforms without a fourth and final set of reforms to give us a real, functioning democracy. Just as we are replacing the old economy with a new one, we need a new politics to restore the promise of American democracy. The New Green Deal will:

• Revoke corporate personhood by amending our Constitution to make clear that corporations are not persons and money is not speech. Those rights belong to living, breathing human beings – not to business entities controlled by the wealthy.


• Protect our right to vote by supporting Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr.’s proposed “Right to Vote Amendment,” to clarify to the Supreme Court that yes, we do have a constitutional right to vote.


• Enact the Voter Bill of Rights that will:
  
  
  
  • guarantee us a voter-marked paper ballot for all voting;
  
  
  • require that all votes are counted before election results are released;
  
  
  • replace partisan oversight of elections with non-partisan election commissions;
  
  
  • celebrate our democratic aspirations by making Election Day a national holiday;
  
  
  • bring simplified, safe same-day voter registration to the nation so that no qualified voter is barred from the polls;
  
  
  • do away with so-called “winner take all” elections in which the “winner” does not have the support of most of the voters, and replace that system with instant runoff voting and proportional representation, systems most advanced countries now use to good effect;
  
  
  • replace big money control of election campaigns with full public financing and free and equal access to the airwaves;
  
  
  • guarantee equal access to the ballot and to the debates to all qualified candidates;
  
  
  • abolish the Electoral College and implement direct election of the President;
  
  
  • restore the vote to ex-offenders who’ve paid their debt to society; and,
  
  
  • enact Statehood for the District of Columbia so that those Americans have representation in Congress and full rights to self rule like the rest of us.
  
  
  
  


• Protect local democracy and democratic rights by commissioning a thorough review of federal preemption law and its impact on the practice of local democracy in the United States. This review will put at its center the “democracy question” – that is, what level of government is most open to democratic participation and most suited to protecting democratic rights.


• Create a Corporation for Economic Democracy, a new federal corporation (like the Corporation for Public Broadcasting) to provide publicity, training, education, and direct financing for cooperative development and for democratic reforms to make government agencies, private associations, and business enterprises more participatory.


• Strengthen media democracy by expanding federal support for locally-owned broadcast media and local print media.


• Protect our personal liberty and freedoms by:
  
  
  
  • repealing the Patriot Act and those parts of the National Defense Authorization Act that violate our civil liberties;
  
  
  • prohibiting the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI from conspiring with local police forces to suppress our freedoms of assembly and of speech; and,
  
  
  • ending the war on immigrants – including the cruel, so-called “secure communities” program.
  
  
  
  


• Rein in the military-industrial complex by reducing military spending by 50% and closing U.S. military bases around the world; restoring the National Guard as the centerpiece of our system of national defense; and, creating a new round of nuclear disarmament initiatives. Let us not rest until we have pulled our nation back from the brink, and until we have secured the peaceful, just, green future we all deserve.

For more information, visit gpus.org - Green New Deal.

Download this document:
Apple Pages | Word | PDF

Fairytale Candidate?

Kerri has elk!

My very good friend sent me great shots of the deer and elk grazing just out her window.

There's also this...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aYVqATFQMAI&feature=youtu.be

Can gays get along with straight wives?

This was an answer over on Quora.

Can gays get along with straight wives?

For any question that takes the form, “can members of group x do y?” the answer is nearly always going to be, “some will. Some won't.”

The point, as always, is that in any case where you're attempting to generalize all gay people into one monolithic class if some members of x do, indeed do y, that still doesn't tell you anything useful about the class as a whole. It only says something about those members of the class who are x and do, in fact, do y.

Can some gay men (presumably men, given the wording of the question) get along with straight wives? Yes, some can. Closeted gay people of any gender have been marrying people of other genders for as long as human societies have sought to prevent homosexuality.

It hasn't ever actually prevented anything, but that's a different discussion.

But the fact that some gay men might be happy in a heterosexual relationship doesn't really tell you much. It only addresses that subgroup of gay men who can be happy in a straight relationship. It doesn't say anything about gay people in general, or gay people as a whole. In parts of the world where being gay probably won't get you killed, where we can live more openly, very, very few of opt for relationships with partners who aren't the gender(s) we're attracted to.

In other places, where being openly gay is actively dangerous, sure, lots of gay men will opt for straight marriages. That doesn't mean much of anything other than a desire to avoid getting hurt or killed.

It doesn't suggest that those people wouldn't opt for a same-gender relationship given the right circumstances.

I could marry a woman… we'd probably get along fine. I generally think women are awesome.

But it wouldn't be anything like my marriage with my husband, and I would actively want that relationship with a man, even if I got along well enough with a woman.

"I saw the trash bag was moving..."

Really? Just... really? Sigh.

[fbvideo link="https://www.facebook.com/malissa.s.lewis/videos/10210445303079359/" onlyvideo="0"]


Via The Dodo
https://www.facebook.com/malissa.s.lewis/videos/10210445303079359/

"Saudi Arabia is bombing my country..."

This is from a Code Pink action alert. They're calling for folks to share their Yemen videos all over social media. If you're willing to help, I greatly appreciate it.

Jill never asked...

Why is it offensive when cis men say they are lesbians trapped in a man's body?

This was an answer over on Quora.

Why is it offensive when cis men say they are lesbians trapped in a man's body?

For the same reasons it would annoy or offend my trans friends if I described myself as a straight woman trapped in a man’s body.

I’m gay. I don’t experience gender dysphoria.

I don’t know what that feels like. I will never, ever know what that feels like. It’s not mine to make casual, offhand remarks about. It’s a painful experience that isn’t mine, that I only ever know about through inference. I’ve had friends compare it to various things, but none of that really tells me what the experience is. It just sort of tells me what some of that experience is like.

But I can talk, all day long about swimming. That will never be the same thing as experiencing the act of swimming.

In much the same way that I can’t ever really get a straight person to understand homophobia, the lived daily reality of it in the way I experience it, I will never, ever understand gender dysphoria. Ever.

I can sympathize, but I will never be able to actually empathize.

I am not straight. I am not a woman. I am nothing trapped in some other body. I’m a cis man; I’m a gay man. I sympathize with my friends when they say that gender dysphoria is painful - painful enough to risk all of their relationships by coming out and transitioning. That I do know something about, because I’m queer. We can share that.

But that doesn’t mean I understand dysphoria, and it’s hurtful for me to treat it like a casual joke as if I do.

How do you feel about the term "fag hag"?

This was an answer over on Quora.

How do you feel about the term "fag hag"?

I have friends who embrace the term, and friends who don’t. It’s up to them; it isn’t up to me. If I’m with friends who self-describe as faghags, we all use it - much like gay men who are comfortable with each other will call each other faggot and queen. (I do this, too, depending on the social circle I’m with.)

But if somebody dislikes it, I won’t use it with them.

I don’t feel like it’s inherently offensive, just because it’s historically been a slur, or connected to a slur. I think there’s power in reclaiming slurs across the board.

But it’s not up to me to tell a specific woman it’s okay because I think it’s “reclaiming.”

It’s only useful in that way if it’s chosen as such.

Madonna: “Let’s face it, I’m a big ‘ole faghag.”

Madonna shouldn’t call herself what we all know she is? Eh. I don’t see it. Others will object, and that’s fine, but if it’s something we choose, and embrace, why is it insulting? Because the word “hag” has shitty connotations? Because “fag” does? Okay. But there’s something really amazing, and particularly special about the women who hang around in the gay scene, the women who are there because they specifically want to be, because they’re us, too. If they want to embrace “faghag” in much the way I embrace “fag,” I think it’s fantastic. If you don’t, you don’t. That’s okay.

Why can black people use the "N-word" in casual conversation, but white people should not?

This turned into one of my semi-popular answers over on Quora.

"Nigger" (racial slur): Why can black people use the "N-word" in casual conversation, but white people should not?

The reality you’re going to have to face is that not all words are open to you.

You don’t get to call me “Queen” or “faggot,” even if my friends get to.

You and I don’t get to call trans women “tranny,” even if other trans people get to.

Not all terms are available to you. That’s a simple fact. Get used to it.

You don’t own the emotional reality of those terms, for those people. They own them. You didn’t grow up hearing “faggot” used as a slur and knowing, to the bones, that that was directed at you. You didn’t grow up a gender-variant gay boy hearing “faggot” and related slurs the way they were used to slur me.

I get to reclaim those terms, for my use. They aren’t for you. They don’t describe you. They’re not open to you.

Similarly, you aren’t black. You haven’t grown up hearing shit like, “the only good nigger is a dead nigger,” or “you know, I don’t mind blacks, it’s the niggers I can’t stand.”

The emotional reality of those terms isn’t something you ever experienced, and it isn’t something you ever will experience, because you are not that person.

Just as you aren’t gay, if you’re a straight guy, wondering why it’s all right when my friends call me a fag, but it’s not okay if you do it.

It’s not okay.

Some words aren’t open to you. That’s all you really need to understand.

If that feels unfair to you, try to imagine living in a world where you aren’t entitled to extra shit just because your skin is brown.

How do guys become gay?

This was an answer over on Quora.

How do guys become gay?

By recognizing that they already are gay.

Before I could put a finger (teehee!) on how I specifically felt different from other, “normal” boys, I knew I was different. Apparently, as a tot, I didn't go through an “eeeew, girls have cooties” phase. I was friends with several of the neighborhood girls.

They were awesome. They cared not a whit that I was a boy and was every bit as interested in their dolls and silly plastic jewelry as they were. (Mom put a stop to that, however. I may well have been the most obviously pink boy ever, but that didn't mean she wouldn't try to cover over all of that with liberal coats of any other color.)

A little later, when folks would talk to me about when I grew up and got married, and had kids of my own… I knew, somewhere deep that wouldn't happen. My nine and ten year old crushes were all boys. My fourth grade male teacher was awesome in ways I had already learned I needed to keep to myself. A fourth grade boy with a crush on his female teacher is regarded as cute…but his male teacher? Don't ever let that slip.

A short while later, when the hormones and adolescence kicked in, that interest in boys became overtly sexual. I wasn't just the somewhat fey, pink boy who didn't enjoy “boy things”...I was gay like a box o’ Christmas lights. Visible from space gay. Diamond tiara and combat boots gay.

Pretty freaking gay.

But I didn't become anything so much as realize, and eventually accept that I was, and had been all along.

Does your cat meow back to you when you talk to it?

This was an answer over on Quora.

Does your cat meow back to you when you talk to it?

It totally depends on which of our cats I'm talking to.

If it's Jasper, he talks to everyone. He talks back if you talk to him, and he's quite happy to initiate a conversation. He'll talk to new people, people he knows, the bird on the feeder outside, the bathroom door when it's closed, some random spot on the wall… He's chatty, that one.

Orlando only ever talks when he's hungry, but he's constantly hungry. If either of us set foot anywhere that might eventually lead to the kitchen, he heads straight for his bowl and announces its emptiness. If you talk to him, he will look you in the face and tell you again. And again. And again, just in case you didn't get it the first 167 times.

Paco was a chatty cat when he first came to us, but he's quieted down now that he's settled into our house. About the only time he talks now is when we're getting out of the shower, and I suspect that's more about the shower door being closed, than anything else. (Himself does not approve.)

Iggy ? rarely ever talked. If she was vocal, something was wrong.

What is the appropriate bedtime for a 17 year old?

This was an answer over on Quora.

What is the appropriate bedtime for a 17 year old?

Mom sat us both down when we turned 16.

“If you're old enough to drive, you're old enough to get yourself out of trouble.”

What she meant was: we were out of the house, on our own, at least as far as getting to school or jobs were concerned. (I don't drive, but the conversation was largely the same.) We each knew - to a certainty - that our mother meant it when she said, starting at about age 13, “if you get yourself in trouble, I will not bail you out. If you drive drunk, you're spending the night in jail, or until your hearing. If you get someone pregnant, you will support your child, under your roof. If you steal or do drugs, and you get caught, I will not bail you out. I will visit you in jail.”

We didn't test her. We'd been raised from infancy that that particular tone of voice meant she wasn't kidding around, and she meant *every last word *of what she was telling us.

Neither of us were stupid enough to call her bluff, because we *knew *she wasn't bluffing.
Now: bedtimes and curfews. Once we were old enough to drive, or get ourselves around, hard curfews ended. We could work until 10, hang around with friends until 11 or midnight (or later) but we weren't to wake her or cause a disturbance coming home. We were expected to maintain our grades, and hold a job such that we could continue paying room and board.

If we screwed around with either of those, she might have instituted a curfew, but I doubt it. She was pretty much set on the idea that we were either responsible teenagers, or not, but it was up to us to manage our time, keep our grades up and keep a job.

When J. blew off his first job and lost it, mom kept a running tally, and he was to pay back rent when he had a paycheck again. (And again, she wasn't kidding around.)
At 17 your ability to parent her like a six year old has ceased. Your daughter is nearly an adult, and will be one inside of a year.

You need to start preparing her to be one. You need to have started years earlier, but if you expect to keep her following rules that might make sense for younger children, you're not doing that. She needs some adult expectations and with those, some adult consequences for failing to meet them. If she isn't waking up for school, that is *her problem. *Make sure your 17 old is prepared to move out, or she never will.

Why am I progressive?

This was an answer I posted over on Quora.

Why are you a progressive?

Largely because the things I care about, and the policies that I think make a better, more functional society for nearly everyone are labelled “progressive.”

If my general political goals (briefly summarizing, that’s prioritizing environmental protection, global climate change, feminism, LGBTQ equality, racial justice, economic equality, and a complete overhaul of our foreign policy to stress human rights over US imperialism) were labelled “neoconservative,” or “juniper berries,” I’d use those labels instead.

I don’t particularly care about the label. It’s useful to have something other than “liberal,” when a small minority of European Quorans get pedantic about their liberalism being more or less equivalent to our libertarianism, but I’m not attached to the label per se.

If you’re asking why I care about those things, regardless of the label, it’s because I’m of the firm belief, based on what I can see with my own eyes, that societies that prioritize these things work better, for the vast majority of the populace, than societies that don’t.

What Other People Think

Stashing this here for future use...

The US has a debt to the Colombian people

This is why we need to radically reconsider our drug policy, and take all necessary steps, including legalization, to end the "War on Drugs."

The U.S. has a debt to the Colombian people because it also played a dirty role in this cruel war. The U.S. trained and supplied the Colombian military with billions of our tax dollars as it committed human rights abuses against its own people. We know that the so-called “War on Drugs” was really a war on our people in the United States and in Colombia.

https://ajamubaraka.squarespace.com/blog/2016/8/31/statement-on-colombia-peace-agreement

Hey that's us!

I think I'm starting to have Wedding Anniversary-itis. Does it show? This was last year in Atlantic City, us gettin' hitched.