Yeah, last Thursday one of my (Indiana) two Senators, Todd Young, showed locally for a fundraiser and was greeted by about 60 pro abortion protestors. I know it’s popular among the kewl liberal set to dismiss all this and say it won’t matter in November. I think they’re wrong.
We had a decent sized one in Rochester, NY. Good high energy and in-your-face speakers, heavy on the intersectionality. Lots of reminders that poor and POC and LGBTQ+ will be affected the most, as they always are. Our (white, male, middle aged) congressman was there, not a firebrand but a decent Dem. They only let him have the mike to lead a MY BODY MY CHOICE chant. Wide age spectrum, and quite a few men (mine came with me, and ran into a guy from his band). Saw a dad who brought his two young teen girls, and when we were walking in, we heard a young twenty-something say to her sister "Look -- there's Grandma." About a dozen anti-choice protesters stood across the street, saying the rosary or whatever. They had signs like IF YOU'RE PREGNANT WE WILL HELP YOU. Oh yeah? For 18 years?
I agree that the biggest tell showing conservatives realize this could bite them in the ass is the fact the smarter, smoother ones aren't taking a victory lap but are trying to downplay the significance.
And it's absolutely vital we don't let them get away with that. Roe and women's bodily autonomy are vital in and of themselves, but Roe will also be just the first domino to fall. They are planning to come for everything.
The famously nonverbal Clarence Thomas airing his infinite sense of victimhood to torture-defender John Yoo at length is Günter Grass level symbolism. Thomas’ defensiveness is impenetrable - can one imagine him ever connecting his deletion of “militia” from the Second Amendment with the slaughter in a Buffalo grocery store by a “heavily armed” racist? Unregulated gun owners racked up additional dead and wounded in Texas, Milwaukee and Chicago this weekend thanks to dead Tony and soulless Clarence, a not-coincidental bookend to the Court’s intention to insert itself into medical decisions during pregnancy. No sensible country would leave power in the hands of these sociopaths, but in other news, gas is expensive and formula hard to find, so vote Republican.
Roy, I’m repeatedly on record of being meh on the issue of the masses demonstrating and thereby causing change -- documented not to have worked in over fifty years, Nam peace demos was the last time it did.
So what I wonder is whether at least at your demo there were any efforts at organizing, mobilization to, you know, get some actual power either electorally or to get some agency-through-numbers to get some control over people’s lives. To overly simplify things, there’s a huge problem with excessive passivity among the masses so, you know, anything that empowers engagement is the way.
And of course if any of y’all have anything to report from elsewhere, thanks.
One of the guys who comes to Planned Parenthood frequently is bigtime into BLM (he's white, of course) and ACAB stuff. This is the guy who thinks we shouldn't ever call the cops and if they show up, we should all start chanting "Off the pigs!" or some such shit. Pointing out that 9 times out of 10 the cops are there to protect US FROM the nutjobs got us nowhere.
Anyway, he got pissed and said he was going to organize his own counter-protest for the next Saturday, where they would be all intersectional and shit, and protest the cops too.
Spent the next week advertising on Facebook and social media, all about his big "INTERSECTIONAL FEMINIST" event.
Come Saturday morning, he's there with his banners and signs and PA system and his buddy. Nobody else shows, and we spend most of the morning razzing them and asking if "intersectional feminism" was the kind that didn't have any women. Good times.
"The crowd (thousands, though I don’t think they hit the 17,000 they were permitted)"
Yup. Tho the crowd at the monument was pretty packed together, it was 1/3 to 1/2 the Jan6 crowd in absolute numbers (I estimated Jan6 crowd at the Ellipse about 30,000).
I was perched for awhile right near where Roy got that shot looking downslope to the stage. The thing that bothered me was how low-energy we all were during the speechifying. But later on, on the street, drowning out the stupid guys with bullhorns, the energy was up closer to where we want it, I think.
And bonus: got into the art exhibits, both the Nat Gallery and the Portrait Gallery, and there's great new stuff at both, including the exhibit Roy reviewed last week. Plus, at the Sculpture Garden, the steam calliope was beyond awesome...
A small emendation: the Women's March of January 2017 was hardly the first major repro rights march. As SCOTUS was contemplating (I think) the Casey decision a half-million people marched in D.C. in April, 1989. It was there that I decided I wanted a third child, who was born in January 1990. I was very good at getting pregnant on the first try or accidentally despite *always* using birth control. Denying an individual the right to bodily autonomy is a refusal to recognize them as *persons*, and is the very essence of slavery. I may be post-menopausal, but I feel deeply threatened.
May 16, 2022·edited May 16, 2022Liked by Roy Edroso
I can't decide which I love more -
Wakan Tanka(who I would gladly worship in a heartbeat ) or
" Coochie Police" which is perfect in every way possible.
Righties are pushing too hard. They're gonna blow it. They aren't legion. It seems like they are because the press loves them because the press is hot garbage. That being said, I've already made arrangements to be off camping on election day because I am old and my hearts liable to explode from the stress.
May 16, 2022·edited May 16, 2022Liked by Roy Edroso
COOCHIE POLICE…MY NEW BAND NAME!
I stopped going to protests in the early ‘90s - because I’d gone to a zillion of them since the ‘70s - Black Power Rallies, ACT UP, pro Indigenous, Asian, Jewish, Hispanic, Latino, endangered animals, ecology, Black Lives Matter, Save The Whales, Save The Bees, against nuclear power, against the Dotard/fair elections, etc. I’m pooped!
And as I got older, and people have gotten more violent and insane, it became less fun to do with my friends. I’m very happy people still exercise this civil right, though I don’t think it’s as powerful as it was in the ‘60s.
Anyway - as an almost 60 year old Black American woman, I’m really beyond exhausted from warning White folks (mostly women) about what’s coming and to not get too comfortable…only to wind up telling those same White folks, “I told you so”, and busting my ass to help save this fucking country from itself, when this country hates me.
Anyone remember the football player, Torrold DeShaun "Rod" Smart who had “ HE HATE ME” on the back of his jersey?
Smallish crowd in Des Moines. One speaker, an accomplished black attorney talked about getting pregnant in college and deciding to have her twins. She talked of the struggle and the rewards. Yeah yeah. Cool cool. Then she said NO ONE IS PRO ABORTION. I raised my hand and pointed down at myself. I am pro abortion! I looked at my best friend and loud whispered "That's not true! That is Clinton era BULLSHIT!" Lots of head shaking in the crowd. Following speakers took that comment apart and it was great. There was a young trans man who works for a non-profit helping needy folks get healthcare. A fiery little red-headed socialist who ended her speech with Fuck The Police. The best was a young indigenous woman who also brought fire and called out us white women for our privilege. Kudos to her, the crowd was about 97% white. Due to the Hyde Act (I hope Senator Hyde is suffering somewhere) there are no legal abortions on reservations. Those speakers were pro abortion. I'm pro abortion. The WEASEL-SPEAK about what should be a safe, common and even celebrated procedure is partly why we are here now-- about to lose any right to bodily autonomy. The Court and the Republicans will not stop with abortion. Also, too.
I wonder how much of the criticism of intersectionality descends from the Old Left's orthodox Marxist belief that (put crudely) _only_ economics 'really' exist. Feminism was dismissed as an upper-class distraction, queer politics as a _degenerate_ distraction; racism was fought on purely strategic grounds: black Americans were particularly proletarianised and so obviously would welcome the new doctrines, and pointing-out U.S. racism was convenient in the days when the Party, like it or not, really was in the end an arm of The Homeland of Socialism. (I very much liked my Communist relatives, and their comparatively happy marriage helped firm-up my resolve that mine would be childless, as my mother said the Party told them theirs must be, true or not.)
…but racism was, in the end, still—like misogyny and the existence of queer people—just another consequence and supporting member of Capitalism, and one must fight The Real Enemy .
"They won't stop with Roe" is right. But even if you think they will, everyone should proclaim, everywhere, that they won't. Be specific: "They will outlaw all abortion everywhere. They will outlaw contraception. They will outlaw gay marriage. They will outlaw interracial marriage."
These should be shouted from the rooftops until even married couples using contraception are given pause. It doesn't matter how likely these developments are. The point is, the Court and the right have lost every speck of the benefit of the doubt. There is no doubt. They are now guilty until proven innocent--and even then I won't believe their innocence. This is a scare campaign, yes. Because now it's sensible to be scared.
Yeah, last Thursday one of my (Indiana) two Senators, Todd Young, showed locally for a fundraiser and was greeted by about 60 pro abortion protestors. I know it’s popular among the kewl liberal set to dismiss all this and say it won’t matter in November. I think they’re wrong.
We had a decent sized one in Rochester, NY. Good high energy and in-your-face speakers, heavy on the intersectionality. Lots of reminders that poor and POC and LGBTQ+ will be affected the most, as they always are. Our (white, male, middle aged) congressman was there, not a firebrand but a decent Dem. They only let him have the mike to lead a MY BODY MY CHOICE chant. Wide age spectrum, and quite a few men (mine came with me, and ran into a guy from his band). Saw a dad who brought his two young teen girls, and when we were walking in, we heard a young twenty-something say to her sister "Look -- there's Grandma." About a dozen anti-choice protesters stood across the street, saying the rosary or whatever. They had signs like IF YOU'RE PREGNANT WE WILL HELP YOU. Oh yeah? For 18 years?
I agree that the biggest tell showing conservatives realize this could bite them in the ass is the fact the smarter, smoother ones aren't taking a victory lap but are trying to downplay the significance.
And it's absolutely vital we don't let them get away with that. Roe and women's bodily autonomy are vital in and of themselves, but Roe will also be just the first domino to fall. They are planning to come for everything.
The famously nonverbal Clarence Thomas airing his infinite sense of victimhood to torture-defender John Yoo at length is Günter Grass level symbolism. Thomas’ defensiveness is impenetrable - can one imagine him ever connecting his deletion of “militia” from the Second Amendment with the slaughter in a Buffalo grocery store by a “heavily armed” racist? Unregulated gun owners racked up additional dead and wounded in Texas, Milwaukee and Chicago this weekend thanks to dead Tony and soulless Clarence, a not-coincidental bookend to the Court’s intention to insert itself into medical decisions during pregnancy. No sensible country would leave power in the hands of these sociopaths, but in other news, gas is expensive and formula hard to find, so vote Republican.
Stealing „Pharisee Christianity“
Roy, I’m repeatedly on record of being meh on the issue of the masses demonstrating and thereby causing change -- documented not to have worked in over fifty years, Nam peace demos was the last time it did.
So what I wonder is whether at least at your demo there were any efforts at organizing, mobilization to, you know, get some actual power either electorally or to get some agency-through-numbers to get some control over people’s lives. To overly simplify things, there’s a huge problem with excessive passivity among the masses so, you know, anything that empowers engagement is the way.
And of course if any of y’all have anything to report from elsewhere, thanks.
One of the guys who comes to Planned Parenthood frequently is bigtime into BLM (he's white, of course) and ACAB stuff. This is the guy who thinks we shouldn't ever call the cops and if they show up, we should all start chanting "Off the pigs!" or some such shit. Pointing out that 9 times out of 10 the cops are there to protect US FROM the nutjobs got us nowhere.
Anyway, he got pissed and said he was going to organize his own counter-protest for the next Saturday, where they would be all intersectional and shit, and protest the cops too.
Spent the next week advertising on Facebook and social media, all about his big "INTERSECTIONAL FEMINIST" event.
Come Saturday morning, he's there with his banners and signs and PA system and his buddy. Nobody else shows, and we spend most of the morning razzing them and asking if "intersectional feminism" was the kind that didn't have any women. Good times.
"The crowd (thousands, though I don’t think they hit the 17,000 they were permitted)"
Yup. Tho the crowd at the monument was pretty packed together, it was 1/3 to 1/2 the Jan6 crowd in absolute numbers (I estimated Jan6 crowd at the Ellipse about 30,000).
I was perched for awhile right near where Roy got that shot looking downslope to the stage. The thing that bothered me was how low-energy we all were during the speechifying. But later on, on the street, drowning out the stupid guys with bullhorns, the energy was up closer to where we want it, I think.
And bonus: got into the art exhibits, both the Nat Gallery and the Portrait Gallery, and there's great new stuff at both, including the exhibit Roy reviewed last week. Plus, at the Sculpture Garden, the steam calliope was beyond awesome...
“If the U.S. Supreme Court is gonna be the coochie police, I’m here to defund the coochie police.”
Nee Nee Taylor FTW!
A small emendation: the Women's March of January 2017 was hardly the first major repro rights march. As SCOTUS was contemplating (I think) the Casey decision a half-million people marched in D.C. in April, 1989. It was there that I decided I wanted a third child, who was born in January 1990. I was very good at getting pregnant on the first try or accidentally despite *always* using birth control. Denying an individual the right to bodily autonomy is a refusal to recognize them as *persons*, and is the very essence of slavery. I may be post-menopausal, but I feel deeply threatened.
I can't decide which I love more -
Wakan Tanka(who I would gladly worship in a heartbeat ) or
" Coochie Police" which is perfect in every way possible.
Righties are pushing too hard. They're gonna blow it. They aren't legion. It seems like they are because the press loves them because the press is hot garbage. That being said, I've already made arrangements to be off camping on election day because I am old and my hearts liable to explode from the stress.
COOCHIE POLICE…MY NEW BAND NAME!
I stopped going to protests in the early ‘90s - because I’d gone to a zillion of them since the ‘70s - Black Power Rallies, ACT UP, pro Indigenous, Asian, Jewish, Hispanic, Latino, endangered animals, ecology, Black Lives Matter, Save The Whales, Save The Bees, against nuclear power, against the Dotard/fair elections, etc. I’m pooped!
And as I got older, and people have gotten more violent and insane, it became less fun to do with my friends. I’m very happy people still exercise this civil right, though I don’t think it’s as powerful as it was in the ‘60s.
Anyway - as an almost 60 year old Black American woman, I’m really beyond exhausted from warning White folks (mostly women) about what’s coming and to not get too comfortable…only to wind up telling those same White folks, “I told you so”, and busting my ass to help save this fucking country from itself, when this country hates me.
Anyone remember the football player, Torrold DeShaun "Rod" Smart who had “ HE HATE ME” on the back of his jersey?
That’s how I feel.
Smallish crowd in Des Moines. One speaker, an accomplished black attorney talked about getting pregnant in college and deciding to have her twins. She talked of the struggle and the rewards. Yeah yeah. Cool cool. Then she said NO ONE IS PRO ABORTION. I raised my hand and pointed down at myself. I am pro abortion! I looked at my best friend and loud whispered "That's not true! That is Clinton era BULLSHIT!" Lots of head shaking in the crowd. Following speakers took that comment apart and it was great. There was a young trans man who works for a non-profit helping needy folks get healthcare. A fiery little red-headed socialist who ended her speech with Fuck The Police. The best was a young indigenous woman who also brought fire and called out us white women for our privilege. Kudos to her, the crowd was about 97% white. Due to the Hyde Act (I hope Senator Hyde is suffering somewhere) there are no legal abortions on reservations. Those speakers were pro abortion. I'm pro abortion. The WEASEL-SPEAK about what should be a safe, common and even celebrated procedure is partly why we are here now-- about to lose any right to bodily autonomy. The Court and the Republicans will not stop with abortion. Also, too.
I wonder how much of the criticism of intersectionality descends from the Old Left's orthodox Marxist belief that (put crudely) _only_ economics 'really' exist. Feminism was dismissed as an upper-class distraction, queer politics as a _degenerate_ distraction; racism was fought on purely strategic grounds: black Americans were particularly proletarianised and so obviously would welcome the new doctrines, and pointing-out U.S. racism was convenient in the days when the Party, like it or not, really was in the end an arm of The Homeland of Socialism. (I very much liked my Communist relatives, and their comparatively happy marriage helped firm-up my resolve that mine would be childless, as my mother said the Party told them theirs must be, true or not.)
…but racism was, in the end, still—like misogyny and the existence of queer people—just another consequence and supporting member of Capitalism, and one must fight The Real Enemy .
Thank you for this and especially for Sarah Eagle Heart's invocation. What grace.
"They won't stop with Roe" is right. But even if you think they will, everyone should proclaim, everywhere, that they won't. Be specific: "They will outlaw all abortion everywhere. They will outlaw contraception. They will outlaw gay marriage. They will outlaw interracial marriage."
These should be shouted from the rooftops until even married couples using contraception are given pause. It doesn't matter how likely these developments are. The point is, the Court and the right have lost every speck of the benefit of the doubt. There is no doubt. They are now guilty until proven innocent--and even then I won't believe their innocence. This is a scare campaign, yes. Because now it's sensible to be scared.