PUMA forward
Posted: April 19, 2009 Filed under: Hillary Clinton: Her Campaign for All of Us, Human Rights, No Obama, president teleprompter jesus, PUMA, Team Obama, The DNC, The Media SUCKS, Voter Ignorance, Women's Rights | Tags: PUMA Actions, PUMA Organizing, PUMA PLANNING 5 Comments
You think it’s too late to plan some kind of commemorative/commiserative event for the 5.31 rules committee meeting that led to the birth of PUMA? Maybe make it net/blog based? Any interest?
Digg!!!! Share!!!!
Every one has the right to live Happily Ever After …
Posted: April 12, 2009 Filed under: Human Rights | Tags: California, Gay Marriage, Gay rights, Proposition 8, Vermont 3 Comments
I’ve never been a big fan of marriage even though I sat in one for about 20 years. Don’t ask and I won’t tell. I’ve found it to be a major constraint. I found compromise is a virtue only to those who lack ambition and leave it at that.
However, I know I’m not the least bit in the main stream about a lot of things; mostly about any kind of religion. It takes a lot of commitment and intellectual compromise to support religions developed back before high level reading, writing, arithmetic, and science were invented. I even think that the term “DARK AGES” and “Age of Enlightenment” are pretty self-explanatory but then if there’s a god gene, it just doesn’t seem to run in my family and hasn’t for a long time.
Still, I’ve noticed a generational thing surrounding the marriage issue as well as old time religion. The older you are, the more you insist it’s one man, one woman, and it’s best for children. I just think it’s unnecessary unless you really want to give away your assets, time, and dreams to some body else who can drag you through court and take even more by the time you’re done. My kids have yet to get married and think it’s something best put off to when you’re nearly dead any way (say somewhere between 30 and 40). The kids and I think any one who wants to be able to do it should be able to get married. My parents were both pretty accepting of gay people, but their generation just can’t see gay marriage. In that way, my family appears to be pretty typical.
March 10, 1959
Posted: March 15, 2009 Filed under: Human Rights | Tags: 50th anniverasry of Tibetan Uprising, His Holiness the Dali Lama, Tibet Comments Off on March 10, 1959
March 10, 1959 was the day that native Tibetans protested the Chinese Invasion and occupation of Tibet. By March 20, the Tibetan Capital was mostly destroyed. It was estimated that 800 shells were used to destroy Tibet’s three major monasteries. Chinese soldiers rounded up the remaining monks and nuns. They executed many. China’s response to the protest was a mass genocide of Tibetans. This genocide continues today.
By the time of the 1964 census, 300,000 Tibetans had gone “missing” in the previous five years, either secretly imprisoned, killed, or in exile.
In the days after the 1959 Uprising, the Chinese government revoked most aspects of Tibet’s autonomy, and initiated resettlement and land distribution across the country. The Dalai Lama has remained in exile ever since.
China’s central government, in a bid to dilute the Tibetan population and provide jobs for Han Chinese, initiated a “Western China Development Program” in 1978.
As many as 300,000 Han now live in Tibet, 2/3 of them in the capital city. The Tibetan population of Lhasa, in contrast, is only 100,000.
Ethnic Chinese hold the vast majority of government posts.
His Holiness, the 14th Dali Lama and a small entourage made a difficult journey across the Himalyas to seek refuge in India. They are still in exhile. Tibetan Monks, Nuns, and loyalists are still imprisoned, tortured, and murdered. The aftermath of the invasion is documented by Wikipedia.
According to the Tibetan Government in Exile and captured Chinese documents an estimated 86,000 Tibetans died in the events surrounding the 1959 uprising. The Norbulingka was struck with an estimated 800 shells, killing an unknown number of Tibetans within and camped around the palace. Lhasa’s three major monasteries- Sera, Ganden, and Drepung– were seriously damaged by shelling, with Sera and Drepung being damaged nearly beyond repair. Members of the Dalai Lama’s bodyguard remaining in Lhasa were disarmed and publicly executed, along with Tibetans found to be harboring weapons in their homes. Thousands of Tibetan monks were executed or arrested, and monasteries and temples around the
city were looted or destroyed.
In April 1959, the 19 year old 10th Panchen Lama, the second ranking spiritual leader in Tibet, residing in Shigatse, called on Tibetans to support the Chinese government. However, after a tour through Tibet, in May 1962, he met Zhou Enlai to discuss a petition he had begun writing at the end of 1961, criticizing the situation in Tibet. The petition was a 70,000 character document that dealt with the brutal suppression of the Tibetan people during and after the Chinese invasion of Tibet. In this document, he criticized the suppression that the Chinese authorities had orchestrated in retaliation for the 1959 Tibetan uprising. But in October 1962, the PRC authorities dealing with the population criticized the petition. Chairman Mao called the petition “… a poisoned arrow shot at the Party by reactionary feudal overlords.” In 1967 he was formally arrested and imprisoned. He was released in 1977 and died suddenly after a mysterious illness in 1989.
I would like to ask for you to visit the Tibetan Government in Exile’s website and to consider helping Tibetan refugees and any other efforts that might interest you.
Fear and Loathing in Algier’s Point
Posted: December 22, 2008 Filed under: Human Rights, New Orleans | Tags: Alger's Point White Vigillantes, Post Katrina Racism Comments Off on Fear and Loathing in Algier’s PointAlgier’s Point has a history of racism. It’s a small neighborhood and mostly white enclave located on the west bank of the Mississippi River in New Orleans. It started as the place in New Orleans where human beings were bought and sold. The Slave Market was placed far across the river from the main part of the city that was filled with folks of mixed race, free people of color, and the many assorted European transplants that made it home. Now it’s a quaint little neighborhood that has shown an ugly white face to the world.
You may remember hearing about the West Bank when the Sheriff of Gretna (another mostly white working class enclave) stopped many folks from crossing the Crescent City Connection in attempt to wall off the west bank from those fleeing the flooded city. There was a lawsuit that was recently dismissed and the event attracted attention from national media and civil rights leaders. The West Bank and its after-Katrina aftermath is once more at the epicenter of controversy. ‘The Nation’ broke a story last week that included this video-taped admissions from White vigilantes in Algiers Point. You can listen to them admit to shooting Black men on sight for just being in the neighborhood during Katrina.
One transplant from Chicago brags in only the way the truly stupid can:
“It was great! Like pheasant season in South Dakota. If it moved, we shot it.”
(You can catch this jerk around the 5:40 mark).
Charges of racism have been bandied about this election so readily that I’ve frequently worried we’ll become immune to the real things when it happens. This weekend, I actually heard on commentator say that it was racist to even think about running any one against New York Governor Patterson in an upcoming election. Just about anyone who supported Hillary Clinton during the primary had the racist meme thrown at them. I was tired of the entire subject, frankly.
Watch this video. It’s the real deal and you’ll recognize it. It’s incredibly appalling and I hope the MSM airs the most offensive parts because there is an incredible level of hatefulness here that signifies racism at its worse. I know it when I see it.
NOTE: you can read more about this and make comments at the website of the New Orleans Times Picayune
When Inclusion is Really Exclusion
Posted: December 18, 2008 Filed under: A My Pet Goat Moment, Human Rights, No Obama, president teleprompter jesus, Team Obama | Tags: Gene Robinson prayer, Inauguration, Obama inauguration, Rick Warren prayer 11 Comments
When I heard that Rick Warren was invited by PE Obama to say a prayer at the inauguration, my first thought was that Obama’s pandering to the religious right was more than just electioneering. Obama seems intent on including them in his administration. To me, this bodes poorly for science, rational thought, and civil rights. I was hoping he might ask some one like Rev. Gene Robinson, an Episcopalian Bishop to give the prayer because it would demonstrate a true commitment to civil rights. Rev. Robinson is openly gay and his appointment has been an ongoing source of controversy.
I was pleased to read Jeffrey Feldman’s blog today to find there was some one else out there with similar feelings. I always find the Feldman’s analysis of how people looking for positions of power ‘frame’ cultural and political issues fascinating. Feldman believes that Obama is not leading on civil rights issues but ‘tinkering’ and points to previous democratic leaders who took bold stands on civil rights issues. I’m going to highlight his main points, but would suggest you go look at the entire essay.
Obama, Feldman believes, comes up short on the leadership scale.
Marriage equality for gays and lesbians is not just some “social issue” akin to school uniforms, warning labels on music or smoking in restaurants. It is the current epicenter of the civil rights movement in America.
… When Lincoln took office, the abolition of slavery was the epicenter. When Wilson took office, the women’s suffrage movement was the epicenter. When FDR took office, poverty was the epicenter. When Kennedy took office, segregation was the epicenter
Thinking about Obama’s presidency in terms of an ‘epicenter’ of civil rights changes how we think about Rick Warren speaking at the inauguration.
Rick Warren is not just a pastor opposed to gay rights. He is a highly political leader of a mega-church who has compared abortion to the Holocaust and opposed marriage reform in terms equivalent to the bigoted plaintiffs in Loving v. Virginia–the landmark 1967 civil rights case overturning anti-miscegenation marriage laws. In an era where gay rights are the epicenter, Rick Warren is a widely recognized voice arguing against those rights.
Translating Rick Warren into the terms of previous civil rights eras is the key to seeing why his role at Obama’s inauguration is so troubling. By comparison, if this were Lincoln’s inauguration, Rick Warren would have been the equivalent pro-slavery pastor giving the invocation. If this were Wilson’s inauguration, Rick Warren would have been the equivalent of an anti-women’s suffrage pastor saying a prayer. For FDR, he would have been the same as inviting a pastor opposed to rights for the poor. For Kennedy, he would have been the same as inviting a pastor who spoke out repeatedly about the dangers of desegregation.
In each of these cases, for the President-elect to invite the a voice known for arguing against progress–and to do so in the name of political peacemaking, as Barack Obama has done with Rick Warren–would have revealed a tinkerer on civil rights, not a leader.
Feldman raises just one faucet of leadership where Obama fails. Obama’s cabinet appointments are being ‘framed’ as pragmatic. Obama has said he wants to be surrounded by folks that are not idealogues, but folks that will get things done. I guess I have to raise the question of how important is getting a bureaucracy to work when the overall goals are based on functionality and not vision. This is where I think Feldman sees the gay rights as symptomatic of Obama’s lack of leadership skills. As President, Obama should be doing more than just making history based on appearances. If Obama is ‘symbolic’ of civil rights gains, then what does it say to choose Warren, some one who assaults the civil rights of both women and GLBT Americans?
I feel compelled to add my voice to those asking Obama to disinvite Warren. What would it say if Obama, instead, asked Rev Robinson to contribute this prayer instead? Wouldn’t the inclusion of Rev. Gene Robinson make a compelling statement towards the future of civil rights in this country? Wouldn’t this be a strong statement given that the President Elect’s supporters contributed so heavily to the defeat of Prop 8 in California? This would be a sign of leadership and not just a going along with what worked to get Obama elected.
peej
Carissa
bostonboomer
dakinikat
ecocatwoman
mablue2
Mama Lopez
peggysue22
quixote
skydancingguestblogger
Mona (aka Wonk the Vote)
Sky Dancing 
Recent Comments