feminist blogs

Happy 72nd birthday, Johnny Mac! Here, just for fun I found some pictures from your 69th birthday, which was three years ago, August 29, 2005.

Huh. August 29, 2005. Something else happened that day, I think. But what could it be? What could have been happening right at the same time as this fun event with your pal Dubya?

Oh well, I’m sure it wasn’t anything that would have caused you and George to turn down a chance to party.

Have fun naming your veep today, John. Good symbolism, picking your vice president on the third anniversary of your 69th birthday, and whatever else happened three years ago today. Nice sensitivity. Stay classy.

Fuck you, Karl Rove:

 “The Republicans can’t seem to get a break when it comes to August and when it comes to the weather,” said Rove, a FOX News analyst. “I know this is being thought a lot about in Washington and at the White House and discussed and I suspect they will monitor it carefully and figure out what to do.”

Yeah, Karl, Hurricane Katrina was so fucking bad for you and the idiot king. Boo fucking hoo. If you would have done something for the people of New Orleans, rather than dither and share cakes with John McCain, that might not have been bad. But that would have required a competent, caring, capable president, which we don’t have, thanks to you.

Not to mention, of course, that global warming is playing its role in this, something you’ve been foursquare against working to solve.

If August weather is bad for the GOP, it’s on your own head. If you don’t feel good about the memories of Katrina — you shouldn’t, you fucking asshole. You failed your fellow Americans. If you didn’t want to feel bad about it, maybe you should have cared for the poor, black people drowning in New Orleans. But you didn’t care then, and you don’t care now — because no matter how bad August weather is for you, Karl, it’s far, far worse for the people of the Gulf Coast, who’ve lost their homes, family members, even their lives. Those people, I feel bad for. You can go to hell.

Image description: a large white cloth banner with the words STOP THE DEMOLITIONS. The image is close cropped but several hands are visible holding the banner.

A statement from the Coalition to Stop Demolitions:

The Coalition to Stop the Demolitions would like to thank all allies and supporters throughout the United States and the world who came and stood with us in New Orleans or took action on the streets your city, or who called, emailed, or faxed the New Orleans City Council, Mayor Ray Nagin, Senator Vitter, the Senate Banking Committee members and other public officials. Your support played a pivotal role in helping us attain the victories we accomplished last week in halting the demolition of three of the four major public housing locations in New Orleans.

However, the fight is far from over and we still need your help. Despite our victories in both State and Federal Courts last Friday, we recognize that it is quite possible that we might lose the City Council vote on Thursday, December 20th by a decision of four to three (or perhaps even five to two). We are fairly certain that at least three of the white City Council members are going vote against us, including Jacquelyn Clarkson, Stacy Head, and Shelley Midura. There is a possibility that Arnie Fielkow, the current Council President, might vote in favor or abstain in order to not lose favor with a sector of the Black electorate whom he will need to fulfill his Mayoral aspirations. As for those who may stand with us, there are likely only two members who are solid. These are James Carter and Cynthia Willard-Lewis. The third Black Council member, Cynthia Hedge-Morrell, is definitely a critical swing vote. We need to put pressure on each and every one of these City Council members between now and the 20th (please stress outreach to Internally Displaced Persons in your area and encourage them to call as a priority).

In addition, the Federal lawsuit filed on behalf of the residents of the St. Bernard was transferred from Washington, D.C. to the US District Court – Eastern District of Louisiana. Based on his past behavior, we do not expect this judge will do anything to stop the demolitions.

What this means is that by Friday, December 21st we may realistically be engaging in our second wave of mass non-violent civil disobedience action. Should this be the case, we are going to need all of our allies and supporters everywhere to be ready yet again to take decisive action to stop these inhumane demolition orders.

Things we foresee as being critical this week:

1. We need to blitz the City Council of New Orleans and demand
1. That they vote NO to the demolitions, and
2. That they hold a public hearing on the demolitions in the evening so that more working class people can participate. Information on how to contact the City Council is provided below.
2. We need as many people who can come to
1. Pack City Council on Thursday, December 20th,
2. Be prepared to engage in non-violent civil disobedience in line with the residents council principles (read below) and the coalitions pledge of resistance statement. To engage in this initiative you must register with the coalition at action@peopleshurricane.org.
3. We would also like to encourage Black and other oppressed nationality organizers to come down and help us with outreach, base building, and coalition building work over the course of the next several weeks.
3. We need to continue pressuring Senator David Vitter with calls, faxes, and emails demanding that he support Senate Bill 1668 and allow the bill to move from the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee to the Senate for a vote.
4. We need to pressure Senator Mary Landrieu to demand that the Federal government via President George W. Bush and the Justice Department suspend the demolitions until the Federal investigation of Alphonso Jackson is complete.
5. We need to seize these next three days to reframe the struggle to stop the demolition based on the demands of the Coalition (see below). We need everyone to
1. Write letters to the editor for your local news outlets,
2. Blitz the major newsprint, TV, and cable media networks and demand that they cover the issue, and
3. To write articles on the issue based on the Coalitions demands and post them to as many listserves, blogs, and websites as you possibly can.

Finally, we need some resources to carry out this work. Some of the things we need resources for include:

1. The “Stop Da Demolitions” Mixtape made by Sess 4 – 5, Nuthinbutfire Records, and the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement for the Coalition the Stop the Demolition. We need $1,400 to produce and print 2,000 CD’s for youth outreach and education.
2. We also need resources to help with transportation, food, and accommodations for both residents and volunteers.
3. We need resources the cover the Coalitions cell phone expense.
4. We need resources to cover printings (flyers and posters).
5. Finally, we need resources materials to produce banners and other mobilization props.

Donations can be made out to the Mississippi Disaster Relief Coalition (MDRC) and mailed to P.O. Box 31762 Jackson, MS 39286. Please indicate on your donation “Coalition to Stop Demolitions”. All donations are tax-deductible.

Our Demands

1. City Council needs to vote NO on demolition. The Council meeting should be moved to an evening time to accommodate people’s schedules and allow a full public hearing on demolition before taking a vote.
2. The mayor needs to meet with the faith leaders who have requested a meeting with him about the housing crisis in the city
3. No Demolitions – reopen the existing units and rebuild dignified housing at former public housing sights.
4. Guaranteed one-to-one replacement for all public housing residents.
5. All available public housing units should be made available for the homeless and those likely to face homelessness from the pending loss of rent vouchers and trailer recalls.
6. The Federal government needs to suspend demolition until the investigation of Alphonso Jackson and the contraction process is completed.
7. Rent Control to provide deeply affordable housing so that all will be able to return to the city.
8. Stop the privatization and gentrification of the City.

Resident Principles

1. All Actions should be non-violent.
2. There should be no weapons or drugs at any actions, and no alcohol or drug or weapon possession at any action.
3. No destruction or defacement of resident property.
4. No coalition meetings without resident knowledge and input.
5. No media without residents or resident knowledge.
6. Focus on defending public housing and affordable housing in the city for all.

City Council Contact Information

* Arnie Fielkow 504.658.1060 afielkow@cityofno.com
* Jacquelyn Clarkson 504.658.1070 jbclarkson@cityofno.com
* Stacy Head 504.658.1020 shead@cityofno.com
* Shelly Midura 504.658.1010 smidura@cityofno.com
* James Carter 504.658.1030 jcarter@cityofno.com
* Cynthia Hedge-Morrell 504.658.1040 chmorrell@cityofno.com
* Cynthia Willard-Lewis 504.658.1050 cwlewis@cityofno.com

In Unity and Struggle,
Kali

From the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:

Article 25.

(1) Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.

Have any of you all ever been evicted? Ever lost a home for any reason? Even if it’s an old house in the middle of the city that could probably use a lot of time and money that you don’t have, it’s still home.

I spent a couple of years on my old blog talking and posting pictures of my old house and my old neighborhood in Milwaukee. People didn’t understand why I stayed–people thought that it must be depressing to be so poor and living in such a poor area. Well fuck yeah, there were plenty of depressing times, but it wasn’t the fault of my neighbors or my house.

People who don’t live in communities don’t quite get how communities work. Communities aren’t all about the suburban folks having a cocktail party (or whatever it is y’all suburban folks do), or some tv drama about desperate white women behind picket fences. I learned all I needed to know about how a community succeeds by living, tumbled down and broke, right alongside people who were careful of me, then accepting of me, and then my friends. Community meant that Ashanti could go to the corner store and the couple who ran the store, who had lived in a flat above that store for 30 years, knew her name and her favorite candy. Community meant that when Kat was wild and running the streets, the prostitutes working the avenue would look out for her and make sure she got home safe. Community meant that if Yolanda next door was cooking rice and beans or making sandwiches or a pitcher of koolaid, she shared with my kids. It meant that when my electricity got cut off I knew I could run an extension cord between my house and Eddie’s house so that I could at least have a lamp on and watch television.

Here’s community: one morning Yolanda came running to my house to let me know that the city tow truck was outside getting ready to tow my car for unpaid tickets. I wasn’t dressed yet so I threw her my car keys and she ran out to the street, unlocked the car door, and jumped inside. Cuz see, the tow truck couldn’t tow my car as long as there was somebody in there. And by the time I was dressed and outside Yolanda had argued so strenuously with the tow truck driver that he agreed to leave without my car.

This is poor people looking out for each other. I was often the only one on the block with my phone turned on, so I was the person who made and accepted phone calls for my neighbors. If I heard Mattie and her boyfriend’s argument starting to get out of hand, I could stick my head out the window and let her know I’d call 911 if she needed me to. Often that was enough to get the boyfriend to cool it.

This is a community of poor people who struggle and look out for each other. Lot of times folks don’t understand exactly how that works. You watch the news and you think people in inner cities are too busy shooting guns and smoking crack to actually have friends and family that they love. You think poor means stratified, disconnected, a world of distrust and violence. If you think it’s that simple then you’re wrong.

When my disability got bad enough that for a couple of years I rarely left my house, my neighbors would stop by on their way to the store to see if I needed anything. When I got my scooter and became mobile again, people I hadn’t seen in years cried and kissed me on the cheek and hugged me because they were so pleased for me.

Poor people, y’all. Poor brown and black people living in a city that is famous for violence and racial segregation.

And I have a good friend who grew up in the projects in Chicago, the famous Harold Ickes (the “Ickes) projects, who remembers her childhood with great fondness. Her grandma still lives there to this day. And when the Chicago Housing Authority made plans to demolish the Chicago projects, there was enormous outcry from the residents, even as the wealthy salivated at the prospect of getting their paws on all that prime real estate. I went to protests and community actions trying to keep the projects from being torn down. And what happened to the residents of the projects that were demolished? Gone to the suburbs, cut off from each other, torn apart. Lost to the communities that had sustained them.

Talk about ghettos and slums and the inner city all you want. Let the media lie to you and tell you that poor people and people of color can’t work together, can’t create vibrant life together. Live in ignorance. But I tell you, if all that is true, then why are the scattered, displaced residents of New Orleans so desperate to come home? Why the outcry, the grief, at the loss of the New Orleans public housing?

This is why: because people who are poor need each other. We need each other because we know exactly how it feels to be down to your last $10 and it’s only the middle of the month. We need each other because we speak each other’s language. We need to be around people like us so that we maintain our humanity and our hope.

And poor people have a right to housing. Housing is a human right, like enough food and water and safety from violence. And if the bad men who want to finish the job of destroying New Orleans succeed in tearing it down and rebuilding it in their own image, there is nothing to stop them from doing the same thing in any poor neighborhood in the country.

Housing is a right. I deserve it, and so do you. And so do the people of New Orleans.

Somewhere in Alabama, an all-male gang of elite cops from New Jersey spent some down-time from protecting and serving by getting off on sexy drunken displays of power and violence.

HOBOKEN, N.J. — The Hoboken Police Department’s SWAT team has been disbanded, just days after officials learned of racy photos showing the unit’s commander and other officers cavorting with waitresses from a Hooters restaurant in Alabama.

Judging from the selection from the photo slide show, it seems that these photos involve more than just a trip to Hooters, and include some that are more explicit than just racy.

On the same day Hoboken’s new public safety director was sworn in, he gave the city’s police chief orders to disband the SWAT team and to order the lieutenant at the center of the controversy to desk duty.

After seeing the photos of Lt. Angelo Andriani and other members of the Hoboken police SWAT, newly appointed Public Safety Director Bill Bergin said he had to act decisively.

Bergin listed his reasons for disbanding the SWAT team in a phone interview with Newschannel 4’s Pei-Sze Cheng: The brazenness of the whole situation, because everything in the photographs, which I was shocked at, had Hoboken all over it, from the uniforms, to the police car, the bus that was involved.

Bergin ordered the police chief to disband the SWAT team and to have Andriani return from his extended vacation and assign him to desk duty immediately.

The photos were taken last year on a return trip from Louisiana, where the Hoboken officers helped with the Hurricane Katrina relief effort.

They show the waitresses holding shotguns and other weapons belonging to officers under Andriani’s command.

—WNBC (2007-11-16): N.J. SWAT Team Disbanded After Racy Hooters Photos Emerge

Elsewhere in New Jersey, another man in uniform, Anthony Senatore, used his power as a professional narc to extort sexual favors from a woman he’d pressured into becoming a drug informant. Then, after she tried to put a stop to it, he stalked her, forced his way into her house, and raped her. After his victim filed a lawsuit, Senatore was reassigned to a desk job. Although the boss cops and everybody else do concede that Senatore repeatedly exploited his position to coerce sex from the woman, the state A.G. has decided to sweep it under the rug and declined to prosecute on the rape charge. This, apparently, is what passes for having found no wrongdoing on the officer’s part in the eyes of the (male) mayor and the (male) police chief.

JACKSON — The state Attorney General has decided not to prosecute a police detective who is accused, in a civil lawsuit, of raping a drug informant in 2005 and impregnating her with a son who was born eight months later, township officials confirmed Wednesday. Advertisement

The lawsuit filed last year by the informant, identified only as Jane Doe, still is pending in federal court. However, Mayor Mark A. Seda said Wednesday that the attorney general’s decision exonerates Officer Anthony Senatore.

Apparently they found no wrongdoing on the officer’s part, Seda said, adding that Senatore remains on the Jackson force but is no longer a detective.

… According to the lawsuit, Senatore enlisted Jane Doe in April 2005 as a drug informant, in exchange for money and prosecutorial considerations for her children and estranged husband, all of whom have been investigated by the Jackson police.

But soon after Jane Doe became an informant, the detective’s behavior changed, according to the suit.

By means of intimidation, threat, harassment, coercion and/or promises of judicial and prosecutorial consideration for plaintiff and her family, Senatore repeatedly propositioned and solicited plaintiff for sexual relations from late April through July 2005, the suit alleges.

During that time, he had sex with her in her home, in police vehicles and in wooded locations in and around Jackson, according to the suit.

When Jane Doe tried to break off the relationship, Senatore’s deviant, predatory behavior intensified, culminating in a savagely brutal rape in her home on July 25, 2005, according to the suit. As a result of that rape, the plaintiff became pregnant and gave birth to a son March 26, 2006, according to the suit.

The suit accuses the township, the police department and then-Public Safety Director Samuel DiPasquale of permitting and encouraging police officers, including Senatore, to sexually harass and have sex with female informants, female defendants and other women they encountered while on duty.

In case you were curious, this is how seriously the boys in blue take their job of protecting you and me from all the weirdoes and creeps running around out there:

Shortly after the suit was filed, Senatore was removed from the detective bureau and placed on administrative duty where his only responsibilities included paperwork, the mayor said.

… Senatore is now back in circulation as a patrolman, though, because the police department is short staffed, Seda said. He did not know whether the officer will be reinstated to the detective bureau.

But don’t worry. They are seriously concerned about how this predator’s pattern of bullying, sexual harassment, sexual coercion, and rape against a woman substantially under his legally-backed power — which they dignify as a relationship with an informant — will adversely affect their P.R., and maybe a court case. Senatore may be back patrolling the streets, but hey, they might consider adding a couple of clauses to their internal policies.

When an officer’s character is in question, it puts us at risk, Seda said. We didn’t want to give any criminal a loophole to get out of charges.

… With the Attorney General’s investigation complete, the town and the police department are looking into how Senatore was able to take advantage of his job and engage in a relationship with an informant [sic], Seda said.

That’s certainly something we wouldn’t want to see happen again, the mayor said. We’re looking at our policy internally to see what we can do to prevent that.

—Fraidy Reiss, Asbury Park Press (2007-11-08): Detective won’t be prosecuted; Detective won’t be prosecuted

(Stories via Lindsay Beyerstein 2007-11-17 and ACLU Blog 2007-11-17.)

Bint shares the bad news that all public housing units in New Orleans are set to be destroyed. If you’re in Louisiana or the surrounding areas, or if you want to make the journey to engage in some civil disobedience, contact action@peopleshurricane.org with your response to the pledge copied below:

A major human rights crisis exists in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. It is a crisis that denies the basic rights to life, equality under the law, and social equity to Black, Indigenous, migrant, and working class communities in the region. While this crisis was in existence long before Hurricane Katrina, the policies and actions of the US government and finance capital (i.e. banking, credit, insurance, and development industries) following the Hurricane have seriously exacerbated the crisis.

(more…)

The Rude Pundit on the dangers of comparing disasters.

Paul Krugman has an excellent take on the Katrina anniversary:

Today, much of the Gulf Coast remains in ruins. Less than half the federal money set aside for rebuilding, as opposed to emergency relief, has actually been spent, in part because the Bush administration refused to waive the requirement that local governments put up matching funds for recovery projects — an impossible burden for communities whose tax bases have literally been washed away.

On the other hand, generous investment tax breaks, supposedly designed to spur recovery in the disaster area, have been used to build luxury condominiums near the University of Alabama’s football stadium in Tuscaloosa, 200 miles inland.

But why should we be surprised by any of this? The Bush administration’s response to Hurricane Katrina — the mixture of neglect of those in need, obliviousness to their plight, and self-congratulation in the face of abject failure — has become standard operating procedure. These days, it’s Katrina all the time.

Consider the White House reaction to new Census data on income, poverty and health insurance. By any normal standard, this week’s report was a devastating indictment of the administration’s policies. After all, last year the administration insisted that the economy was booming — and whined that it wasn’t getting enough credit. What the data show, however, is that 2006, while a good year for the wealthy, brought only a slight decline in the poverty rate and a modest rise in median income, with most Americans still considerably worse off than they were before President Bush took office.

Most disturbing of all, the number of Americans without health insurance jumped. At this point, there are 47 million uninsured people in this country, 8.5 million more than there were in 2000. Mr. Bush may think that being uninsured is no big deal — “you just go to an emergency room” — but the reality is that if you’re uninsured every illness is a catastrophe, your own private Katrina.

Yet the White House press release on the report declared that President Bush was “pleased” with the new numbers. Heckuva job, economy!

Read the whole thing. The Bush administrations complete re-writing of reality (and, following that, their refusal to deal with the reality at hand) is scary, dangerous and deadly.

As we have several important anniversaries on the horizon, I thought it would be *fun* to predict the kind of content MSM will be funneling to the masses this holiday weekend. Will they give more coverage to ...

• the still-going-strong fuck'd'upedness of the Fed's handling of the Katrina aftermath?
• the six year "hunt" for Osama Bin Laden?
• the very unfortunate and untimely death of the pretty, pretty British princess who did many wonderful things, but who I thought I didn't have to care that much about because I'm an American who doesn't care that much about the world around me ...except I'm supposed to stop in my tracks with rapt attention because Americans are required to care about all the comings and goings of the British monarchy?
• labor?