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May 1 is a big date for many reasons.
For a kid in Catholic elementary school, it began the Month of Mary with all sorts of Marian devotional events like crowning statues with flowers and walking in the annual “pilgrimage” which basically went around the block where the church was while singing “Oh, Mary we crown you with blossoms today”.
As a kid growing up in the 1950s, geopolitically, this was the day the godless communists in Russia had their big military parade.
As a Catholic I knew it was also Beltane, the day pagans, whose babies we were always “ransoming” with little in class collections, promote and celebrate fertility which, I assumed, was a reason for all the babies who needed to be ransomed gor Jesus.
This May First is the first anniversary of when, after dismissing criticism of policies and practices that would not end well and with people in a position to actually do something about it choosing to just let things slide, the C.Carlos Carreiro Immigration Detention Center, Unit B, run at the taxpayers’ expense by Bristol County Sheriff Thomas Hodgson blew up.
A months’ long investigation after the event ( AGO Report into BCSO Response to May 1 Disturbance (2020-12-15)that had been invited by the sheriff but later rejected because it was critical and had him demanding to know what right the state’s Attorney General, the head lawyer, top-cop of the state, and his supervisor, concluded that,
”The Bristol County Sheriff Office’s calculated use of force included the use of a variety of less-lethal but dangerous weapons— including a flash bang grenade, pepper-ball launchers, pepper spray canisters, anti-riot shields, and canines—against detainees who had exhibited calm and nonviolent behavior for at least an hour before this operation. The BCSO deployed these weapons both indiscriminately upon entry and also specifically against particular detainees who were not combative, assaultive, or otherwise actively resisting staff. Informing our conclusion that the BCSO’s use of force was excessive.”
“The BCSO violated the civil rights of the detainees …… by using excessive force against the ICE B detainees and by acting with deliberate indifference to a substantial risk of serious injury or harm to the detainees and their health.”
And, because,
“Our investigation revealed that the Bristol County Sheriff’s Office violated the rights of detainees by using excessive force and by seriously risking their health and safety. This callous disregard for the well-being of immigration detainees is unacceptable and must be addressed through the significant reforms we outline in our report,”
Yet, in spite of this and its being clearly a case of a sheriff violating his job and oath of office, and, in the case of his use of unmuzzled dogs and having inmates kneel or lie on the ground while ignoring the medical needs of those affected by the pepper spray, violating the law, no steps have been taken to discipline and/or remove someone who is so clearly in violation of policy, procedure, and law.
After the major altercation at the ICE detention center on the campus of the Bristol County House of Corrections in North Dartmouth, Massachusetts, Sheriff Thomas Hodgson received criticism for not only his handling of the actual incident, but also for the conditions in his facilities that made such an event inevitable.
Some have been calling for accountability for a number of years now, and this incident has prompted others to begin scrutinizing his job performance more closely with some calling for independent investigations with others, after weighing the sheriff’s history, calling for his resignation.
If people in authority are allowed to abuse that authority without question because there is no system for accountability, people are “too busy” to exercise that system, or that person’s actions, regardless how unacceptable, support certain political agendas, the intensity of the abuse increases. Over time, they become so used to their freedom to abuse, the assumption of the abuser is that it will continue to go unquestioned, and it usually does, resulting in the abuser not being prepared to react rationally, ignoring facts and grabbing at any straws that protect the abuser, going so far as to take on the part of a victim being persecuted unfairly, and jumping from one defense to another with them being unconnected or inconsistent.
The abuser often just keeps throwing defenses out as needed and related only to the moment as they come to mind.
When a person, who refers to the majority of people in his jails as “drug addicts” and people in the ICE detention center as “Criminal illegal aliens” to create a monster under the bed with which to frighten the people of Bristol County into accepting that he is more than what he really is, begins a defensive letter to the editor of local newspapers with
“The motto of the left-wing activist groups, abolish-ICE advocates, Prisoners’ Legal Services and plain anti-Trumpers has always been, and continues to be, ‘Don’t let the facts interfere with your political agenda,’
the reader just knows that what follows is going to be well reasoned and unbiased.
His go to tactic is to claim that people are criticizing his deputy sheriffs when they are actually against many of his practices that are bad for the incarcerated people in his facilities, most yet to be proven guilty in a court of law.
Things like suicides, poor medical treatment, attempts to deny them legitimate family contact, having no programs for re-entry into the community that results in a ridiculously high return rate were concerns before the time of COVID-19 and are what his critics have been addressing, knowing full well that the deputies must follow his directives and orders.
He claimed in his defense after the “riot” that there were surveillance tapes that showed his version was the true version.
They actually did the opposite. His abusive behavior before, during, an after the event is clear from the surveillance videos.
His claim that his actions had guaranteed that no inmates in his facilities had COVID-19,
“We’ve not had any circumstances with any inmates here indicating [that they had the corona virus].
was based on not having tested his inmates.
How would he have known if no one had the virus if he had not tested all his inmates?
When a court demanded testing be done, staff and inmates were found to have the virus.
When COVID-19 began its evolution to a pandemic and social distancing and quarantining became a way to slow its spread, people expressed concern for those incarcerated in federal and state prisons, county jails, and ICE detention centers. Unlike those on the outside, these people are at a decided disadvantage when it comes to preventative practices, so it was proposed that those whose sentences were just short of being completed, those only sitting in jails waiting for their day in court for an alleged nonviolent crime because they could not make bail, and those who had been convicted of minor nonviolent crimes be released with provisions made, such as house arrest, for those who would have to return.
Bristol County Sheriff, Thomas Hodgson, with more than half of his inmates yet to have their day in court, and according to common law are still considered innocent as they have yet to be found guilty, was dead set against the idea.
When he had no choice but to comply, he released a “Prisoner Release Alert on Facebook and his website that listed what he claimed are criminal charges and convictions against individual immigration detainees, implying these are who is being released when, not only not connecting any names to the alleged crimes as Massachusetts law governs the way criminal records are publicized, but knowing no one can verify his claims.
It was only a generic list of crimes which might have no relation to the people in ICE Detention, but it sure was a scary list.
Either he is purposely lying to the people of Bristol County to create the fear of “Others”, or he is deliberately releasing people not included in the court Basically erectile dysfunction is something wherein a man viagra pills price fails to give his performance on the bed to his partner, it is said to be an erectile dysfunction. The partner not only remains sexually dissatisfied, but at the same sildenafil buy online time, you need to take care of your body. Another cialis india online reason for the increasing popularity of Kamagra jelly 100mg drug is PDE5 blocker drug. Rush and bring home Maha Rasayan capsules and King Cobra oil are the renowned and efficient herbal cures to prescription viagra without combat the bad sexual performance in men. decision or the advocacy of social justice groups and the inmates’ attorneys as a way to thumb his nose at them.
In the days after the “riot” at his ICE detention facility, the sheriff explained away those demanding an independent investigation of what led up to the incident and how it was handled because the detainees were,
“the same people who have been calling their attorneys and advocate groups, saying that they need to be released because they’re going to get contaminated because it’s too dangerous in here.”
And, he asks,
“Why do you guys keep listening to inmates who lie to you and then take it as gospel?”
It might not have been “Gospel”, but the investigation of the event showed that what they had been saying was true.
As a court ruling found,
Previous to this, a Judge had found, that in spite of assurances and some changes made,
“Nonetheless there remains critical safety gaps that establish a likelihood of irreparable harm in the absence of preliminary equitable relief. Testing of both Staff and detainees has been minimal, so the real infection rate is a mystery.”
“A related problem is the “insufficient and ad hoc contact tracing of
detainees and BCHOC staff who may have interacted with COVID-19 positive
individuals.”
“Of particular concern is the
contradictory evidence in the record regarding monitoring of those Detainees
who are especially vulnerable to COVID-19.”
“Had the Court stayed its hand
little or no progress would have been made at BCHOC towards accurately
determining the virus presence among the Detainees and Staff and
towards effectively separating potential carriers from others…”
“Keeping individuals confined closely together in the presence of a potentially lethal virus, while neither knowing who is carrying it nor taking effective measures to find out, likely displays deliberate indifference to a substantial risk of serious harm. That is what the evidence shows here.”
The sheriff’s response to this was to allow conditions to continue as they were, resulting in the May 1, 2020 disturbance.
After months of the demands made by detainees and community advocacy groups to institute testing and employ stricter protocols than the faulty and incomplete, obsolete ones he was using, he defended himself by claiming that those involved in the altercation had been opposed to being tested. The suddenness of the timing, speed, and the need for detainees to pack their things for possible removal immediately while not employing any translators on a regular basis meant all commands to the detainees were in English so many could not understand them.
After an hour of calm that began after the initial commands to gather their things for testing was met with verbal objections and demands for explanation, while some detainees had no idea what was going on and why it had to be so sudden and swift, the sheriff returned with deputies in riot gear and dogs, some of whom were not muzzled, a violation of state law when it comes to the use of police dogs.
Rather than looking at the abusive treatment of detainees by the sheriff and looking for excuses to let it slide because, well, “That’s our Tom”, those in positions to do so, and that includes the federal, state, and local government in the person of the Attorney General, and his employers, the county taxpayers, should look at the totality of the long outdated racism, xenophobia, macho posturing, and the use of petty little punishments that are the hallmarks of the Bristol County Sheriff have no place in Massachusetts.
It is one thing to spend taxpayer money investigating what is essentially a rogue, politically motivated public employee and arriving at conclusions that call for addressing problems, but not doing anything about it is another thing that makes the expenditure wasted money.
Inaction required by the conclusions is a dereliction of duty.
As it stands now with a sheriff who has been able to abuse people in the name of the law, as he sees it, behind the jailhouse walls by the,
“calculated use of force included the use of a variety of less-lethal but dangerous weapons— including a flash bang grenade, pepper-ball launchers, pepper spray canisters, anti-riot shields, and canines—against detainees who had exhibited calm and nonviolent behavior for at least an hour before this operation,” deploying weapons indiscriminately upon entry and also specifically against particular detainees who were not combative, assaultive, or otherwise actively resisting staff”, using excessive force, violating the civil rights of detainees, and “acting with deliberate indifference to a substantial risk of serious injury or harm to the detainees and their health”,
the people of Bristol County, without giving permission or even aware of the situation have become the sheriff’s Ghislaine Maxwell who recruited underage girls for Jeffrey Epstein to abuse, although she chose to do this where the citizens of the county have not.
It is extremely convenient that the person who so easily abused those in his care is provided victims on an ongoing basis.
It has been a year since the “riot” at the Bristol County House of Correction Fifty Shades of Grey Pleasure Dungeon, and the sheriff is still running around the country pushing his white supremacist ideas whenever he can and serving on the board of an organization whose goal is to keep the country white.
He might have had cover when he praised the previous president and begged to be a chairperson of his Massachusetts reelection campaign, only to be thrown the crumb of being the “Honorary Chair”, but times have change.
People are taking note of racism and abuse in law enforcement and are demanding human changes.
They notice when a Law and Order Sheriff who demands every one follow the law chooses to ignore those legal actions he does not agree with and makes his refusal public and political.
Clearly, he needs to be suspended pending the results of a complete investigation of his policies, practices, and rather questionable financial dealings, or removed as it is clear that he violated the law by, for example, using unmuzzled dogs on detainees.
Many people in his facilities are there for violating lesser laws.
And the people of Bristol County Massachusetts, when they see how they are being used, will refuse to keep being his procurers.
Those who are in a position to do so must do something with what was found in ONE investigation on a specific issue.
To do nothing sends the message that laws only apply to the common people and not politicians, and is a dereliction of duty.
Governments are supposed to protect the people, not act as the nobility with no controls or accountability.
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It is important to remember what the country’s priorities should be.
While we have income inequality, inequity of medical care due to poverty and race, a pandemic, people acting on politically motivated misinformation placing their health and lives and those of others in danger, lead in pipes poisoning children, bridges ready to collapse if they haven’t already, pot-holes that whole families have been lost in, and some recent testy moments with the Evil Empire, it is important to not lose sight of what matters spend time on the important issues like Dr. Seuss’s family’s decision not to republish poorly selling books, Mr. and Mrs. Potato head becoming potatoes with a slew of features to choose from, Joe Biden’s not limiting the number of hamburgers Americans can eat in a year, and now the Pride flag on government property.
The Biden rescinded the Trump administration’s requirement to get special permission from the State Department to fly the Pride flag. Anyone familiar with the motivation for this regulation knows that the response will be “no” each time as there was no guarantee it would be given and Trump even forced some embassies to take theirs down when he changed to policy.
This is not idle talk as I had been held to such a requirement with the most innocuous request getting rejected along with all the others.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced that instead of playing this game which is totally subjective and reliant on a supervisor’s religious, political, and personal beliefs while ignoring those of the person making the request, foreign outposts could simply do it if the people there so dire without jumping through hoops meant to discourage the practice.
The new policies is not a requirement to fly the flag, it just allows for it to be hung. just the possibility while not be required to hang the flag.
The religious right and Republican leaders are predictively appalled.
Newt Gingrich denounced the move, and Religious right leader Franklin Graham has called the posting of the flag “a specific agenda”, something he might want to bring up at the next National Prayer Breakfast
The outrage almost dims the brightness of that of a castrated potato, an outrage based solely on either not understanding the real world and the GQP contradictions that exist in it, simply ignoring the facts, and/or worse just outright lying because it promotes an agenda.
“Every idiotic thing that the Biden administration has done in the first 100 days, you begin to realize — whether it’s threatening everybody who believes in the Second Amendment or it’s attacking everybody who believes in right to life or it is attacking people of traditional values who are appalled that this administration would fly the gay flag at American embassies all over the world.
“I mean, you just go down item by item and it’s almost like they have a checklist of ‘What can we do that will really, truly, infuriate traditional Americans?’ And I’ve never seen anything like it. I couldn’t imagine any administration which had been this deliberately anti-American and it’s deliberately committed to infuriating the majority of the American people.”
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Not to be outdone in the area of misrepresentative hyperbole, Franklin Graham speaking from his virtuous high horse rambled.
“Just because something is ‘authorized,’ that doesn’t make it right! Why should a flag representing one group of people and a specific agenda be literally raised up above all others and allowed to fly at our embassies and consulates?”
Apparently, he is unaware that regardless what flag is flown, the Pride one, the MIA/POW one, Trump 2020, the American flag is on top.
Newt also let it be known that he accepts and promotes the idea that there are regular and irregular Americans and that he and his ilk are the arbiters as to who is which.
“Look, I think that the left has decided they’re going to try to push all the regular Americans into a corner where they either have to fight, in which case they’ll be attacked by the news media, or they have to just cave and hide.”
Yet, when he was in a leadership role in the Republican Party he did whatever he could to slam the closet door on GLBT people and force them to hide, I assume, because they did not fit into what he considers “regular” Americans.
The divorcee who at the age of 19 married his 26 year old Geometry teacher on whom he cheated while she was dying of cancer, delivering the divorce papers to her death bed, and then marrying the woman with whom he had been cheating, only to repeat this, sans cancer, by proposing marriage to wife number three before asking wife number two for a divorce, and who apparently thinks straight people in the military are a celibate lot, had objected to ending Don’t Ask/ Don’t Tell because
“I don’t think that in the military you would particularly want sexual behavior to be an overt issue.”
Where has this guy been, has he not watched a war movie?
Just hide.
It would be wonderful if Gingrich et al would take the energy to fulminate about potatoes and outdated children’s books and fight for what is best for the American people, and that they take the time to notice that the treatment they rail against is what they have been meting out to others.
That Martin Niemöller “Fist they came for the…….” quote?
Although the popular quote’s meaning is clearly that we should stop the not necessarily inevitable turn taking elimination of a people but make sure the chain ends. However, for some it has slowly morphed apparently from a warning to be watchful to one of waiting to see who goes next.
As groups seek ways to continue to exercise bigotry toward their chosen objects du jour, they hide behind gymnastically arrived at interpretations of the U.S. Constitution so they can refuse to treat all citizens as the citizens they are, often hiding behind religion to do so.
Although there is no law that allows for discriminatory treatment, there are laws and public and private policies against it which people can get around if their religion says it’s okay for them to ignore those laws.
As more states and local municipalities began to make anti-discrimination laws more inclusive as people’s understanding of language about and toward, and treatment of others wasn’t as innocent as assumed.
Recently we saw that communal shift when, in spite of a supposed deep-seated need to defend against all attacks on religion, religious people found it acceptable to have anti-Muslim policies because they accepted misrepresentation over reality.
We have also been running through the Gay Community with special emphasis on its Transgender members, rounding off with Asian and Pacific Islanders, and it is only if some member of one of these groups gets treated in such a way that it horrifies most of us that we take notice while thoughts and prayers fulfill any obligation for true empathy or useful action.
Too often, when the members of those groups speak up, the response in general is that they have no right to the complaining they are doing as other people, usually outside that group, don’t see a problem.
Take bakeries, photographers or anyone who opens a business to make money with ways to do that being the overriding motivation for any action taken by the owner.
Deny a wedding cake to a Gay couple and the news gets out, people on both sides make it a major issue, the business gets free advertising, and, even if the interest in the place wanes over time, the business is better after than it had been before.
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It is already in the Declaration and the We the People of the Constitution.
It’s not just about cakes.
States, like Arkansas, have passed legislation that allows medical providers to refuse to treat GLBT people if it conflicts with their religious or moral beliefs. Some states with similar laws include EMTs at emergency sites like car crashes, and some states do not allow Gay couples to adopt or foster-parent children.
Reminder, same-sex marriage is legal.
History shows us that majority populations especially those members of it in positions of authority have always designated one group of people to be hated by all outside that group, and there were times that the rejected group had at one time been part of those who were acceptable.
It all depends on political expediency and the preservation of power.
It may be this group now as it was some group before, but if this does not stop, some group feeling comfortable now will fall out of favor and then First they came for the …..:”
.
.
And GQP majority state legislatures propose and enact laws to curtail the First Amendment rights to freedom of assembly and to petition the government for redress of wrongs.
While the Second Amendment is sacrosanct, the First is fluid when it is inconvenient.
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I was a member of a committee to revise and revamp a school district’s student/parent handbook a number of times. It was during the time I was advocating for teacher professional development sessions dealing with sensitivity training about those who were not straight just as we did with other groups into which students fell and getting the words “sexual orientation” and, with time, “gender identity” added to all those policies, especially the ones on bullying, harassment, and nondiscrimination, that specifically listed any group such as race, color, creed, religion etc.
What better way to ensure this would be done than to be in a position on a committee with official standing and who, if educated, would do the right thing, as happened when one committee’s support to include those words resulted in inclusion.
But beyond my personal concern, we covered all aspects of what the handbook contained and that included the dress code a topic that generated a lot of discussion as it was becoming obvious even back then, many years ago now, that most provisions in these codes are vague, too broad, and are often based on the personal tastes, whether personal, political, or religious, of those in charge of the policies that controlled and molded young minds
Girls could not wear dresses with spaghetti straps because it exposed too much skin and would distract boys during and between class, while it was totally acceptable that the boys could wear nothing below their waist beyond baggy basketball shorts that, as they swaggered down the halls they could advertising their goods there and when they man-spread in their classroom seats with the occasional shift to catch the eye.
If students wanted to wear any sports fan gear like football, hockey, or generic sports t-shirts with logos, students could only wear those teams, professional or college, that were in state. Any team or college was banned if it was from another state. This was because of a morbid fear that team logos represented certain gangs and sports team logos could be a form of gang endorsement or affiliation. If your parents went to an in-state college, you could wear their college team shirt. If your parents moved into the state after having attended college out of state, you could not wear theirs.
Gang, gang-related, or pro-gang clothing was banned with no one really able to define what that meant, leaving the application of that provision up to personal judgment.
Heavy Metal was considered satanic and so T-shirts related were verboten. These also fell into the more generic category of anything promoting or normalizing violence. Although seemingly neutral, the problem this posed was that while a kid could not wear an Al Pacino in Scar Face T-shirt, the one that had a black and white line drawing of a seemingly severed human hand nailed to a piece of wood with copious amounts of red blood, the only color on the torso sized picture, was acceptable because the wording was “He did it for you.”
When it came to hairstyles, the main directive was that they should not be a danger to self or others or distract from learning without any clear criteria as to what comprised a distraction and if there were degrees of it.
This generally became the older generation clicking its collective tongues over what those whipper-snappers look like, while recounting the days when men looked like men.
In my youth there had been a chart of haircuts to pick from in the barber shop. Including the Crew Cut, whose close cousin was the Baseball because of a frontal upswing supported by a pomade, all the styles were based on the Military Cut, and everyone I knew, except for Walter who got what seemed to be the only haircut Black kids got, had some version of the same haircut. Aside from our world being in color, we all looked like we were living in the forties.
Times have changed and so have demographics. Not every person in this country can carry off a Military Hair Cut, and since that tonsorial style is a man-made expectation, not everyone will ignore their own cultures and reality to awkwardly comply to what is actually a matter of someone else’s preferences.
In many of the suggestions to add or delete something in the dress code, there were serious discussions as we saw those things assumed to be neutral were in reality biased.
While boys fit into the generic and clipped bans on gang clothing, out of state team wear, and not being indecent without any definition, those parts of the dress code concerning the girls was very detailed.
The temptresses needed to be controlled.
viagra rx Sildenafil Citrate acts by repressing a compound that manages blood stream in the penis. Other medical conditions that require your doctor’s advice and approval include the following: Angina (Chest Pain) Previous Stroke Blood disorders Kidney Problems Liver Disorders Stomach Ulcers india viagra generic Allergies to any of the local pharmacy has to provide ads for the medicine to be noticed by the physicians along with proper diet and required exercises that can effectively treat the illness level. It was also approved by food and drug administration viagra generic canada has approved few allopath medications that increase cGMP enzymes and nitric oxide in body, and are PDE5 inhibitors. A variety of non-reflex coupled with automatic functions will definitely happen within the body, but ones goal of those debt settlements will be to make sure you achieve the exact organism off the lot using these source that’s inflicting that to ‘ve got anxiety. generic levitra onlineI worked at a private Catholic college prep high school that had a very strict dress code that included jackets and ties. Uniforms would be introduced years after I had moved on. With parents supporting public schools through taxes and opting to spend additional money on their own kids’ education, they wanted the most bang for the buck and part of that was a strong education, instilling self-discipline, and molding men who could take their place in a professional world which called for strict codes of conduct and dress.
The reasons for any provision in any code was clearly spelled out as were all details for the sake of clarity and so the dress code was easily defended if challenged, and clear so as to be easily understood by students, parents, and staff.
On the school district’s committees that I had been on, much of the discussion was philosophical, religiously based, and too often lacking in any real reason to add or delete. There was also a fear of someone somewhere at some time possibly filing a complaint.
And too much time was wasted on what was nothing other than matters of personal taste.
Too often many provisions in dress codes are based on one group not knowing much about another, cultural differences newly introduced to a community, and, too often, people in positions of authority choosing not to learn about new things but attempting to force all into the old.
The examples of race and gender bias that can be seen in dress code provisions are plentiful no example is clearer than the treatment of hair.
Native American children sent to “Indian School” had their hair shorn so they would be less Indian and more White. Black kids who at one time decided to let their hair grow out and end the mandatory close cropped almost shaved cut white kids like me assumed was how they had to have it for some reason, found that just with White people, with their hair grown out, they had more hairstyle options, something that horrified the establishment back then and still continues to do now.
Troy, Texas, has a huge problem in its schools, something that threatens the proper education of students, and has dealt with it.
It seems a sixth-grade student whose mother is White and his father Black with his hair influenced by both, like any middle school age kid attempting to establish identity, grew his hair out to see what he could do with it. As it grew the student’s mother was informed that in accordance with the dress code she must cut her son’s hair with no specifics as to how or what length or styles would be acceptable in accordance with the hair on his head.
The mother cut the hair short on the sides of his head, a common style choice, and braided the remaining hair on the top of his head to keep it close to his scalp gathering the hair on the back of his head in a braided knot leaving the possibility open for further experimentation at home.
The two-year old school dress code policy forbids boys from wearing their hair in “a ponytail, top knot, bun or similar styles.”
None of these is a danger to student safety and welfare nor is any a distraction from education. It is a matter of taste.
A person would have to be comatose not to see this as a prohibition of boys doing girl stuff like with their hair, and clearly this list is based on the premise that everyone has so many more options than just these, while the reality is that for some these are the only options.
Because the new haircut fell into the nebulous “similar styles” category, the student received a multi-day in-school suspension (detention during the whole school day separated from everyone on campus from all but those similarly detained).
As an attempt to reduce the subjective judgment about students’ hair and to eliminate conscious of ingrained racial bias, the Crown act has been proposed in the state legislature that would ban hair discrimination on the state level.
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Because my cartoons in the union’s monthly newspaper leading up to a teacher walk-out, my teaching profession had been threatened as the word was passed on to the Union President that if I did not stop my cartoons that made them look as foolish as they were acting, the Los Angeles school board would begin the process of having me terminated.
I refused to censor myself. The Board backed down as I had called their bluff. The union won the strike that year.
While some may have the luxury to read long explanations of purpose and take the time to weigh pros and cons on any issue once they have grasped them, everyone, even the illiterate can understand even the most complicated topic if it can be reduced to a cartoon that can be quickly taken in and just as quickly inform the viewer.
Brevity being the soul of wit, the shorter the verbiage on a sign or T-shirt, the better when showing up for any type of protest or rally as onlookers are not there to read long explanations but do want to know what it is all about. Carrying a sign with some paragraph long statement on it is less effective than a one sighting, one shot, almost instantaneous understanding of the basics of the issue.
Most dedicated sign makers make their signs eye-catchingly clever and brief, generally tending toward humor as the event they are attending is serious enough and, as people are capable of repeating a joke after hearing it once, a clever picture or a witty bon mot stays on the viewer’s’ mind and easy to repeat.
The downside is that if the sign is powerful enough, the bearer faces the backlash from those who disagree and, in my experience, this backlash can be either loud, angry verbal expressions of opposition or physical attacks that end with the sign destroyed and the bearer physically hurt.
Such an assault as this is illegal, and the victim, at least, has some degree of assurance that the fear of the law might limit physical attacks.
Did you ever get beaten by the standard Southern Baptist Convention’s leatherbound Bible in Jesus’s name, and I mean physically not quotationally attacked?
We already have Republican led states making it legal for a motorist to run down protesters without any consequence, and this doesn’t just mean they were in drivers way when traveling that route, but allows a person to go out of their way to drive to a protest to run some protesters down.
Last summer BLM acted on and demonstrated against another one-too-many killing of unarmed Black person by the police, demanding what policing has become be re-evaluated and revamped as needed to become what it should be.
In spite of over 93% of its demonstrations and marches being extremely peaceful with the remainder being a mixture of mild pushing and shoving to, apparently, throwing cans of soup and burning property like they think they are at some post athletic championship game celebration, Republicans, having nothing positive to offer to make us a better country, a country the purpose of whose constitution exists in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity,” paints BLM as some terrorist organization with a sinister agenda, equal rights and equitable treatment for all residents, and ANTIFA, more of a philosophy with no structured organization, as the homeland’s version of Al-Qaeda.
During the Trump years when the present leaders of the “Movement” came of age, any objections to laws, proposed and passed, that moved the country away from being a rich cultural salad, had to contend with an administration with a bend toward white nationalism and a stacked justice department that would toe the company line with all manner of verbal gymnastics to get the task done.
Things have changed, and fearing loss of power and the loss of a Me-maw’s apron to hide behind, the GQP is working as fast as it can to encode their odd views into law.
Ignoring the statistics where in a race to be the most violent and destructive, the America First, MAGA crowd wins hands down, among other reactionary laws to deal with nonexistent problems while ignoring real ones, Republican led states, most recently Florida, are enacting “anti-riot” laws that grant civil immunity to anyone who decides to drive a car into protesters who are blocking a road, and makes the destruction of a plaque, memorial, painting, flag, or other structure commemorating historical people or events a second-degree felony.
Iowa and Oklahoma passed similar bills granting legal protections in certain situations for drivers who hit protesters supposedly blocking the street.
This last will be interesting If there are any organized protests on the day of the vote if it does come up again and shows the possibility of passage.
Clearly the threat of being killed with no consequences to the murderer is a not too subtle warning not to gather and exercise a First Amendment right.
The same fear of free speech, but in a new guise.
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