"Blow up the bags of sham" – Jean Arp
In Sacramento 1990, I was part of a group of young people who organized a series of mass protests in Sacramento, against the build up to the Gulf War. After our first protest drew far more than we expected, we decided to do a 24-hour occupation/protest on the west steps of the State Capitol. To…
This was written back in 2017, when New Orleans was taking heat for removing Confederate statues. It is relevant today, especially the very last paragraph.) Let’s talk about statues, particularly statues honoring the Confederacy. Last week (April 24, 2017), the city of New Orleans started to remove statues dedicated to the Confederate “heroes†Robert E….
CNN’s Chris Cillizza reports on recent generic ballot polls for Congress (generics are when no candidate is mentioned) which show that the voting public prefers a Democratic controlled Congress 51% to 40% – an 11-point gap. He notes that in January that gap was 6 points. As someone who studies and writes on polls, Cillizza’s…
When an incident of repression occurs or systematic oppression is revealed, people who were not repressed or do not live with a particular form of oppression are repulsed by what they see. They want to help fight repression and oppression. In recent days, many white people watched the nine-minute clip of George Floyd’s murder by…
I woke Tuesday morning with tears in my eyes. It was a rough night. Popped outside for the dog’s last walk, a little after 8 p.m., after San Francisco’s unnecessary, open-ended curfew. There were a half-dozen people hurrying down the sidewalk, alone, something I’ve gotten used to in the pandemic shutdown. Tucked in doorways, a…
One of the more disturbing reactions to the week’s unrest is the shock that riots are occurring. I’m not talking about shock over why they are happening, but that violent unrest happens. People react as if the violent uprisings in Minneapolis and other cities are unique occurrences in the history of America. They aren’t. Going…
Whenever a police kills a Black or Latinx person, we play by all the rules. We write letters to public officials, we go to community meetings, we dialogue with the police, we work on political campaigns, we vote…and we protest. News reports emphasize “peaceful” as if peaceful protests aren’t the norm. Often the protests are…
Have you ever been in a riot? Never? I have; several. The first one was at the Democratic National Convention in 1984. We went down from Sacramento to San Francisco to see the Dead Kennedys. Mayor Dianne Feinstein had the police create “protest pens,†areas tucked away from the convention, which allowed police to keep…
Please don’t freak over Trump and his recent lashing out about Twitter. It is all impulse and show. He cannot do anything to shut down or police social media. No executive order he issues (if he actually does, he puff ‘n bluffs a lot) will make it through the courts. Read Trump’s hissy fit as…
One of Donald Trump’s most effective tactics is the puff ‘n bluff. He puffs himself up as a tough guy, a know-it-all, or a tough guy know-it-all and starts babbling bullshit. It is a tactic he learned at a young age. When he was an “aspiring developer,†he puff ‘n bluffed his way into city…