Finally Friday Reads: White-Washing our Lives

Mvskokvlke ‘Temeckv Nene (Mvskoke Trail of Tears) by Johnnie Diacon. The Tulsa-based artist is using this work as a study for a new mural he’s creating for the Museum of Native American History.

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

We’re heading to the end of the year as measured by the Romans and their Sun God, who stole that calendar from the Greeks and other things from the Egyptians.  The Egyptians were more interested in the Dog Star since it appeared in the east each solar year when the Nile flooded than the sun. Julius Caesar replaced the slightly confusing Greek Lunar Calendar with the Egyptian one in 45 BC.  The Romans stole a lot from the Greeks, too.  A later Pope, Gregory XIII, tried to correct the bugs in that one. However, we still have leap years and months with varying numbers of days. That’s why they constantly have to tinker with it. They’re forcing it to be what they want.

None of this is particularly relevant to the many folks who still follow the lunar calendar for important days. It shows you just how much conquerors can usurp everything meaningful to you as they rewrite your celebrations, history, and culture.  I have a meeting next week where everyone is supposed to share their holiday traditions with pictures and stories before we go on the obligatory week off, which really is not the best time of year to have a forced week off.  I always get to be the one who says there are no holidays in this month for me. But you can ask me on January 14th next year.

I just try to stay out of the way of all the money-centric activities during the month and the frenetic business that wears everyone out and causes many to be depressed. If you are one of those folks who experience depression this time of year, you are not alone, and do not hesitate to seek help.  Also, please remind any of your friends and family who struggle this month that you stand by them and are willing to help them.

Fig. 2. Virginian Luxuries. Courtesy of the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Center, Williamsburg, Va.

There is a genuine effort to white-wash history in this country. Texas is a mainstay in these activities. This is from the Texas Monthly. “The Texas Historical Commission Removed Books on Slavery From Plantation Gift Shops. An agency spokesperson claimed that the move had nothing to do with politics. Internal emails show otherwise. ” There are many plantations here in Louisiana and many focus on the treatment of slaves in their presentations of history. It’s not pretty and it shouldn’t be, because it wasn’t.

After visiting the Varner-Hogg plantation an hour south of Houston, amateur historian Michelle Haas was incensed by what she had seen. At an exhibit that details the farm’s use as a sugar plantation worked by at least 66 slaves in the early nineteenth century, she’d watched an informational video. To her mind, it focused too much on slavery at the site and not enough on the Hogg family, which had turned its former home into a museum celebrating Texas history. She’d also seen books in the visitor center gift shop written by Carol Anderson and Ibram X. Kendi, two Black academic historians who have been outspoken on the issue of systemic racism. Outraged, she emailed David Gravelle, a board member of the Texas Historical Commission, the agency that oversees historical sites at the direction of leaders appointed by Governor Greg Abbott. “What a s—show is this video,” Haas wrote on September 2, 2022. “Add to that the fact that the activist staff member doing the buying for the gift shop thinks Ibram X. Kendi and White Rage have a place at a historic site.”

Over the next eight months, Haas continued to email Gravelle, advocating for such books to be removed. In turn, Gravelle, a marketing executive based in Dallas, took up the cause internally at the Historical Commission, calling on agency staff to do away with the titles Haas didn’t think belonged at the gift shops. By November of this year, it appeared Haas’s demands were met. The Texas Historical Commission no longer sells White Rage by Anderson or Stamped From the Beginning by Kendi, or 23 other works to which Haas later objected, at two former slave plantations in Brazoria County, including Varner-Hogg. Among the literature no longer available for purchase is an autobiography of a slave girl, a book of Texas slave narratives, the celebrated novel Roots by Alex Haley, and the National Book Award–winning Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison.

The Texas Historical Commission did not provide Texas Monthly with a list of titles no longer for sale. Chris Florance, a spokesperson for the agency, said many books were removed from the historical sites as part of an effort that he said was launched in March to reduce inventory as the agency transitions to a new point-of-sale software system. Emails acquired by Texas Monthly through an open-records request reveal, however, that Gravelle was concerned about the way those books presented Texas history and about potential attention from state lawmakers over what books were available for purchase. The emails also show that he had raised those concerns in February, before the agency decided to change its software system.

Texas Attorney General, and all around corrupt crook is going after the Ob/Gyn who will hopefully, still perform a necessary abortion approved by a Judge just days ago.  This letter was sent to Three Hospitals where the Doctor would likely perform the surgery.  AG Paxton has done nothing to protect the children of Texas from death by guns, but that is his response to procedure necessary to keep this woman healthy and alive. It his not his or the state’s business.  This is from The Guardian. “Texas attorney general says he will sue doctor who gives abortion to Kate Cox. Ken Paxton issues threat after judge ruled this week that Cox, a pregnant woman with a lethal fetal diagnosis, can get an abortion.”

The Texas attorney general, Ken Paxton, has threatened to prosecute any doctor who provides an abortion to Kate Cox, a woman with a non-viable pregnancy, advising hospitals to ignore a court order issued on Thursday allowing her to get the procedure.

The rightwing Paxton issued the warning to three Houston-area hospitals after a Texas judge ruled this week that Cox, a pregnant woman with a lethal fetal diagnosis, may obtain an abortion under the narrow medical exceptions offered by the state bans.

In a brazen dismissal of the court’s decision, Paxton wrote that the judge’s order “will not insulate hospitals, doctors or anyone else from civil and criminal liability.”

Paxton also wrote that the hospital where Cox obtains an abortion “may be liable for negligent credentialing the physician” who performs the procedure.

The Center for Reproductive Rights filed a lawsuit on behalf of Cox after she learned last week that her fetus has trisomy 18, a fatal chromosomal condition, as well as other health issues, including a spinal abnormality. Continuing the pregnancy could threaten Cox’s life and future fertility. The 31-year-old mother of two has already rushed to the emergency room four times with severe cramping and fluid loss, but doctors have told her that their hands are tied by the state laws.

On Thursday, the Travis county judge, Maya Guerra Gamble, issued a temporary restraining order to permit Cox’s doctor to perform the abortion.

“The idea that Ms Cox wants desperately to be a parent and this law might actually cause her to lose that ability is shocking and would be a genuine miscarriage of justice,” the judge said, following an emergency hearing on Thursday.

Late Thursday night, the state appealed the judge’s ruling, in a motion asking the Texas supreme court to immediately block Gamble’s order.

In Paxton’s letter to the hospitals involved in Cox’s case, the attorney general wrote that Gamble was “not medically qualified to make this determination”.

“He is trying to bulldoze the legal system to make sure Kate and pregnant women like her continue to suffer,” said Marc Hearron, the senior counsel at the Center for Reproductive Rights, in a statement. “Fearmongering has been Ken Paxton’s main tactic in enforcing these abortion bans. Rather than respect the judiciary, he is misrepresenting the court’s order.”

Cox’s case marks the first time a pregnant person has asked a court for an emergency abortion since Roe v Wade was decided in 1973.

Human Laundry, Belsen: April 1945  (Atrocities at Death Camps)

Anti-Semitism and Anti-Muslim speech is a topic of a debate over freedom of speech in this country. It has been especially focused on the speech of students and professors at Universities.  Michelle Goldberg provides this Op-Ed for the New York Times. “At a Hearing on Israel, University Presidents Walked Into a Trap.”

On Wednesday, a dear friend emailed me a viral clip from the House hearing on campus antisemitism in which three elite university presidents refuse to say, under questioning by Representative Elise Stefanik, a New York Republican, that calling for the genocide of Jews violates school policies on bullying and harassment. “My God, have you seen this?” wrote my friend, a staunch liberal. “I can’t believe I find myself agreeing with Elise Stefanik on anything, but I do here.”

If I’d seen only that excerpt from the hearing, which has now led to denunciations of the college leaders by the White House and the Democratic governor of Pennsylvania, among many others, I might have felt the same way. All three presidents — Claudine Gay of Harvard, Sally Kornbluth of M.I.T. and Elizabeth Magill of the University of Pennsylvania — acquitted themselves poorly, appearing morally obtuse and coldly legalistic. It was a moment that seemed to confirm many people’s worst fears about the tolerance for Jew hatred in academia.

But while it might seem hard to believe that there’s any context that could make the responses of the college presidents OK, watching the whole hearing at least makes them more understandable. In the questioning before the now infamous exchange, you can see the trap Stefanik laid.

“You understand that the use of the term ‘intifada’ in the context of the Israeli-Arab conflict is indeed a call for violent armed resistance against the state of Israel, including violence against civilians and the genocide of Jews. Are you aware of that?” she asked Gay.

Gay responded that such language was “abhorrent.” Stefanik then badgered her to admit that students chanting about intifada were calling for genocide, and asked angrily whether that was against Harvard’s code of conduct. “Will admissions offers be rescinded or any disciplinary action be taken against students or applicants who say, ‘From the river to the sea’ or ‘intifada,’ advocating for the murder of Jews?” Gay repeated that such “hateful, reckless, offensive speech is personally abhorrent to me,” but said action would be taken only “when speech crosses into conduct.”

So later in the hearing, when Stefanik again started questioning Gay, Kornbluth and Magill about whether it was permissible for students to call for the genocide of the Jews, she was referring, it seemed clear, to common pro-Palestinian rhetoric and trying to get the university presidents to commit to disciplining those who use it. Doing so would be an egregious violation of free speech. After all, even if you’re disgusted by slogans like “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” their meaning is contested in a way that, say, “Gas the Jews” is not. Finding themselves in a no-win situation, the university presidents resorted to bloodless bureaucratic contortions, and walked into a public relations disaster.

The anguished and furious reaction of many Jews to that viral clip is understandable. Jewish people of many different political persuasions have been stunned by the rank antisemitism and contempt for Israeli lives that has exploded across campuses, where Jewish students have been threatened and, in some cases, assaulted. This week, when I wrote that the backlash to anti-Israel protests threatens free speech, I received many emails from people who felt I was refusing to grapple with an evident crisis. “You are worried about an overreaction when there hasn’t yet been a sufficient reaction to the antisemitism terrifying Jewish students on campus,” said one.

But it seems to me that it is precisely when people are legitimately scared and outraged that we’re most vulnerable to a repressive response leading to harmful unintended consequences. That’s a lesson of Sept. 11, but also of much of the last decade, when the policing of speech in academia escalated in ways that are now coming back to bite the left.

Amid the uproar over the campus antisemitism hearing, many have claimed that if Stefanik were asking about attacks on any other ethnic group, there would have been no waffling. But Stefanik did ask about another group. Her first question to Gay was, “A Harvard student calling for the mass murder of African Americans is not protected free speech at Harvard, correct?” Gay started to respond, “Our commitment to free speech,” but Stefanik, perhaps realizing she wasn’t going to get the answer she wanted, cut her off and changed tack.

Yet clearly, at many universities, the defense of free speech has been inconsistent. Some elite schools now cloaking themselves in the mantle of the First Amendment to ward off charges of coddling antisemites have, in the past, privileged community sensitivity over unbridled expression. So when university administrators say, as Gay did, “We embrace a commitment to free expression, even of views that are objectionable, offensive, hateful,” many in the Jewish community see a galling double standard.

But as the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, a libertarian-leaning civil liberties group, said in a statement about the hearings, “Double standards are frustrating, but we should address them by demanding free speech be protected consistently — not by expanding the calls for censorship.” Unfortunately, that is not what’s happening.

“The general point that there’s a hypocrisy around free speech and an imbalance around free speech on college campuses is right,” said Ryan Enos, a Harvard professor of government. But, he said, many of the people pointing this out “are not doing it to stand up for free speech; they’re just doing it because they want to shut down speech they disagree with.”

This is from ABC News.  “Hospitals in southern Gaza are at ‘breaking point,’ international organizations say.  The WHO said patients are being forced to be treated on the floor.”

Hospitals in central and southern Gaza are at a “breaking point” and struggling to care for the influx of patients amid the ongoing Israel-Hamas war, Doctors Without Borders and the World Health Organization say.

Two hospitals — Al-Aqsa Hospital in central Gaza and Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza — are overwhelmed and are being forced to prioritize those with life-threatening conditions, according to Doctors Without Borders, or Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), which has staff working at both medical centers.

“We hear bombing around us, day and night,” Katrien Claeys, an MSF team leader in Gaza, said in a press release Monday. “In the last 48 hours, over 100 dead and over 400 injured people arrived at the emergency room of Al-Aqsa Hospital. Some patients were taken for surgery right away.”

The fog of war is perhaps the worst place to get actual information on atrocities be it the brutal rapes and murders of Israeli women at a Music Festival or the bombing of young and elderly at a hospital.

The fog of the NRA is also difficult to traverse. We have a lot of festivals and holidays surrounding light this year; Diwali, Channukah, the birth of the light of the world, etc.  But it’s sure difficult to shine the light on so many thing things these days even with global internet and news.

This is from NBC News.  “Man federally charged after firing shots outside New York synagogue, officials say. The suspect was identified as Mufid Al Khader, 28, officials said.”

A man arrested in connection with shots that were fired outside a synagogue in Albany, New York, on Thursday has been federally charged, officials said.

Mufid Fawaz Alkhader was arrested and charged with possession of a firearm by a prohibited person, FBI spokesperson Sarah Ruane told NBC News.

Alkhader, 28, was born in Iraq and is now a U.S. citizen. He recently lived in Schenectady, New York, according to the criminal complaint.

No one was injured in the incident, in which two shots were fired from a Kel-Tec KS7 12 gauge pump shotgun outside Temple Israel around 2 p.m., Albany Police Chief Eric Hawkins said. Police don’t know in what direction the shots were fired, he said.

“We were told by responding officers that he made a comment, ‘Free Palestine,’” Hawkins said at a news conference.

The shooter fled but was confronted by another person in a vehicle in a lot, Hawkins said.

“The suspect at that point made some statement to this person who was in the vehicle to the effect of he feels that he’s being victimized,” Hawkins said.

The suspect then dropped the shotgun, and officers arrived and arrested him, said Hawkins, who emphasized that Al Khader acted alone and that there is no further threat to the community. There was also no damage to the building.

Hawkins said his understanding is that the suspect made the “Free Palestine” comment around the time he was taken into custody.

​​Charles Henry Alston, Walking, 1958

This is from The Daily Beast. “Bystanders Stop Woman Torching Martin Luther King Jr.’s Atlanta Birth Home.”

Off-duty police officers and tourists on Thursday helped to stop a woman setting fire to the house where Martin Luther King Jr. was born in Atlanta after she doused the property in gasoline, authorities said.

The 26-year-old woman was confronted by a pair of visitors from Utah as she poured fuel on the porch of the house, Atlanta Police Chief Darin Schierbaum said. Two off-duty New York City Police Department officers who had been visiting the home then pursued the suspect and detained her until local law enforcement arrived, Schierbaum added.

“That action saved an important part of American history tonight,” the police chief said.

One of the tourists from Utah, Zach Kempf, said he initially thought the woman was watering shrubs in front of the house. Kempf told The New York Times he and the co-worker with whom he was visiting the home then asked the woman “what she was doing” as she tried to open the screen door, but “she didn’t respond.”

It was then that she allegedly emptied a five-gallon container on the porch and retrieved a lighter she’d left in the grass next to the porch. Kempf said he blocked the woman with his body as she attempted to get back onto the porch while holding the lighter.

He told the Times the woman had a “nervous energy” but “wasn’t aggressive” and eventually backed down, turning around and walking off down the street. Kempf said he called 911 and “yelled at the two guys down the street that she was trying to set the house on fire and to follow her.”

Kempf said the men—the off-duty NYPD cops—restrained the woman. He added that later, after local officers arrived at the scene, the suspect’s father and three sisters showed up after tracking her location from her phone. Her family described the woman as a veteran who was in mental distress, according to Kempf.

The Atlanta Police Department said the woman was arrested for attempted arson as well as interference with government property. In a statement, the King Center said an “individual attempted to set fire to this historic property” but was fortunately unsuccessful “thanks to the brave intervention of good samaritans and the quick response of law enforcement.”

“If the witnesses hadn’t been here and interrupted what she was doing, it could have been a matter of seconds before the house was engulfed in flames,” Atlanta Fire Department Battalion Chief Jerry DeBerry told reports.

From a poster dated c.1913. Force Feeding suffragettes during a hunger strike in the UK.

The arsonist was a black woman.  No one knows right now why she decided to torch the home of the civil rights leader. One of our next National Holidays will celebrate the birth of Martin Luther King, Jr. I’d like to draw your attention to the speech he gave on December 11, 1964 as a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize.  “The quest for peace and justice” Perhaps in a season celebrating so much light and experiencing so much darkness Dr King’s words are enlightening.

Every man lives in two realms, the internal and the external. The internal is that realm of spiritual ends expressed in art, literature, morals, and religion. The external is that complex of devices, techniques, mechanisms, and instrumentalities by means of which we live. Our problem today is that we have allowed the internal to become lost in the external. We have allowed the means by which we live to outdistance the ends for which we live. So much of modern life can be summarized in that arresting dictum of the poet Thoreau¹: “Improved means to an unimproved end”. This is the serious predicament, the deep and haunting problem confronting modern man. If we are to survive today, our moral and spiritual “lag” must be eliminated. Enlarged material powers spell enlarged peril if there is not proportionate growth of the soul. When the “without” of man’s nature subjugates the “within”, dark storm clouds begin to form in the world.

This problem of spiritual and moral lag, which constitutes modern man’s chief dilemma, expresses itself in three larger problems which grow out of man’s ethical infantilism. Each of these problems, while appearing to be separate and isolated, is inextricably bound to the other. I refer to racial injustice, poverty, and war.

These words do not get as much play on his birthday as many of his other speeches and writings, but I think it’s worth reading the details he provides on his three categories.

It is also important to realize that the more we bury past actions, the more likely we will tolerate their repeat. The struggle for peace and justice continues.

Let me add a quote from Abigail Adams.  “Don’t forget the Ladies.”  Also, love is love.  People know who they are better than you. Embrace the LGBTQ+ community and their rights.

If you celebrate light this month, be the light you seek at all times.  You have several calendars to choose from to keep track of your path.

What’s on your reading and blogging list today?

[Verse 1]
Strikes across the frontier and strikes for higher wage
Planet lurches to the right as ideologies engage
Suddenly it’s repression, moratorium on rights
What did they think the politics of panic would invite?
Person in the street shrugs—”Security comes first”

[Refrain]
But the trouble with normal is it always gets worse
The trouble with normal is it always gets worse

[Verse 2]
Callous men in business costume speak computerese
Play pinball with the third world trying to keep it on its knees
Their single crop starvation plans put sugar in your tea
And the local third world’s kept on reservations you don’t see
“It’ll all go back to normal if we put our nation first”

[Refrain]
But the trouble with normal is it always gets worse
The trouble with normal is it always gets worse

[Verse 3]
Fashionable fascism dominates the scene
When the ends don’t meet it’s easier to justify the means
Tenants get the dregs and the landlords get the cream
As the grinding devolution of the democratic dream
Brings us men in gas masks dancing while the shells burst

[Refrain]
But the trouble with normal is it always gets worse
The trouble with normal is it always gets worse
The trouble with normal is it always gets worse
The trouble with normal is it always gets worse