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#governors awards 2019
waltermis · 6 months
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We don't talk about this look enough 😍😍
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stylestream · 6 days
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Lupita Nyong'o | Tom Ford Spring 2019 gown | Governors Awards | 2018
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mbee4 · 1 year
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governors awards 2019
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How unions won a 30% raise for every fast food worker in California
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Tonight (September 14), I'm hosting the EFF Awards in San Francisco. On September 22, I'm (virtually) presenting at the DIG Festival in Modena, Italy.
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Anything that can't go on forever will eventually stop. 40 years of declining worker power shattered the American Dream (TM), producing multiple generations whose children fared worse than their parents, cratering faith in institutions and hope for a better future.
The American neoliberal malaise – celebrated in by "centrists" who insisted that everything was fine and nothing could be changed – didn't just lead to a sense of helplessness, but also hopelessness. Denialism and nihilism are Siamese twins, and the YOLO approach to the climate emergency, covid mitigation, the housing crisis and other pressing issues can't be disentangled from the Thatcherite maxim that "There is NoA lternative." If there's no alternative, then we're doomed. Dig a hole, climb inside, pull the dirt down on top of yourself.
But anything that can't go on forever will eventually stop. For decades, leftists have taken a back seat to liberals in the progressive coalition, allowing "unionize!" to be drowned out by "learn to code!" The liberal-led coalition ceded the mantle of radical change to fake populist demagogues on the right.
This opened a space for a mirror-world politics that insisted that "conservatives" were the true defenders of women (because they were transphobes), of bodily autonomy (because they were vaccine deniers), of the environment (because they opposed wind-farms) and of workers (because they opposed immigration):
https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/05/not-that-naomi/#if-the-naomi-be-klein-youre-doing-just-fine
Anything that can't go on forever will eventually stop. A new coalition dedicated to fighting corporate power has emerged, tackling capitalism's monopoly power, and the corruption and abuse of workers it enables. That coalition is global, it's growing, and it's kicking ass.
Case in point: California just passed a law that will give every fast-food worker in the state a 30% raise. This law represents a profound improvement to the lives of the state's poorest workers – workers who spend long hours feeding their neighbors, but often can't afford to feed themselves at the end of a shift.
But just as remarkable as the substance of this new law is the path it took – a path that runs through a new sensibility, a new vibe, that is more powerful than mere political or legal procedure. The story is masterfully told in The American Prospect by veteran labor writer Harold Meyerson:
https://prospect.org/labor/2023-09-13-half-million-california-workers-get-raise/
The story starts with Governor Newsom signing a bill to create a new statewide labor-business board to mediate between workers and bosses, with the goal of elevating the working conditions of the state's large, minimum-wage workforce. The passage of this law triggered howls of outrage from the state's fast-food industry, who pledged to spend $200m to put forward a ballot initiative to permanently kill the labor-business board.
This is a familiar story. In 2019, California's state legislature passed AB-5, a bill designed to end the gig-work fiction that people whose boss is an algorithm are actually "independent businesses," rather than employees. AB5 wasn't perfect – it swept up all kinds of genuine freelancers, like writers who contributed articles to many publications – but the response wasn't aimed at fixing the bad parts. It was designed to destroy the good parts.
After AB-5, Uber and Lyft poured more than $200m into Prop 22, a ballot initiative designed to permanently bar the California legislature from passing any law to protect "gig workers." Prop 22's corporate backers flooded the state with disinformation, and procured a victory in 2020. The aftermath was swift and vicious, with Prop 22 used as cover in mass-firings of unionized workers across the state's workforce:
https://pluralistic.net/2021/01/05/manorialism-feudalism-cycle/#prop22
Workers and the politicians who defend them were supposed to be crushed by Prop 22. Its message was "there is no alternative." "Abandon hope all ye who enter here." "Resistance is futile." Prop 22 was worth spending $200m on because it wouldn't just win this fight – it would win all fights, forever.
But that's not what happened. When the fast-food barons announced that they were going to pump another $200m into a state ballot initiative to kill fair wages for food service workers, they got a hell of a surprise. SEIU – a union that has long struggled to organize fast-food workers – collaborated with progressive legislators to introduce a pair of new, even further-reaching bills.
One bill would have made the corporate overseers of franchise businesses jointly liable for lawbreaking by franchisees – so if a McDonald's restaurant owner stole their employees' wages, McDonalds corporate would also be on the hook for the offense. The second bill would restore funding and power to the state Industrial Welfare Commission, which once routinely intervened to set wages and working standards in many state industries:
https://www.gtlaw-laborandemployment.com/2023/08/the-california-iwc-whats-old-is-new-again/
Fast-food bosses fucked around, and boy did they find out. Funding for the IWC passed the state budget, and the franchisee joint liability is set to pass the legislature this week. The fast-food bosses cried uncle and begged Newsom's office for a deal. In exchange for defunding the IWC and canceling the vote on the liability bill, the industry has agreed to an hourly wage increase for the state's 550,000 fast-food workers, from $15.50 to $20, taking effect in April.
The deal also includes annual raises of either 3.5% or the real rise in cost of living. It keeps the labor-management council that the original bill created (the referendum on killing that council has been cancelled). The council will include two franchisees, two fast food corporate reps, two union reps, two front-line fast-food workers and a member of the public. It will have the power to direct the state Department of Labor to directly regulate working conditions in fast-food restaurants, from health and safety to workplace violence.
It's been nearly a century since business/government/labor boards like this were commonplace. The revival is a step on the way to bringing back the practice of sectoral bargaining, where workers set contracts for all employers in an industry. Sectoral bargaining was largely abolished through the dismantling of the New Deal, though elements of it remain. Entertainment industry unions are called "guilds" because they bargain with all the employers in their sector – which is why all of the Hollywood studios are being struck by SAG-AFTRA and the WGA.
So what changed between 2020 – when rideshare bosses destroyed democratic protections for workers by flooding the zone with disinformation to pass Prop 22 – and 2023, when the fast food bosses folded like a cheap suit? It wasn't changes to the laws governing ballot initiatives, nor was it a lack of ready capital for demolishing worker rights. Fast food executives weren't visited by three ghosts in the night who convinced them to care for their workers. Their hearts didn't grow by three sizes.
What changed was the vibe. The Hot Labor Summer was a rager, and it's not showing any signs of slowing. Obviously that's true in California, where nurses and hotel workers are also striking, and where strikebreaking companies like Instawork ("Uber for #scabs") attract swift regulatory sanction, rather than demoralized capitulation:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/30/computer-says-scab/#instawork
The hot labor summer wasn't a season – it was a turning point. Everyone's forming unions. Think of Equity Strip NoHo, the first strippers' union in a generation, which won recognition from their scumbag bosses at North Hollywood's Star Garden Club, who used every dirty trick to kill workplace democracy.
The story of the Equity Strippers is amazing. Two organizers, Charlie and Lilith, appeared on Adam Conover's Factually podcast to describe the incredible creativity and solidarity they used to win recognition, and the continuing struggle to get a contract out of their bosses, who are still fucking around and assuming they will not find out:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fgXihmHIZk
Like the fast-food bosses, the Star Garden's owners are in for a surprise. One of the most powerful elements of the Equity Strippers' story is the solidarity of their customers. Star Garden's owners assumed that their clientele were indiscriminate, horny assholes who didn't care about the wellbeing of the workers they patronized, and would therefore cross a picket-line because parts is parts.
Instead, the bar's clientele sided with the workers. People everywhere are siding with workers. A decade ago, when video game actors voted on a strike, the tech workers who coded the games were incredibly hostile to them. "Why should you get residuals for your contribution to this game when we don't?"
But SAG-AFTRA members who provide voice acting for games just overwhelmingly voted to authorize a strike, and this time the story is very different. This time, tech workers are ride-or-die for their comrades in the sound booths:
https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/business/story/2023-09-13/video-game-voice-actor-sag-strike-interactive-agreement-actors-strike
What explains the change in tech workers' animal sentiments? Well, on the one hand, labor rights are in the air. The decades of cartoonish, lazy dismissals of labor struggles have ended. And on the other hand, tech workers have been proletarianized, with 260,000 layoffs in the sector, including 12,000 layoffs at Google that came immediately after a stock buyback that would have paid those 12,000 salaries for the next 27 years:
https://doctorow.medium.com/the-proletarianization-of-tech-workers-ad0a6b09f7e6
Larry Lessig once laid out a theory of change that holds that our society is governed by four forces: law (what's legal), norms (what's socially acceptable), markets (what's profitable) and code (what's technologically possible):
https://cs.stanford.edu/people/eroberts/cs181/projects/2010-11/CodeAndRegulation/about.html
These four forces interact. When queer relationships were normalized, it made it easier to legalize them, too – and then the businesses that marriage equality became both a force for more normalization and legal defense.
When Lessig formulated this argument, much of the focus was on technology – how file-sharing changed norms, which changed law. But as the decades passed, I've come to appreciate what the argument says about norms, the conversations we have with one another.
Neoliberalism wants you to think that you're an individual, not a member of a polity. Neoliberalism wants you to bargain with your boss as a "free agent," not a union member. It wants you to address the climate emergency by recycling more carefully – not by demanding laws banning single-use plastics. It wants you to fight monopolies by shopping harder – not by busting trusts.
But that's not what we're doing – not anymore. We're forming unions. We're demanding a Green New Deal. And we're busting some trusts. The DoJ Antitrust Division case against Google is the (first) trial of the century, reviving the ancient and noble practice of fighting monopolies with courts, not empty platitudes.
The trial is incredible, and Yosef Weitzman's reporting on Big Tech On Trial is required reading. I'm following it closely (thankfully, there's a fulltext RSS feed):
https://www.bigtechontrial.com/p/what-makes-google-great
The neoliberal project of instilling learned helplessness about corporate power has hit the wall, and it's wrecked. The same norms that made us furious enough to put Google on trial are the norms that made us angry – not cynical – about Clarence Thomas's bribery scandals:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/06/clarence-thomas/#harlan-crow
And they're the same norms that made us support our striking comrades, from hotel housekeepers to Hollywood actors, from strippers to Starbucks baristas:
https://thetyee.ca/News/2023/09/13/Starbucks-Workers-Back-At-Strike/
Yes, Starbucks baristas. The Starbucks unions that won hard-fought recognition drives are now fighting the next phase of corporate fuckery: Starbucks corporate's refusal to bargain for a contract. Starbucks is betting that if they just stall long enough, the workers who support the union will move on and they'll be able to go back to abusing their workers without worrying about a union.
They're fucking around, and they're finding out. Starbucks workers at two shops in British Columbia – Clayton Crossing in Surrey and Valley Centre in Langley – have authorized strikes with a 91% majority:
https://thetyee.ca/News/2023/09/13/Starbucks-Workers-Back-At-Strike/
Where did the guts to do this come from? Not from labor law, which remains disgustingly hostile to workers (though that's changing, as we'll see below). It came from norms. It came from getting pissed off and talking about it. Shouting about it. Arguing about it.
Laws, markets and code matter, but they're nothing without norms. That's why Uber and Lyft were willing to spend $200m to fight fair labor practices. They didn't just want to keep their costs low – they wanted to snuff out the vibe, the idea that workers deserve a fair deal.
They failed. The idea didn't die. It thrived. It merged with the idea that corporations and the wealthy corrupt our society. It was joined by the idea that monopolies harm us all. They're losing. We're winning.
The BC Starbucks workers secured 91% majorities in their strike votes. This is what worker power looks like. As Jane McAlevey writes in her Collective Bargain, these supermajorities – ultramajorities – are how we win.
https://doctorow.medium.com/a-collective-bargain-a48925f944fe
The neoliberal wing of the Democratic party hires high-priced consultants who advise them to seek 50.1% margins of victory – and then insist that nothing can be done because we live in the Manchin-Synematic Universe, where razor-thin majorities mean that there is no alternative. Labor organizers fight for 91% majorities – in the face of bosses' gerrymandering, disinformation and voter suppression – and get shit done.
Shifting the norms – having the conversations – is the tactic, but getting shit done is the goal. The Biden administration – a decidedly mixed bag – has some incredible, technically skilled, principled fighters who know how to get shit done. Take Lina Khan, who revived the long-dormant Section 5 of the Federal Trade Act, which gives her broad powers to ban "unfair and deceptive" practices:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/10/the-courage-to-govern/#whos-in-charge
Khan's wielding this broad power in all kinds of exciting ways. For example, she's seeking a ban on noncompetes, a form of bondage that shackles workers to shitty bosses by making it illegal to work for anyone else in the same industry:
https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/02/its-the-economy-stupid/#neofeudal
Noncompete apologists argue that these merely protect employers' investment in training and willingness to share sensitive trade secrets with employees. But the majority of noncompetes are applied to fast food workers – yes, the same workers who just won a 30%, across-the-board raise – in order to prevent Burger King cashiers from seeking $0.25/hour more at a local Wendy's.
Meanwhile, the most trade-secret intensive, high-training industry in the world – tech – has no noncompetes. That's not because tech bosses are good eggs who want to do right by their employees – it's because noncompetes are banned in California, where tech is headquartered.
But in other states, where noncompetes are still allowed, bosses have figured out how to use them as a slippery slope to a form of bondage that beggars the imagination. I'm speaking of the Training Repayment Agreement Provision (AKA, the TRAP), a contractual term that forces workers who quit or get fired to pay their ex-bosses tens of thousands of dollars, supposedly to recoup the cost of training them:
https://pluralistic.net/2022/08/04/its-a-trap/#a-little-on-the-nose
Now, TRAPs aren't just evil, they're also bullshit. Bosses show pet-groomers or cannabis budtenders a few videos, throw them a three-ring binder, and declare that they've received a five-figure education that they must repay if they part ways with their employers. This gives bosses broad latitude to abuse their workers and even order them to break the law, on penalty of massive fines for quitting.
If this sounds like an Unfair Labor Practice to you, you're not alone. NLRB General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo agrees with you. She's another one of those Biden appointees with a principled commitment to making life better for American workers, and the technical chops to turn that principle into muscular action.
In a case against Juvly Aesthetics – an Ohio-based chain of "alternative medicine" and "aesthetic services" – Abruzzo argues that noncompetes and TRAPs are Unfair Labor Practices that violate the National Labor Relations Act and cannot be enforced:
https://www.nlrb.gov/case/09-CA-300239
Two ex-Juvly employees have been hit with $50-60k "repayment" bills for quitting – one after refusing to violate Ohio law by performing "microneedling," another for quitting after having their wages stolen and then refusing to sign an "exit agreement":
https://prospect.org/labor/2023-09-14-nlrb-complaint-calls-noncompete-agreement-unfair-labor-practice/
If the NLRB wins, the noncompete and TRAP clauses in the workers' contracts will be voided, and the workers will get fees, missed wages, and other penalties. More to the point, the case will set the precedent that noncompetes are generally unenforceable nationwide, delivering labor protection to every worker in every sector in America.
Abruzzo has been killing it lately: just a couple weeks ago, she set a precedent that any boss that breaks labor law during a union drive automatically loses, with instant recognition for the union as a penalty (rather than a small fine, as was customary):
https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/06/goons-ginks-and-company-finks/#if-blood-be-the-price-of-your-cursed-wealth
Abruzzo is amazing – as are her colleagues at the NLRB, FTC, DOJ, and other agencies. But the law they're making is downstream of the norms we set. From the California lawmakers who responded to fast food industry threats by introducing more regulations to the strip-bar patrons who refused to cross the picket-line to the legions of fans dragging Drew Barrymore for scabbing, the public mood is providing the political will for real action:
https://www.motherjones.com/media/2023/09/drew-barrymores-newest-role-scab/
The issues of corruption, worker rights and market concentration can't – and shouldn't – be teased apart. They're three facets of the same fight – the fight against oligarchy. Rarely do those issues come together more clearly than in the delicious petard-hoisting of Dave Clark, formerly the archvillain of Amazon, and now the victim of its bullying.
As Maureen Tkacik writes for The American Prospect, Clark had a long and storied career as Amazon's most vicious and unassuming ghoul, a sweatervested, Diet-Coke-swilling normie whose mild manner disguised a vicious streak a mile wide:
https://prospect.org/power/2023-09-14-catch-us-if-you-can-dave-clark-amazon/
Clark earned his nickname, "The Sniper," as a Kentucky warehouse supervisor; the name came from his habit of "lurking in the shadows [and] scoping out slackers he could fire." Clark created Amazon Flex, the "gig work" version of Amazon delivery drivers where randos in private vehicles were sent out to delivery parcels. Clark also oversaw tens of millions of dollars in wage-theft from those workers.
We have Clark to thank for the Amazon drivers who had to shit in bags and piss in bottles to make quota. Clark was behind the illegal union-busting tactics used against employees in the Bessamer, Alabama warehouse. We have Clark to thank for the Amazon chat app that banned users from posting the words "restroom," "slave labor," "plantation," and "union":
https://pluralistic.net/2022/04/05/doubleplusrelentless/#quackspeak
But Clark doesn't work for Amazon anymore. After losing a power-struggle to succeed Jeff Bezos – the job went to "longtime rival" Andy Jassy – he quit and went to work for Flexport, a logistics company that promised to provide sellers that used non-Amazon services with shipping. Flexport did a deal with Shopify, becoming its "sole official logistics partner."
But then Shopify did another logistics deal – with Amazon. Clark was ordered to tender his resignation or face immediate dismissal.
How did all this happen? Well, there are two theories. The first is that Shopify teamed up with Amazon to stab Flexport in the back, then purged all the ex-Amazonians from the Flexport upper ranks. The other is that Clark was a double-agent, who worked with Amazon to sabotage Flexport, and was caught and fired.
But either way, this is a huge win for Amazon, a monopolist who is in the FTC's crosshairs thanks to the anti-corporate vibe-shift that has consumed the nation and the world. As the sole major employer for this kind of logistics, Amazon is a de facto labor regulator, deciding who can work in the sector. The FTC's enforcement action isn't just about monopoly – it's about labor.
Now, Clark is a rich, powerful white dude, not the sort of person who needs a lot of federal help to protect his labor rights. When liberals called the shot in the progressive coalition, they scolded leftists not to speak of class, but rather to focus on identity – to be intersectionalists.
That was a trick. There's no incompatibility between caring about class and caring about gender, race and sexual orientation. Those fast food workers who are about to get a 30% wage-hike in California? Overwhelmingly Black or brown, overwhelmingly female.
The liberal version of intersectionalism observes a world run by 150 rich white men and resolves to replace half of them with women, queers and people of color. The leftist version seeks to abolish the system altogether. The leftist version of intersectionalism cares about bias and discrimination not just because of how it makes people feel, but because of how it makes them live. It cares about wages, housing, vacations, child care – the things you can't get because of your identity.
The fight for social justice is a fight for worker justice. Eminently guillotineable monsters like Tim "Avocado Toast" Gurner advocate for increasing unemployment by "40-50%" – but Gurner is just saying what other bosses are thinking:
https://jacobin.com/2023/09/tim-gurner-capitalists-neoliberalism-unemployment-precarity
Garner is 100% right when he says: "There’s been a systematic change where employees feel the employer is extremely lucky to have them, as opposed to the other way around."
And then he says this: "So it’s a dynamic that has to change. We’ve got to kill that attitude, and that has to come through hurt in the economy."
Garner knows that the vibes are upstream of the change. The capitalist dream starts with killing our imagination, to make us believe that "there is no alternative." If we can dream bigger than "better representation among oligarchs" when we might someday dream of no oligarchs. That's what he fears the most.
Watch the video of Garner. Look past the dollar-store Gordon Gecko styling. That piece of shit is terrified.
And he should be.
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If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/14/prop-22-never-again/#norms-code-laws-markets
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EFF Awards, San Francisco, September 14
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coochiequeens · 3 months
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This guy is in the news again........
By Eva Kurilova. December 21, 2023
Canadian women are expressing outrage after a trans-identified male who campaigned to defund a rape crisis shelter was awarded the Meritorious Service Medal from the Governor General of Canada. Morgane Oger, a trans activist from Vancouver, was honored at a ceremony in Ottawa last week.
On December 16, Oger took to X (formerly Twitter) to boast of his receipt of the award, claiming he had been selected because of his work with “2SLGBTQ+ persons” and trans rights.
“Feeling so grateful, recieving [sic] the Meritorious Service Medal from Governor General of Canada Mary Simon last week for supporting 2SLGBTQ+ persons and furthering the legal protections of Transgender Canadians.”
In Canada, the Governor General is the federal representative of the monarch, currently King Charles III. According to the website for the Governor General of Canada, the Meritorious Service Medal is a civil award that recognizes “great Canadians for exceptional deeds” such as tackling poverty or improving educational opportunities for children.
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In the list of recipients for the awards that were distributed on December 7, Oger is described as a “champion of diversity who has changed perceptions around 2SLGBTQI+ rights and has worked tirelessly to see those rights enshrined in law.”
Continuing, the office of the Governor General states that Oger has “forged alliances across party lines that propelled changes to provincial and federal legislation protecting individuals against discrimination based on gender identity or expression.” The short biography concludes by lauding Oger for his “courage, vision and perseverance have helped redefine the fundamental issue of equality and have advanced inclusiveness for gender-diverse Canadians.”
But the news of Oger’s top-level commendation did not sit well with Canadian women’s rights advocates, who noted that Oger has a long and disturbing history of actively fighting against women’s rights.
Canadian journalist and Feminist Current founder Meghan Murphy called out the Governor General, writing that Oger had once stalked her through her neighborhood in apparent retaliation for her views on gender ideology.
“Morgane Oger, whose career has involved harassing and vilifying feminists who defend women-only spaces, including fighting to defund Canada’s longest-standing rape crisis centre and transition house, @VanRapeRelief, stalked me around my neighborhood one day. Just one more reason I left Vancouver,” Murphy wrote. “Are these the ‘exceptional deeds’ bringing honor to Canada, @GGCanada? Making women feel unsafe and ensuring that when they are targeted by male violence they have nowhere safe to go?”
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Murphy, like many others, was calling attention to an incident in 2019 where Oger successfully campaigned to strip Canada’s oldest rape crisis center, Vancouver Rape Relief & Women’s Shelter, of its city funding due to its female-only policy. In comments made before the city committee meeting, Oger called the shelter “non-compliant with Canadian law.
Prior to losing its city funding, Vancouver Rape Relief had been through a 12-year legal battle where its policies of only serving females and only allowing female peer rape counselors had been tested and held up in court. The Supreme Court of British Columbia and the British Columbia Court of Appeal both ruled that the facility was allowed to maintain a female-only space.
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But despite the legal precedent, the City of Vancouver agreed with Oger and pulled the funding it had previously provided the shelter for its educational outreach programs despite the fact that the outreach programs were accessible to all, even transgender people.
While in the throes of defending its funding, Vancouver Rape Relief was targeted by a sickening harassment campaign from trans activists. Dead rats were nailed to the door and messages like “KILL TERFS” and “trans women are women” were written on the windows of its charity storefront.
Oger dismissed the abuse the rape shelter was receiving in a blasé statement he gave to press at the time.
“Sometimes, unfortunately, when Vancouver Rape Relief’s policies hit mainstream media and when their discriminatory conduct hits the light of day some people overreact,” he said of the vandalism and threats.
But just prior to the incident with the shelter, Oger had already attracted the ire of Canadian women’s rights advocates for his initial support of vexatious litigant Jonathan “Jessica” Yaniv.
Yaniv, a trans-identified male, made international headlines after filing a series of complaints with the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal against female aestheticians who refused to perform waxing services on his male genitals. During a lengthy proceeding, it was alleged that Yaniv had deliberately targeted salon workers who were Sikh or Muslim in an effort to force women with religious restrictions on male-female contact to serve him.
On X (then known as Twitter) Oger referred to the women’s refusal to touch genitals on demand as “prohibited discrimination” and said that there was “no entitlement in Canada to refuse the performing of a service” on the basis of gender identity.
“Estheticians should take this up with their training providers. It wasn’t that long ago some service providers ‘weren’t trained’ to work on Black women or serve foreigners, either,” he said. “The law’s changed. Move on, get the training you need.”
When asked directly about his personal involvement with Yaniv, Oger was non-committal in his comments but admitted that he had spoken to Yaniv on the phone and that he had previously encouraged “trans women” to “complain to their human rights tribunal about prohibited discrimination.”
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Eventually, the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal ruled that estheticians were, in fact, able to refuse services that they were not trained to perform, such as waxing a scrotum.
This is not the first time Oger has received a Meritorious Service Medal. In 2018, he was given the award by then-Governor General Julie Payette for, according to City News, “her [sic] work advocating for LGBTQ rights.”
Speaking to Reduxx, journalist Meghan Murphy condemned the Governor General for providing Oger one of the most respected civilian awards in the country.
“Morgane Oger’s legacy is fighting against women’s rights, safety, and free speech,” she said. “Anyone who focuses so much effort on defunding one of the few rape crisis lines and transition houses in Canada is not someone who deserves to be celebrated.”
Murphy continued by noting that Oger had made her feel “unsafe” in her own home, prompting her to file a police report on him in 2020.
“This is a man who has gone out of his way to ensure that women don’t have safe places to go when escaping male violence. That the Canadian government has supported and celebrated him in these efforts is horrendous and shameful.”
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winterpinetrees · 2 days
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The Carnival (Gap Years Part 8)
June 17th 2019
Union County, OR
Once again mustering the strength to post oc stuff on the cringe oc site. This doesn’t get easier. The events of this part were inspired (years ago) by a Mark Rober video where he recruits a friend that is also a professional baseball pitcher to help him win carnival games.
…………………
There’s an old cliche about how war is 99% boredom and 1% terror. This isn’t war. This is the survivor of a coup and his three teenage allies driving across the country on a circuitous path going nowhere. It’s still boring though.
When Brian and his friends began driving after their first fight, he’d hardly expected to survive until morning. Now, the sword slash across his chest has healed and they still haven’t seen an elf other than Marin. He knows he should be happy about this, but the anticipation is killing him. Brian has always been good under pressure, and he has a lot of awards to prove it. He’s never been good at the waiting though. At some point, that one percent of terror will come back and they will need to fight for their lives. It could be any moment now. Yesterday, Clay and Sierra went off to investigate a town and only Sierra came back. They spent four hours panicking before finally remembering to call Clay on the same satellite phone that they’d all mocked him for carrying. Without it, he probably never would have come back at all. It’s a horrible reminder of the stakes after a week of nothing. Brian feels like he’s going to explode.
They’re driving through northern Oregon. They could have been all the way across the continent by now if they’d wanted to be. However, with nowhere specific to go, they’ve instead chosen to take a winding path up and down California, stopping literally anywhere that catches their attention (They did eventually make it to Redwoods National Park). Today, Brian is taking all of them to a fair. He’s justified it by saying that crowds are safe, but he really just needs to throw something. Also, Marin is really getting on his nerves. Elves always act superior in the movies, but it’s different to spend a week in a car with a ‘teenager’ who clearly thinks that the three of them are moderately better than dogs. It’s not that this sort of talk is new to him. His father is the California governor and solidly on the liberal side of things, but the Whitakers have been in politics since before the Civil War. They all have opinions about his bisexuality and about Sierra’s first-generation mother and certainly about Clay’s habit of running off to the bad parts of town. He’s really sick of it.
Specifically, Marin keeps talking about how elves are just more evolved than humans. Brian’s a humanities kid, but he knows that isn’t how it works. Evolution doesn’t make better animals over time, it just makes things that survive. Marin may have magic and live for a while, but he isn’t any better than Brian just because his bones are hollow like a bird. That’s the other half of the reason for dragging him to a fair. It’s stupid, but Brian wants to challenge him to games until he beats him at something. Maybe it’s foolish and this graceful magic prince will win everything, but Brian is a varsity baseball player with a stack of wrestling metals and a black belt. He killed a nobleman (noblelf?) with a crowbar. He’s confident that he can pick Marin up and throw him. Unfortunately, that’s not a common carnival game.
Marin also keeps dancing around the idea that humanity would all be better off under elven rule anyway, which is just, not something Brian is willing to discuss.
He puts the car into park and they all step outside. He can tell from the fact that the parking lot is just dead grass that it will all be dissassembled by the end of the summer. Clay kicks his door shut with his foot. His sunburns are pretty bad, and he’s not in any shape to carry the sci-fi rifle he loves so much. It would be too conspicuous anyway. Instead, Brian takes a pistol with emerald detailing from Marin’s bag. He doesn’t have all of the right qualifications to concealed carry in Oregon, but the group agreed that Marin should just brainwash anyone that gets suspicious. Hopefully they won’t need to. Sierra takes her magic measuring device and Marin swings his bigger-on-the-inside messenger bag over one shoulder. They’re just four teens going to a carnival. No one will notice the magic, or the weaponry, or the huge amount of cash that they’re carrying because Clay pointed out that someone (elves or their parents) could track their credit card information. They’re three billionaire’s kids and a prince. Things were never going to be any more normal than this.
………………
“I went to something like this with my mother once. It was in the early 60s. Georgia, maybe?” Marin says casually as they walk towards the ticket stand.
“Really? Your mother? I’m surprised that the Apex had time to kill around us simple humans” Clay replies.
He ignores the insult. “Well, my mother was an exception. She didn’t have enough magic, so they sent her away for a while when she was a kid. She spent a lot of time along the Gulf Coast, in both worlds,” He pauses. ”I think she was happiest here. Here meaning the human world, not here”.
Brian has a thought, tries to ignore it, and then decides to follow it anyway. “Wait, when was your mother young?”
“This was the early 1700s”.
Marin is a prince of the elves. You can tell from his pointed ears and silent footsteps and the way that his eyes shine in the dark. However, from a distance, he looks like any Black teenager. His mother almost certainly had the same features. There’s got to be a story here, but Brian isn’t comfortable asking. They buy tickets and stand in the grass.
“Marin, I challenge you to a duel”.
“What in Lazarus’s name is that supposed to mean,” the elf replies.
“It means that we are going to go around this place and try a bunch of tests of skill until I beat you at something”.
“This is about how I said humans are less evolved, isn’t it?”
Brian smiles. “Also I really need to throw something”.
They shake hands. Marin doesn’t have a very strong handshake, which Brian decides actually makes sense, because strong handshakes are probably not an elf thing.
Clay offers to be the referee. “We already know this, but Marin, all of these are rigged”.
He nods, but doesn’t turn his eyes away from Brian. “Where I come from, the challenger sets the terms of the duel”.
“Wait, you have an actual dueling code?” It isn’t that surprising, to be honest.
“Several. Where should we begin?”.
Brian looks around. Should he start with a game he’s sure to win by physical strength alone? Or is that just playing into elven logic? Maybe he should choose one of those nearly impossible throwing games, but maybe there’s some sort of elf baseball and Marin has played that too. Maybe he’s just not good enough. That’s always how it always goes with his older brothers, and Marin is eighty-six. Brian might be in over his head. They walk to the milk-bottle toss. Brian hands over a ticket in exchange for a baseball and turns back to his opponent. The bottles are metal and bottom weighted, and the staff certainly won’t give an athletic eighteen year old one of the stacks that are rigged in favor of the player.
It won’t matter. Brian’s the starting shortstop on his team. He can throw a ball. He tosses the ball in the air, catches it again, and throws it with perfect form at the stacked bottles. It hits the center of the base and the whole thing collapses. Brian takes a stuffed elephant for the trouble. He’ll give it to some other kid. There’s no room in the car.
Marin looks around at the many-colored decorations of the stand and hands the staff member a ticket. The elf mimics his action, throwing the ball into the air and catching it as well. He throws, and the ball strikes almost the exact same place as Brian’s. The top bottle falls, the other two wobble, and Marin does not win a prize. He shrugs and moves to tie back his locs.
“You are just proving my point. That wasn’t about accuracy. That was a strength game”.
“Brian has one point, Marin has none” Clay winks. “Don’t kill each other”.
……
They keep walking. Both boys beat the basket toss, Marin wins a cute pink wolf at darts, and both of them, against their better judgment, try and fail the stupid little game where you throw the rings over bottles. They play against each other, against little kids, and against the rigged games themselves. After over an hour, the group pauses for a moment by a shooting game and Clay mutters something under his breath before grabbing a bb gun with his burned hands and getting shockingly close to a win.
“Brian, you still have that pistol?” Sierra laughs.
“Very funny. At least I didn’t get knocked over by recoil last week,” Clay replies.
Brian, Clay, and Sierra give all of their prizes to other kids (Well, Sierra keeps one), but Marin keeps slipping his into his messenger bag. He’s won a wolf, a snake, and a fox. Eventually they all come to the two games that aren’t even competitions. With his strength, Brian will win the hammer-swinging strongman game. Marin will win the ladder climb with his perfect balance. There’s nothing to do but play it out.
Brian not only gets a higher score than Marin, but actually beats the strength game. (It’s all about leverage, he’s done this before). He’s going to lose overall though. They’re tied now, and Brian doesn’t have a chance at the ladder climb. He’s not even the most coordinated human of the group. The older man running the game glares at Marin when he approaches. Brian chooses to think that it’s because he can tell that the elf is going to win, instead of something far less palatable. And Marin does! The disguised tightrope that sends Brian flailing to the inflatable floor after three steps hardly shakes when Marin climbs it, and he claims an orangey-brown cat half his size.
Brian shrugs. He’s lost by a point. “I think that’s everything! Good game, man! Or elf? How does that work?”
Marin doesn’t react. The prince of the elves just looks into the cheap plastic eyes of this big cat, unblinking.
“Marin, are you okay? You won! I was being sort of mean earlier”.
The elf looks back at Brian. His bright hazel eyes are very wide. Is he about to cry? He blinks and composes himself. It’s gone.
“Thank you. I needed this”.
Marin does not elaborate on what he needed.
It’s only a few hours later, as Marin leaves a message in an elven language using Sierra’s phone, that Brian realizes the cat has fangs. It’s not just some oversized ginger cat, it's a saber-toothed tiger, a smilodon. Wasn’t that the symbol of Marin’s house? Genus Sondaica, represented by a sabertooth in emerald green?
He brings this up to Clay and Sierra. What were the symbols of the other elven families?
“His betrothed is a fox, I think. That might have been a metaphor though. Smart women are foxes a lot,” Sierra explains.
Clay adds something. “I remember a snake. We had to explain your dumb joke afterwards”.
Brian remembers that too, now that it’s been mentioned again. “Marin chose those animals as prizes. A wolf, a snake, a fox, and a sabertooth. He didn’t give them away”.
“You think they’re gifts for other elves?”
Sierra looks back at him, “I mean, is anyone else even left?
Brian watches Marin out of the corner of his eye, “Coups are never easy. There’s got to be someone”.
“The question is whether we’ll be alive to meet them”.
………
Next time, Ishtar and her High Council start to figure out what in the worlds is going on. I was going to include a scene of the council here, but this is long already.
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ukrfeminism · 1 year
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https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/jk-rowling-nicola-sturgeon-is-deaf-to-women-s-concerns-over-gender-id-tn03x6gjv
Just over a week ago, I posted a picture of myself wearing a T-shirt printed with the words “Nicola Sturgeon: Destroyer of Women’s Rights” on Twitter. I did this to show my solidarity with women who were protesting outside the Scottish parliament against the proposed Gender Recognition Act reform bill.
Some of the women, like Maya Forstater and Helen Joyce, have public profiles, but most of the women protesting do not. They also knew they might be taking a risk in demonstrating. It takes guts for Scottish women to stand up for their rights these days — not, I should emphasise, anywhere near the same guts as Iranian women are currently displaying, but guts nonetheless. They risk being targeted by activists, police complaints being made against them and even the threat of a spell in jail for posting what are seen as “transphobic” comments or images by their complainants.
Scotland’s first minister, Nicola Sturgeon, believes the protesters outside parliament on October 6 have nothing to complain about. The woman who calls herself a “real feminist” said to the BBC that her proposed new Gender Recognition Act “doesn’t give any additional rights to trans people nor does it take any rights away from women”.
I disagree. So, to name just a few who were also protesting that day, do Rhona Hotchkiss, the retired prison governor with a Masters in Law and a qualification in Research Methodology; Isabelle Kerr, former manager of Glasgow and Clyde Rape Crisis Centre, who was awarded an MBE for her international work helping rape and sexual assault victims; all-female independent policy analysis collective Murray Blackburn Mackenzie; and For Women Scotland, a grassroots feminist group that has emerged as a leading voice for Scottish women over the last few years.
If Sturgeon’s new act passes into law, a person will be able to change their legal gender as long as they’ve lived in their acquired gender for three months, and made a statutory declaration that they intend to keep doing so. Remarkably, nobody seems able to explain what living in an acquired gender actually means, so how those granting certificates can judge whether the criteria has been met is anyone’s guess.
Under the current act, those who wish to change their gender need a diagnosis of gender dysphoria, ie, persistent distress and discomfort with their natal sex. However, all medical gatekeeping has been removed from Sturgeon’s revised bill. I presume this is in response to the strong push from the trans activist lobby to “depathologise” trans identities. The argument is that trans people aren’t mentally ill: being trans is as natural as being gay. As Rachel Cohen, campaigns director of Stonewall wrote in 2017: “Being trans is not about ‘sex changes’ or clothes, it’s about an innate sense of self.” You may ask how anyone can assess the authenticity of somebody else’s “innate sense of self”. I haven’t a clue.
Soon, then, in Scotland, it may be easier to change the sex on your birth certificate than it is to change it on your passport. In consequence, intact males who’re judged to have met the meagre requirements will be considered as “valid” and entitled to protections as those who’ve had full sex reassignment surgery, and more male-bodied individuals will assert more strongly a right to be in women’s spaces such as public bathrooms, changing rooms, rape support centres, domestic violence refuges, hospital wards and prison cells that were hitherto reserved for women.
In 2019, The Sunday Times made a freedom of information request to the Ministry of Justice that revealed almost 90 per cent of sexual offences committed in changing rooms happened in those that are unisex. Nevertheless, Sturgeon loftily dismisses anyone who fears her new legislation could be wide open to abuse. “It is men who attack women [feminists should worry about] and we need to focus on that, not on further stigmatising and discriminating against a tiny group in our society that is already one of the most stigmatised.”
In saying this, Sturgeon is employing no fewer than three arguments beloved of trans activists.
The first is that trans women are extremely vulnerable, far more so than biological women. This is in spite of the fact that no trans woman has been murdered in Scotland to date, whereas 112 women were murdered by men in Scotland between 2009 and 2019.
The second argument is that men who transition, uniquely among all other categories of those born male, never harm women. Yet there is no evidence to show that trans women don’t retain male patterns of criminality. According to Jo Phoenix, Professor of Criminology at the University of Reading: “Sex is the single strongest predictor of criminality and criminalisation. Since criminal statistics were first collected (in the mid 1850s) males make up around 80 per cent of those arrested, prosecuted and convicted of crime. Violent crime is mostly committed by males . . . This remains the case regardless of stated gender identity.” The Ministry of Justice’s own figures show that there are proportionately more trans-identified men in prison for sexual offences than among incarcerated males taken as a whole.
The third argument Sturgeon uses is that it’s transphobic to suggest any man would fraudulently claim a female identity. This claim is extraordinary. Nobody but the very naive can fail to be aware that predatory men are capable of going to great lengths to gain easy access to victims, and have often sought out professions or special status that offer camouflage for their activities. Sex offenders have historically been found among social workers, teachers, priests, doctors, babysitters, school caretakers, celebrities and charity fundraisers, yet no matter how often the scandals break, the lesson appears never to be learned: it is dangerous to assert that any category of people deserves a blanket presumption of innocence. Incidentally, it seems that prison is the perfect space in which to discover your innate sense of self: half of Scottish prisoners currently claiming a trans identity only did so after conviction.
This shouldn’t need saying, but in the current climate, it does: literally no feminist I’ve ever met claims all trans women are predators, any more than we believe that all men are predators. As I’ve already stated publicly, I believe that some trans people are truly vulnerable. That, though, is not the point.
I’ve spent much of the past 25 years campaigning for and funding initiatives to help women and children. These have included projects for female prisoners, campaigns for the rights of single mothers, the funding of safe spaces for victims of rape and male violence, and the fight to end child institutionalisation. I’ve also learned a huge amount about safeguarding from experts, both in relation to vulnerable children placed in institutions, who’re often abused or trafficked, and in the context of sexually abused women.
I say all this to make it clear that concern for women’s and children’s safety isn’t something I’m pretending to be interested in to mask a deep hostility to trans people. The question for me and all the feminists I know is, how do we make trans people safe without making women and girls less safe?
One of the most damning things I’ve heard about the consultation process for Sturgeon’s new bill is this: Murray Blackburn Mackenzie identified five female survivors of male violence who were prepared to meet with the committee and explain what had happened to them, the severe impact it had upon their lives, and why they fear the government is making it easier for violent or predatory men to get access to women and girls. The committee declined to meet the survivors, telling them to put their concerns in writing. Susan Smith, one of For Women Scotland’s founders, told me: “These women were prepared to parade their trauma and were rebuffed.” The committee did, however, find time to meet 17 trans-identified individuals.
In 1983 Andrea Dworkin wrote: “No matter how often these stories are told, with whatever clarity or eloquence, bitterness or sorrow, they might as well have been whispered in wind or written in sand: they disappear, as if they were nothing. The tellers and the stories are ignored or ridiculed, threatened back into silence or destroyed, and the experience of female suffering is buried in cultural invisibility and contempt . . . the very reality of abuse sustained by women, despite its overwhelming pervasiveness and constancy, is negated.”
Nearly 40 years later, Rhona Hotchkiss says that vulnerable women in Scotland are being told “their concerns, their fears, their despair, must take second place to the feelings of men who identify as women. Politicians who say there is no clash of rights have no idea about the lives of women in situations they will never face.”
Rarely in politics is it easy to draw a direct line from a single policy decision to the harm it’s done, but in this case, it will be simple. If any woman or girl suffers voyeurism, sexual harassment, assault or rape in consequence of the Scottish government’s lax new rules, the blame will rest squarely with those at Holyrood who ignored safeguarding experts and women’s campaigners.
And nobody should be held to higher account than the first minister, the “real feminist” who’s riding roughshod over the rights of women and girls.
• A new poll shows Nicola Sturgeon is out of step with Scottish voters over her proposed gender recognition law (Jason Allardyce writes).
A Panelbase survey of 1,018 voters for The Sunday Times suggests her plans command little public support – even among SNP supporters – and that opposition is growing as people have become more engaged with the debate.
The poll, conducted on October 7-11, found 62 per cent opposed to reducing the age at which people can change gender from 18 to 16, with just 19 per cent in favour while a further 19 per cent didn’t know. Among SNP voters, only 26 per cent backed Sturgeon on the age issue, while 52 per cent were opposed and 22 per cent didn’t know.
Just a quarter of the voters polled (25 per cent) back the plan to cut the time required to change gender from two years to three months plus a three month-reflection period, while it is opposed by 50 per cent and 24 per cent don’t know. More voters oppose than support the proposed removal of the need for a medical diagnosis of gender dysphoria (39 per cent v 26 per cent).
The poll follows claims that some young people who change gender are pushed down a medical route and may benefit from better counselling to establish whether gender change is right for them.
A Scottish government spokesman said: “Our support for trans rights does not conflict with our continued strong commitment to uphold the rights and protections that women and girls currently have under the 2010 Equality Act, which includes a number of exceptions which allow for trans people to be excluded when this is a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim.
“Those exceptions are important and the Scottish government supports them. The Gender Recognition Reform Bill does not make changes to Equality Act or to those exceptions.”
Q&A
How does the existing Gender Recognition Act work? Under the 2004 law, a trans person can apply for a gender recognition certificate (GRC), which recognises their acquired gender under the eyes of the law. They can then obtain a birth certificate with their recognised legal sex.
What does the Scottish government want to change? It plans to end the requirement for a medical diagnosis of gender dysphoria, reduce the minimum age of application from 18 to 16 and let people obtain a GRC after living in their acquired gender for three months and a further three-month “reflection” period. Applicants would make a statutory declaration that they intend to live the rest of their lives in their acquired gender, with false declarations a criminal offence punishable with up to two years’ imprisonment.
How many people are expected to change gender? More than 6,000 GRCs have been granted across the UK to date, with an estimated 25-30 in Scotland each year. Based on Ireland’s experience, ministers expect 250-300 applicants a year.
What are the main arguments for reform? Ministers say the current system is “intrusive”, “distressing” and “unnecessary”, denying trans people the right to live and die in their true gender.
And the main arguments against change? Opponents believe vulnerable women will be placed at risk, with trans people with male anatomy gaining access to women-only spaces including changing rooms, public toilets, prisons and refuges. There is concern that some people with trauma, depression or other conditions could be pushed down the route of irreversible medical transitioning from an early age when counselling about their needs would be better.
Can the plans be stopped? A majority of MSPs are expected to vote in favour of the new legislation, with backing from SNP, Labour, Green and Lib Dem ranks while Conservatives are expected to vote against. The strength of public opposition, including among SNP voters, could lead to elements being watered down.
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President Biden speaks on the border deal, promising to sign the agreed Senate measure as soon as it lands on his desk and making clear that the only thing that stands in the way of the border security revamp becoming law is Donald J Trump.
* * * * *
LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN
January 26, 2024
HEATHER COX RICHARDSON
JAN 27, 2024
[There is a description of rape in paragraph 8.]
This afternoon a jury of nine Americans deliberated for less than three hours before it ordered former president Trump to pay writer E. Jean Carroll $83.3 million for defaming her after she accused him in 2019 of raping her in the 1990s. In May 2023 a jury found Trump liable for sexually abusing Carroll in an assault the judge said is commonly known as rape, and for defaming her. That jury awarded Carroll $5 million. 
Despite the jury’s 2023 verdict, Trump has continued to attack Carroll. Indeed, he repeatedly attacked her on social media posts even during this month’s trial. Today’s jury found that Trump acted with malice and awarded Carroll $65 million in punitive damages, $11 million in compensatory damages for a reputation repair program, and $7.3 million in compensatory damages outside of the reputation program.
Trump immediately called the jury verdict “Absolutely ridiculous!” and said he would appeal. “THIS IS NOT AMERICA!” he posted on social media.
Conservative lawyer George Conway responded. “Not so. The United States of America is about the rule of law, something you couldn’t care less about. Today nine ordinary citizens upheld the rules of law. You have no right to maliciously defame anyone, let alone a woman you raped. In America, we call this justice.” 
In June 2023 the court required Trump to move $5.5 million to a bank account controlled by the court to cover the jury’s judgment while he appeals it. For this larger verdict, Trump could do the same thing: pay $83.3 million to the court to hold while he appeals, or try to get a bond, which would require a deposit and collateral and would also incur fees and interest. Any bank willing to lend him that money would likely take into consideration that he has other major financial vulnerabilities and charge him accordingly.
This was not, actually, the case that looked like it would incur staggering costs. More threatening is the other case currently underway in Manhattan, where New York Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron is considering appropriate penalties for the frauds that Trump, the Trump Organization, the two older Trump sons, and two employees committed in their business dealings. New York attorney general Letitia James, who brought the case, has asked Engoron to impose a $370 million penalty, as well as a prohibition on the Trump Organization from doing business in New York. 
Judge Engoron has said he hopes to have a decision by the end of the month. 
Former president Trump is under pressure on a number of fronts. As legal analyst Joyce White Vance pointed out tonight in Civil Discourse, two separate juries have now found that Trump acted with malice, and it is becoming harder for him to argue that so many people—two entirely different juries, prosecutors, and so on—are unfairly targeting him. Vance speculates that this latest judgment might hurt his political support. “How do you explain to your kids that you’re going to give your vote in the presidential race to a man who forced his fingers into a woman’s vagina and then lied about it and about her, and exposed her to public ridicule and harm?” she asked.
On the political front, much to his apparent frustration, Trump has not been able to bully former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley out of the race for the Republican nomination, and she is needling him about his mental deterioration. The Republican National Committee has been considering simply deciding Trump is the nominee rather than letting the process play out. The Haley camp responded to that idea with a statement saying that if Ronna McDaniel, the RNC chair, “wants to be helpful she can organize a debate in South Carolina, unless she’s also worried that Trump can’t handle being on the stage for 90 minutes with Nikki Haley.” Ouch. 
Trump’s congressional allies’ attacks on President Biden took another hit today after a business associate of Hunter Biden said in sworn testimony yesterday that President Biden “was never involved” in any of their business dealings. 
John Robinson Walker said: “In business, the opportunities we pursued together were varied, valid, well-founded, and well within the bounds of legitimate business activities. To be clear, President Biden—while in office or as a private citizen—was never involved in any of the business activities we pursued…. “Any statement to the contrary is simply false…. Hunter made sure there was always a clear boundary between any business and his father. Always. And as his partner, I always understood and respected that boundary.”
Meanwhile, Trump’s attempts to destroy the bipartisan border deal, in which Democrats appear to have been willing to give away more than the Republicans out of desperate determination to fund Ukraine, are being called out for cynical politics. The news is awash today with stories condemning the Republicans for caving to the demands of a man who is, at least for now, a private citizen and who is putting his own election over the interests of the American people as he tries to keep the issue of immigration alive to exploit in the 2024 campaign. 
Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC) told his colleagues: “I didn’t come here to have the president as a boss or a candidate as a boss. I came here to pass good, solid policy…. It is immoral for me to think you looked the other way because you think this is the linchpin for President Trump to win.” Senator Jon Tester (D-MT) told Sahil Kapur and Frank Thorp V of NBC News, “I think it’s crap…. We need to get that deal done to secure the border. If they want to keep it as a campaign issue, I think they need to resign from the damn Senate.”
But while Trump is apparently telling Republicans he will “fix” the border if he gets back into the White House, Greg Sargent noted yesterday in The New Republic that when Trump was in office, “[h]e too released a lot of migrants into the interior, and he couldn’t pass his immigration agenda even with unified GOP control.” And, of course, he never got Mexico to pay for his wall, as he repeatedly claimed he would, while President Joe Biden, in contrast, got Mexico to invest $1.5 billion in “smart” border technology and to beef up its own border security. 
The White House has refused to abandon negotiations even as Trump trashed them. In a statement today, Biden said that negotiators have been “[w]orking around the clock, through the holidays, and over weekends,” to craft a bipartisan deal on the border, and he called out Republicans who are now trying to scuttle the bill. 
“What’s been negotiated would—if passed into law—be the toughest and fairest set of reforms to secure the border we’ve ever had in our country,” he said. “It would give me, as President, a new emergency authority to shut down the border when it becomes overwhelmed. And if given that authority, I would use it the day I sign the bill into law.
“Further, Congress needs to finally provide the funding I requested in October to secure the border. This includes an additional 1,300 border patrol agents, 375 immigration judges, 1,600 asylum officers, and over 100 cutting-edge inspection machines to help detect and stop fentanyl at our southwest border. Securing the border through these negotiations is a win for America. For everyone who is demanding tougher border control, this is the way to do it. If you’re serious about the border crisis, pass a bipartisan bill and I will sign it.”
Biden seems to be signaling that if the Republicans kill this measure, they will own the border issue, but he is not the only one making that argument. Yesterday the Wall Street Journal’s editorial board, which slants toward the right, wrote: “[G]iving up on a border security bill would be a self-inflicted GOP wound. President Biden would claim, with cause, that Republicans want border chaos as an election issue rather than solving the problem. Voter anger may over time move from Mr. Biden to the GOP, and the public will have a point. Cynical is the only word that fits Republicans panning a border deal whose details aren’t even known.”
The Wall Street Journal editorial board went further, articulating what Republicans are signing up for if they continue to prevent funding for Ukraine. Recalling the horrific images of the April 1975 fall of Saigon, the capital of South Vietnam, to North Vietnamese forces, when desperate evacuees fought their way to helicopters, the board asked: “Do Republicans want to sponsor the 2024 equivalent of Saigon 1975?”
LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN
HEATHER COX RICHARDSON
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beardedmrbean · 7 months
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SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — California Gov. Gavin Newsom has ambitious and expensive plans for a dilapidated factory at San Quentin State Prison where inmates of one of the nation’s most notorious lockups once built furniture, and lawmakers have given him the greenlight to start with little input or oversight.
He wants to spend $360 million demolishing the building and replacing it with one more reminiscent of a college campus, with a student union, classrooms and possibly a coffee shop. It’s part of his desire to make San Quentin, once home to the nation’s largest death row and where the state performed executions, a model for preparing people for life on the outside — a shift from the state’s decades-long focus on punishment.
And Newsom wants it all to happen by December 2025, just before he leaves office.
A 21-member advisory council Newsom selected to help shape the new facility’s design and programming does not have to follow open meetings laws, while the Legislature traded away seats on the council and formal oversight during budget negotiations.
That’s a concern for supporters and critics of prison reform. Republican lawmakers say the Legislature needs more of a say in the process, especially when the state faces a nearly $32 billion budget deficit. Criminal justice advocates say reforming San Quentin is a distraction from the real goal of closing more prisons.
“Spending hundreds of millions on new prison infrastructure is a step in the wrong direction,” said Brian Kaneda of CURB, a criminal justice reform coalition. “If there’s no public accessibility to the San Quentin advisory council meetings, that’s a really significant concern that I think people aren’t paying enough attention to.”
After inquiries from The Associated Press, the governor's office said it will release the advisory council's report to the public before Newsom presents his next budget to lawmakers in January.
“Since the very beginning of this process, the administration has engaged a diverse set of stakeholders and committed to transparently making the Advisory Council’s recommendations public. Our partners in the Legislature — along with stakeholders including victims, incarcerated individuals and their families, (The Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation) staff, and program providers — are the linchpin to San Quentin’s success," Izzy Gardon, deputy director of communications for Newsom, said in a statement.
The advisory council includes criminal justice reform advocates, San Quentin top brass and Newsom political allies like Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg. It has met at least five times since June, and it will give a preliminary report to the administration this September and a final report in December.
The Democratic governor first announced his plans for remaking the prison — and renaming the facility located about 18 miles (29 kilometers) north of San Francisco the San Quentin Rehabilitation Center — in March. He said California would offer its own take on the Scandinavian prison model where cells look more like dorm rooms and inmates have access to activities and educational programs.
Newsom in 2019 instituted a moratorium on executions, and the state has begun moving San Quentin’s remaining 700 death row inmates to other prisons. San Quentin is home to more than 3,600 inmates total.
San Quentin already has some of the nation’s most innovative programs for inmates. In July, Newsom’s administration invited reporters to tour the prison, showcasing accredited college classes, a coding academy and the prison’s award-winning newsroom, among other programs. Many inmates said they’re excited for more programming spaces, but others remained skeptical.
Juan Haines, an inmate at San Quentin for nearly three decades, said the governor’s efforts to shift the culture at San Quentin would only work if both inmates and prison guards are buying into the vision, he told reporters during the July media tour.
Steinberg, one of the advisory council's leaders, said the group is tackling how to retrain correctional officers and improve inmates’ experience, among other issues.
The Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation started soliciting contractors to design the new campus before lawmakers approved the budget, and a firm has been hired with plans to start construction next year. Lawmakers waived the historic preservation requirement and an environmental impact review to speed up the project.
The San Quentin campus would cost $360 million through a lease revenue bond. Lawmakers also agreed to another $20 million from the general fund for other smaller capital projects recommended by the council.
Democratic lawmakers, who hold a supermajority in California, said they’re supportive of Newsom’s project. Approving it helped them score a different political victory.
In exchange for approval, they added a provision to the budget giving them access to key data on the operational capacities of prisons across the state, which they say will help determine which to shut down. California has roughly 15,000 empty prison beds, a number that’s expected to grow.
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Ineligible, Bolsonaro gets honorary citizenship from allied governor
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Far-right former President Jair Bolsonaro was awarded honorary citizenship of Minas Gerais state on Monday, by Governor Romeu Zema.
The motion to confer honorary citizenship to Mr. Bolsonaro in Brazil’s second most-populous state was approved by local lawmakers back in early 2019, just weeks after he took office as president. However, a ceremony had not yet been scheduled, despite the former president’s frequent trips to Minas Gerais during last year’s election campaign.
State lawmaker Colonel Sandro, a retired police officer and member of Mr. Bolsonaro’s Liberal Party (PL), authored the motion. Mr. Sandro was re-elected last year for a second term.
Mr. Bolsonaro was born in the city of Glicério, in the state of São Paulo, and served as a House member for seven consecutive terms (1991-2018), representing the state of Rio de Janeiro.
Continue reading.
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reasoningdaily · 1 year
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Romarilyn Ralston
Romarilyn Ralston is Executive Director and former Program Director (2016-2022) of Project Rebound. She identifies as a black feminist abolitionist with an incarceration experience. She also chair’s the CSU Project Rebound Consortium Policy & Advocacy Committee. Romarilyn Ralston earned a Bachelor’s degree in Gender & Feminist Studies from Pitzer College and a Master’s degree in Liberal Arts from Washington University in St. Louis after 23 years of incarceration. Romarilyn is especially focused on building power, sharing space, and empowering systems-impacted BIPOC women and other justice-involved sisters from all backgrounds through the transformative power of post-secondary education and community-building. She is a long-time member and organizer with the California Coalition for Women Prisoners and serves on the leadership committee.  Romarilyn sits on the several national Board including the Alliance for Higher Education in Prison and Freedom Reads also known as the Yale Million Book Project. In 2022, Ralston received a full pardon from Governor Gavin Newsom.
Awards
She is the recipient of Pitzer College’s 2020 Distinguished Alumni Award, California State Senator Ling Ling Chang’s 2020 Woman of Distinction Social Justice Champion Award, and the 2018 Civil Rights and Advocacy Award from the Orange County Chapter of the National Council of 100 Black Women. Ralston was a 2018 Fellow of the  Women's Policy Institute , where as a member of the criminal justice reform team she helped to pass several pieces of legislation into law. Ralston has also held fellowships with Just Leadership USA, CORO Public Affairs, and the Napier Initiative for Justice and Peace.
Romarilyn Ralston CV
The Education Trust Advisory Board Member, Appointed May
Alliance for Higher Education in Prison, Board Vice Chair, Appointed August 2021
Pitzer College Alumni Board Member, Appointed June 2020
Freedom Reads, The Justice Collaborative at Yale University. The Million Book Project will bring curated 500-book literary time-capsules to 1,000 prisons and juvenile detention centers to each state in the United States, Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico.
Steering Committee Member, California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation CARE Grant Program ($10 million), FY 2020.
Member, Blue Ribbon Commission on Fair Employment & Equity, City of Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, an alliance of private and public sector employers committed to providing opportunities for people who have been historically excluded from upwardly mobile jobs. Los Angeles, CA, July 2017- 2019.
Publications
Romarilyn Ralston | openDemocracy
"Project Rebound Coordinator Uses Education to Help Formerly Incarcerated Students,"  The Daily Titan, December 4, 2017.
"Silenced by the Pain of a Tumultuous Life,"   Ms. Magazine Blog, October 29, 2015.
Abolition Feminisms Vol. 1 Organizing, Survival, and Transformative Practice Edited by Alisa Bierria, Jakeya Caruthers, and Brooke Lober Foreword by Dean Spade ESSAY: Caring Collectively: 25 Years of Abolitionist Feminism in California
1st Edition Critical Perspectives on Teaching in Prison Students and Instructors on Pedagogy Behind the Wall Edited By Rebecca Ginsburg Chapter 19: Schools, Prisons, and Higher Education
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joealwyndaily · 1 year
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What does this event for? Like does joe vote for someone or is he hosting or is it to meet/build connection with flimmakers and actors?
the Governors Awards is "an annual event celebrating awards conferred by the Academy's Board of Governors – the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award, the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award and the Honorary Award. Recipients are honored at a dinner gala."
so lots of actors, filmmakers/oscar hopefuls attend for connection, campaigning, honouring the people getting awards etc. Joe also went in 2019 x
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cogitoergofun · 1 year
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Much has been said about saving money and cutting wasteful government programs in Florida, where concerned legislators, led by an ambitious governor, look for ways to jettison superfluous programs from an annual state budget that exceeds $110 billion. Yet, the state budget increased spending by over 8% last year while its population grew by less than 2%.
Being fiscally responsible about taxpayers’ funds is commendable, but sometimes voters should consider the implications of eliminating programs that might benefit their communities. One such program, eliminated by a gubernatorial veto, cost the state $1 million annually (less than a tenth of 1% of the budget) but delivered enormous returns to the communities it served.
The Martin Luther King Jr. “Day of Service” grants were available for seven years, first in Hillsborough and Pinellas counties, and later in Broward County. The project was sponsored by state Sen. Darryl Rouson, D-St. Petersburg, and developed in Hillsborough County by Joan Holmes Mosley and Samuel Lamar Wright Sr. In 2019-2020, its last year, 33 organizations, ranging from church groups to fraternities and sororities and nonprofits, received a total of $123,000. They spanned the county from Wimauma and Ruskin to Plant City, Temple Terrace and Tampa. In-kind contributions amounted to $190,000, and cash contributions approached $64,000.
Nearly 3,000 volunteers contributed more than 13,400 hours of their time (including 1,621 students), and the projects served more than 10,000 people, including 2,314 students and 232 veterans. The average amount of money awarded to grant recipients in Hillsborough County was $3,700. Projects were eclectic and included the provision of school supplies to children; food to supplement needy families; academic guidance and training for aspiring college-bound students of color; companionship for older people and an annual community interfaith celebration.
Project outcomes were not always amenable to standard evaluation measures — planting and reaping the seeds sown by some projects might take years, but if only one participant was inspired to pursue a life of community service or a professional career, and this indisputably occurred, the project was exceptionally successful. The question is then, why was the MLK Day of Service project eliminated? Saving a small amount of money in the cause of fiscal responsibility might seem to justify this action in the short term, but the long-term divestment of such funds in the affected communities is incalculable and devastating. Requests for projects are still being received.
We can take the governor’s rationalization for such frugality at face value, or we can consider his action in the larger context of prejudicial attacks against minority communities as the real justification for his behavior. His recent rejection of the much-heralded Advanced Placement course on African American studies, his attempt to eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion programs from state universities, the National Hockey League and private corporations such as Disney, as well as his campaign against transgender individuals and his attempted destruction of the liberal and highly regarded New College, which is LGBTQ-friendly, are further indications of his animus against minorities.
But Republicans in the Florida Legislature share in the blame for this myopic approach that threatens to drag our state back into the pre-civil rights era. After the governor’s much-publicized and criticized transportation of immigrants from Texas to Florida and then to Massachusetts, the Legislature allocated an additional $12 million of taxpayers’ money to transport undocumented immigrants to states that recognize their humanity and will provide essential services to them.
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urscart · 11 months
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His expression seems to say “Wow, I never ever imagined this in my wildest childhood dreams.” -Oct. 2019, Governor’s Awards
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naturalrights-retard · 8 months
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Across the Mainstream establishment media from Germany to the UK to the US, the topic of Iran’s Morality Police enforcing the wearing of hijabs dominates. Many are under the misconception that a hijab is a burka – when in fact it is simply a headscarf.   And it is none of our business.  
The vast majority of information coming from Iran is thru various NGO’s including US Agency For Global Media. The journalist is Masih Alinejad.   Born in Iran Masih was privileged to attend Oxford in the UK. She took the name Masih as a young woman (it was not her given name) – in Persian it means Messiah.  She is a feminist who actively protested against the government of Iran in 1994 and later in the US when she relocated here. She has met with Mike Pompeo and Jake Sullivan who promote her ideologies. Masih attempted to seek presence before His Majesty Obama, denied, and won an award from the American Jewish Committee…
According to The Guardian – Masih has been front and center in organizing Iranian protests. With the help of the US Global Media and Voice of America. Effectively, she helps the US initiate coups. She is also used as a source by The Gateway Pundit to promote Iran rhetoric. I assume – unintentionally.
The American Jewish Committee was established in 1906 as the Bolsheviks began organizing their tender under Lenin. During its early years, the organization was led by four prominent businessmen including banker Jacob Schiff. Schiff was an Ashkenazi Jew whose father worked with The Rothschilds. Jacob married the daughter of Solomon Loeb…   and the Jewish Banking Cartel was thus solidified in the US.
The US Agency for Global Media was formed in 1994 originally as the Broadcasting Board of Governors – its name was changed in 2019.    It is tasked with supervising 5 different stations including Voice of America, Radio Free Europe, Middle East Broadcasting, Office of Cuba Broadcasting, and the Open Technology Fund. Their purpose is to incite the youth in various countries across the globe to rebel, create chaos, and allow for the NED/CSIS Regime Change – COUP.
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mariacallous · 1 year
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Nikki Haley, former Governor of South Carolina and former Ambassador to the United Nations announced this week that she was running for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024. She is the second to announce, after former President Donald Trump, but she will not be the last. She is likely to be followed by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, by former Vice President Mike Pence and by former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Other, more obscure candidates may also follow given that, in recent years, running for president has become a career move towards a gig on Fox or CNN or a way to sell books or just a mammoth ego trip.
Many things will happen between now and the Republican convention in 2024 and most of them are, at this point in time, unknowable. But there is one thing we do know — if there are many candidates running for the Republican nomination and they all stay in the race — Trump will win.
Here’s why.
The Republican party rules governing how delegates are awarded to presidential candidates are determined state by state. Taken together they have a bias in favor of candidates who win by a small number of votes. In 2016, Donald Trump was able to win the Republican nomination because he was the plurality winner of a crowded field (11 other candidates) in many states and congressional districts. Trump won 45% of the votes in the primaries and caucuses, but because of the rules for allocating delegates he won 70% of the votes on the first ballot at the convention.
These results are likely to be repeated in 2024 if Trump faces a large field of candidates. In 2016, Republican state parties used five different types of rules for awarding delegates to presidential candidates. Nine states awarded delegates proportionally — these states accounted for 13% of the delegates to the Republican convention. Three other states elected their delegates on the same ballot as the presidential preference poll. These accounted for 7% of the delegates. The remaining states, accounting for the vast majority of delegates, used some sort of winner-take-all rule.[1]
The most familiar of these is winner-take-all by state where the winner of the state, no matter how small the win, wins all the delegates. For instance, Trump won 45.7% of the vote in Florida in 2016 and won all the state’s 99 delegates. Other states award delegates based on the percentage of the vote a candidate gets in a congressional district. In Tennessee, in 2016, if a candidate won more than 66% of the vote in a district, they could win all the delegates. Trump won 39% of the popular vote there but 57% of the delegates.
The effects of winner-take-all or winner-take-most rules can be seen in the following table from the 2016 race. Note that in each case Trump’s share of the delegates exceeded his share of the popular vote. If Cruz, Kasich and Rubio were one candidate instead of 3, the non-Trump candidate would have accumulated delegates and won the nomination.
How the “Hybrid” System Helped Trump
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Primary Politics: Everything You Need to Know About How America Nominates Its Presidential Candidates, Elaine C. Kamarck, (Brookings Press 2019, Third edition) Page 155
In 2020, Trump was an incumbent president and like many before him he faced no serious opposition for the Republican nomination. To be sure however, he did what many previous sitting presidents have done and used his influence to shape a set of rules to his liking. For Trump in 2020 this meant increasing the number of winner-take-all by state primaries from seven to 17 (accounting for 39% of the delegates) and increasing the number of “hybrid” systems (where a candidate crossing a certain threshold, usually 50%, can win all the delegates) from 14 to 17 (accounting for 34% of the delegates.) This was a smart move on Trump’s part, for while his nomination was never really in doubt, by limiting the number of delegates other candidates could win he guaranteed himself a convention free of challenges on issues like platform and rules.
The 2024 Republican party’s rules are not yet final. One advantage of having run for a nomination in the past, however, is that Trump’s operatives are probably working hard to make sure this nomination system is a favorable one for Trump. Other than that Trump has to hope that many others get into the race and that, as in 2016, most of them stay in the race until the bitter end — hoping lightening will strike.
Finally, Trump has to hope that Republican primary voters in 2024 don’t re-run the Democratic race in 2020. That year, Joe Biden managed to win one of the early states, South Carolina. Several of his opponents got out and endorsed him and he sailed to victory, winning 10 of the big primaries on Super Tuesday.
Republicans are very aware of why Trump won in 2016 — in spite of their doubts about him. In 2024, one can imagine substantial pressure on Haley, Pence, Pompeo or others who get into the race to get out in time to coalesce around a non-Trump candidate. In addition, Trump has to have a substantial base that sticks with him through the primaries and there are some signs that Republican voters are looking for a “Trump-lite” candidate for 2024 — someone who speaks to their anger but does not have quite the accumulation of baggage. Thus, the most likely way Trump loses his run for the Republican nomination in 2024 is if one of the lesser-known candidates becomes the Republican Biden, empties the field and wraps up the delegates. But if he keeps a solid base and multiple opponents stay in the race for the duration — Trump will win again.
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