On April 3, 2020, sailors chanted “Crozier, Crozier!” after Navy Captain Brett E. Crozier was fired for his email to Navy leaders, detailing the service’s failures in dealing with a coronavirus outbreak on the U.S.S. Theodore Roosevelt.
Here is Captain Crozier walking away from his ship while sailors chant his name after he was relieved from duty for blowing the whistle on a coronavirus contamination aboard the USS Roosevelt.
“Strijdom, you have tampered with the women, You have struck a rock.”
– South African Women’s March, August 1956
In South Africa, pass laws were a form of internal passport system designed to segregate the population, severely limiting the movements of not only black African citizens by requiring them to carry pass books when outside their homelands or designated areas. In the 1950s, the primary catalysts of the anti-pass protests were thousands of African women, many of whom had never been involved in demonstrations. In 1956, thousands of South African women of all races marched to Pretoria to stand in support of black South African women, singing to the Prime Minister: “”Strijdom, you have tampered with the women, You have struck a rock.”
Today marks the 36th anniversary of the unsolved murder of Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme. As a Social Democrat, Palme didn’t hire bodyguards or armored cars; he felt that it was important not to create distance between himself and the people of Sweden. On Friday night, February 28, 1986, Palme and his wife Lisbet were walking home from dinner in Stockholm when an unidentified gunman fired a single round in the Prime Minister’s back.
Since then, Olof Palme’s grave in central Stockholm has become a place of homage. To many Swedes, Palme was more than a politician, he was a hero who was responsible for creating Sweden’s healthy welfare system, among other leftwing policies that also made him despised by the right.
To this day, Palme’s grave is marked by red roses, a symbol of Social Democracy.
The latest installment of my column, Turning Purple, is up this week at The Rumpus. “Blood Feast” is centered around my time canvassing in Trump country and the roots of my activism. Check out the photos on Instagram.
“In every story I read to my class, the villains were my student’s uncle, who recognized me at a club, kissing a girl. At parent-teacher conferences the next week, the girl’s parents glared at me with their arms folded, finally shouting what are you teaching our daughter, without saying what they knew. I shook next to the principal, certain that I was about to be outed, arrested or fired. When that didn’t happen, I decided it was time for my third graders to learn about activism. I wanted to find out what mattered to eight-year-olds.”
A FINAL NOTE: On Tuesday night, the efforts of volunteers around the country paid off at the polls. If you’re looking for a therapeutic and easy way to get involved in the 2020 election, write to Postcards to Voters to join the party. #PostcardstoVoters
Why the Trump Impeachment Inquiry Is the Only Option “After all, Americans have seen this playbook before. During the 2016 campaign, Mr. Trump called on Russia to find emails he hoped would embarrass Hillary Clinton: “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing,” he bellowed then at a campaign news conference in Florida. Mr. Mueller subsequently showed that Russian agents tried to hack into Mrs. Clinton’s personal servers that same day … that Mr. Trump was not dissuaded by the response to Mr. Mueller’s findings from seeking political aid from another foreign source suggests he has learned nothing except that he is free to try anything — that a president may use the office as he chooses to promote his re-election.”
Today is National Voter Registration Day. How much do you know about voting and elections? Take CNN’s quiz. Another easy thing you can do today to help is to share the link to this page on usa.gov.
A note on the image for Method 45: On August 19, Iceland held a demonstrative funeral for Okjökull, a 700-year-old glacier. Okjökull lost its status as a glacier in 2014, and is now a small patch of ice atop a volcano.
Today, as sixteen-year-old Greta Thunberg leads and inspires the world in a climate strike, there’s a disturbing new report that shows darker proof of her bravery. In July, Global Witness released a report that showed that in 2018, more than three people a weekdied defending their land or our environment:
In 2018 Guatemala recorded the sharpest rise in murders, which jumped more than fivefold to make it the deadliest country per capita.
The Philippines had the highest number of killings of any country this year, with at least 30 defenders murdered.
Mining was the worst sector, causing 43 deaths, though deaths related to conflicts over water sources also surged. Attacks driven by agribusiness, logging and hydropower continued too.
Private security groups, state forces and contract killers – sometimes working together – are all suspected of carrying out killings.
On Tuesday, the activist group Extinction Rebellion staged a demonstrative funeral to mark the end of Fashion Week in London. According to CNN, Bel Jacobs, a former fashion editor who now belongs to Extinction Rebellion, told CNN that Tuesday’s protest was organized to “lay to rest the toxic system that is destroying us all, and to mourn those who have already lost their lives and those still to lose their lives to the effects of climate change.”
Today’s Student Strike is Method 62 of Gene Sharp’s 198 Methods of Nonviolent Action. Since beginning this project a year ago, every time it’s time to do a new post, I’ve never had to look far – these methods are being used every single day, all around the world.
The estimated number in New York is over 250’000! They closed the park because there were too many people… I’m speaking soon at Battery Park. #ClimateStrikepic.twitter.com/YOD80SxHaa
“For way too long, the politicians and the people in power have gotten away with not doing anything at all to fight the climate crisis and the ecological crisis. But we will make sure that they will not get away with it any longer.”
– Greta Thunberg
A note on the image for Method 45: On August 19, Iceland held a demonstrative funeral for Okjökull, a 700-year-old glacier. Okjökull lost its status as a glacier in 2014, and is now a small patch of ice atop a volcano.
I didn’t ever want to hear Brett Kavanaugh’s name again, but if it means that the FBI might grow a pair and investigate this dirtbag, bring him out. While impeaching a federal judge is rare, there is a process for it. If you want to make your voice heard on this issue, 5 Calls has a script for calling your Members of Congress.
Mock Funerals were first used in this country in 1765, just before the Stamp Act was scheduled to go into effect. On November 1, the Sons of Liberty marched through Newport, Rhode Island carrying a coffin marked “Old Freedom.” When the protestors reached the cemetery, a groan came from the coffin and a figure emerged – freedom was not dead! A battle between Freedom and the Angel of Death was played out in the graveyard to cheers and the ringing of Newport’s bells. Similar protests were staged on the same day in three other cities. The idea behind this method is to create a spectacle – one that onlookers can’t resist, and the people in power will notice.
From the early days of the Trump administration, the White House has been doing everything it can get away with to limit the role of the FBI. It’s time a coffin marked “FBI” was dragged down Pennsylvania Avenue and dropped at 1600. For updates on Kavanaugh, the climate crisis, and the other Riders of the Apocalypse, subscribe to 5 Calls for weekly updates on how to make your voice heard.
Postage from Fid / “Owls Against Patriarchy” by Fid Thompson
Dear Fid,
Receiving your Postage was the best kind of surprise. Like you, my grandparents were artists, and they often included small watercolor paintings or cray-pas illustrations in their letters to me. I would hold the envelopes to my nose before opening them to see if I could guess the medium they used. For a long time, researchers thought that pigeons used smell to find their way home, and your relationship to handwritten letters feels warm and familiar, like a kind of homing instinct. I so wish I could join your workshop this weekend, and since I can’t, I followed your prompt.
Dear Uncle Dick: before i had a name for who i am, i had you. when i think of you, my feet curl and stretch to free themselves, and soon they’re up and running back to that cabin in the woods, the lake still sparkling, the smell of sun on cedar shingles. i’m making dinner tonight! you called, and everyone laughed, but you pointed to me and then to bobby: yes, i’m making dinner, and they’ll help. you shooed all the grownups off to the lake and said c’mon kiddies, we’re going to make a real dinner party. you took us by the hands, your skin soft and safe, flecks of paint under your nails and in your hair, and the three of us skipped down that pine-hallowed stone road like thieves. for two hours, we waded waist-high in a field of queen anne’s lace, gathered the flowers up in our arms like they were bales of hay, and carried them home. when we’d piled them on the picnic table you said, go on, i’ll take it from here, and you poured yourself a drink. by the time you banged a spoon against the bottom of a dinner pot, the sun was longways along the lake’s edge and everyone was cranky from hunger. by then I’d pulled a sundress over my bathing suit, anticipating something from somewhere else, somewhere that smelled like gin and aftershave and conversation. what happened next is something i plan to take to my ever-after: as we made our way up from the lake, it was like the sun had set behind the water and rose inside the cabin. the first thing i noticed were the porch railings, wrapped in garlands of queen anne’s lace, thick green braids the size of my thighs. i reached for bobby’s hand and said look! but there was no need to show him, his mouth was an o, his brown eyes shining in the candlelight, because that was the next thing i noticed – the candles. hundreds of tea lights, maybe a thousand, you had filled that place with so much light, the cabin seemed winged. behind me, granny was laughing, oh dick, you’re something, and when i turned, granny and gramps and mom and dad were all laughing, too. come-come-come you called, before dinner gets cold. up the stairs, the pathway to the table was a petaled runway of green and white, on the table, vases of white petticoats, sprays in vodka bottles and medicine bottles, too. and at our places, each plate held a crown of queen anne’s lace. when we were adorned and laughing, you reappeared from the kitchen with a steaming pot, twirled your spoon in the air, and presented the meal with a flourish: hot dog stew for everyone! nothing could contain us then, whatever crankiness people had felt was gone, and it was then that i understood the most important lesson about entertaining: whether the food is good doesn’t matter, it’s all about presentation and connection. as you dished out the bowls, i remember the way you looked at my grandfather like he was something that could be eaten up, and i remember the way he beamed back at you when you ran your fingers through the bristles of his silver hair and placed another garland on his head. it was a smile i saw him make only once in all the time i knew him, a smile i see now he must have saved for you. and that’s when i knew that the words i had heard used to describe you – irresponsible, bankrupt, flamer, cirrhosis – they were all wrong, because when i imagine what god must be like, i think of you.
“Next year, Stewart will embark on adapting for the screen Lidia Yuknavitch’s book The Chronology of Water...listening to her speak about first reading the book sounds holy and indoctrinating, as if Stewart mainlined the words. “The way [Yuknavitch] talks about having a body, and the shame of having that. The way that she’s really dirty, embarrassing, weird, gross, a girl. It was a coming-of-age story I haven’t seen yet. I grew up watching fucking American Pie, these dudes jacking off in their socks like it was the most normal thing, and it was hilarious. Imagine a girl coming—it’s like, what, so scary and bizarre. I feel like I started reading her stuff, and she was articulating things that I’m like, ‘Dude, I didn’t have the words for that, but thank you.’”
In early August, my essay “The Borderland” was published at The Rumpus. The piece describes life in the border town my parents have called home for the past seventeen years. They moved to the Arizona/Mexico border to work as volunteer park rangers at Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, a protected biosphere and home to many Native American sacred sites.
Yesterday morning, this happened:
HAPPENING NOW: First panels of Trump #Borderwall going up through Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument.
Endangered species, protected wilderness, Native American sacred sites, precious desert groundwater. So much is being destroyed, all for nothing. pic.twitter.com/zzee62P4Uz
Survey stakes are in the ground. Areas are marked for bulldozing. Hundred-year-old saguaros & Organ Pipe cacti will be ripped out of the earth. Pristine desert will be destroyed.
In springtime, the arroyos fill with water and the desert floor swells with green. By July, the saguaros bloom red with fruit. Ha:sañ is the O’odham word for saguaro cactus, and Ha:sañ Bak means “the saguaro is ready.”
Before the first harvest, Tohono O’odham rub the meat of a fallen saguaro fruit on the body near the heart. When you enter the desert, you must have a clear mind and a good heart.
