ACLU -- Now More Than Ever

On October 3, I wrote about the American Civil Liberties Union, and their upcoming visit to Charleston County Democratic Women.  Then along came Hurricane Matthew, and the meeting was postponed.  And then, along came the presidential election, and the world truly shifted.  So that the rescheduled presentation by the ACLU at CCDW seems even more relevant than it was two short months ago.

It is obvious that during the upcoming administration, the only people whose rights will not be violated are those of the Trump family.  Now, don't get me wrong, Mike Pence is the religious right's version of Dick Cheney, and he deserves whatever he gets.  But I am betting he has had to compromise every day since he has accepted that unholy deal for power.

There is already a line of supplicants who have or are in the process of being humiliated by Trump.  In true godfather fashion, he publicly banished Chris Christie as a favor to the hideous Jared Kushner, his son-in-law.  He has forced Rudy Giuliani to scrape and bow while keeping him in the wings waiting for the announcement regarding his choice for secretary of state.  And the media is all over the rumor that Mitt Romney will have to publicly apologized to Trump for his (truly justified) attacks during the campaign.

But those are his friends, those with political power and status, ethically questionable though it may be.

Trump loves to push the powerful around.  But he also has a special place for the rest of us.  Donald Trump likes us to be there to work for him, to flatter him, to need him, to be at his mercy.  He doesn't see us as individuals, not even the ones who stood out at his rallies: "Look at my African-American over there."  Of course he usually has a hard time distinguishing all but our dominant characteristics, so at another rally he called another black supporter a "thug" and had him thrown out.

Donald Trump will go after pretty much all of us in the end.  We once, just a couple of months ago, could talk about groups that are getting discriminated against and vilified.  In this new America, there is not anyone outside of the Trump family that is not at risk.  I have been losing sleep over the thought of mass deportations and internment camps, journalists and Hillary Clinton being imprisoned for being considered threats.  I have worried about workers who will lose their admittedly shaky claim to wages and benefits, and those who have been covered by Obamacare, as well as the poor who have relied on what little Medicaid had to offer.  I have thought about the increased risk that union leaders and peaceful protesters will now face.  I have worried about those whose skin is darker, who already feared walking down the street or wearing a hijab, those whose sexual identities make them vulnerable to bullying and violence.

Last night, though, I lost sleep because I heard that Paul Ryan is salivating at the thought of putting social security and medicare on the chopping block.

So, we are all truly in this mess together.

Yes, there are more of us.  But the others have power, and money, and too often even the law and lawyers on their side.  Before Trump, cops killed innocent people with impunity, and resented having their actions called into question, even if more often than not, they were not made to pay.  And Trump has bragged that he will be "the law and order president."

What we need right now are the organizations who have stood by us in the past, and fought for us.  Groups like the ACLU.

On Thursday, Executive Director Shaundra Scott and Legal Director Susan Dunn will be the speakers at the Charleston County Democratic Women monthly meeting.  It will be held at the  Riverview Holiday Inn at 6:00.  The cost of the dinner buffet is $20.  If you can, please donate to both the ACLU and Charleston County Democratic Women.  These organizations will continue to exist and be strong as long as we stand behind them.

I am looking forward to this meeting, even more than I was in October.  I hope to see you there.

(RSVP to Jan Leonard janleonard08@gmail.com, or at the Charleston County Democratic Women Facebook page, under events.)

      

The Ironic Cherry Reads...

...The Invisible Bridge 

"If the people believe there's an imaginary river out there, you don't tell them there's no river out there.  You build an imaginary bridge over the imaginary river."

This is the quote that prefaces the book "The Invisible Bridge" by Rick Perlstein.  It is attributed as "Advice to Richard Nixon from Nikita Khrushchev."

The book is a doorstop, some 800+ pages.  If you have time to read only one book, this is the one you should read.  As the subtitle says, it chronicles the time -- bridges the time -- of "the fall of Nixon and the rise of Reagan."

If you have been sitting here in 2015 scratching your head and wondering how we got here from the amazing sixties, this is the book that will clear it up for you.  Yes, we had Roe v. Wade, and civil rights legislation, ended the war in Vietnam and began to end pollution and save the planet.  We had desegregation, a war on poverty and more kids went on to college than ever before.

But we liberals never saw the backlash coming.

The abortion wars began as soon as they ended, fires fueled by rage at the Supreme Court justices that made a woman's right to abortion the law of the land.

It was in the 70's that the textbook wars began, with a mild mannered Christian woman named Alice Moore speaking up at a Texas school board meeting, and refusing to back down until school boards in Texas and across the country removed books that offended with their words of sex and science, integration and art.  Evolution was banned from textbooks and classrooms, as well as "The Grapes of Wrath."

Lest we yanks feel smug, it was in Boston where fierce rioting went on over school busing.  "Two groups of people who are poor and doomed and who have been thrown in the ring with each other," was how columnist Jimmy Breslin described the battles between whites and blacks.

And in today's headlines we have a dozen odd republican candidates for president keeping those same wounds open.  They may be using Mexicans instead of African Americans, but their followers I assure you see them as pretty much the same problem.  You can't publicly pledge to send blacks back where they came from these days, but ending Obamacare and the Voting Rights Act is nearly as satisfying.

While Hillary is wasting her time apologizing for emails, we must know that this has nothing to do with what is going on with the upcoming election.

Remember that big brouhaha over Obama's 2008 comments on guns and religion?  We need to go back and listen to those comments again:

"You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. 

And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."

Yes, they continue to cling to their guns and religion, and they are fueled by opportunistic politicians.  And what we see is craziness and rage.  We see nobodies like Kim Davis regaled as a hero for refusing to obey the law and used by fools like Mike Huckabee to promote his own small-minded religious agenda.  And those people who live in their own ignorance and isolation thrive on the narrative that the freedom of others to live differently will deny them their religious freedom.

And there you have that invisible bridge.  There won't be better jobs and the kids will either bail out or follow in the footsteps of fear and denial.  And the politicians will continue to pretend that they care about "religious freedom" while they deregulate and cut taxes for the rich.  And they will cut services to those same isolated small towns, health care and education, roads and schools, police and firefighters, blaming the government.  These pols have created and perpetuated this vicious cycle, wherein ignorance leads being frightened and vulnerable to lies and manipulation, which leads to more isolation and ignorance.

What is different now than it was in the 70's is that we have a Supreme Court that has been molded by the right-wing to reflect that bizarre religious paranoia.  Since Reagan the Supremes have formalized the union between corporate power and religion.  Small businesses haven't noticed that they have not been included in all the freedom of speech that is being bought, and politicians are giving them nothing but lip service.  But the pols have taken up the fight for the religious fanatics.  Because while they are wasting time and dollars with votes and court battles to end Obamacare, voting rights and Planned Parenthood, they are seeming to serve those small town old-timey values while their real constituents, the billionaire capitalists, are allowed to continue to freely run the country.

The Last Gasp of the Columbian Mammoth

I don't want to suggest that making the Columbian Mammoth the state fossil wasn't a hard fought victory; after all, it came to having to decide once and for all whether the earth is 6,000 years old.  But we managed a compromise between religion and science and we can rest easy about our State Fossil.  Which thankfully continues to make science in this great state a matter of opinion.

But still on the horizon are some horrendous and stinky bills, that are being pushed through in the last weeks of the session.  This week coming up are anti-abortion bills that masquerade as anything from protecting women from assault to protecting 20-week-old fetuses from feeling pain that they are physiologically incapable of feeling.  And just added to the roster is a bill that would add regulations to birth centers that would restrict the practice of midwives.  And another bill proposes to protect the rights of public schools to display religious symbols that represent holidays, once again keeping Christmas safe.

So here is a brief rundown:

In the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee, Thursday 4/10, 9:30, 407 Gressette:

S 83 is the personhood bill, stating that life begins at fertilization. 

S 457 is pretty much the same nonsense, as far as I can tell. 

S 527 pretends that it wants to protect pregnant women from violence by allowing them use deadly force against an assailant.  THE TRICK IS THAT THE FETUS IS DEFINED AS AN UNBORN CHILD, WHICH SETS THE PRECEDENT FOR PERSONHOOD IF PASSED.  Nice try, sleazoids.

 Subcommittee members are:   Campsen (ch), Hutto, Gregory, Allen, Hembree.

* * * * *

Also in the Senate, the Medical Affairs Subcommittee Wednesday, 4/9, at 9 a.m., will hear debate on H 4223.  This is the 20-week abortion ban, falsely called the "Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act."  THIS BILL HAS PASSED THE HOUSE.  It is crucial that we be heard in the Senate on this bill.  Members of the subcommittee are:  Ray Cleary (ch), Hutto, Bright, Tom Davis, Kevin Johnson.

* * * * *

H 4458 will be heard by the House Committee on Education and Public Works.  This bill, which goes by the inoffensive title of "Winter Holidays" opens the door to religious symbolism in public schools, pretending that all religions would get equal representation, and that this is for the purpose of education rather than indoctrination.  This meeting will be held on Wednesday, 4/9.

* * * * *

H 5002 is a late-to-the-party attempt to restrict midwives through "accreditation" and "addressing professional requirements for staff members (at birth centers) who provide patient care."  You can't convince me that this doesn't also have an anti-abortion/contraception hidden agenda, although I can't prove it.

* * * * *

At the risk of sounding like Pollyanna, I am going to end with some potentially good news.

H 3435, the Comprehensive Health Education Act, has had its first reading on the House floor and could be called up for a vote as early as Tuesday.  This bill proposes upgrading school standards for health education to "medically accurate."  This is a good thing, and it seems to have a bit of momentum.  Which means you should call your legislators in the House and give them that little extra encouragement to vote yes, and bring our health education system out of the Stone Age, which is even older than the age of our State Fossil.

Finally, I would like to apologize for any errors.  I find this whole process terrible confusing, and wonder if that is part of the grand plan.

Praying for Common Sense

In South Carolina's ongoing political game show, Who's the Best Christian, Wendell Gilliard and a bunch of other Democrats have struck a blow against the rabid faux-religious right-wing.  They have co-sponsored a bill -- yet again -- that would require a moment of prayer each morning in the public schools.  Now, not that I'm saying it's sneaky or deceitful, but Mr. Gilliard contends that 1) it is really a moment of silence which a teacher could turn into a moment of prayer (giving our teachers autonomy they never imagined they could have), and he magnanimously adds that 2) any child who doesn't want to pray can just get up and leave the room.

This is a scenario that allows for so very many possibilities:

      -- A teacher of the Jewish faith could lead a prayer in Hebrew.

      -- A child being raised in the Muslim faith could bring in a prayer mat, set it up pointing toward Mecca, and do his thing.

      -- Those children raised by heathens like myself can go on ahead and do whatever ritual they like, maybe have a snack or read a good book.

Here's another whole quandary:  what to do with the kids that up and leave?  Do they go sit in a detention-like room for a minute and then return to their classrooms?  Who counts down the minute?  Or do they mill around in the hallways while the armed guards we've legislated into the schools watch over them?

And if kids start opting out of prayer, will there end up being a stampede?  Will Wendell be shocked to find out that, given a choice, kids would rather hang out than pray?  Will teachers opt out?

The fact is, it's easier to legislate things like prayer and armed guards in schools than improve schools and pay for quality education.  Here in South Carolina, our legislators would rather pray for a good education than do what it takes to make it happen.