In local news:
Within Washington
[Aberdeen]
C: As February approaches there is still no cold weather shelter in Aberdeen, and from the sounds of it, there wont be. In addition, the nearby city of Westport has had some recent controversy around their shelter.
In recent weeks, formal requests by Westport city officials, which echoed public push back against the shelter, have halted plans to expand services at the county-funded cold weather shelter that has operated on West Spokane Street since November.
About 10 Westport residents voiced concerns about the shelter and its public safety implications, a sentiment that mirrored comments at the Jan. 9 council meeting.
Chaplains on the Harbor has operated a cold weather homeless shelter in its old schoolhouse building on West Spokane Street, at least in some capacity, for five years. Since Nov. 1, 2022, Chaplains has operated a 15-bed cold weather shelter using funding from the county’s cold weather shelter program.
In December, the Chaplains requested extra funding from the county to expand the shelter’s capacity. Barbara Weza, executive director for Chaplains on the Harbor said the Chaplains were forced to turn people away during the December cold snap because of capacity issues.
The Board of County Commissioners approved a contract amendment with Chaplains for an additional $45,000, which, according to the contract, would have allowed the shelter to expand by 10 beds. Those beds only would’ve been used should the shelter reach full capacity, Weza said, which hasn’t happened as often in the last few weeks.
Meanwhile, Grays Harbor County Commissioners tabled the vote on a proposed site for a separate cold weather shelter near Aberdeen, on state Route 105 west of the Bishop Athletic Complex, citing a need for more specific contract language regarding shelter policies. Commissioners also prompted the shelter’s contractor, Chaplains on the Harbor, to confirm logistical questions surrounding the proposed site, further delaying the opening of a service initially projected to start Nov. 1.
The hold ups at both of the shelters has resulted in what Barbara Weza, executive director for Chaplains on the Harbor called a “holding pattern,” with no administrative action being taken.
The Chaplains on the Harbor initially proposed a 35-bed shelter a few blocks from the Aberdeen downtown core in October, but the location was an issue. The city of Aberdeen voted to reject proposals for cold weather shelters within the city limits.
The board later named Chaplains an “apparently successful bidder” for the shelter, but asked for certain contingencies to be provided with the contract, including location and policy.
After a period of searching, the Chaplains identified the current proposed site, which is a three-bedroom house at 267 state Route 105, owned by Terry Emmert. Weza said the site, which is outside city limits, received verbal approval from Schave, and could potentially host 20-25 people.
Weza said Chaplains has been hiring and planning for the shelter, and has lined up inspections with the fire marshal, code enforcement, legal and public works departments while waiting for the site to be approved by the county.
But before they could approve the site, commissioners said contract details — behavioral policies, specifically such as a “check-in, stay in” and “good neighbor” policies — that were included in the Chaplains’ initial contract, were missing from the most recent version.
But because shelter projects have been delayed or altered, the county has a pocket of un-allocated money that was originally expected to be used on shelters.
According to a cold weather shelter budget assessment presented to county commissioners last month, which was presented by Grays Harbor County Public Health’s Healthy Places Manager Cassie Lentz, the county has roughly $130,500 in potentially remaining funds if all projects were fully funded.
However, that was before Westport objected to shelter expansion, and Lentz confirmed that the county hasn’t yet committed the full amount of its grant funding.
Lentz said those funds could potentially be used for something other than cold weather shelters, but those funds would have to provide homeless services and, in some form, be related to COVID-19 aid.
S: Library Carport Removed
In a move supposedly relating to the upcoming renovation of the Aberdeen Library, The City of Aberdeen took steps this month to remove a carport behind the library, months before construction is likely to begin. The carport was one of the last remaining public spaces that were out of the near constant rains here. It was frequently used by library patrons, employees, and the unhoused to stay dry. It has also been the long term site of the weekly meals put on by Chehalis River Mutual Aid Network. With no other dry place to set up their meals they have been forced to relocate under the bridge, down by the local encampment.
Reports are that the move to the new location has gone well, with the residents of camp saying they appreciate it being closer and the mutual aid volunteers being glad to have a large dry space in which to set up and hang out.
They said,
“Whatever the City throws our way makes us stronger as a community. Whether it’s evicting people from their homes, smashing our pallets, or destroying our shelter we always come together to help each other in times of crises. This attempt to dissuade us from the work we do was misguided, we will serve in the rain if we have to. We aren’t going anywhere.”
C: Resident of College Place Walla Walla Washington, Carl Robanske, former Garrison Educator, swim coach and founder of religious non profit “Embracing Orphans”—which is based in Walla Walla, but operates out of Jamaica—is facing new allegations of alleged sexual misconduct toward minor wards in the care of the Jamaican State. The incidents are alleged to have occurred within ‘The Fathers House’.
Wayne Walker tells us more.
S: In Episode 2 part 1 we mentioned we would be doing a follow up with Katy Hussey, a resident of Dayton washington who has been the target of an illegal harrassment campaign that has costed her both her job and housing, Due to the severity of the situation we were not able to reach out for comment at this time. To support Katy in this hard time please send any donations to Venmo @katyHussey or Cashapp $KatyHussey to either help prevent their eviction or support them should things turn worse.
C: In Tacoma Washington a Tenant Rights Action Conference was called for Saturday, February 11th, at 12:00-4:30p.m at
Common Good, 621 Tacoma Ave, Tacoma, WA 98402
In a statement released by the organizers-
We are asking community leaders and organizations to endorse the Tenant Rights Action Conference by emailing Tacoma4All@gmail.com. Over a dozen labor and community organizations have already endorsed. For personal endorsements, please list your name and any relevant roles, titles, or affiliations (if needed, we’ll make clear you are endorsing in personal capacity only). We hope to announce an initial list of endorsers by mid-January.
Tacoma urgently needs a comprehensive Tenant Bill of Rights.
Landlords in Tacoma and Pierce County evict tenants at a 56% higher rate than the rest of the state, with 90% of evictions due to inability to pay rent. A majority of Tacoma tenants are “rent-burdened,” paying more than a third of their income on housing. Studies show exceeding this threshold leads to spikes in rates of homelessness. With housing costs rising far faster than wages, rates of displacement continue to grow.
Tacoma has an acute housing shortage, estimated at 20,000 homes and growing, giving landlords even more leverage to hike rents, evict tenants, and ignore code violations. Landlord profiteering hits communities of color hardest everywhere, but the racial disparities in Tacoma are especially acute: rates of home ownership for Black families are 27 percent lower in Tacoma than the national average.
Evictions and rent hikes destabilize our communities and schools, increasing inequities. Three out of four renters who move do so following rent hikes. Students forced to move schools after eighth grade are twice as likely to drop out.
Robust tenant protections and rent stabilization are proven to reduce inequalities and increase stability, improving outcomes in education, health, employment, and incarceration rates. Yet tenant protections in Tacoma remain extremely limited, even as a wave of tenant rights laws were passed in cities across our state and nationally. It is past time that Tacomans get the same legal protections enjoyed by hundreds of thousands of renters across Washington.
That’s why we are organizing the Tenant Rights Action Conference.
We aim to bring a broad grassroots coalition together to discuss and democratically decide on a strategy to win a robust package of tenant protections (see addendum below). Home in Tacoma for All is preparing both for a possible tenant rights ballot initiative in 2023, as well as opportunities to push our City Council to pass tenant protections.
Whatever strategy we choose, we know that we will need a broad coalition to win against landlord and business opposition. When we launched Home in Tacoma for All last April, we brought together over 120 community leaders, housing justice activists, labor organizers, and those most impacted by housing injustice for a powerful multi-racial rally. In the lead-up to the Action Conference, we aim to grow that coalition further and to emerge with an agreed strategy to organize thousands of Tacomans to take action.
Endorsing the Tenant Rights Action Conference does not mean you or your organization will automatically endorse the strategy decided at the conference, whether that is a ballot initiative or a pressure campaign on City Council. Rather, you are endorsing the urgent need for a serious community dialogue on expanding tenant rights in Tacoma. We thank you for your support!
To see the full document check the link in the show notes.
Outside of Washington
S: The cousin of Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Cullors died after being tasered by a police officer in Los Angeles following a traffic accident.
Keenan Darnell Anderson, 31, died at a hospital in Santa Monica, California, after suffering a cardiac arrest following the 3 January incident.
Authorities say that an officer was flagged down after a crash took place, and the officer stated that Anderson was acting erratically and running in the middle of the street.
The body cam footage of the incident shows Anderson telling the officer “Please help me” before he takes off running.
Anderson was eventually pinned down on the floor by an officer, and shouted, “They’re trying to George Floyd me,” in reference to the Black man killed by police officers during a May 2020 incident in Minnesota.
As a struggle developed between officers and Anderson, one officer deployed his taser weapon. Anderson was then handcuffed and taken to the hospital where he died.
C: Memphis City officials on the evening of January 27th released more than an hour of footage showing the deadly confrontation between Tyre Nichols and Memphis police officers earlier this month. The released materials included three body camera videos and one overhead surveillance video.
The five officers involved in the arrest were fired after an internal investigation and are facing criminal charges, including second-degree murder. Following the release of the video Friday night, two deputies with the Shelby County Sheriff’s Office have been put on leave pending an investigation. Following mass protests in Memphis where peaceful protestors shutdown the I-55 bridge, as well New York City where 3 protestors were arrested, & Washington D.C.
According to the footage, the incident starts to unfolds from 8:24 p.m. CT, when officers initially stopped Nichols for supposed wreckless driving that the Memphis police department has not been able to substantiate, to 9:02 p.m. CT, when an ambulance finally appears on camera to take Nichols to the hospital nearly 20 minutes as officers causaully chatted about above a beaten and bloodyTyre Nichols.
The following is a reading of a written description from a twitter thread from StepdadLRAD for those who want to know what happen but can’t bring themselves to watch the traumatizing video. Screenshots and link will also be in the show notes
Content Warning for graphic descriptions of police lynching in Memphis, Tennessee. If you would like to skip this content you can pick up the next news story by skipping ahead ___
The twitter thread reads as follows.
S: The following is a description of the #TyreNichols murder, I’m writing as I watch. It will be brutal and disturbing. This thread is for people who would like to know what’s happened but do not want to watch the video.
The agency “will continue working with our partners across every level of government and impacted communities to share timely information and to support efforts to keep our communities safe,” it said.
Police departments in Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Nashville, Milwaukee, Seattle, Denver, Dallas, New York, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Louisville, Indianapolis and Atlanta told CNN they are either monitoring the events in Memphis closely or already have plans in place in case of large-scale protests or unrest.
Although it may seem cut off and isolated at times the State is ready and able to mobilize law enforcement from a wide area and even call on the help of the feds to crush any rebellion not strong enough to withstand it. We need spaces in which to learn how we might curtail and resist these efforts, we need to gather to consider and reflect and ruminate on our goals and our needs, and our strategy to achieve them.
The police can repress one uprising, even if its large; what they are not prepared for is many small uprisings all over the place. Its no longer enough to travel to major urban centers for mass demonstrations, we need to be taking the lessons learned and applying it back home in our small towns and outlying cities.
Radicals everywhere should aim to inspire these sorts of actions where they are. We need to be ready for the next wave of mass uprising and be able to transform people’s righteous rage into a productive forces for overturning the table on our rulers, and securing a good living for everyone.
Abolish the Police!
C: This marks yet another casualty of the White Supremacist State, Law enforcement killed at least 1,176 people or about 100 people a month last year alone, making it the deadliest for police violence since 2013 when experts first started tracking the killings nationwide, a new data analysis by Mapping Police Violence reveals.
The preliminary 2022 total – a possible under count as more cases are catalogued – marks 31 additional fatalities than the year before. In 2021, police killed 1,145 people; 1,152 in 2020; 1,097 in 2019; 1,140 in 2018; and 1,089 in 2017. The earliest data goes back to 2013, when journalists and racial justice advocates began counting these fatal incidents on a national basis. A database run by the Washington Post, which tracks fatal shootings by police, also shows 2022 as a year with record killings.
S: Police and Correctional officers were also involved in the horrifying death of Larry Eugene Price, Jr. after arresting him for mental health issues and allowing him to starve to death while in custody awaiting trial.
According to information pulled from a report made by Newsweek-
On August 19th 2020 Larry Eugene Price, Jr. wandered into the Fort Smith police station, as he did almost daily. This homeless man was a regular and harmless part of the officers day. But this time Price, who was diagnosed with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and PTSD, used his finger like a gun to point around the station and at officers, threatening and cursing at those present. Officers proceeded to arrest him on a state felony – terroristic threatening in the first degree.
He had no real weapon, yet he was handcuffed and taken to the Sebastian County Detention Center. He went before a judge who set bond at $1,000. It was simple – he would have been free with $100 for bail, but he was destitute.
From then, everything else that could have gone wrong for Price did. His mind lost, his health gone – and seemingly no one paying attention to his well being – Price was dead a year later at 51. He was found in a solitary confinement cell with his eyes wide open, naked, starved, dried saliva on the corners of his mouth, in a pool of standing water so large his feet had shriveled. He had long since had his medication taken away. Toward the end, he had resorted to eating his own feces and drinking his own urine in an attempt to survive.
The official cause of death for Price was malnutrition and dehydration, and the manner was listed in the autopsy report as “natural”. The prosecuting attorney wrote to the Arkansas State Police on January 5, 2022, that there was no basis to prosecute anyone or any entity in the case. Only in response to Newsweek publishing this story, Sebastian County Sheriff Hobe Runion wrote to say that an internal probe of Price’s death was underway.
The 356-bed Sebastian County Detention Center – originally built in 1994 for 260 and described in the suit as knowingly engaging in “unconstitutional practices and customs, profound training deficiencies, grossly inadequate staffing, overcrowding, and a reckless lack of supervision” – had had problems before.
From 2009 to 2019, for example, Arkansas prison inspectors doing state compliance checks found “in one inspection after another…the jail to be overpopulated with inmates, insufficiently staffed, and in need of additional space,” despite an expansion in 2007, according to the lawsuit. The same worries were found in audits done in 2020 and 2021, the year Price died.
The result, according to the filing, was that the jail was unable to handle inmate emergencies, as well as mental illness cases such as Price, who had his anti-psychotic and mental stabilizing medications – namely Abilify, according to medical records – taken away without explanation months before he died.
Newsweek found there had also been prior deaths in the facility, including the 2017 death of an autistic inmate and of Lewis Shores, a teen who had been accused of using a hammer to kill an elderly couple and fatally stabbing his mother. He died after suffocating in a plastic bag.
The sheriff’s office, which runs the jail, did not comment on the historic allegations.
Friends and family were neither allowed to visit or told of his 100 dollar bond, an amount they would have easily paid to free their loved one.
Specifically, the suit claims, Price “died not only because of their deliberate indifference and neglect, but also because of systemic deficiencies in the Sebastian County Jail’s policies and practices, which put severely mentally ill people at significant risk of serious harm or death.”
Turn Key Health Clinics is named in the suit because it failed, according to the lawsuit, “to train and supervise staff on how to properly monitor and document the condition of mentally ill patients in segregation, when to elevate them to a higher level of care when their condition is not improving, how to respond when they are not ingesting sufficient fluids or nutrition, and how to effectively address the needs of patients who express refusal to take certain medication or otherwise participate in treatment.”
The filing goes on to say the company, a regional provider of health care to places of incarceration, knew of the Sebastian County jail’s “failures and knew that they subjected patients with serious mental illness to a substantial risk of suffering serious harm, but it did not correct the failures. These failures resulted in Mr. Price’s suffering and death.”
The suit over Price’s death states that Turn Key psychiatrist Lewis failed in his legal obligation through a lack of care and attention to the inmate’s withering condition. Both doctors and nurses noted his, at times, psychotic behavior and yet cut his meds off anyway, then refused to see him again.
Heipt, the family’s lawyer, also criticizes how jail officials monitored Price. Heipt, through a public records request, obtained printouts of the logs for well being checks. “Between August 1 and August 29, 2021,” according to the suit’s allegations, “jail guards logged over 4,000 consecutive well being checks of Mr. Price, and each time they made the exact same entry: ‘Inmate and Cell OK.’…In the last 48 hours of Mr. Price’s confinement alone, they made this entry more than 300 successive times. They continued to log these same words, at least four times an hour, even in the hours and minutes leading up to his death — when Mr. Price was visibly malnourished, dying of starvation and dehydration.” They even made these same logs after his death.
C: The Supreme Court on January 3rd indicated it would rule in favor of a concrete company in Washington state seeking to revive a lawsuit it filed against the International Brotherhood of Teamsters alleging that a strike damaged its product.
The legal question is whether the company, Glacier Northwest Inc., can sue the union for damages in state court over an August 2017 strike action when drivers walked off the job, leaving wet concrete in their trucks. It centers on an incident in which members of Teamsters Local 174 went on strike after negotiations broke down over a new collective bargaining agreement.
Glacier says it lost $100,000 as a result of failing to fulfill a contract on the day of the strike and also claims additional damages. The company says it was able to do the previously scheduled work the following week.
The Washington Supreme Court ruled for the union in December 2021, saying that any concrete loss was “incidental to a strike arguably protected by federal law.”
Based on questions of the justices during the oral argument, it appears the court will say that the Washington Supreme Court was wrong to dismiss the lawsuit. It could however be a narrow ruling adopting the middle-ground position taken by the Biden administration.
San Diego Trades Council v. Garmon (1959) lays out the process that employers must use if they believe their workers timed a strike so recklessly that the union should be held liable. In nearly all cases, the employer must first obtain a ruling from the NLRB establishing that their workers’ strike was not protected by federal law. Only then may they file a lawsuit against the union.
This is a tremendous blow to workers. One important reason the Garmon process exists is that it shields unions from lawsuits that could drain their finances and discourage workers from exercising their right to strike — after all, that right means very little if well-moneyed employers can bombard unions with lawsuits the union cannot afford to litigate.
S: If the Supreme Court decides to rule in favor of Glacier in this case then we will begin to see even worse conditions for the Working Class,
Even positions of privilege are not guaranteed so long as those above them are free to carry on with their exploitation.
Google’s parent company Alphabet Inc has laid off 12,000 employees from across teams. The staff was informed about the mass job cut by the CEO of the tech giant Sundar Pichai in a memo. Those affected include a software engineering manager named Justin Moore who worked at Google for over 16.5 years and was sacked after his account was deactivated at 3 am.
Mr Moore, in a LinkedIn post, wrote, “So after over 16.5 years at Google, I appear to have been let go via an automated account deactivation at 3 am this morning as one of the lucky 12,000. I don’t have any other information, as I haven’t received any of the other communications the boilerplate “you’ve been let go” website (which I now also can’t access) said I should receive.”
The employee added that his time at Google was “largely wonderful” and that he was proud of the work he and his teams did.
C: Workers at Twitter Singapore office were told to empty out their desks and vacate the premise via email. They were told that they had until 5 p.m. to leave the CapitaGreen building and resume their duties remotely.
Musk’s cost-cutting efforts have included not paying rent on its global headquarters, and it was sued over that issue last month by the landlord of its San Francisco offices.
Casey Newton of Platformer first tweeted about the Singapore office clear out, adding that the reason for it was failure to pay rent on the facility. This adds yet another hilarious chapter in Musk’s takeover of the company and the resulting downfall of Twitter.
- Tesla CEO Elon Musk is currently facing a securities fraud trial over tweets he made in 2018 about taking the company private at $420 per share and having “secured” funding for the bid.
- Shareholders who traded Tesla stock following the tweets are suing Musk for billions of dollars in damages, claiming that his tweets led to them losing “millions and millions of dollars.”
S: Arkansas Gov Bans Term Latinx
Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders signed an executive order last week barring the use of the term “Latinx” in official state documents, saying the government should use “ethnically appropriate language.”
“The government has a responsibility to respect its citizens and use ethnically appropriate language, particularly when referring to ethnic minorities,” the executive order read.
In her order, Sanders said her administration’s policy is to “prohibit the use of culturally insensitive words for official state government business” and directed all state agencies to review their official documents and submit a report to the governor detailing their use of the terms “Latinx,” “latinx,” “Latinxs,” or “latinxs.”
C: Anti-drag bills have proliferated in 2023. States like Arizona, Montana, and several others have seen bills proposed to ban drag being seen by minors or drag in public. One state, Nebraska, would even say that people who are under 21 years old cannot see drag. Arizona’s bill says that drag events can’t happen before noon on Sunday. All of the bills include language on how they define drag that leaves people wondering if these laws will also target the transgender community. A new bill being proposed in West Virginia, however, goes a step further: it outright bans any “transvestite or transgender exposure, performance, or display” if minors are present.
There have been increasing escalations in anti-drag bills recently. Nebraska’s bill states that a performance is banned if “the main aspect of the performance is a performer which exhibits a gender identity that is different from the performer’s gender assigned at birth using clothing, makeup, or other physical markers.” Transgender people could easily be read into that law and thus banned from doing any sort of public performance. These bills also make no distinction between a live and recorded performance, leaving some to wonder if movies like Mrs. Doubtfire would be banned. Several Shakespearian plays utilize drag. What about transgender comedians, transgender musicians, and plays in which transgender people are cast?
Needless to say, things are scary and uncertain in the states in which drag laws are being proposed.
Four Senators in West Virginia just decided to clear up any uncertainty: yes, they absolutely do intend to include bans on transgender people being in front of minors in anti-drag bans. West Virginia SB 252 explicitly targets the trans community in a bill that defines any “transvestite or transgender exposure to minors” as obscene matter. See these lines from the bill:
The bill modifies 61-8A-1 (Definitions of Obscene Matter To Minors) and directly includes “transvestite or transgender exposure, performance, or display” as obscene matter. Section 61-8A-2 then defines the penalties for exposing minors to “obscene matter” (“transgender exposure” included in this new bill):
What does this mean for transgender teachers? Transgender parents? Earlier in the same bill, they ban “obscene matter” within 2,500 feet of any school – this would in effect treat all transgender people like sex offenders when it comes to schools. Are teachers going to be fired because they are giving minors “transgender exposure?” Are plays with transgender people in them going to be cancelled? Are parents walking their children to school going to be targeted?
It’s disconcerting to see weekend news of drag queen events being stormed by far-right militant organizations like the Proud Boys and then to see these laws proliferate afterwards. Republicans sometimes try to distance themselves from these groups, but it is clear that there are major figures in the Republican party who intend to steer the party and any states they control into an oppressive new era of anti-LGBTQ+ enforcement. The intimidation tactics being used in an extralegal fashion are resulting in Republican politicians not condemning but supporting these goals.
Some might argue that these bills have no chance of passing, or that they will be struck down as unconstitutional. I want to emphasize that this isn’t just a single Republican proposing it – several bills like it have been proposed all over the country. While this is the most extreme version of these bills, four senators have sponsored it: Senator Michael Azinger, Senator Bill Hamilton, Senator David Stover, and Senator Vince Deeds.
It feels like we are approaching new territory every day we see new anti-trans legislation. Criminal bans on gender affirming care are being proposed in many states that would ban care up to, in some cases, the age of 26. Now we are seeing attempted bans on gender-nonconformity and bans on simply being trans in public. Are we going to return to the days of the three-article rules which resulted in people getting arrested for “impersonating men/women” in public? Stonewall was a fight in part as a result of these kinds of laws being imposed on the gay, trans, and drag communities. It is unthinkable that we could return to those days yet again. I hope that we never do.
S: North Dakota Bill To Mandate Pronouns Associated with DNA to be used by employers or face 1500$ fine
North Dakota has been the site of many anti-trans bills in 2023. Already it has seen multiple bills proposed that would do things like ban transgender people from sports, ban transgender birth certificate updates, and medically detransition trans youth. One of these bills, the bill to ban trans birth certificate updates, even received a “do pass” from its committee hearing yesterday.
North Dakota’s SB2199 would mandate that all employers in the state who receive state funding as well as all schools, institutions, state agencies, and offices misgender transgender people at large – not just students but all transgender people. The bill mandates that “words used to reference an individual’s sex, gender, gender identity, or gender expression mean the individual’s determined sex at birth, male or female.” It also mandates that this be determined through the individual’s deoxyribonucleic acid, their DNA. Those who violate will be charged by the state a fee of $1,500.
Here is the text:
C: In Santee, CA as reported by Unicorn Riot– For the second time in four days, the Cameron Family YMCA in suburban San Diego County closed its doors ahead of a rally by violent anti-LGBTQ bigots targeting the facility for its transgender-inclusive policy. Local far-right organizer and Qanon supporter Mike Forzano called for the Saturday rally in a January 17 Facebook Live video, broadcast from his car, in which he explained that the event would also be in honor of his own birthday. Forzano is one of several Southern California anti-LGBTQ activists looking to capitalize on panic sparked by recent false claims by a 17-year-old that a trans woman’s presence in a YMCA shower area meant she had been exposed to a naked male and therefore assaulted.
In addition to Proud Boys chapters and the right-wing Latino group LEXIT, those welcomed under Forzano’s banner included members of the violent white supremacist group American Guard, including one man sporting a swastika tattoo on his right arm. During Forzano’s event a small group of women counter-protesting for trans rights were accosted by men wearing knives and pepper spray canisters; one anti-trans rally attendee said he wanted to “string them up and fucking hang them.”. One masked anti-trans protester believed to be an unattended child repeatedly aimed an air rifle or paintball gun towards reporters filming the event. LEXIT activist Sylvia Araujo was seen on video briefly assaulting photojournalist Kelly Stuart (@skyspider) while she was documenting that far-right activists had covered over their vehicles’ license plates with tape.
Local media reported that Samuel Deuth, a pastor at the ardently right-wing Awaken Church in San Diego, spoke at Saturday’s event. In March 2022 the church hosted the “Reawaken America” tour with Eric Trump, Roger Stone and former general Michael Flynn in an ceremony laden with Qanon imagery that aimed at sanctifying the far-right January 6th, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol. (Unicorn Riot reported on Flynn’s organizing which led to the Capitol attack.) More mainstream religious leaders said the tour promoted a “Christian nationalist ideology that weds discrimination and militarism with a warped view of Christian faith.”
The rally lasted about two hours with roughly 150 in attendance; no arrests or injuries were reported. San Diego Sheriff’s Department deputies from the Santee Sheriff’s Station observed the event from the YMCA parking lot and did not intervene in any altercations.
A previous rally on January 18 targeted the same YMCA and forced it to close as local Republican school board and city council gave anti-LGBTQ speeches to a crowd of approximately 500 people. Proud Boys, members of American Guard and others also engaged in some brief violence against counter-protesters and media on the fringes of the Wednesday event:
Republican officials promoted an apparent hoax falsely painting transgender people as violent predators. Among their supporters were clearly identifiable Proud Boys and at least one man with Nazi imagery tattooed on his head.
A 17-year-old recently claimed she was exposed to a nude “male” in the Cameron Family YMCA shower. While the trans woman she targeted had previously undergone gender reassignment surgery, the teenager’s misleading account sparked a transphobic moral panic claiming the gym’s trans-inclusive policies, in compliance with state law, were causing helpless underage girls to be assaulted by naked men.
The Cameron Family YMCA in Santee has had to repeatedly close due to threats from the escalating anti-LGBTQ+ campaign seeking to deny trans people the access to public facilities guaranteed to them by California law.
About 500 anti-trans rally goers gathered in front of the local YMCA while about 2-300 people attended a nearby counter-protest and dance party organized by the San Diego chapter of the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL) and local antifascist collectives.
Members of violent racist groups such as the Proud Boys and American Guard swung fists and makeshift weapons at counter-protesters as speeches degrading LGBTQ+ people as “deviant” and “criminal” were given by Santee City Councilwoman Laura Koval, El Cajon City Councilman Phil Ortiz, and Cajon Valley School Board member Anthony Carnevale.
Former California State Assemblyman Steve Baldwin and Foothills Christian Church Pastor Mike Van Meter also delivered supportive comments to the pro-bigotry event. So did Andrew Hayes, who serves as both President of the Lakeside Union School District and District Director for California State Senate Minority Leader Brian Jones.
San Diego Sheriff’s Department deputies were present with riot gear and crowd control munitions, but did not intervene. No arrests or injuries were reported.
S: Idaho Supreme Court Mandate C Sections For Abortions
On January 5, 2023, the Idaho Supreme Court upheld Idaho’s near Total Abortion Ban (I.C. § 18-622), its 6-Week Abortion Ban (I.C. 18-8804 to -8805), and its related Civil Liability Law (I.C. § 18-8807). Planned Parenthood v. State of Idaho,—but they also offered some ‘clarifications’ on law that aren’t likely to do anything other than further confusion and suffering. For example, Idaho’s ban requires that doctors who legally terminate pregnancies (in the limited exceptions that the state allows to do so) in a way that quote “provide[s] the best opportunity for the unborn child to survive.”
The court writes that doctors performing abortions “must remove that unborn child in a manner that provides the best opportunity for survival (e.g., vaginal delivery or cesarean delivery)” as opposed to a procedure like a D&C—even if the doctor understands that the fetus will not be viable—unless doing so would pose a “greater risk of the death of the pregnant woman.”
C: Idaho Senator Sen. Scott Herndon Unsuccessfully Tried To Remove Rape Incest Abortion Exemptions. In four pieces of proposed legislation he sought to change the state’s abortion laws, remove requirements for public works contractors to provide bathrooms that align with gender identity, and strengthen the state’s “Stand Your Ground” laws; the one proposal of his that the Senate State Affairs Committee members did not vote to introduce would have removed rape and incest exemptions from Idaho’s abortion bans.
The committee voted to return the proposal to the senator rather than introducing it as a bill, with only Sen. Ben Toews, R-Coeur d’Alene, voting against it.
Sen. Treg Bernt, R-Meridian, told the Idaho Press he felt the proposed legislation went too far.
“Those exemptions are important and need to be respected under the law,” Bernt said.
Sens. Chuck Winder, R-Boise; Kelly Anthon, R-Burley; and Abby Lee, R-Fruitland, were absent.
S: Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is asking state universities for the numbers and ages of their students who sought or received gender dysphoria treatment, including sex reassignment surgery and hormone prescriptions, according to a survey released Wednesday.
Why he’s conducting the survey wasn’t completely clear. LGBTQ advocates have criticized DeSantis for policies seen as discriminatory, including his infamous “Don’t Say Gay Bill” banning instruction on sexual and gender identity in early grades and making it easier for parents to remove books related to the topic in public schools.
“We can see cuts in funding for universities to treat students with this condition, and I think an all-out elimination of services is certainly on the table,” House Democratic leader Fentrice Driskell said.
The survey is similar to one DeSantis is forcing state universities to complete regarding spending on diversity, equity and inclusion and critical race theory programs.
The current memo asks universities to “provide the number of encounters for sex-reassignment treatment or where such treatment was sought,” as well as data for students referred to other facilities. It says to protect students’ identities in completing the information.
The survey requires breakdowns by age, regardless of whether students are age 18 or older, of people prescribed hormones or hormone antagonists or who underwent medical procedures like mastectomies, breast augmentation or removal and reconstruction of genitals.
C: KENORA, Ont. — Searches for unmarked graves at the site of a former northern Ontario residential school have uncovered 171 “plausible burials,” the Wauzhushk Onigum Nation said Tuesday, with other sites still to be investigated.
Most of them were unmarked, except for five with grave markers, the First Nation said in a news release.
“Both Canada and Ontario have continued to express their commitment to reconciliation, to the truth, and to healing of our communities,” Chief Chris Skead said in the release.
“Finding the truth and exercising caution on everything touched by this genocidal legacy comes at a price and it’s a price our Treaty partners need to be prepared to pay. That is true reconciliation.”
The truth and reconciliation approach is a form of restorative justice, which differs from the customary adversarial or retributive justice. Retributive justice aims to find fault and punish the guilty. On the other hand, restorative justice aims to heal relationships between offenders, victims, and the community in which an offense takes place.
According to records provided by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, at least 36 children died at the St. Mary’s Residential School in Kenora, Ont., the First Nation said. “Based on conversations with survivors, and their testimonies, the true number is believed to be significantly higher,” it said.
Between 1897 and 1972, more than 6,000 Indigenous children attended the Catholic-run institution in Kenora.
The plausible burials were found during studies conducted by the First Nation’s technical, archeological and ground-penetrating-radar team, and informed by testimony from survivors, it said.
The studies were first launched in May as part of a multi-year project intended to locate unmarked graves.
Wauzhushk Onigum Nation is now seeking resources to get greater certainty on the number of plausible graves in the cemetery grounds linked to the former school and to conduct investigations into sites near it.
Additional sites, which are not covered by the current search and include land now privately owned, have been identified by survivor testimony, archeological assessment and archival investigations, the First Nation said.
Ontario Indigenous Affairs Minister Greg Rickford said he communicated his full support to Skead upon hearing of the discovery.
“As we continue to uncover the truth of our collective past on the journey toward reconciliation, we will continue to support these investigations and will support healing for survivors, their families and community members suffering from mental health and addictions due to intergenerational trauma and harms inflicted by the Indian Residential School system,” he said in a statement.
More than 150,000 Indigenous children were forcibly separated from their families and communities and sent to church-run residential schools beginning in the 19th century, a central element of a state-backed policy that amounted to cultural genocide, according to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The idea for the schools came in part from the United States. In 1879 the Carlisle Indian Industrial School opened in Pennsylvania. The school’s motto was “kill the Indian, save the man.”
A motion calling on the federal government to recognize residential schools as genocide passed the House of Commons with unanimous consent in October.
The 2021 findings of possible unmarked graves at a former Kamloops, B.C., residential school set off a number of other investigations.
Last week, Star Blanket Cree Nation in Saskatchewan said ground-penetrating radar had turned up 2,000 areas of interest and a child’s bone had been separately found at the site of one of Canada’s longest-running residential schools located in that province.
The Indian Residential Schools Resolution Health Support Program has a hotline to help residential school survivors and their relatives suffering trauma invoked by the recall of past abuse. The number is 1-866-925-4419.
Although survivors of this deeply unsettling history report varied experiences, the shared attitude toward Residential Schools is one of mostly unanimous disgust and bone-chilling fear.
Children lived a daily nightmare: Staff and teachers physically, psychologically, and sexually abused them. In addition to being neglected and starved, children were brutally disciplined if they were caught speaking their native language. Their clothing and belongings were removed and swapped for ordinary Western clothes, and their hair–which is a symbol of pride and one’s connection to the Earth for many Indigenous cultures–was cut. Everything about this new environment was meant to teach the children that they were inferior. Some engendered a deep loathing for their indigeneity, others became even more determined to trace back their roots. But for many, the cultural dissonance this era created has continued to impact Indigenous people today via intergenerational trauma.
Residential school survivor testimony has long been filled with stories of students digging graves for their classmates, of unmarked burials on school grounds, and of children who disappeared in suspicious circumstances. Many of these stories were heard by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC), which was formed in 2008 and collected testimonies from over 6,750 survivors. The TRC’s 2015 Final Report made it quite clear that further recoveries of unmarked graves at the schools were inevitable.
What is intergenerational trauma?
“A phenomenon in which the descendants of a person who has experienced a terrifying event show adverse emotional and behavioral reactions to the event that are similar to those of the person himself or herself. These reactions vary by generation but often include shame, increased anxiety and guilt, a heightened sense of vulnerability and helplessness, low self-esteem, depression, suicidality, substance abuse, dissociation, hypervigilance, intrusive thoughts, difficulty with relationships and attachment to others, difficulty in regulating aggression, and extreme reactivity to stress.
Leona Wolf, who comes from the Muskowekwan reserve, was five years old when she says she was taken from her home in 1960. School officials and police would often show up unannounced in indigenous communities and round up children, some as young as three. Parents could be jailed if they refused to hand their children over. When kids arrived at their schools, their traditional long hair was shaved off. If they tried to speak their language, they were often punished.
S: New Extremist Israeli Government in power cause mass atrocities in 6 days since Jan 1st
Israel’s new extremist government has been in power for a short time and here’s what they’ve already done. In their first six days they killed four Palestinians, including three children. Bombed the homes of two of the slain. Destroyed at least four homes and a water tank in Masafer Yatta. Broke into Al Aqsa Mosque, among the holiest Muslim sites in the world. Violently invaded the Palestinian city of Jenin multiple times.
Palestinains have been subjected to horrendous violence by every single Israeli government. But based on it’s first week in power, Israel’s new extremist government may be the worst yet. The new government openly admits it doesn’t believe that Palestinians have the right to exist on their own land. Its violence from the last week alone is what that looks like in action.
C: Coleen Rowley, a retired FBI special agent whose career included 14 years as legal counsel in the Minneapolis division where she worked with prosecutors and agents directly involved in the Peltier case, has written to Joe Biden making a case for Peltier’s release.
“Retribution seems to have emerged as the primary if not sole reason for continuing what looks from the outside to have become an emotion-driven ‘FBI Family’ vendetta,” said Rowley in the letter sent to the US president in December and shared exclusively with the Guardian.
The FBI’s repeated opposition to the release of Leonard Peltier is driven by vindictiveness and misplaced loyalties, according to a former senior agent close to the case who is the first agency insider to call for clemency for the Indigenous rights activist who has been held in US maximum security prisons for almost five decades.
Rowley added: “The focus of my two cents leading to my joining the call for clemency is based on Peltier’s inordinately long prison sentence and an ever more compelling need for simple mercy due to his advanced age and deteriorating health.
“Enough is enough. Leonard Peltier should now be allowed to go home.”
Peltier, an enrolled member of the Turtle Mountain Chippewa tribe and of Lakota and Dakota descent, was convicted of murdering two FBI agents during a shootout on the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota in June 1975. Peltier was a leader of the American Indian Movement (AIM), an Indigenous civil rights movement founded in Minneapolis that was infiltrated and repressed by the FBI.
The 1977 murder trial – and subsequent parole hearings – were rife with irregularities and due process violations including evidence that the FBI had coerced witnesses, withheld and falsified evidence.
S: In lighter news, in Bakersfeild, California a video has circulated of two men set themselves on fire after dumping an accelerant on a California immigration services building and setting it ablaze.In the video caught by a ring surveillance camera the two men proceed to dump the accelerant over the side of the building and parking lot in front.
As one of the men continued to spread the fuel, the second squatted over a puddle of the accelerant and tried to light it on fire. The fire ignited violently and the man sprinted away with his leg on fire. The second man panicked and fell down twice, and like his accomplice, sprinted away from the scene of the crime on fire.
The man could be heard screaming as he ran into the night.
C: And finally, a new Hero has been etched into the record book of radical legends, praise be to the almighty Mud Wizard and their sidekick Greta Thunberg whom demonstrated their power against the legions of German riot police in defense of potentially 35,000 protestors protecting the coal beneath he long-occupied village of Lützerath from being mined by one of the nations largest energy companies, setting up barricades and treehouses, using rope systems to evade capture, and ensnaring officers in deep mud.
In fact, this mysterious figure had already appeared in our storied radical past, during the legendary battle of ZAD at Notre-Dame-des-Landes. Where the police ambushed the Wizard among a group of other Heros. The Wizard casted spells of water at the police, proclaiming “I baptize you in the name of the ZAD!” In the ensuing chaos, he made off with one of their batons.
The same Wizard was later seen delivering a sermon to the retreated liberal retirees chanting “disarm them” while holding the very baton he had taken from the Legion.
Victory to the mud wizards! Defend the earth!
For more information on this story check our the article The Defense of Lützerath by Crimethinc
S: Crimethinc Headlines
https://crimethinc.com/2023/01/11/january-2002-the-battle-of-york-anti-fascism-then-and-now
IGD Headlines
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