“OK, This Trump Thing Isn’t Funny Anymore”: Shouting ‘White Power’ At Rallies, Endorsed By The Daily Stormer, The Joke Is Over
It has been more than two months since Donald Trump announced his candidacy for president, and slowly but surely the entertainment factor as been on the wane and the fear factor has been on the rise.
As his poll numbers steadily keep him in a comfortable first place in the crowded GOP field, and he packs stadiums—receiving raucous applause in Alabama and along the Mexican border—his fiery and divisive rhetoric has taken on a new meaning. His positions have now become the focal point of the GOP field and all candidates must respond to Trump before they can proceed.
What he and his supporters say can no longer be considered a joke. During his rally in Mobile, Alabama, screams of “white power” could be heard from the audience. And last week, two white ex-cons from Boston beat up a homeless Hispanic man, and upon their arrest they told the police, “Donald Trump was right, all these illegals need to be deported.”
In response to the attack, Trump said, “I will say that people who are following me are very passionate. They love this country and they want this country to be great again. They are passionate.” He did not initially decry their actions, but later stated on Twitter that he thought the attack was “terrible.”
The joke is over. The horrors of a Trump presidency should not be lost on anyone. His immigration plan calls for the deportation of the estimated 11-12 million undocumented immigrants who have entered via our southern border. This position has definitely stoked the fire of Americans who are not pleased with our immigration policies, but an America that rounds up and forcefully removes a race or class of people is most certainly a dystopian nation that encourages lawlessness and anarchy.
If these policies were enacted, what would prevent American citizens from destroying the documentation of legal Hispanic immigrants, and forcefully deporting them or using the threat of deportation as leverage for rampant abuse? Arizona already has the “show me your papers” provision of SB 1070 that essentially treats Hispanics as illegal until proven innocent.
This reality might seem farfetched, but in fact America has traversed this territory before. My forebears in South Carolina were free persons of color since the late 1700s and lived as second-class citizens, but in the 1860s prior to emancipation, certain municipalities started requesting that FPCs show their papers or be forced into slavery. Many FPCs had never needed papers before, so they regularly went about their lives without documentation.
But overnight this changed. Without papers you were assumed to be a slave, and white America would see to it that you were “returned” to a life of slavery. Additionally, it was illegal to educate blacks in South Carolina, so some FPCs were illiterate, and therefore even if they had documentation it was difficult for them to prove the papers’ legitimacy. Many FPCs ran for their lives, and attempted to flee the state, but countless of them were rounded up and forced into slavery.
Essentially, even though 150 years may have passed, too many Americans are still advocating for oppressive, segregationist, and pre-Civil War policies. But this time these Americans may have decided to direct most of their hatred towards a different shade of people.
When you examine Trump’s unilateral and authoritarian foreign policy positions more red flags are raised. Invading a country to take its oil is something America has already attempted with dire consequences. Does he honestly think that he can force Mexico to pay for the construction of a wall along our border?
Concerning women’s issues and basic respect for another person he is equally troubling, and the rekindling of his vile and sexist war of words with Fox News’ Megyn Kelly shows this. He again called her a bimbo and demeaned her physical appearance. If these were merely the comments of a clown, we could brush them off and ignore them. But when it is a billionaire clown that is the GOP presidential front-runner, we all should be incredibly concerned. If this man had the authority to create and approve laws, what would his policies regarding women’s rights look like?
Even his campaign slogan “Make America Great Again” stokes a nationalistic fervor that makes some Americans—predominately conservative white Americans—feel as though they are under attack from ruinous anti-American elements that need to be defeated. Yet if American greatness existed prior to the 1960s, I am sure that countless other Americans would not want to return to that era, which sure wasn’t very welcoming for them.
In another time and another place we would probably view Trump’s rise to prominence along a fascist trajectory similarly to the European movements of the early 20th century and discuss his every move as a cautionary tale, but as of yet we have not. But we should pay attention when the Daily Stormer, a conservative, Neo-Nazi and white nationalist publication, endorses Trump for president, as it did Tuesday.
This is alarming. Yet I wonder if this lack of alarm exists because his language is not foreign to American society. We have always proclaimed ourselves to be a meritocratic society where anyone can work his way to the top with hard work, but parallel to this narrative was the reality that persons of color have always had limited opportunities for advancement. Therefore, it has always been commonplace to demean the poor and/or persons of color because they supposedly had “earned” their lower station in life due to an assumed predisposition toward sloth or some other negative activity.
As long as America ignored its oppressive structures then people had an unlimited license to demean and ridicule people who they felt had “earned” less than they. It now became acceptable to fabricate negative narratives to explain an oppressed group’s lower station in life, and Trump is invoking this cultural trait to a dangerous effect.
Trump is rallying his supporters around a narrative of nationalistic pride, collective frustration, and dehumanizing language regarding persons of color and women, and this cannot be a platform American society can embrace again. Our collective fear concerning his candidacy should be about what era of America’s past he wants to return us to in his quest to “Make America Great Again.”
By: Barrett Holmes Pitner, The Daily Beast, August 27, 2015
“Protest 101, A Chance To Change The World Again”: Some Thoughts As We Wait To See Whether Ferguson Burns
Last week, I spent a day at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, where some students and I talked about protest. Des Moines is six hours up the road from Ferguson, Missouri, the St. Louis suburb where Michael Brown, an unarmed teenager, was shot to death by a police officer in August, prompting weeks of often violent clashes between protesters, rioters and heavily militarized police.
Some of the kids have ties in that area, so they were waiting — even more tensely than the rest of us — to see if a grand jury would indict the officer and whether the failure to do so would mean renewed violence. These were serious-minded young people concerned about the state of their nation and they were wondering what they could do to effect change.
I’ve had similar talks on college campuses going back before most of us ever heard of Ferguson. I’ve lost count of how many students have told me: “I want to change things, but I don’t know how. What can I do?”
It amazes me that half a century ago people their age fought for civil rights, women’s rights and an end to a useless war in Southeast Asia using no technology more sophisticated than mimeograph machines and rotary dial telephones, while kids with iPads and social media accounts feel helpless to make themselves heard. I’ve walked away from many encounters with students feeling that they were earnest, well intentioned — and utterly clueless about their power to better the world.
Nor am I alone in that. I often hear older people, those who marched, leafleted and shouted for justice in the ’60s, complain that Kids These Days are too complacent. They lament what they would do if they were just young enough. Rep. John Lewis, the hero of the voting rights campaign in Selma, often puts it like this: “Young people today are too quiet.”
But here’s an idea: Instead of just criticizing them, why don’t their elders teach them? Meaning not just icons of the struggle for human rights like Gloria Steinem, Diane Nash and Tom Hayden, but lesser-known footsoldiers whose names never made the history books. Why don’t they put together college campus lectures, church basement meetings, podcasts?
Call it Protest 101, a seminar in how to organize effectively for change. It would be a gift to the next generation, one the elder generation is uniquely positioned to give.
I vacillate on what John Lewis said. Sometimes it seems to me that young people are, indeed, entirely too quiet, too narcotized by gadgets, games and irrelevancies to notice the world is going to heck around them. Other times, it seems that they simply don’t know what to do about it, that they have been made to feel too helpless and small to make a difference.
But as the Occupy movement a few years ago demonstrated and Ferguson reiterates, there is a new ferment among young people — and people not so young — as they see civil rights gains whittled away, as they see elections rigged like a casino slot machine by monied interests, as they see unarmed black boys gunned down without consequence, as they see robber barons too big to fail game the economy and get away scot-free while the full weight of American jurisprudence and media indignation drops like a brick on poor people and immigrants.
What a waste if that energy goes only into the breaking of windows. What a loss if that moral authority is burned up in fire.
This nascent, inchoate movement knows how to get attention, but has no idea what to do after that. It is undisciplined and unformed and does not know how to articulate an agenda for change. I submit that that’s where their elders come in.
The ’60s generation once changed the world. Here’s a chance to change it again.
By: Leonard Pitts, Jr., Columnist for The Miami Herald; The National Memo, November 17, 2014
“This Is Not Your Independence Day”: Celebrating The Birth Of An Imperfect Union As The Fight For ‘Freedom’ Has Yet To Be Won
Every year, proud U.S. citizens across the country take a break from daily life to commemorate the birth of America. Dusting off the grill, buying frozen meat en masse, attempting to retreat to the nearest body of water, and putting sparklers in the hands of small children might not be exactly what our founding fathers envisioned, but who am I to argue with a long weekend? I enjoy a good fireworks show as much as the next girl. And beachside BBQs? I’m in. Red, white, and blue happens to be the color scheme of my most flattering bikini, so by all means, pass the veggie dogs and pump up the revelry.
But amidst the pomp and circumstance, please don’t wish me a “Happy Independence Day!”
The 4th of July might commemorate the independence of our country — but it also serves as a bitter reminder that in 1776, the country that I love had no place for me in it.
When our founding fathers penned, “All men are created equal,” they meant it. Not all people. Not all humans. Just all men — the only reason they didn’t feel obliged to specify “white” men is because, at the time, men of color were considered less than men, less than human.
The 4th is not my Independence Day — and if you’re a Caucasian woman, it isn’t yours either. Our “independence” didn’t come for another 143 years, with the passage of The Woman’s Suffrage Amendment in 1919. The 4th of July is also not Independence Day for people of color. It wasn’t until the 15th Amendment was ratified in 1870 that all men had the right to vote regardless of race — on paper, that is, not in practice. People of color were systematically, and all too successfully, disenfranchised for another century. July 4th of 1776 was certainly not a day of Independence or reverence for Native Americans. It wasn’t until 1924 that Native Americans could unilaterally become citizens of the United States and have the voting rights to go with it.
Now, before anyone argues that Independence is about more than voting rights, I’d like to point out that our Founding Fathers would fundamentally disagree with you. The Revolutionary War was fought, in large part, because of “taxation without representation” — the then English colonists believed they were not free because their voices were not represented. The right to vote, the right to have your say is the delineating characteristic of a democracy.
There is nothing finite about freedom. July 4, 1776 was a definitive step forward in the struggle toward freedom and democracy but we were a long way off from achieving it. And while we have advanced in leaps and bounds — my patriotic swimwear goes over way better in Williamsburg, Brooklyn than it would have in Colonial Williamsburg — we are still a far way off from the freedom and independence we’re celebrating.
A resurgence in voter ID laws put in place to once again disenfranchise minorities challenges our collective independence.
This week’s Hobby Lobby ruling — deciding that a woman’s employer has any say in her health care — is a challenge to the ideology of freedom and autonomy our country was founded upon.
The on-going fight for marriage equality prevents same-sex couples in many states from the pursuit of happiness that they are constitutionally guaranteed.
So by all means, enjoy your long weekend. Raise a beer to the ideals of progress and democracy that the 4th of July represents.
But remember that you are celebrating the birth of an imperfect union, remember that the fight for ‘freedom’ has yet to be won — and if you must wish someone a “Happy Independence Day!”, make sure you’re doing something to maintain and advance the Independence you have come to appreciate.
By: Carina Kolodny, The Huffington Post Blog, July 3, 2014
“Contraception Is Not Controversial”: The Last Time The Supreme Court Meddled In Women’s Health, It Was A Big Setback For The GOP
By ruling that family-owned businesses can deny contraceptive coverage to their employees, the Supreme Court handed a victory to a handful of businesses whose owners equate contraception with abortion. But the conservative justices may have dealt a blow to Republican political chances in 2014 and even in 2016.
Polls show, of course, overwhelming public support for contraception, even among Catholics. A Gallup poll in May 2012 found that 89 percent of all respondents and 82 percent of Catholics believed that contraception was “morally acceptable.” If Democrats can paint their Republican opponents as supporters of the Roberts Court and its decisions, they could help their cause significantly, especially among women who might otherwise vote for Republicans or not vote at all.
One can look at the effect an earlier court decision regarding women’s rights had on Congressional and gubernatorial elections. In July 1989, the court handed down Webster v. Reproductive Health Services upholding Missouri’s right to restrict the use of state funds and employees in performing, funding, or even counseling on abortions. It was the first court decision restricting the rights bestowed under Roe v. Wade.
The nation, of course, was divided on the issue of abortion. How the issue played politically depended on which side of the debate saw itself under attack, and in this case the Webster decision mobilized pro-choice supporters. The right to abortion became a hot issue in the 1990 elections, and in the final results, abortion-rights supporters came out ahead. There were several telltale races. In Florida, Democrat Lawton Chiles defeated incumbent Republican Governor Bob Martinez, who, in the wake of Webster, had championed restrictive laws for Florida.
In the Texas governor’s race, Democrat Ann Richards defeated Republican incumbent Clayton Williams. According to polls, Richards, who made opposition to Webster a centerpiece of her campaign, garnered over 60 percent of the women’s vote, including 25 percent of Republican women. In the final tally, abortion-rights supporters, running against or replacing anti-abortion candidates, secured a net gain of eight seats in the House of Representatives, two Senate seats, and four statehouses.
What was also striking was the overall size of the gender gap. According to the National Election Studies survey, there was no gender gap between male and female supporters of Democratic congressional candidates in 1988. In 1990, gender gap was ten percentage points—the highest ever. All in all, 69 percent of women voters backed Democratic congressional candidates that year. Of course, there were other issues than Webster that were moving votes, but there is no doubt that the court ruling played an important role that year.
Fast forward to 2014. If Webster improved Democratic chances in 1990, the court’s decision in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby could prove a boon to Democrats. Abortion rights remain controversial but contraception is not, and the opposition to contraception raises hackles among most voters, but especially among women. If Democrats, who had seemed destined for defeat in November, can tie the ruling around the necks of their Republican opponents, they could do surprisingly well in November.
By: John B. Judis, The New Republic, July 2, 2014
“Do What We Tell You To Do, Or We Will Kill You”: The Right To Be Able To Walk Into A Clinic Must Be Protected
The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that a Massachusetts buffer zone law violates the First Amendment; the justices were unanimous in the ruling. In case you weren’t up to speed on the case, here are the basics: Fourteen years ago, the high court upheld a Colorado law that created an 8-foot “bubble zone” around patients entering or exiting clinics. But Massachusetts’ buffer zone law prohibited demonstrators from standing within 35 feet of the facility, a length the justices seemed dubious of from the start. Walking that length — the size of a school bus — takes approximately seven seconds.
A lot can happen in those seven seconds. A lot can happen when protesters are allowed to enter clinics, physically confront patients or block doors. Massachusetts passed its law in response to aggressive and dangerous conduct from protesters stationed directly outside clinics, including an incident in 1994 where a gunman opened fire at two abortion clinics, killing two people and injuring five others. In its defense of the measure, the state argued before the justices that the buffer law is not a prohibition on speech, but a practical measure to keep access to these facilities “open and clear of all but essential foot traffic, in light of more than two decades of compromised facility access and public safety.”
Lawyers for lead plaintiff Eleanor McCullen argued that the law was an infringement on her First Amendment rights. “It’s America,” she said in an interview with NPR News. “I should be able to walk and talk gently, lovingly, anywhere with anybody.” (Clinic workers and patients may not agree about the gentle and loving nature of confrontations with protestors.)
The high court’s ruling was limited, and doesn’t necessarily mean that all restrictions on protestors outside of clinics violate the First Amendment. As Ian Millhiser from the Center for American Progress noted on Twitter, the ruling “means that some buffer zones can stay, even if this one can’t.” Salon spoke with doctors and clinic escorts about what these laws can do — and can’t do — to protect access to abortion services, their safety and the safety of their patients and colleagues.
Dr. Warren Hern, a provider in Boulder, Colorado.
I think that the harassment of patients is unacceptable. The antiabortion fanatics feel good by making other people feel bad. The patients who come to see me are carrying a tremendous emotional burden to start with, especially my patients who are coming there to end a desired pregnancy because of some fetal catastrophe or their own medical issues. For those women, they don’t want to be here and have an abortion; they want to have a baby. And they’re there in tremendous pain because of that. And so the antiabortion people come and harass these patients and their families, in spite of the fact that they are in tremendous pain and emotional anguish. It’s unsupportable, it’s indecent, it’s indefensible.
So the buffer zone ordinance that was passed in Boulder in 1986 was an attempt to help that. A problem with the buffer zone ordinance is that it requires an actuation, an activity by the patient. She has to object to this and she has to call the police, and she’s not always going to do that. And it does not require the antiabortion demonstrator to keep a certain long distance within a few feet. Well, that’s enough to cause tremendous anguish and pain for the patient.
I accept buffer zones as an important symbolic expression of community sentiment, which they are. Our law is totally supported by the people of Boulder. We all believe in free speech; nobody’s saying they can’t go to the city park and say what they want or stand across the street and picket. But really, I think the bubble zone should be the distance a rifle bullet can travel. Or even better, New Jersey. Make the Boulder buffer zone end somewhere in New Jersey.
I can’t use the front door of my office and I can’t drive out the front driveway with the protesters there. Because all of the doctors who have been assassinated have been assassinated by so-called protesters. All the other people have been killed in Boston and Alabama and so on have been killed by so-called peaceful protesters who “went over the edge.” This is the ultimate expression of what they’re saying. If they can’t use the coercive power of the state to get people to do what they want them to do, they will kill them! And the message from the antiabortion movement, which is the face of fascism in America, is, “Do what we tell you to do, or we will kill you.” So while I believe in its symbolic importance, the buffer zone ordinance is useless against that kind of mentality. These people do not accept basic premises of civilized society and the legal process.
Dr. Cheryl Chastine, a provider in Wichita, Kansas.
Buffer zones help providers feel that their safety is respected and protected. When I travel into my clinic, I know that I am mere feet from people who want to stop me by any means necessary. That’s very intimidating. We are lucky in that we have a gate and a private parking lot that patients can drive into; even still the patients are not able to get away.
They’re not able to prevent the protesters and picketers from approaching them and making personal contact with them. And so when patients come into my clinic, they’re very stressed about the fact that that contact was forced on them. I think that if they chose to make that contact, to seek those people out and talk to them, that would be one thing. But they come to the clinic knowing that they don’t want to speak to a picketer, and yet they have to go directly past them, and it makes them angry and upset and ashamed.
Katie Klabusich, a writer, media contributor and clinic escort in New York, New York.
Buffer zones don’t stop the harassment, they just make it easier to get people inside. And just because they haven’t been able to shut down the clinics in your community doesn’t mean that there isn’t a gauntlet that people have to walk to get into their doctor’s office. No matter where you live, that should horrify all of us.
Even before I was standing between patients and people from [extreme antiabortion group] Abolish Human Abortion in New Jersey, I have always seen this as a nationwide fight. Particularly if they can overturn Roe v. Wade — and they have a plan to do this — this is national.
By: Katie McDonough, Politics Writer, Salon, June 26, 2014
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