NAACP Issues Travel Warning for Missouri

Welcome to the new Chumph confederacy…

NAACP Warns Minorities, Women Heading To Missouri: ‘They May Not Be Safe’

The organization wants people to know their civil rights may be violated in the Show Me State.

NAACP delegates have approved a travel advisory warning marginalized groups that “they may not be safe” if they go to Missouri because their civil rights are likely to be violated.

The delegates voted Wednesday to nationally adopt the advisory, which was put in place statewide in June, according to the Springfield News-Leader. The advisory ― directed at people of color, women, people who identify as LGBTQ and those with disabilities ― cites recent legislation signed by Gov. Eric Greitens (R) that makes it even more difficult to sue for housing or employment discrimination.

NAACP Springfield chapter President Cheryl Clay and other chapter members emphasized that this is not a boycott, but a warning and a response to the legislation.

“Our ongoing issues of racial profiling, discrimination, harassment and excess violence towards people of color have been further exacerbated by the passage and signing of [Senate Bill] 43,” Clay said in a statement to the News-Leader.

“Not all the communities have the desire or the will to do the right thing for people in their community,” Clay added. “Thus, this is why Missouri has earned the travel advisory for the whole state.”

In addition to the bill, the advisory condemns the state for a number of issues dating back to the Missouri Compromise of 1819. Those include “racial and ethnic disparities in education, health, economic empowerment and criminal justice,” a “long history” of racial violence and harassment, and recent data that shows black drivers were 75 percent more likely to be pulled over by cops than white drivers in 2016.

It also cites the racism that led to protests against University of Missouri in 2015 and a lawmaker’s comments on the House floor claiming that there’s a “distinction between homosexuality and just being a human being.”

Just days before the national delegation voted, Missouri NAACP President Rod Chapel told The Associated Press that he thinks “everybody’s civil rights are now in jeopardy.”

After the delegates approved the travel advisory, Chapel told the AP that he hopes the move will boost awareness. He said that the advisory will be up for ratification by the national board in October.

 

Dropping Like Flies – The “Mooch” Fired After Just 10 Days

Yet another of the Chumph’s men hits that Whites Only House killing floor…

You hire scumbags…You wind up firing scumbags.

The “Mooch”…DOA

 

Anthony Scaramucci abruptly removed as White House communications chief after chaotic first week

Donald Trump has decided to remove Anthony Scaramucci from his position as White House communications director, according to the New York Times.

Scaramucci was removed from the position just 10 days after it was announced he would be the news communications chief.

Scaramucci is a Wall Street financier and former Trump transition team official who frequently appeared on TV programs to defend the embattled president. An inside source told Politico that Trump hired Scaramucci because “he is really good at making the case for him… [Trump] loves him on TV.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3iXsMJyFz8

 

The Crumbling of America

Fareed has it right on this one…

 

Sessions Goes After LGBT Rights

Well… Jefferson Davis Sessions just went after LGBT people. Likely as part of an overall attempt to eliminate Title IV and Civil Rights Law.

The New Jim Crow for LGBT people.

Why Trump’s Justice Department Just Increased the Stakes In the Fight for LGBT Workplace Rights

The Trump administration’s Department of Justice on Wednesday undercut the stance of the Obama administration’s DOJ and another autonomous federal agency, by arguing that an existing law, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, does not bar an employer from firing a gay employee because he or she is gay.

The filing came the same day as President Trump’s announcement that he would bar transgender troops from serving in the military. Together, the two actions fueled outrage from lawmakers, activists and other leaders who argue that the administration is seeking to roll back the rights and protections won by the LGBT community in recent years.

As a candidate, Trump largely avoided talking about issues related to sexual orientation, but often implied that he wouldn’t interfere with recent progress, even going so far as to promise gays and lesbians, “I will fight for you.”

Since his inauguration, however, Trump has been largely silent on the issue. Social conservatives were key to his election victory, and, notably, his attorney general, Jeff Sessions, has been a longtime opponent of extending job protections based on sexual orientation.

Sexual orientation is not explicitly listed in Title VII, which protects individuals against employment discrimination on the basis of race and color, as well as national origin, sex, and religion. But the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission ruled in July 2015 that discrimination based on sexual orientation is, in essence, discrimination based on sex. Because sexual orientation can’t be defined or understood without reference to sex, the commission held, discrimination based on it is “premised on sex-based preferences, assumptions, expectations, stereotypes, or norms” and therefore barred by the law. The EEOC’s ruling was hailed as a victory for the LGBT community at the time, and under President Obama, it became the interpretation that the DOJ abided by.

Trump’s DOJ on Wednesday challenged that stance, arguing just the opposite: that Title VII does not protect against discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. The DOJ’s opinion, filed in a brief in an ongoing legal case between a worker and his boss being heard by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, says “the sole question here is whether, as a matter of law, Title VII reaches sexual orientation discrimination. It does not, as has been settled for decades. Any efforts to amend Title VII’s scope should be directed to Congress rather than the courts.”

The EEOC filed a motion in the same Second Circuit case just last month, reiterating its 2015 finding that Title VII bans bias based on sexual orientation.

In its filing, the DOJ acknowledged, rather frankly, that its stance on the matter contradicts that of its fellow government agency. “The EEOC is not speaking for the United States and its position about the scope of Title VII is entitled to no deference beyond its power to persuade,” the ruling says.

It’s true that courts are not bound by EEOC positions; they’re only required to honor legislation and the rulings of courts to which their cases can be appealed, including the Supreme Court. (It should be noted that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit made the same determination as the EEOC in a case in April.) But the EEOC’s decisions matter because the commission enforces Title VII, has the authority to bring lawsuits based on its rulings against private employers, and adjudicates cases brought by federal workers against federal agencies.

The DOJ meanwhile, is the defense attorney for the United States, so, in many ways, it’s just like any big employer that files an amicus brief in a case. But enforcing discrimination law in contexts outside of employment—housing, voting rights, disability—is part of the department’s mandate, meaning its stance on such issues carries more weight than other employers’, says Marcia McCormick, an employment law professor at St. Louis University School of Law.

Its filing in the Second Circuit case this week extends what has been a years-long debate over the scope of Title VII. The EEOC’s ruling on that matter in 2015 recognized that federal courts had concluded the opposite, but it said that those decisions were “dated.”

The EEOC’s stance on Title VII’s reach—spelled out in 2015—was considered a landmark decision because it gave gay workers extra cover in states that hadn’t passed their own laws barring discrimination based on sexual orientation. As of this April, 20 states have passed laws banning discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity; another two have passed legislation against bias based on sexual orientation only, according to the Human Rights Campaign, meaning there are 28 states where gay employees can be fired for being gay.

The DOJ’s new stance on the matter says that determining such workplace protections should be done through Congress, not through the courts. Lawmakers have pursued that route before. The federal Employment Non-Discrimination Act, which would have outlawed discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation (and, in more recent versions, gender identity) nationwide, was first introduced in 1994. Congress considered it at least 10 times in the following decade and a half, but it never became law. The current Congress, whose GOP leadership includes many social conservatives, seems highly unlikely to act on a similar bill.

 

The Silent March

With the rise of the Second KKK, and the election of extremely racist President Wilson (Probably the most racist President until Trump in history), America was at War both in Europe and at home.

The KKK serially attacked 20 black communities in what were euphemistically called “Race riots” by the media of the time, as well as conducted lynchings. While the efforts and protests had an impact, what finally stopped the carnage was black folks shooting back – most notably in the attack on the black community of Washington, DC in July of 1919.

This peaceful March in 1917 set the stage for black resistance, and in many ways is the grandfather of today’s BLM Movement.

Silent Protest parade on Fifth Avenue, New York City, July 28, 1917, in response to the East St. Louis race riot. In front row are James Weldon Johnson (far right), W. E. B. DuBois (2nd from right), Rev. Hutchens Chew Bishop, rector of St. Philip’s Episcopal Church (Harlem) and realtor John E. Nail.(Credit: New York Public Library (public domain))

100 years ago African-Americans marched down 5th Avenue to declare that black lives matter

Nearly 10,000 African-Americans participated in the “Silent Protest Parade”

The only sounds were those of muffled drums, the shuffling of feet and the gentle sobs of some of the estimated 20,000 onlookers. The women and children wore all white. The men dressed in black.

On the afternoon of Saturday, July 28, 1917, nearly 10,000 African-Americans marched down Fifth Avenue, in silence, to protest racial violence and white supremacy in the United States.

New York City, and the nation, had never before witnessed such a remarkable scene.

The “Silent Protest Parade,” as it came to be known, was the first mass African-American demonstration of its kind and marked a watershed moment in the history of the civil rights movement. As I have written in my book “Torchbearers of Democracy,” African-Americans during the World War I era challenged racism both abroad and at home. In taking to the streets to dramatize the brutal treatment of black people, the participants of the “Silent Protest Parade” indicted the United States as an unjust nation.

This charge remains true today.

One hundred years later, as black people continue to insist that “Black Lives Matter,” the “Silent Protest Parade” offers a vivid reminder about the power of courageous leadership, grassroots mobilization, direct action and their collective necessity in the fight to end racial oppression in our current troubled times.

Racial violence and the East St. Louis Riot

One of the great accomplishments of the Black Lives Matter movement has been to demonstrate the continuum of racist violence against black people throughout American history and also the history of resistance against it. But as we continue to grapple with the hyper-visibility of black death, it is perhaps easy to forget just how truly horrific racial violence against black people was a century ago.

Prior to the “Silent Protest Parade,” mob violence and the lynching of African-Americans had grown even more gruesome. In Waco, a mob of 10,000 white Texans attended the May 15, 1916, lynching of a black farmer, Jesse Washington. One year later, on May 22, 1917, a black woodcutter, Ell Persons, died at the hands of over 5,000 vengeance-seeking whites in Memphis. Both men were burned and mutilated, their charred body parts distributed and displayed as souvenirs.

Even by these grisly standards, East St. Louis later that same summer was shocking. Simmering labor tensions between white and black workers exploded on the evening of July 2, 1917.

For 24 hours, white mobs indiscriminately stabbed, shot and lynched anyone with black skin. Men, women, children, the elderly, the disabled — no one was spared. Homes were torched and occupants shot down as they attempted to flee. White militia men stood idly by as the carnage unfolded. Some actively participated. The death toll likely ran as high as 200 people.

The city’s surviving 6,000 black residents became refugees.

East St. Louis was an American pogrom. The fearless African-American anti-lynching activist Ida B. Wells traveled to the still smoldering city on July 4 and collected firsthand accounts of the aftermath. She described what she saw as an “awful orgy of human butchery.”

The devastation of East St. Louis was compounded by the fact that America was at war. On April 2, President Woodrow Wilson had thrown the United States into the maelstrom of World War I. He did so by asserting America’s singularly unique place on the global stage and his goal to make the world “safe for democracy.” In the eyes of black people, East St. Louis exposed the hypocrisy of Wilson’s vision and America itself.

The NAACP takes action

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored Peoplequickly responded to the massacre. Founded in 1909, the NAACP had yet to establish itself as a truly representative organization for African-Americans across the country. With the exception of W.E.B. Du Bois, one of the NAACP’s co-founders and editor of The Crisis magazine, the national leadership was all white. Branches were overwhelmingly located in the North, despite the majority of African-Americans residing below the Mason-Dixon line. As a result, the NAACP had largely failed to respond with a sense of urgency to the everyday horrors endured by the masses of black folk.

James Weldon Johnson changed things. Lawyer, diplomat, novelist, poet and songwriter, Johnson was a true African-American renaissance man. In 1916, Johnson joined the NAACP as a field secretary and made an immediate impact. In addition to growing the organization’s southern membership, Johnson recognized the importance of expanding the influence of the NAACP’s existing branches beyond the black elite.

Johnson raised the idea of a silent protest march at an executive committee meeting of the NAACP Harlem branch shortly after the East St. Louis riot. Johnson also insisted that the protest include the city’s entire black community. Planning quickly got underway, spearheaded by Johnson and local black clergymen.

A historic day

By noon on July 28, several thousand African-Americans had begun to assemble at 59th Street. Crowds gathered along Fifth Avenue. Anxious New York City police officers lined the streets, aware of what was about to take place but, with clubs at the ready, prepared for trouble.

At approximately 1 p.m., the protest parade commenced. Four men carrying drums began to slowly, solemnly play. A group of black clergymen and NAACP officials made up the front line. W.E.B. Du Bois, who had recently returned from conducting an NAACP investigation in East St. Louis, and James Weldon Johnson marched side by side.

The parade was a stunning spectacle. At the front, women and children wearing all-white gowns symbolized the innocence of African-Americans in the face of the nation’s guilt. The men, bringing up the rear and dressed in dark suits, conveyed both a mournful dignity and stern determination to stand up for their rights as citizens.

They carried signs and banners shaming America for its treatment of black people. Some read, “Your hands are full of blood,” “Thou Shalt Not Kill,” “Mothers, do lynchers go to heaven?” Others highlighted the wartime context and the hollowness of America’s ideals: “We have fought for the liberty of white Americans in six wars; our reward was East St. Louis,” “Patriotism and loyalty presuppose protection and liberty,” “Make America safe for Democracy.”

Throughout the parade, the marchers remained silent. The New York Times described the protest as “one of the most quiet and orderly demonstrations ever witnessed.” The silence was finally broken with cheers when the parade concluded at Madison Square.

Legacy of the Silent Protest Parade

The “Silent Protest Parade” marked the beginning of a new epoch in the long black freedom struggle. While adhering to a certain politics of respectability, a strategy employed by African-Americans that focused on countering racist stereotypes through dignified appearance and behavior, the protest, within its context, constituted a radical claiming of the public sphere and a powerful affirmation of black humanity. It declared that a “New Negro” had arrived and launched a black public protest tradition that would be seen in the parades of the Universal Negro Improvement Association, the civil rights demonstrations of the 1960s and the Black Lives Matter marches of today.

The “Silent Protest Parade” reminds us that the fight against racist violence and the killing of black people remains just as relevant now as it did 100 years ago. Black death, whether at the hands of a Baton Rouge police officer or white supremacist in Charleston, is a specter that continues to haunt this nation. The expendability of black bodies is American tradition, and history speaks to the long endurance of this violent legacy.

But history also offers inspiration, purpose and vision.

Ida B. Wells, James Weldon Johnson and other freedom fighters of their generation should serve as models for activists today. That the “Silent Protest Parade” attracted black people from all walks of life and backgrounds attests to the need for organizations like the NAACP, following its recent national convention, to remember and embrace its origins. And, in building and sustaining the current movement, we can take lessons from past struggles and work strategically and creatively to apply them to the present.

Because, at their core, the demands of black people in 2017 remain the same as one of the signs raised to the sky on that July afternoon in 1917:

“Give me a chance to live.”

 

Moved to the Country…Took up Canning

My Grandma was the State Champion canner for a number of years. I remember as a young kid looking at all the jars of canned fruit and vegetables in her root cellar. Each peach was carefully and perfectly placed in the old Ball jars and sealed,

Have a small garden this year which has been prolific – so I have lots more tomatoes, cucumbers, squash and other produce than I can consume alone. The solution? Can that for winter use. I am feeling a bit connected with the old folks who lived in the country and did this to survive.

First canned tomatoes –

Have a boatload of Goliath and Large Tomatoes. Love just slicing them thin with a little salt. pepper, and sugar, a drop of two of Balsamic vinegar, and topping them off with Mozzrella and a leaf of basil. Or even skipping the mozzarella and basil. Hey ! Summer doesn’t get much better than this!

Next – Salsa! Now my Salsa isn’t red because the base is made of Yellow Pear Tomatoes and Red Cherry Tomatoes. It is a killer sauce. Going for round 2 this weekend adding a few more fresh spices I’ve gotten my hands on.

 

Next – Sweet Pickle Relish! I have 2 Cucumber plants making 2-3 Cucumbers a day. So first the sweet, and then the Dill.

Next – Pattypan (White) Squash, Pickled with Jalapeno pepper…First try at this, so the veggies are a bit loose. Harvested 10 more of the squash yesterday, next go is to layer them more neatly.

My Garden is in two parts – Here is part of the Deck Garden –

 

Here is the one in the “Back 40” about 5 weeks ago – And yes, I built the Trellis from scrap wood I had laying around.

Anybody else like to garden and cook?

 

Attempted Rise of the Third Klan Aided By the Chumph, Bannon…And Sessions

If the make the movie…It will be called “The Second Birth of a Nation”

A real sequel.

If the hot air in DC winds up with Sessions getting fired – I will jump for joy. Not the least of which reason being that the Chumph won’t get another pick at AG until the Mueller Report is out.

Alt-right activists say Trump and Bannon are giving them “space to destroy” by keeping FBI away

Top alt-right podcasters say the Trump administration is deliberately backing off investigating domestic extremists

While the neo-fascist alt-right is not entirely happy with President Donald Trump’s first few months in office, one thing for which they are grateful is that the new administration is giving them free reign to engage in building their movement, completely unencumbered by any law enforcement scrutiny of their activities.

“He’s going to give us space to destroy,” Michael Peinovich, the creator of The Right Stuff, an alt-right podcast network said during a Sunday guest appearance on “Fash the Nation,” the movement’s most popular web radio show.

Peinovich, who also goes by the pen name “Mike Enoch,” was referencing a 2015 remark by Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, then the mayor of Baltimore, which some people interpreted as giving support to rioters who committed numerous acts of violence in the city following the acquittal of several police officers who had been on trial for the death of a black resident.

“He’s going to give us space to operate, and frankly, it is space to destroy,” Peinovich continued.

“Now is the time that we have to make hay while the sun shines . . . while these investigations of ‘domestic terrorist groups’ are not being funded by the government, they’re not being pushed by the Department of Homeland Security” argued one of the co-hosts of the program, an anonymous former Republican political staffer who calls himself Jazzhands McFeels.

“We’d probably be facing fucking [racketeering] charges or some shit like that,” Peinovich said, discussing what he believed might have happened if Hillary Clinton had won the 2016 presidential election.

“We have to use these four years to grow into something that can’t be defeated,” Peinovich said, referring to possible future investigations of neo-fascist groups.

Some parts of the Trump administration actively want to encourage the growth of the alt-right, the former Hill staffer “Jazzhands McFeels” said, claiming that Trump’s top strategist Steve Bannon secretly was trying to enable the fringe movement.

“They kind of expect us to be doing this. I’m not saying he’s our guy, but they want — at least Bannon, I would think — wants us to be able to operate in that space. So we should and we are,” he said.

Both podcasters’ statements were met with agreement by guest Richard Spencer, an alt-right editor who operates a series of niche web publications and conferences catering to self-styled racist intellectuals who has since tried to rebrand himself as more of an activist.

In 2016, Bannon told Mother Jones writer Sarah Posner that Breitbart News, the website he oversaw before going to work for Trump, was “the platform for the alt-right.” Subsequently, the White House strategist claimed that he was referring to the anti-Washington ethos that permeates the larger Republican base.

As a matter of policy, the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation do not publicize ongoing investigations but presumably, given how tightly knit the small alt-right movement is, the two podcasters likely have some knowledge about the lack of law enforcement oversight.

One government policy area which does appear to have changed under Trump is that federal grants to non-profit groups seeking to combat domestic extremism appear to have been frozen by the new administration.

Those funds were to be disbursed under a program called Countering Violent Extremism which was approved by the GOP Congress and former president Barack Obama in January of this year.

In February, Reuters reported that the Trump administration had decided to take the $10 million budget of the program, which was supposed to be given to private-sector groups trying to discourage extremism of all types, and redirect it toward counteracting Islamist influence only. The program itself would be renamed the “Countering Radical Islamic Extremism” initiative, according to the wire service. Since that time, several nonprofit groups which had been approved for funding allocations have publicly stated that they have not received any information from the federal government, despite the fact that the money was supposed to be disbursed within 30 days of approval.

“I hope the way that he [Trump] is looked back on in history is that he was the vehicle that moved the alt-right movement, the white identity movement in the United States, back into the forefront of the political scene,” Peinovich said on the podcast.

While he is not as widely covered in the political press as some other alt-right activists, Peinovich’s “The Right Stuff” podcast network currently hosts over a dozen neofascist web radio shows that in total have hundreds of thousands of downloads every week, far in excess of the audience of the some nationally syndicated radio hosts’ podcasts.

The Right Stuff has begun recovering some of its audience after Peinovich was exposed in January as having a Jewish wife. His business partner claimed after he was “doxxed” that Peinovich was “separating” from her but neither activist has ever offered any proof of the assertion.

 

Emmit Till…And Racial Re-Appropriation in Art

Now it is “wrong” fora white artist to paint a black subject? To express in art anything about black history?

Methinks there are indeed too snowflakery about and way too much snowfuckery…

That New Jim Crow – Sometime he seem to work both sides of the street,

Protesters Want This Painting of Emmett Till Destroyed—Because the Artist Is White

Artist Hannah Black has launched a petition calling on the Whitney to remove and destroy the painting, Dana Schutz’s ‘Open Casket,’ currently on show at the museum’s Biennial show.

Before it opened to the public, the 2017 Whitney Biennial was lauded by critics for deftly addressing the political and cultural turbulence of our times—not just the Trump era, but our country’s broader socio-political climate and racial tensions during the Obama years as well.

A group of protesters have arrived at a different conclusion: the Biennial has exploited the black experience by displaying a white artist’s painting of Emmett Till, the teenager who was brutally murdered by two white men in 1955.

British artist Hannah Black has launched a petition calling on the Whitney to remove and destroy the painting, Dana Schutz’s Open Casket, which depicts Till’s bludgeoned face as seen in a photograph of his open-casket funeral service.

A handful of people also protested the painting in person last Friday, the Biennial’s opening day, standing in front of it to block it from public view.

More than thirty people have signed the petition, which began circulating Facebook on Monday afternoon. “That even the disfigured corpse of a child was not sufficient to move the white gaze from its habitual cold calculation is evident daily and in a myriad of ways, not least the fact that this painting exists at all,” the petition reads.

A number of original signatories’ names were scrubbed on Monday because they were white; responding to criticism, Black commented on her Facebook post that it was “better to include only black signatories.” The artist declined to speak to The Daily Beast beyond what she wrote in her public statement, which argues that it is “not acceptable for a white person to transmute Black suffering into profit and fun.”

In a statement to The Daily Beast, Schutz said the painting was “never for sale and never will be.” Schutz, who has two other paintings on view at the Biennial, said she created the painting in August 2016, “after a long, violent summer of mass shootings, rallies filled with hate speech, and an ever-escalating number of camera phone videos of black men being shot execution style by police.”

She noted that there was “renewed attention” around this time to the murder of Till and his mother’s decision to “let the world see what she had seen.” (This is also written on the wall text accompanying Schutz’s painting). “Till’s photograph, like a festering wound, felt analogous to the tragic events of the summer. What had been hidden was now in plain view,” Schutz said, adding that she “did not know if I could make this painting ethically or emotionally.

“I don’t know what it is like to be black in America. But I do know what it is like to be a mother. Emmett was Mamie Till’s only son. I thought about the possibility of painting it only after listening to interviews with her. In her sorrow and rage she wanted her son’s death not just to be her pain but America’s pain. I made this painting to engage with the loss.”

But Black and others supporting her campaign argue that–regardless of Schutz’s intentions–the loss is not hers to engage with because “white free speech and white creative freedom have been founded on the constraint of others, and are not natural rights. The painting must go.”

Even if Schutz herself does not directly profit from sales of the painting, the petition states that contemporary art is a “fundamentally white supremacist institution” and that the Whitney Museum is profiting from Biennial ticket sales–and thus is exploiting black people’s suffering.

Schutz said that while she knew her depiction of Till might stir up controversy, she didn’t anticipate calls for it to be destroyed or removed from the Whitney Biennial. Asked if art should ever be censored, Schutz said no. But she encourages debate over works like hers. “People have a right to their outrage,” she said. “Public discussion and argument is important and essential for art.”

 

White Woman Who Cried Rape Falsely – Gets Charged With Felonies

Lot of bad history in America from this type of person….

White woman who lied about being raped by three black men indicted on felony charges

A Texas woman who lied about being raped by three masked black men was indicted on three felony charges including two third-degree felony counts of tampering with physical evidence and a third-degree felony count of tampering with a government record, the Root reports.

On March 21, Breana Harmon Talbott—who was 18 at the time—ran into a Texas church in just her bra, a T-shirt and underwear, and claimed she had been raped by two masked men while a third held her down. She was taken to local hospital where it was determined she showed no signs of forced penetration. Harmon eventually admitted her injuries were self-inflicted.

Doing the Perp Pose

In a statement released the following day, Denison County Police called Harmon’s accusation a “hoax.”

“The so-called victim in the case confessed to the hoax last evening (March 21) to a member of the investigative team working the case,” Denison Police Chief Jay Burch said. “Talbott’s hoax was also insulting to our community and especially offensive to the African-American community due to her description of the so-called suspects in her hoax.”

“[Breanna Harmon Talbott] was originally arrested for the misdemeanor offense of false report to a peace officer,” Grayson County District Attorney Joe Brown said Wednesday. “However, the more we have looked at what happened in this case, and considered the harm it caused, and certainly could have caused, we believe what she did fits these higher charges. What she did was very serious, and we believe it was felony conduct.”

If convicted, Harmon faces up to 10 years in prison and a $10,000 fine for each felony. The Denison Police Department is also seeking $8,000 in restitution.

 

Al Franken Asks – Why Does the Chumph Believe Russia Over Our Own Intelligence?

The Chumph’s lies and excuses are wearing very thin…

 

 

“Hail! Hail! The Witch is Dead!” – Republican Killercare Dies

Hopefully the end of this pathetic saga… And these clowns will get on with fixing the problems they caused in Obamacare trying to insert poison pills when the first Bill was passed.

 

Not Buying “Get Tough on Crime”

“Getting tough on crime” has been synonymous with mass incarceration of minorities in America.

Baltimore’s Mayor just stepped on a land mine.

 

 

 

I’ll Play the Blues For You

Just because it’s Thursday – The Blues in different generations

Ain’t no Love in the Heart of the City –

Little Milton – Make Me Cry

Albert Collins – If Trouble Was Money-

Otis Rush –

Non-electric blues – Lightnin Hopkins for the early 60’s –

From the early 50’s – Son House –

And Mississippi John Hurt – “Cocaine Blues”

And lastly at the edge of R&B – Howling Wolf

 

Lighting a Short Fuse – the Chumph Goes After the LGBQT Community

In a tweet more likely aimed at diverting the public’s attention away from Chumph crimes and failure to pass legislation, the punk-in-charge decides to take on the most powerful minority in America – the LGBQT community.

Bad move.

Out trots whipping boy Sessions to defend the Chumph’s attack on Transgender Military personnel and to try and overturn Civil Rights Law banning discrimination against the LGBQT community.

Trump Administration Argues Federal Civil Rights Law Does Not Protect Gay Employees

 

On Wednesday, the Department of Justice filed an amicus brief in the 2^nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals arguing that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 does not prohibit discrimination against gay and bisexual employees. The DOJ’s brief was not solicited by the court or any party to the case. Rather, in an unusual move, the Trump administration elected to weigh in with an aggressively anti-gay stance, arguing that gay Americans have no protection against workplace discrimination under federal law. Its decision is unsurprising in light of Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ vigorous opposition to LGBTQ rights.

Title VII does not explicitly outlaw sexual orientation discrimination in employment. However, it does forbid “discrimination … because of sex.” which the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission interprets to encompass anti-gay discrimination. For at least 15 years, many federal courts have agreed, and in April, the 7^th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Title VII does, indeed, protect gay employees. Both the 7^thCircuit and the EEOC relied on three theories of sex discrimination:

1. “But-for” sex discrimination

This theory holds that anti-gay discrimination qualifies as sex discrimination because, but for the gay person’s sex, she would not be discriminated against. Imagine, for example, that a homophobic employer fires a female worker because she marries a woman. But for that worker’s sex, she wouldn’t have been fired: Her boss has no issue with men marrying women, only women marrying women. The employee’s sex was fundamental to the discrimination she suffered—so it can therefore aptly be described as sex discrimination.

2. Sex stereotyping

The Supreme Court held in 1989’s Price Waterhouse v. Hopkins that sex stereotyping is a form of sex discrimination. Thus, when an employer mistreats a worker because she fails to conform to certain gender norms, it has engaged in discrimination “because of sex.” Initially, sex stereotyping was applied to masculine women and feminine men. But as the 7^th Circuit pointed out, gay people are “the ultimate case of failure to conform” to sex stereotypes, which, in America, have historically held that men should date only women and women should date only men. By intimately associating with people of the same sex, gay individuals violate this stereotype. And so, when they are discriminated against because of their sexual orientation, they have suffered sex stereotyping.

3. Associational sex discrimination

Under this theory, anti-gay bias constitutes sex discrimination in much the same way that anti-miscegenation laws constitute racial discrimination. The Supreme Court has held that when a state prohibits a white person from marrying a black person, it has engaged in discrimination because of race. Similarly, the 7^th Circuit ruled that when an employer mistreats a gay person for associating with a partner of the same sex, it has engaged in discrimination “because of sex.” Consider, for instance, a gay man who places a photo of his husband on his desk at work, and is fired for it. In effect, his employer is punishing him for being a man and intimately associating with another man. Change the sex of one partner and the discrimination disappears. This reveals, as the 7^th Circuit wrote, that “the discrimination rests on distinctions drawn according to sex.”

This fall, the full 2^nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals will evaluate these theories after the circuit’s chief judge essentially urged the court to adopt them. It is this litigation that spurred the Justice Department to declare that Title VII does not, in fact, protect gay employees. (Under President Barack Obama, the agency took no position on the matter, although it did determine that Title VII protects transgender workers.) By filing this brief, the DOJ has created an odd situation in which one federal agency (the EEOC) disagrees with another (the Justice Department) in federal court.

The DOJ’s primary argument is that Congress’ failure to add “sexual orientation” to Title VII—either in 1964 or in the years since—proves that the law does not currently cover gay employees. This theory is rather strange because the absence of legislative action is not typically considered to be a useful tool of statutory interpretation. Congress’ failure to act could mean that it does not wish for Title VII to encompass sexual orientation. But it could also mean that Congress believes the law already protects gay employees. More than 125 members of Congress recently signed a brief asserting their belief that Title VII currently bars sexual orientation discrimination. At the very least, the absence of clear legislative guidance on the matter is obviously ambiguous.

 

To repudiate the three theories of sex discrimination listed above, the DOJ deploys some extremely questionable logic:

• In response to the “but-for” theory, it argues that homophobic employers discriminate against gay men and women equally, taking sex out of the equation. But sex cannot be removed from the equation. When an employer discriminates against a white woman for dating a black man or vice versa, it is still guilty of race discrimination: Race was obviously the key factor in its discrimination. Similarly, when an employer discriminates against a man for dating a man, it is guilty of sex discrimination, because sex was the foundational element of its bias.

• In response to the sex stereotyping theory, the DOJ argues that gay men and lesbians may only raise a claim of sex stereotyping if they face discrimination because of their mannerisms—not because of their sexual orientation. So, according to the DOJ, a lesbian who “has masculine manners or clothing” may raise a sex stereotyping claim, but a traditionally feminine lesbian may not. Likewise, an effeminate gay man may suffer sex stereotyping, but a traditionally masculine gay man does not. To reach this conclusion, the DOJ asserts that employers may hold “moral beliefs” about sexuality that “need not be based on views about gender at all.” This argument simply defies logic. Homophobic employers may well hold “moral beliefs” about gay men and women. But those beliefs are always rooted in a stereotype about how men and women should behave.

• In response to the associational discrimination theory, the DOJ argues that discrimination against gay people based on their intimate associations is unlike discrimination against interracial couples. The brief insists that discrimination against interracial couples is rooted in a belief that one race is superior to the other—and that true sex discrimination is similarly rooted in beliefs that one sex is “inferior.” But this presumption is utterly incoherent. Everyone knows that interracial marriage bans constitute race discrimination because they take the race of each partner into account. It’s no different with anti-gay discrimination: When an employer discriminates against a gay person, it is objecting to his intimate association with someone of the same sex. You simply cannot escape this fundamental sex-based consideration, which Title VII proscribes.

The left-leaning 2^nd Circuit is almost certain to side with the EEOC and against the DOJ. But this fight is ultimately heading to the Supreme Court—and the Trump administration has now signaled loudly that it will encourage the justices to rule against gay employees. That may be disappointing to civil rights advocates, but it is not devastating to the cause. With arguments this unintelligible, the Justice Department seems unlikely to change anybody’s mind.

 

Airbnb Teams With NAACP to Combat Rental Discrimination

Smart move by Airbnb. Hopeful; the NAACP can help in vexing this natty problem…

Airbnb certainly can’t look to the DOJ for help- Indeed, it is likely the current DOJ leadership will come down on the side of the bigots.

Airbnb teams up with the NAACP to fight racism on its platform

And improve outreach to black communities

Airbnb and the NAACP announced a partnership today to promote the rental service’s platform in communities of color. The move is a way to both boost the sharing economy as an income stream for black Americans and help increase the diversity of hosts to curb discrimination. Airbnb has grappled for years now with racism on its platform, with hosts discriminating against people of color and other minorities both in the US and abroad when deciding who they permit to rent their homes or apartments.

In many cases, racist hosts will deny rental applications from black users or claim the property is booked on the selected dates, only to turn around and rent the property to a white user or leave the dates unbooked. In response to an increasing number of cases documented on social media, Airbnb user Quirtina Crittenden coined the hashtag #airbnbwhileblack last year. It quickly went viral, prompting an outpouring of personal accounts that quickly turned into an public relations nightmare for Airbnb.

This new measure, along with the added assistance of the NAACP, is a signal that Airbnb is continuing to take its fight against racism seriously. “Our fastest-growing communities across major US cities are in communities of color and we’ve seen how home sharing is an economic lifeline for families,” Belinda Johnson, Airbnb’s chief business affairs officer, said in a statement. “This partnership will build on this incredible progress. The NAACP is unrivaled in its tireless work to expand economic opportunities for minority communities and we look forward to collaborating with their talented team.”

As part of the partnership, the NAACP will help Airbnb target communities that could benefit greatly for home-sharing services and the tourism and additional income they provide. Airbnb will also gift 20 percent of its earnings from rentals in these communities to the NAACP, which will return the favor by aiding the company in its workplace diversity efforts. “For too long, black people and other communities of color have faced barriers to access new technology and innovations,” Derrick Johnson, the interim president and CEO of the NAACP, said in a statement. “This groundbreaking partnership with Airbnb will help bring new jobs and economic opportunities to our communities.”

For Airbnb, the existence of racism on its platform is both a PR disaster and a severe economic risk. Last year, the company narrowly avoided a potentially damaging racial discrimination case brought by Greg Selden. Selden, a black man, duped a racist host into accepting an application from a fake account with a white person’s photo after denying his original application, and he sued Airbnb claiming it violated the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

FOR AIRBNB, RACISM IS A HUGE MORAL AND ECONOMIC THREAT TO ITS BUSINESS

Thanks to a specific clause in its Terms of Service agreement, Airbnb was able to move that case to individual arbitration and avoid a class action suit. Nonetheless, the company released a new non-discrimination policy it calls “The Airbnb Community Commitment” back in October of last year that it makes hosts agree to, and it’s also ramped up efforts to weed out racist hosts and build better protections for users.

Despite those efforts, instances of flagrant racism continue to flare up on Airbnb and make international headlines. Earlier this month, a 26-year-old law clerk named Dyne Suh documented, in a video posted to YouTube, her interactions with host Tami Barker of Big Bear, California. Barker, upon learning that Suh was Asian-American, sent a series of racism-fueled texts saying she was canceling Suh’s reservation because of her ethnicity.

Airbnb promptly banned Barker, refunded Suh, and covered the cost of replacement accommodations, while the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing (DFEH) stepped in to fine Barker $5,000 and order that she take an Asian-American studies class. The DFEH now has the ability to investigate Airbnb hosts in California with more than three listings for racial discrimination following a landmark agreement with Airbnb in April.

Still, Airbnb can’t possibly regulate the behavior of every one of its hosts every hour of the day. A better solution, it appears, is to simply cater to communities where this discrimination doesn’t occur, and to increase the diversity of hosts to ensure more minorities feel comfortable using Airbnb when they travel.