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My friend Ally writes:
“Just a moment of your time could save my friend JoJo Tran’s life.
JoJo’s attempts at gaining asylum after being in the US for over 13 years have been denied. At this point, his only hope of staying here and safe from prosecution in Vietnam is if ICE (Immigration & Customs Enforcement) reopens his case. A team of volunteers in Seattle is trying to collect as many signatures as possible to convince them and our local politicians to lean on ICE to do this.”
JoJo’s story:
We are calling for US Immigration and Customs Enforcement to reopen Dung Anh “JoJo” Tran’s asylum case.
JoJo Tran fled Vietnam in 1996 fearing politically motivated persecution after helping American military veterans as a guide to view sites that the Vietnamese authorities claimed were not authorized, and being called in, questioned and threatened by the Vietnamese intelligence agency.
Since moving to Seatle shortly after his arrival in America in 1996, JoJo has been busy working and volunteering for numerous organizations in the Puget Sound area.
Our updated information from JoJo’s attorney is that March 28 is the last day of his voluntary departure period unless ICE consents to grant him some sort of stay while his petition is being considered.
Help us help this amazing man who has turned adversity and a fourteen year effort to become an American into thousands of hours of volunteering in the community he wants to call home.
Dorothy Loader and Rosabelle Glasby are identical twins. But not if you ask the Australian Department of Immigration. You see, different families adopted them, and it took 50 years for them to find each other again. And in fifty years, they had different nationalities: Rosabelle was in Australia, and Dorothy was in Malaysia. Dorothy wants to move to Australia to be with her sister, but the authorities claim they are “not related for the purposes of immigration” and denied her request.
I wrote about their story before.
Well, Rosabelle’s husband Marc has asked that I share a website they have created to try and reunite these sisters. On the site there are suggestions for how you can help. Check it out. Their story is crazy and Orwellian to the max.
Jana Mackey was a friend of mine in college. Read about her story here and check out the press release below.
For Immediate Release February 27, 2009
March 8th – “Jana Mackey Day in Kansas”
Hays, KS – In the coming days Kansas lawmakers will be joining Governor Kathleen Sebelius in recognizing International Women’s Day on March 8th by honoring a recent victim and fatality of domestic violence.
Jana Mackey, a 25 year old KU law student was murdered by her ex-boyfriend last July in Lawrence. Jana was well known throughout Kansas for her work on many women’s issues.
Governor Sebelius has signed a proclamation recognizing March 8th as a “Jana Mackey Day in Kansas.”
On March 5th Senator Janis Lee (D-Kensington) and Senator Marci Francisco (D-Lawrence) will be sponsoring a resolution honoring Mackey. On the House side, Representative Eber Phelps (D-Hays), Representative Barbara Ballard (D-Lawrence), and Representative Paul Davis (D-Lawrence) will be presenting Mackey’s family with a formal certificate on March 9th.
Mackey, who grew up in Hays, had spent endless hours volunteering to aid victims of sexual assault and domestic violence. She had also served three years as one of the youngest lobbyists at the Kansas Capitol with the National Organization for Women.
After her death, Mackey’s family and friends established a national campaign to help her service live on through others. Symbolic of the number of people who attended her funeral, the Eleven Hundred Torches campaign urges hundreds of ordinary citizens to serve others.
Governor Sebelius has joined the campaign and is calling on all Kansans to set aside time on March 8th to volunteer in their communities.
Special volunteer events are being planned in Hays and in Lawrence on that day.
International Women’s Day began in 1908 with a 15,000 women’s march through New York City calling for equal voting and work rights for women. In 1913 the event was officially scheduled as March 8th. Today International Women’s Day is celebrated world-wide and is an official holiday in 15 nations.
For more information about Eleven Hundred Torches, see their website at www.1100torches.org.
Republican Colorado State Senators are really working hard to outstrip Utah State Senator Chris Buttars on the mind-boggling ignorant bigotry.
Colorado State Senator Dave Schultheis had some choice words about a bill that would require HIV testing for pregnant women. Obviously, he is against this bill.
The Colorado Independent reports:
Schultheis said he planned to vote against a bill to require HIV tests for pregnant women because the disease “stems from sexual promiscuity” and he didn’t think the Legislature should “remove the negative consequences that take place from poor behavior and unacceptable behavior.”
Listen to some of his words here.
He went on to say: “What I’m hoping is that, yes, that person may have AIDS, have it seriously as a baby and when they grow up, but the mother will begin to feel guilt as a result of that. The family will see the negative consequences of that promiscuity and it may make a number of people over the coming years begin to realize that there are negative consequences and maybe they should adjust their behavior.”
This is a state senator who believes that expectant mothers should not be tested for an incurable disease that could effect their child for life, because it is his opinion that HIV is contracted through “promiscuity” and therefore an HIV+ baby is the proper punishment for such a woman.
Let’s leave aside Schultheis’ obviously problematic belief that HIV is the result of promiscuity. Let’s think about the baby here. Schultheis is a Republican with warped beliefs about sex, so I’d say it’s a good bet that he is familiar with the “Culture of Life” bullshit and the anti-abortion movement. Purportedly, people who are fans of these movements care about the baybeez. Per usual, when it comes down to protecting children or shaming sluts, it appears that Schultheis would rather see babies born with HIV than allow a slut to get away with her slutty ways without being punished with a terminally ill child. An inspiring ideology, really.
But Wait! That’s not all that’s going down in Colorado! Oh no, it gets better (or worse, depending on your perspective.) Read the rest of this entry »
Final Call News reports:
In Chicago the mayor has put city employees on unpaid leave to help fill a budget shortfall. But a little over a year ago, Chicago officials agreed to pay $19.8 million to four men who suffered police torture under then-commander Jon Burge.Some $30 million has been spent to settle assorted lawsuits connected with the case, which stretches back to abuses during the 1980s and 1990s. Mayor Richard Daley proposed a two-to-three day furlough for more than 4,000 non-union workers to ease the city’s budgetary crisis.
…Current budget problems may cause taxpayers to take a look at how their money is spent, but in Chicago $18 million was paid to the family of LaTanya Haggerty, a Black woman shot to death by police in 1999. In 1995, a New York Times editorial noted that in the “cash-starved” Big Apple, brutality settlements and court judgments cost the city $87 million over five years. The Rodney King beating cost Los Angeles $3.8 million in a settlement and estimates for property damage hit $700 million after riots when officers involved were acquitted. In 2001, the city of New York shelled out $7.125 million in the infamous Abner Louima case, in which the Haitian immigrant was assaulted with a plunger by officers in a precinct bathroom.
“This is shameful because right now if you’re already suffering from a $150 million budget deficit and you have three or four huge lawsuits, you have to find that money, so it makes sense to train and educate officers on the front end rather than pay for settlements on the back,” said Ronald Hampton, executive director of the National Black Police Association.
I don’t read this as an argument that citizens who have been abused by police shouldn’t bring cases. This is an argument for police departments to stop wasting taxpayer money by condoning police brutality. Thoughts?
Definitely Paul McCartney’s best work.
Cerrie Burnell hosts a children’s show on BBC television called CBeebies. She has been the subject of a recent spate of parent complaints. Not because of her performance. Because of her disability. She was born without the lower section of her right arm.
The Independent reports:
One man said that he would stop his daughter from watching the BBC children’s channel because Burnell would give his child nightmares.
…[S]ome of the vitriolic comments on the “Grown Up” section of the channel’s website were so nasty that they had to be removed.
“Is it just me, or does anyone else think the new woman presenter on CBeebies may scare the kids because of her disability?” wrote one adult on the CBeebies website. Other adults claimed that their children were asking difficult questions as a result. “I didn’t want to let my children watch the filler bits on The Bedtime Hour last night because I know it would have played on my eldest daughter’s mind and possibly caused sleep problems,” said one message. The BBC received nine other complaints by phone.
Outrage! Outrage! Outrage!
Fortunately, many more people have contacted BBC to express their support. Now I don’t have to bang my head against a wall to fall asleep tonight. Read the rest of this entry »
1. White “nationalists”
2. Cult members
It will only lead to tears, I promise.
I have recently become aware of the case of the White Pride Mom from Winnipeg, thanks to Womanist Musings.
The Winnipeg Mother, who cannot be identified to protect her kids, has a house full of swastikas and other harmless ‘White Pride’ items (she claims she is not a white supremacist, simply proud of her white heritage). She sent one of her kids to school two days in a row with a swastika drawn on her arm. Teachers alerted the authorities and now the Winnipeg Mother’s children have been taken away, and her visitation rights revoked.
“They’ve made me more dedicated, more aware of the political oppression that we suffer in the country just trying to fight for freedom of speech for anyone.”
Alrighty, so I don’t really think what is at issue is freedom of speech here. Just as you can’t yell “Fire!” in a crowded theater, you can’t publicly support genocide against a group of people (drawing swastikas on one’s daughter’s arm, for example). In both cases, the safety of a large number of people comes before your ‘freedom of speech’.
What is at issue is a parent’s right to her children, which I believe to be one of the most fundamental rights in life. Clearly, Canada cannot start a trend of taking children away from their parents based on their parents’ beliefs, unless the children are in danger of physical harm. This is a) unenforceable, b) a rather scary power for a government to have, and c) probably illegal.
Oh, and d) the only real effect this action will have is to rally the forces of white nationalist hate around the Winnipeg Mother.
The Aryan Guard is planning another rally in Calgary next month. The mother said she will take the opportunity to raise money for her legal defence.
Helmut-Harry Loewen, who teaches sociology at the University of Winnipeg and is an anti-racism activist, said the organization of these various groups is in a bit of a tatters and they need this kind of case to mobilize.
“Clearly, leaders of the movement have identified her as potentially useful for their ultimate aims and she’s playing along with it,” he said.
Nooooooo!!! This is the opposite of what any reasonable person would want. It will only make white nationalists seem like an oppressed minority, give martyr status to this woman, and create a rallying point for hate groups.
For similar reasons, I was extremely dismayed when Texas authorities decided to take custody of 439 children from a Fundamentalist Church of Latter-Day Saints compound. They had a tip that child abuse had occurred at the YFZ Ranch (it turned out to be a hoax). Based on what I will call pervasive dislike of the FLDS Church, the decision was made to simply take all children away from their parents, instead of locating the person who had reported abuse toward herself.
This action was a) ineffective at solving the supposed problem, b) an extremely disturbing abuse of power by the government, c) definitely illegal, and d) only further entrenched the FLDS community against opening themselves up to the wider world and respecting secular authority. And again, I believe it violated the FLDS parents’ fundamental right to their children, a right which should only be breached in the gravest of cases where very convincing proof of abuse exists.
Common dislike towards a certain group or community should not be enough for them to be treated in a manner where their fundamental rights are breached. The effect will be to prove their disdain for the wider world and government authority founded, to provide a rallying point for the group, and to make them further entrenched in their questionable beliefs. In addition, we can never be sure when according to current standards, a group we feel part of will become the object of common dislike and be subject to breaches of fundamental rights. No need to start that trend now.
A politician stirred the debate about minority rights in Turkey when he spoke Kurdish in Parliament on Tuesday, violating laws that bar the language in official settings.
Learn more about the oppression of the Kurdish language and legislator Ahmet Turk’s brave stand here.
By RUPERT MURDOCH
Last updated: 3:16 AM February 24, 2009
As the Chairman of the New York Post, I am ultimately responsible for what is printed in its pages. The buck stops with me.
Last week, we made a mistake. We ran a cartoon that offended many people. Today I want to personally apologize to any reader who felt offended, and even insulted.
Over the past couple of days, I have spoken to a number of people and I now better understand the hurt this cartoon has caused. At the same time, I have had conversations with Post editors about the situation and I can assure you – without a doubt – that the only intent of that cartoon was to mock a badly written piece of legislation. It was not meant to be racist, but unfortunately, it was interpreted by many as such.
We all hold the readers of the New York Post in high regard and I promise you that we will seek to be more attuned to the sensitivities of our community.
Especially when it’s South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford.
CALLER: I hope you all are not playing politics with this. People in South Carolina are hurting. You know how unemployment rates are high right now and going up higher. We are running out of money in the unemployment bank — we need money for that, the people that need help. And I’m one of them, I can’t get no help. […]
SANFORD: Well I’d say hello to Charleston because its home and I’d say hello to this fellow this morning and say that my prayers are going to be with him and his family because it sounds like he is in an awfully tough spot.
For those of us that missed this story first time around, apparently segregated proms still occur in certain Southern communities.
Here’s the excellent stuff white people do post on the matter.
The documentary film about segregated prom.
The CNN story.
Federal courts forced schools in Charleston, Mississippi, to desegregate in 1970, but no judge ordered the high school proms to merge.
The February 20th edition of MSNBC’s Morning Joe was particularly hard to watch. (See below)
Look what Horrible Person Pat Buchanan had to say about lending to “minority communities” causing the financial collapse:
BUCHANAN: The feds, Joe, the feds leaned on banks and threatened some of these banks, “You’ve got to make more loans,” so the banks — and pushed them out — you gotta help, frankly, in minority communities. And they pushed them out and the guys put nothing down and stuff, and then the banks sell the loans off to Fannie and Freddie.
SCARBOROUGH: And that’s what happened. Banks made bad loans. They sold it to Fannie and Freddie. Fannie and Freddie sold it to Wall Street.
DR. NANCY SNYDERMAN: That’s right.
SCARBOROUGH: They turned it into securities, chopped it up, sent it around the world, and here we are with the Dow Jones at its lowest rate since 1632.
I knew this was the fault of the poor all along! It’s a big conspiracy hatched by the children of Welfare Queens to find a new way to get the government to give them free $money$! They never intended to pay their mortgages, heck, they never even intended to live in their houses… they’re more comfortable sleeping out on the streets anyhow.
When did it become part of our culture to try and screw our neighbors and to openly despise the poor?
I cannot remember a time in my life during which contempt for the less fortunate was as celebrated as it is now. It’s practically a badge of dignified self-respect to publicly castigate anyone having a rough time. At least on the MSM.
On MSNBC’s Morning Joe on the 20th, the talking heads discussed the stimulus package. Of particular contention were the funds intended to prevent foreclosures. As I have heard several times recently, everyone on the show seemed to fret that the money would go to unworthy recipients who are poor due to some personal fault, or greedy people who should never have dreamed of owning a home in the first place. They played a clip of Rick Santelli’s antics, whose recent rant struck a chord with poor-shamers. His “raise your hand if you want to pay for your neighbor’s mortgage” got a chorus of boos from the floor of the stock exchange. The guys around him were livid at the thought.
Mary Kate Cary wrote an approving opinion piece in US News as a reaction. Basically, her point is that those lucky enough not to be touched by the recession- those who have kept their jobs and houses- are upset that the tax revenue from their good fortune will be used to help those less fortunate. They are angry that part of their tax dollars will help the poor and/or those facing loss of their home moreso now that we are facing an economic crisis as a nation.
For me, that draws a huge HUH?
What the hell is wrong with people? This “I’ve got mine- screw you” attitude is a national shame.
The Republican party seems to relish shaming the poor during the recession. The mass vote against the stimulus. The various governors talking like they don’t need and won’t take the money. It seems like they are happy to leave people in poverty in order to prove an ideological point.
The gloating, the schadenfreude, the utter lack of compassion… I think this is a really ugly way to react to those Americans suffering most during a national crisis, and it is not reserved to any party.
Why are we unwilling to help a neighbor? Why do we assume we deserve our home and our amenities, but call those facing foreclosure “greedy”? What better use for our tax dollars than to help those hit worst by a national crisis? Why has the thought of helping out the less fortunate become so viscerally repugnant to so many Americans?
When worst comes to worst, would Americans rather leave their compatriots out in the cold as punishment for their poverty because helping them out is too similar to the scary scary S-word: Socialism?
I haven’t seen a single TV discussion of the stimulus that included commentary from a person facing unemployment, foreclosure, or poverty. While they are being mocked in newspapers and on television screens around the country, they have not even been invited to speak on their own behalf. Their many voices apparently do not deserve the amplification accorded to the small circle of comfortable, employed and adequately housed pundits and politicians who bash them. Hardly a fair fight.
I guess I’m hoping that all of these writers, pundits and politicians simply do not speak for the majority of Americans. It’s just hard to believe that because somebody is reading their columns, listening to their radio shows and watching them on television.
Yes.
Incredible!
I am a reader of Angry Black Bitch. I enjoy her perspective, voice, and commentary. But I also have a secret additional affection for her: she lives in St Louis, my birth-town and current location of not one but TWO of my brothers.
She often covers Missouri news that really takes me back to my Midwestern upbringing.
A certain Missouri Representative Bryan Stevenson (R-Webb City) took to the floor and declared the not introduced so not really in question and certainly not a pressing issue if it ever does get introduced FOCA [Freedom of Choice Act] the “greatest power grab by the federal government since the War of Northern Aggression.”
Oh yes he did!
He compared a hypothetical federal law protecting Choice to Lincoln’s decision to save the Union and end slavery. Negatively.
A revealing hand-tip indeed.
Oh, to those of you who aren’t familiar, the War of Northern Aggression is the preferred term for the Civil War amongst Southerners who long for ye good olde days of codified white supremacy and black enslavement. Before that evil “power grab” by Lincoln.
Makes sense, I guess, that someone who still rues the end of slavery would also be so terrified of any lessening of our tradition of female servitude. Oh no, what about the patriarchy!
Hear the words from the horse’s mouth:
Utah Republican State Senator Chris Buttars is in the news again. I wrote about his antics previously when he supported a bill to mandate that all Utah businesses greet their customers during December with “Merry Christmas” only.
Think Progress has gotten ahold of a leaked interview with Buttars where, thinking his words would never be heard by the general public, he makes a plethora of rabid, factless statements about gay Utahans.
– To me, homosexuality will always be a sexual perversion. And you say that around here now and everybody goes nuts! But I don’t care.
– They say, I’m born that way. There’s some truth to that, in that some people are born with an attraction to alcohol.
– They’re mean! They want to talk about being nice — they’re the meanest buggers I ever seen. It’s just like the Moslems. Moslems are good people and their religion is anti-war. But it’s been taken over by the radical side. And the gays are totally taken over by the radical side.
– I believe that you will destroy the foundation of American society, because I believe the cornerstone of it is a man and a woman, the family. … And I believe that they’re, internally, they’re probably the greatest threat to America going down I know of. Yep, the radical gay movement.
The occasion of Buttars’ learned commentary? He was celebrating the defeat of several bills in the Utah state legislature that would have given a few rights to its gay citizens.
Listen for yourself.
UPDATE 2/20/09: Buttars has been removed from the Utah Senate Judiciary Committee due to these comments. Hooray!
These cells may soon have equal rights to a human
Yes, this bullhooey just passed North Dakota’s House, and is moving on to the Senate. Apparently it is intended, as other (already failed) personhood measures were, to pose a challenge to RvW.
The bill declares that “any organism with the genome of homo sapiens” is a person protected by rights granted by the North Dakota Constitution and state laws.
The supergenius behind this measure is bill sponsor Rep. Dan Ruby, who said, “This is very simply defining when life begins, and giving that life some protections under our Constitution — the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
For a clump of cells inhabiting a human’s internal organs?
I have some questions.
What are the laws regarding flushing humans down the toilet? Since 50%-80% of fertilized eggs, excuse me, microscopic Americans, are ejected from the body pre-implantation, that means that over half of all humans are flushed down the toilet and are now located somewhere in the sewage system. Should police be investigating these millions of abandoned corpses? The dead are practically littering the streets!
To what country are zygotes loyal? Since citizenship is awarded at birth, preborn patriots do not actually have citizenship status, and are a grave national security risk.
When humans die in America, they receive a death certificate. When unborn urchins die at the age of 1 week post-conception, can they get a death certificate even though they haven’t been born? Can you die pre-birth?
Since life begins at conception and birth into the world is just a random happenstance of little import where babies are simply removed from their containers, shouldn’t we celebrate our birthdays based on what day we were conceived? Come to think of it, shouldn’t all of our important documents, to reflect our true lifespan, and include Date of Conception in order to be accurate? Of course, since it is medically impossible to actually know what day an egg met a sperm, so no one will ever know on what day they became a person, and documents will be rather imprecise.
Since common activities like exercise and breast-feeding are known to prevent embryonic earthlings from “taking”, resulting in the death of humans, should almost everything be illegal for women to do?
Since women are often not aware for the first several weeks that they have become walking incubators and may continue to smoke and drink during that time, which in some cases will result in murder of an incubating infant, can concerned citizens form vigilante groups to perform random womb-checks and summary executions, to help along what is sure to be an over-burdened justice system?
Just some thoughts. North Dakota, I’d like some answers.
So this makes four. Four bills meant to chip away at women’s access to abortion are currently circulating in Kansas.
I first posted about the bill to make women listen to the fetal heartbeat before being allowed to have an abortion.
Then I posted about a bill that would allow her family or husband to sue if they think a woman’s abortion was “illegal”. It would also force doctors to read a pro-life, anti-abortion script to patients before allowing them to have their procedure.
And now there’s two more!
The Kansas City Star informs us that Kansas Rep. Steve Huebert is sponsoring a bill to remove the mental health exemption for late term abortion. “I don’t think mental distress qualifies,” he states.
Is that your medical opinion, Steve, or from your experience as a woman with a difficult pregnancy and severe mental health issues?
The fourth (and final?) bill would force abortion providers to provide the Kansas government in Topeka with personal medical information about each late term abortion they perform so that the government can determine whether the medical decision was “justified”. Why the government has a compelling interest in double-checking doctors’ decisions only in the case of abortion is not clear.
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