Categories
politics

Open Letter to Westminster City Council Re: Statement on SB 20-217

This letter was emailed to all members of the Westminster, Colorado City Council on 7/10/2020.

 

Dear City Council:

I am a twenty year resident of Westminster and am generally very proud of this city. However, I must express my extreme disappoint in the statement that the city council put out regarding SB 20-217, found here: https://www.cityofwestminster.us/News/city-council-supports-police-department-after-passage-of-senate-bill-20-217
Particularly with this:
“Please know, the City intends to defend and indemnify its police officers for any liability incurred by them including any judgment or settlement entered against them for claims brought pursuant to C.R.S. 13-21-131 (1), unless the police officer/s are convicted of a criminal violation for the conduct from which the claim arises or otherwise precluded by law.”
I am in complete agreement with both Governor Polis and Attorney General Weiser, who expressed their disappointment with local governments trying to edge around the new civil liability measures of SB 20-217. I am, frankly, appalled that Westminster is trying to get around a law that has been a long time in coming and is in fact the smallest possible step toward addressing deeper, long-running issues of racist police violence in our state. I have long wanted to believe in Westminster’s Police Department as “one of the good ones”–but if that’s to be the case, this edging around the law of the state becomes even less acceptable.
It’s also, I will note, incredibly financially irresponsible on the part of the city to shield potential bad actors from civil liability counter to state law. I am generally very live and let live about tax revenue; it gets spent on things I don’t agree with all the time, and that’s the price of living in a democracy. A commitment that runs counter to the law of the state, which was enacted by our democratically elected government, however? That, I have a most profound problem with.
I strongly urge you to rethink this stance.
Alex Acks

 

Categories
personal politics

Things I remember from the strike

I grew up in a union house. My dad was a chief steward in the CWA (local 7750). I remember there being one strike (and the threat of others) when I was growing up. Looking at the CWA history, I’m pretty sure this is what I remember:

1986: Post Divestiture Bargaining

1986 presented CWA with its first negotiations with the post-divestiture telephone industry. Twelve years after CWA had achieved national bargaining, the union was forced back to the old multiple table way of bargaining. CWA had to bargain not only with AT&T, but with the independent RBOCs and their subsidiaries. National bargaining had been replaced by 48 different bargaining tables.

In the AT&T negotiations, the company attempted to take back health care benefits, lower clerical wages, and eliminate cost of living adjustments obtained in earlier contracts. CWA had no choice but to strike. The strike lasted 26 days and AT&T agreed to provide wage and employment security improvements and retain the health care benefits intact. Although the negotiations with the RBOCs were also difficult, they were less contentious than those with AT&T. Strikes were necessary against some of these operating companies, but none lasted more than a few days.

So I was five going on six at the time. Needless to say, my memories aren’t that sharp or specific. But things I do remember?

  • Going with my dad to where the everyone met and getting food for our house. Also getting my fingernails and toenails painted because I was wearing sandals. I’m pretty sure this is from the strike, but don’t quote me.
  • Learning what “scabs” are, and that they’re bad. Well, of course they’re bad, I thought. Scabs are pretty gross, and you pick them off and flick them away, and then whats underneath is all gross and oozy. Why would you want to be like a scab?
  • My parents not wanting to buy things or spend money because they didn’t know how long the strike would last.
  • Having a play picket line with my older brother outside our house, because we saw dad with his sign for the picket line. My brother had a sign on a stick. I had a little sandwich board sign made with poster board and string.

That’s honestly it. When you’re that young, things don’t impact you the same way. And I think my parents worked hard to make sure we didn’t really know what the financial situation was like… because you try to keep your kids out of those worries until they’re too big to hide.

I was a member of the CWA for the just shy of six years that I worked for AT&T, later. There was one time when we had a strike vote–I voted yes, but at the time a lot of my coworkers argued with me, because they thought the union was pointless and what they were going after wasn’t worth a strike. I had my doubts at the time (I was young and stupid and that’s a whole other blog post – and I also didn’t have much of a strike fund saved up, so that was scary too) but I was glad about being union later when I needed my rep to sit in a couple meetings between me and my supervisor. And I was weirdly glad that because of the union, I knew when my job was on the layoff chopping block, because I was low on the seniority list. I’d rather get let go for that than because I didn’t suck up to my boss sufficiently.

Anyway.

This post brought to you by me taking a break from writing about the Ludlow Massacre and feeling angry. And because the WGA West has asked its membership for strike authorization and I’m already seeing people (who aren’t writers) bitching about it because they don’t want their TV shows interrupted when the world is a fiery political hell pit.

People don’t strike because it’s fun. It disrupts your life in ways you can’t imagine and can fuck you over financially even if you win in the end. People strike because the companies never stop trying to push workers further down the hole. Because it’s the only way the workers have to defend themselves from a line getting crossed. So I’m sorry if it inconveniences you, but the writers (or communications workers, or electricians, or truckers, or grocery store workers or…) aren’t the ones you should bitch at. The bosses trying to kill them by inches are.

It’s not greedy to want a decent life for yourself and your loved ones, and it’s not out of line to want your labor (and writing is labor, fuck off) to be respected. If you already have that good of a life, don’t shit on people trying to get to that level. And if you don’t have what they do, why the fuck are you shitting on them for wanting better, and why aren’t you fighting for better for yourself?

In 1886, during the Great Southwest Railroad Strike, Jay Gould (owner of the Union Pacific and Missouri Pacific Railroads) famously said: “I can hire one-half of the working class to kill the other half.”

Whose side are you on?

Categories
books politics

Thoughts upon finishing Stamped From the Beginning

The subtitle on Stamped From the Beginning is “The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America.” And Ibram X. Kendi is not fucking around on this one. This book took me an unusually long time to read—not because it was unpleasant, or even overly dense (as sometimes history books are), but because there’s a lot there, and the subject matter is extremely challenging.

I’m really glad I read it. Really, really glad. I encourage you to take the time to read and digest and mull it over as well. Buy the book, check it out from the library like I did, but go get it.

I’m going to think out loud on a couple of the points Kendi made that drew the most blood from me. But my mulling things over out loud should not be in any way a replacement for reading the book and getting Kendi’s thoughts first hand. Goodness knows I’m missing nuance and have my own major blind spots.

Categories
politics

Open Letter to Governor Hickenlooper

I sent this to the governor of Colorado, John Hickenlooper today, after seeing the AP story about a Trump administration draft memo regarding mobilization of the National Guard to be used to round up undocumented immigrants. Yes, I am aware that we’re talking a draft, but I find it seriously horrifying that this is even being talked about as an option, however off-handedly or unseriously. This is not a thing you fucking joke about.

Anyway, that prompted me to write and send the following message today. I’m sharing it in the hope that others will feel encouraged to send similar messages.

#

Dear Governor Hickenlooper:

Per the Associated Press today, a draft memo from the Trump Administration showed they’re thinking about using the National Guard to round up undocumented immigrants. Considering the absolutely tragic and shameful history of our own state when it comes to the National Guard being mobilized against our citizens and residents (i.e.: the Ludlow Massacre), this calls on us all to speak firmly against this notion before it can gather steam.

Beyond that, undocumented immigrants are a vital part of Colorado society. It would be far better if they could have a path to legal citizenship or permanent residency, but lack of national will does not change the enormous contributions they make to Colorado daily. We should be respecting and protecting all of our residents, whether they have papers or not.

I urge you to speak out in strong support of undocumented Coloradans, and do everything in your power to keep their families from being torn apart by these unfair and racist policies we keep seeing from Washington DC. Make us a sanctuary state; while I know we can’t stop ICE, we can refuse to aide and abet the destruction of families and the victimization of innocent people who are integral to the fabric of Colorado.

With a lack of national will, it falls to us to step up and show our strength of spirit and compassion. I know Colorado is better than what our national government is currently trying to become.

Thank you.

Categories
lgbt politics

To my beloved Republican family member

(This was originally intended to be a Facebook reply, but it’s so long that it actually broke Facebook when I tried to post it. Or maybe the multiple links did it. Either way, go me?)

I know I don’t normally even go here, but I saw your airy dismissal that LGBTQ rights will be “fine” under the Trump presidency and can’t really remain silent. Please don’t read this as me lecturing you, but rather trying to explain why I and so many of my LGBTQ siblings are terrified what’s going to happen to us.

There are a lot of reasons I’m extremely concerned about the Trump presidency, but I’m going to set everything else (such a mountain of everything else) aside just to focus on my perspective only as a queer individual. From that stance, the problem isn’t even necessarily Donald Trump himself. While he’s said a lot of incredibly hateful things that I’ve been horrified by, I don’t recall any being directed toward LGBTQ people specifically, other than the bitterly laughable “ask the gays” comment, which is right up there with “some of my best friends are gay” when it comes to eye-rolling. Hell, he even said he’d “protect LGBTQ citizens from the violence and oppression of a hateful foreign ideology” after the Pulse nightclub shooting, which is… nice, I guess, though I could have done with a lot less being used to justify anti-Islamic sentiment and more addressing hateful domestic ideologies. But I honestly do buy the argument that Donald Trump probably does not give two shits if someone is gay or straight, and who knows, maybe he’s one of those lovely people who is equally misogynistic to both cis and trans women. (How refreshing.)

Rather, as a genderqueer and non-heterosexual person, the problem I have is with Mike Pence, and the Republican party as a whole. I saw you reel off the Republican agenda as you see it, and homophobia wasn’t part of that. I think it’s great that in your mind, it’s not. But we need to talk about the agenda the party has stated. Because I love you, but your personal take on the agenda is obviously not what the party as a whole believes, in their own words.

From the full, long-form Republican party platform:

From Defending Marriage Against an Activist Judiciary:

Traditional marriage and family, based on marriage between one man and one woman, is the foundation for a free society and has for millennia been entrusted with rearing children and instilling cultural values.

I don’t care how nice it sounds, this is a homophobic call to destroy gay marriage. If you read further into it, there’s direct criticism of United States vs Windsor and Obergfell vs Hodges, which are both landmark court victories for gay rights. And this isn’t just about gay people being able to get dressed up and have a nice wedding. This is about all of the countless attendant rights that come with a legally recognized marriage, including guardianship of children, inheritance, and the right of spouses to make medical decisions and even visit their ill or injured partner in the hospital. The reason this is important is so people like Mike Pence (yes, that Mike Pence) can no longer, say, try to keep a woman from being able to visit her dying wife in the hospital.

From The First Amendment: Religious Liberty:

We pledge to defend the religious beliefs and rights of conscience of all Americans and to safeguard religious institutions against government control. We endorse the First Amendment Defense Act, Republican legislation in the House and Senate which will bar government discrimination against individuals and businesses for acting on the belief that marriage is the union of one man and one woman.

FADA is something that scares the hell out of most LGBTQ people, because it’s basically Mike Pence’s RFRA on steroids. Setting aside for now the implications this will have on women, this bill would allow publicly funded programs/government employees to deny service to LGBTQ individuals based on their personal religious beliefs. This goes beyond protecting asshole clerks who want to deny marriage licenses and organizations who want to fire their gay employees, to very real danger to transgender individuals who can get denied medical care or protection when a provider decides they don’t like the mismatch between gender identity and genitalia. I suppose you can argue that this is not the intention of the law (which I would disagree with) but the point is that these actions would be protected and codified into law, and then be used to justify bigoted behavior that could seriously hurt someone. It might get fought out in the “activist” courts later, but that’s not going to save the people hurt in the meantime.

From The Tenth Amendment: Federalism as the Foundation of Personal Liberty:

In obedience to that principle, we condemn the current Administration’s unconstitutional expansion into areas beyond those specifically enumerated, including bullying of state and local governments in matters ranging from voter identification (ID) laws to immigration, from healthcare programs to land use decisions, and from forced education curricula to school restroom policies.

Emphasis mine. This is a direct attack on the Obama administration’s directive that students should be able to use the bathroom of the gender they identify themselves as. Anti-trans bathroom bills have been the new anti-LGBT line for a lot of local Republicans after getting so much pushback on the gay marriage issue. I personally received a lot of political advertisements on this issue when I was registered as unaffiliated, which is actually why I switched my registration to Democrat, because I wanted bigoted local Republicans to leave me the fuck alone. This anti-trans obsession often paints innocent trans women as sexual predators and puts them in constant danger for the crime of existing in public – and is also the reason I and many of my trans male friends still continue to use women’s restrooms, because you literally have to make a calculation of which bathroom is less likely to get me murdered. Trans people get murdered for their gender identity. I cannot emphasize this point enough.

And then we look at Mike Pence himself. People like to joke that the VP is a largely ceremonial position, but Dick Cheney showed us that didn’t have to be the case. And considering that Mike Pence is now in charge of the transition team, I think that indicates that he’s going to be taking a very active policy role. Which if you were an LGBTQ person, would scare the shit out of you.

I’ve already mentioned him a couple of times in relation to the platform, particularly his anti-gay marriage stance and the RFRA.

Mike Pence: “Congress should oppose any effort to recognize homosexuals as a ‘discrete and insular minority’ entitled to the protection of anti-discrimination laws similar to those extended to women and ethnic minorities.” (source)

Considering the discrimination LGB-and-particularly-T people face in many places, this is unacceptable. And while Pence said that in 2000, his position has obviously not changed considering that in 2007 he voted against the Employment Non-Discrimination Act.

Mike Pence from his campaign website in 2000: “Congress should support the reauthorization of the Ryan White Care Act only after completion of an audit to ensure that federal dollars were no longer being given to organizations that celebrate and encourage the types of behaviors that facilitate the spreading of the HIV virus. Resources should be directed toward those institutions which provide assistance to those seeking to change their sexual behavior.” (source)

Mike Pence’s policies caused an HIV epidemic in Indiana. Part of this was due to his attack on Planned Parenthood (which provides screening) and things like needle exchange programs. (source) But he links HIV to sexual behavior himself in the above quote, and “institutions which provide assistance to those seeking to change their sexual behavior” is a common political euphemism for conversion therapy programs that try to “cure” people of homosexuality or being transgender by incredibly shady and damaging means.

Mike Pence was against repealing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. He’s against gay and transgender people being able to serve in the military. (one source of many) Needless to say, he’s long been against gay marriage.

And here’s my favorite Mike Pence, from 2006, citing one of his reasons for being against gay marriage: “Harvard sociologist Pitrim Sorokin found that throughout history, societal collapse was always brought about following an advent of the deterioration of marriage and family.”  (source)

Beyond the fears that we are going to have what legal rights we’ve gained ripped away, that right there is the summary of our fear and despair. Pence himself preceded that statement by saying that (paraphrasing here, obviously) that this totally isn’t about prejudice, but then blithely continued on that the homosexuals are going to ruin marriage and family and be terrible for children. It’s not that he doesn’t like us, it’s just that we’re going to destroy the fabric of society by getting our queer all over it.

Suicide is an epidemic in the LGBT community, and hits transgender individuals particularly hard. And it’s no fucking wonder, when we spend all of our lives being told that we are unnatural and apparently the reason for societal collapse because we want to be just like everyone else–you know, work, pay taxes, have families, have our loved ones with us when we’re sick and dying, and not get murdered or abused because someone can’t handle their own puerile imaginings about what we do in our relationships or what we have stashed in our shorts. Trans people get murdered with horrifying frequency considering what percent of the population we are. At least 26 have died so far this year. Here are their faces.

And things like bathroom bills? Contribute directly to harming our community. Having an entire political party that makes it part of its platform that our families are lesser – if not directly harmful to children – and we deserve to get fired or denied service for something we literally cannot control is a constant source of harm for LGBTQ adults and to the youth who can see damn well what’s on the horizon.

So I get that you’re not anti-LGBTQ, and many Republicans aren’t. I am hoping that people will stand with us when it comes to the constant attack on our very existence in society. I know that individual Republicans do and will; I have a very dear Republican friend in Denver whom I know always has my back (and I know he didn’t vote for this mess). But when you look at things like, say, the position on gay marriage of national legislators and see only three senators and two(?) representatives who are Republican, it’s difficult to have any kind of confidence that a significant number of Republicans would take a stand for our rights, let alone our personal safety.  So you’ll forgive me if I’m not holding my breath because for so long, the Republican party as a whole was silent about us dying when it wasn’t outright applauding.

There was silence about the AIDS epidemic. There is silence about the plague of suicide that haunts us because so many kids are trapped in circumstances where they see now other way out and no help on the horizon from a society hostile to their very existence. There is silence about us being murdered, or worse, Republican politicians stoke the flames of gay and trans panic with bathroom bills and campaign advertisements that claim trans women are sexual predators. Remember, I used to be a Republican, once upon a time. I’m a pinko liberal now, but I was still fiscally conservative when I left the party. What drove me away was the ever-increasing, virulently homophobic rhetoric coming from within the party, and from conservative media like Fox News. For me, there wasn’t enough tax policy to justify the harm it was doing to me, my friends, and my community.

And maybe your Republican agenda isn’t the same as the party’s, and I think that’s great. But if you voted for Trump/Pence, you still voted for a VP whose entire political career has been defined by his hatred of gay and transgender individuals. (And now, voted for an administration that wants to fill its cabinet with anti-LGBTQ politicians and professionals, most notably Jeff Sessions and Tom Price.) If you voted for any Republican who has endorsed the platform, you have to own that, just like I have to own that by voting for Barack Obama, I voted for his shameful drone warfare program that’s killed a lot of innocent civilians. I have written letters and made phone calls and protested against it, but that doesn’t mean I get to disown my part in putting him in office and what he’s done with that power.

And if you didn’t vote for Trump/Pence, that’s awesome! I really appreciate it. But please don’t dismiss my concerns, or my fear, for myself and my LGBTQ siblings. I’d like to believe we are going to be fine, that nothing is going to backslide, but I’d be a fool to count on it when the national government is being run by a cadre of people who say our existence is a threat to society.

Categories
politics rants writing you need to do better

Why I parted ways with Authors United

As with so many blog posts, it begins thus:

Screen Shot 2014-09-17 at 4.09.49 PM

Storify: accomplished. Pissy blog post: engaged.

I haven’t made a big deal out of the Amazon v Hachette thing mostly because I do not have a LOOK HOW HUGE MY SALES ARE WHY ARE YOU NOT IMPRESSED BY THE SIZE OF MY SALES FIGURES BOW DOWN BEFORE ME dong to wave around, but back when the Authors United thing got started, I signed on to the first letter. Because I’m a slave to a corrupt and terrible system spineless sheeple teetotaler when it comes to Amazon kool-aide fucking human being who can make my own decisions, thanks. My reasoning is not the point of this blog post. (Really, just go read this thing Scalzi wrote or this thing Chuck Wendig wrote and basically yeah, what they said.)

The point of this post is why I ended up asking to have my name taken off the most recent Authors United letter. The letter you now see there is actually not the letter as originally conceived, which is what I read when I said no, thanks, I don’t want to be on this any more. However, after reading this new version, I still don’t agree, and I don’t put my name on letters with which I have disagreements.

The original point of contention was this line here:

Amazon has every right to refuse to sell consumer goods in response to a pricing disagreement with a wholesaler. We all appreciate discounted razor blades and cheaper shoes. But books are not consumer goods. Books cannot be written more cheaply, nor can authors be outsourced to China. Books are not toasters or televisions. Each book is the unique, quirky creation of a lonely, intense, and often expensive struggle on the part of a single individual, a person whose living depends on that book finding readers. This is the process Amazon is obstructing.

Which has been replaced with:

Amazon has every right to refuse to sell consumer goods in response to a pricing disagreement with a wholesaler. But books are not mere consumer goods. Books cannot be written more cheaply, nor can authors be outsourced to another country. Books are not toasters or televisions. Each book is the unique, quirky creation of a lonely, intense, and often expensive struggle on the part of a single individual, a person whose living depends on his or her book finding readers. This is the process Amazon endangers when it uses its tremendous power to separate authors from their readership.

Courtney Milan wrote an excellent blog post about the yick factor of the original paragraph.  And basically: word, sister. Her post was actually what prompted me to go and read the letter carefully in time and ask to have my name removed.

Though I do want to be clear here, that while Douglas Preston and I obviously have some disagreements (upon which I will expound shortly) he is operating very much on the up and up on this thing. He sent everyone involved an e-mail with a link to the proposed letter in it so we could give feedback and ask to have our names taken off if we wished, and when I responded negatively to him he was very polite and didn’t fight me. I’m just such a lazy piece of shit I wouldn’t have gotten around to reading the letter if I hadn’t seen someone else set their trousers on fire first and gone huh, I should probably look in to this.

Shame on me.

Anyway, while I think the new draft of the letter is better, I still don’t agree with it, and I’m glad I asked to have my name taken off. My problem stems from the entire argument that books are not mere consumer goods because of the artistic struggle of the writer. (I’m also not a fan of that outsourcing writing to another country comment for reasons mentioned in Courtney’s post, even if we’re no longer specifically throwing shade at China.)

Now, trust me. I don’t for a second buy bullshit arguments that posit forcing book prices lower will cause people to buy more books. You know what’s stopping me from buying new books? Not having the time to read the ones I already own. I’m not going to consider two $9.99 ebooks interchangeable because they both have unicorns on the cover; they won’t be the same book. And let’s not forget that authors have followings; I’ll run out and buy something by Naomi Novik because I’ve read and liked her other books; I’m not going to pick up something with a dragon in the description just because it’s cheaper.

So books are arguably consumer goods that might resist quite the same models as toasters and candy bars, but they are still consumer goods. Writers, editors, and manufacturers produce the books so that consumers can buy them and read them. And we sure want to market them like they’re consumer goods, don’t we? It’s capitalism, man. Charge what the market will bear.

Arguing to a retail company that books should get some kind of free pass from their shitty, strong-arm tactics because books are special, artistic butterflies? You’re kidding me, right? Courtney Milan made this point in her post already, and better than I could, I think. I’ll just say in short that I think making a non-economic argument at a company that is acting purely out of economic self-interest (no matter what it claims) is a weak position that we’re ill-served by. And kind of makes us sound like assholes, besides. While I think art holds a unique and important place in culture, I’m really not comfortable trying to justify special treatment for books on the backs of the toaster makers. We all deserve to make a fair wage for our labor, whether we’re slapping “hamburgers” together behind the counter at McD’s or writing the Most Important And Transformative Novel Of This Century, and I will not support tacitly abandoning other workers under the suspiciously ego-wanky notion that my skill is way more special.

Anyway if you signed on to the original letter, make sure you read this one and see if you agree with it. It’s important, man. That’s your name on it. (And hey, if you read it and agree with Douglas where I disagree and are a published writer who hasn’t signed on to it, I’m sure he’d like to hear from you.)

I actually want to step past the entire Amazon/Authors United thing and address a much bigger issue, because this is really just another episode in the ongoing adventures of oh hey look we’re getting fucked by corporations again.

Being an artist in a capitalism-obsessed society like America kind of blows. Or really, no kind of about it. It blows. Even producing commercially viable art isn’t any guarantee of being able to make a steady living without a side job, and that makes it a hell of a lot harder to practice one’s craft. But frankly, appealing to the better natures of companies is not the way to fix this. Companies, with rare exception, don’t have better natures.

Now, I’m fond of pointing out that companies are composed of people, and run by people, and excusing corporate malfeasance by shrugging it off as “hey it’s a corporation, what do you expect?” is accepting the most banal sort of evil as part of life. We should expect more from our fellow humans. And hey, we know that it’s possible to have a successful company that doesn’t act like it’s run by total shitlords. (Hello, Ben & Jerry’s.)

Shrugging off corporate evil indicates a profound lack of responsibility and vision for society. It indicates either a conviction of helplessness or an unwillingness to expect better out of ourselves. But you know what? So does expecting corporations to fix our problems our of the goodness of their non-existent hearts. I don’t want to live in a world where corporations are our social conscience.

Capitalism is arguably one of the motors that run our society. But it’s not some kind of miraculous fix-all, and every time a politician (or anyone else) talks about how the magic of the free market is going to swoop in and save us (presumably while riding pillion on a unicorn with Jesus) I just really want to scream. And flip tables. And bite things. We’re not here to serve capitalism. It’s supposed to serve us, and we managed to lose sight of that somewhere along the way.

The real problem here is that we as a society treat artists like shit, and art like it’s widgets, and scorn what is ultimately skilled and important labor. Then those values get reflected back to us by the economy we supposedly own and we go wow that’s ugly could you please not?

Artists aren’t the only profession that gets offered either the shitty end of the stick or no end at all. We don’t even value what we claim to value, or else teachers, soldiers, and artists wouldn’t need government and community assistance in order to survive. Somewhere along the way we allowed ourselves to be convinced that there is such a thing as a person who does not deserve to make a living wage, no matter what their profession.

Companies are not going to value us or our work as long as we treat it as a thing without value. This is our problem to solve, because we let this happen. When corporations shit on people, that’s not because they’re corporations and that’s just what they do. It’s because we’re too fucking cowardly and blind as a society to smack them with a rolled up newspaper and say NO. And asking a corporation nicely to please just stop shitting on people is like asking the doberman with diarrhea to kindly not poop on your rug.

We claim that science is important, creativity is important, that teachers are important, that soldiers are important, and they are. Art is important too. Art is the heart of our society. It’s time we started acting like it instead of effectively praying to Zeus for help and hoping he kisses us before he fucks us and ruins our lives.

Categories
politics rants

Incredibly disappointed, entirely unsurprised. BTW, our healthcare system sucks.

The ruling for the Hobby Lobby case has come rolling downhill from SCOTUS, like a giant turd. (PDF here, dissents start on page 60, thank you Elise.) A couple of months ago and after a Facebook kerfuffle, I had a nice in-comment chat with a friend of mine who is a lawyer. And he explained to me why he thought the ruling would probably go the way it did today, and it made sense. Ultimately it was about the letter of the law and the way it applies, rather than the principle that has us all foaming at the mouth. You know, that whole “women are people and your boss has no business making your medical decisions” thing. Yeah. That doesn’t really matter so much.

Not a lawyer. Not going to try to rehash my very smart friend’s point. Just saying now that I am still incredibly disappointed, but thanks to Aaron, I am entirely unsurprised.

Rather than railing about SCOTUS and the way this country seems set on just fucking over women at every opportunity, I think there’s another important take home here:

Being forced to depend upon employment and the good will of your employer for your access to healthcare is a shitty, shitty system.

The reason I’ve come to believe that healthcare is a human right is because it’s about survival, and about control. Someone else controlling your healthcare, your decisions, puts them in no small measure in control of your life. Well, America is supposed to be all about “freedom.” We’re so about freedom we got freedom coming out of our goddamn ears. And there’s this unending drumbeat talking about about how freedom is destroyed by dependence on the government. Keep your government hands off my healthcare!

So tell me, what kind of freedom is it to have your healthcare in the hands of a corporation? How is having your ability to get healthcare and, it seems, even some of the decisions you make completely controlled by a corporation better? (And don’t give me that fucking line about “don’t like your job? find a new one!” have you even looked at the fucking economy for the last five years? IF you’re even lucky enough to have a job!) You don’t want to be dependent on the government, great. Why the fuck do you want to be dependent on a corporation? An entity whose sole driving force is making a profit.

When I worked for AT&T and was still in my conservative phase (yes, I did have one, I have the humiliating voting history to prove it), even then I’d get taken aback by some egregious abuse of corporate power against employees or the environment and get told: well, you can’t blame the corporation. It’s just there to make money. Just doing what it has to do to fulfill that purpose. (Which even then made me ask and deregulating that is a good thing how? But that’s another song and dance.)

But fine, if all corporations do is make money and fuck everything else, why the fuck do you think it’s a good idea to put someone who literally only gives a shit about money in charge of your health? In charge of your life?

The government ain’t perfect by any stretch of the imagination. But at least I can pretend I have a tiny voice, a sliver of input, a crumb of power in a democracy. Maybe YA has missed the boat, with its ceaseless totalitarian government dystopias. At this point, I’m far more concerned about the benevolence of our corporate overlords.

Categories
holiday politics you need to do better

Black Thursday and Thanksgiving

And once again we’re missing someone from our Thanksgiving table because of Black Friday relentlessly cannibalizing Thanksgiving. Because it doesn’t suck enough already to be working in the retail industry, which spends enormous amounts of energy on pinching pennies away from its employees. Now you have to do the shitty job slog when you rightfully should be sitting around in your pajamas and watching the Thanksgiving Day Parade.

There’s a lot of “don’t shop on Thanksgiving” and “if you shop on Thursday shame on you” and even stronger words going around. And yeah, I get that. It makes me pretty angry that one of my friends won’t be eating turkey with us because profit margins are king in a society that apparently worships capitalism. I can’t even imagine what it would feel like if it was my spouse or kid missing out because of a shitty employer who wants to move more merchandise.

But I was thinking, tonight. I have several friends who are not in nearly so good a financial place as me. I have friends who are shopping on Black Friday, not because they desperately want to elbow some lady in the sternum to try to get an Xbone for a steal, but because it’s the only way they can possibly afford a nice Christmas present for one of their kids or someone else important to them.

And a lot of the time, the people in those situations are the same ones being paid poverty wages by the same (or similar) stores that are fucking their employees out of the one family holiday they used to be able to count on. And those poverty wages are the reason why they’re being forced to depend on the relentless creep of Black Friday so they can try to have something a little nice. The viscious ugliness of that cycle takes my breath away.

I don’t think yelling at people for shopping on Thanksgiving is the way to go. Maybe some people are doing it because they’re bargain hunting assholes, and maybe I’m wrong and it’s actually just plain consumer greed enabling this trend. It’s not like I have data to back up this horrible realization of mine that no doubt has people who have been living it laughing bitterly and shaking their heads. But let’s be real.

The true blame lies in corporate greed, because profits have been and always will be more important than people, and in the complicit spinelessness of the government that insists capitalism is magical and we can’t possibly afford to raise wages to a point where people can survive, let alone thrive. The true blame lies in a class of decision makers so coldhearted that they blame the poor for needing assistance to survive when they aren’t paid enough to even feed themselves, then scold them for having the audacity to want something nice for their families when we’re constantly told that the real American dream is always buying the new shiny.

That’s where the real villainy is. Not in someone who just wants a nice present for their kid. Not even for a crazed shopper punching someone else in the face over a new cell phone because they’re been convinced there’s some kind of fulfillment in owning an expensive toy. We should be questioning the system that makes anyone think it’s okay to place profit at a higher priority than families.

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Now that I’ve gotten that off my chest, there’s the standard thing for Thanksgiving, which is being thankful for things, up to and including the fact that your stomach once again refrained from literally exploding when you wedged in that last piece of pie.

I have a lot to be thankful for this year. I graduated with my MS, and I’m thankful to my advisor (Mary!) and my committee members (Jaelyn and Dr. Budd!). I’m thankful for having a job I love and an awesome boss (Pat!). I’m thankful for all the art I’ve gotten to do this year, between participating in filming and then breaking $1000 earned with writing. (Who knows how next year will go, if this was just a fluke, if it will go up or down, but for now that feels amazing for someone still struggling to get going.) I’m thankful I have a lot of great people in my life.

So today after breakfast (at least I got to see my friend who is missing dinner because of work then) I went for a four mile run. Which is a rough prospect in Colorado since I’m no longer acclimatized to the altitude and there are these things called hills. We don’t have those in Houston. But I kept plugging away and a bit before mile three I got that amazing feeling that yes, I was going to do this. It might suck, but I’d keep chugging along. That feeling is worth more than anything.

Sunlight on my face, a light breeze, just my feet on the concrete and grass as green as it ever gets in Colorado scrolling along forever next to the sidewalk. Everything else stops mattering, and in that moment I felt the pure gratitude for the air in my lungs. For being here, in this moment, for existing in this time and place.

Thanks for everything.

Categories
colorado politics texas

Reason number five million why I miss Colorado (special voting edition)

In Colorado I was on the permanent mail-in ballot list. Several weeks before election day, I would receive my ballot in the mail without having to do anything special for it, then peruse it at my leisure and mail it back, no muss, no fuss.

Technically, they have mail-in ballots in Texas. But only if you are disabled or elderly, basically. I am thankful to not currently be either of those.

In Colorado, the other annual pre-voting day ritual I enjoyed was receiving the state blue book. This lovely pamphlet translates all the proposed amendments into plain English, provides a dry for and against argument for each, and also estimates fiscal impacts. It also told you if judges were recommended for retention. I loved that little blue book and its cheap newsprint paper.

As far as I can tell, Texas doesn’t have those either. I had no idea how spoiled I was, growing up in Colorado.

Of course, I’m still lucky and spoiled here in Texas, to the extent that (supposedly) I’m not going to have any problems with the new voter ID law. I have multiple forms of approved IDs and I didn’t change my name when I got married (not that I did that in Texas anyway). But a lot of people aren’t nearly so lucky as me. It just makes me furious whenever anyone makes it harder to vote.

Anyway, I’ll attempt to find the actual physical voting place either during lunch or after work. I hope it’s right, since I looked it up in the Harris county website. You’re supposed to get the info from http://votetexas.gov but that site has been timing out all morning so…yay?

Enjoy your little blue books and your mail-in ballots, Colorado. Throw the pages of non-partisan explanations of legalese up in the air and laugh mockingly as they flutter down around you. You have no idea how good you’ve got it.

(I am well aware there are many places in the rest of the world where people are literally dying to only be as inconvenienced as I will be today. I wish they had our problems in place of their own, I truly do.)

Categories
climate change politics

I Read the Climate Change Speech

I finally sat down and got to read the full text of President Obama’s climate change speech. Poor speech; it would have been a much bigger deal if the news cycle hadn’t just crapped all over it, what with Supreme Court rulings and most of the legislature in Texas acting like douchebags.

Quotes are from the transcript here.

So the question is not whether we need to act. The overwhelming judgment of science — of chemistry and physics and millions of measurements — has put all that to rest. Ninety-seven percent of scientists, including, by the way, some who originally disputed the data, have now put that to rest. They’ve acknowledged the planet is warming and human activity is contributing to it.

I’m glad that he made the point that some opponents have since changed their minds. 97% is as close as it gets to unanimous in science, it really is.

By the way, this? Probably my favorite line:

Nobody has a monopoly on what is a very hard problem, but I don’t have much patience for anyone who denies that this challenge is real. We don’t have time for a meeting of the Flat Earth Society. Sticking your head in the sand might make you feel safer, but it’s not going to protect you from the coming storm.

I have no idea if he realized that the Flat Earth Society is a real thing when he mentioned them. (I’m of the opinion that they’re really just trolling the rest of us. Or at least I hope?) But it turns out that while the Flat Earth Society has no official position on the matter, their President actually does agree with Obama that climate change is real. And then suggested that Obama should take a poke at the American Enterprise Institute instead. Oof. Hey, AEI: When the guys who might be trolls only we’re never quite sure but they claim the Earth is flat are publicly dissing your understanding of modern science with good cause, it might be time to take a step back and reassess.

But anyway, it feels really good to see the President call out deniers as such.

Really, I think he spent more time calling out bullshit in this speech than I’ve ever seen him do before. Because there was this too:

Now, what you’ll hear from the special interests and their allies in Congress is that this will kill jobs and crush the economy, and basically end American free enterprise as we know it. And the reason I know you’ll hear those things is because that’s what they said every time America sets clear rules and better standards for our air and our water and our children’s health. And every time, they’ve been wrong.

Considering every response I’ve heard from the GOP to everything Obama has done has involved the phrase “job killing” in some way, I think this is a fair swipe too. Because here we go:

“Our argument with the president right now is that he is picking winners and losers, he is harming innovation, and it is going to be a direct assault on jobs,” McCarthy told reporters.

Yawn.

On to the actual policy stuff.

So today, for the sake of our children, and the health and safety of all Americans, I’m directing the Environmental Protection Agency to put an end to the limitless dumping of carbon pollution from our power plants, and complete new pollution standards for both new and existing power plants.

Optimistic about this. Of course, the question will be just where those limits end up. But the fact that there will be limits to begin with is a huge step. If it gets done. If the limits are in any way meaningful.

The net effects of the [Keystone XL] pipeline’s impact on our climate will be absolutely critical to determining whether this project is allowed to go forward. It’s relevant.

There’s been a lot of tea leaf reading on this comment already. I found his entire mention of the KXL to be incredibly non-committal when you come down to it. There’s still no concrete decision in here, at all. So you can optimistically say that he’ll realize what an environmental disaster this could be and follow through with a denial, or you can pessimistically see that he’ll probably pick the sunny side evidence–focusing on carbon emissions since that’s what he specifically mentioned–and go ahead with it. I’m honestly on the pessimist side myself. If he was going to deny the construction of the pipeline, this speech, this much-advertised, massive climate policy speech, was the place to do it. That he didn’t take that chance to really draw some lines doesn’t fill me with confidence.

But please, I would like to be surprised.

I do support the initial push to go from coal to natural gas; natural gas isn’t clean energy in the sense of zero emissions, but it’s got a smaller footprint than coal. And I do agree with the president that this is a transitional thing. If we have to be burning something while we’re trying to ramp up our renewables, better to go where there are fewer emissions.

This is the stuff I’m much more excited about:

Today, I’m directing the Interior Department to green light enough private, renewable energy capacity on public lands to power more than 6 million homes by 2020.

The Department of Defense — the biggest energy consumer in America — will install 3 gigawatts of renewable power on its bases, generating about the same amount of electricity each year as you’d get from burning 3 million tons of coal.

Though hopefully on the public lands, they’ll be keeping a weather eye on environmental impacts. But I’m pretty pumped about the DoD being directed to go onto renewable power. It’s something very concrete in the President’s purview that will have an effect. And it goes right in hand with him directing the government to get more of its electricity from renewables as well.

…my budget once again calls for Congress to end the tax breaks for big oil companies, and invest in the clean-energy companies that will fuel our future.

This gets the “you tried” gold star. Because we all know that Congress is absolutely worthless and this will never happen. Then again, it’s not like he can do anything about it himself, so he can just go on the record saying it yet again. It’s the thought that counts. I’m glossing over pretty much all of his other budget recommendations for that reason. I’m glad he’s recommending these things (like funding for projects that help states deal with climate change that’s already happening or will happen) but I have little faith in Congress actually doing anything.

The fuel standards we set over the past few years mean that by the middle of the next decade, the cars and trucks we buy will go twice as far on a gallon of gas. That means you’ll have to fill up half as often; we’ll all reduce carbon pollution.

I’m incredibly glad he made the point that people will be using less gas–and thus filling their tanks less often. There have been endless complaints about the continued rise in gas prices (cue everyone in Europe laughing bitterly at us) and I’d like to think that emphasizing how this is ultimately a concrete way for individuals to save money will get people to realize this emissions stuff is important.

Just throw in another cash for clunkers program so people can actually get their hands on these new, more fuel efficient cars, and that would be golden.

. And we’ll also open our climate data and NASA climate imagery to the public, to make sure that cities and states assess risk under different climate scenarios, so that we don’t waste money building structures that don’t withstand the next storm.

I love you, Mr. President. At least for this moment, until someone reminds me about the NSA again.

Developing countries are using more and more energy, and tens of millions of people entering a global middle class naturally want to buy cars and air-conditioners of their own, just like us. Can’t blame them for that. And when you have conversations with poor countries, they’ll say, well, you went through these stages of development — why can’t we?

Another point I’m glad he mentioned. He does go on to say later that he’s got some policies for trying to direct developing nations toward developing with cleaner energy sources. But this highlights why, even when the US is no longer the biggest producer of carbon emmissions in the world, we still need to lead on reducing. We’re in a much better position than developing nations to work on this. And if there’s a certain inevitability to the developing world kicking up carbon emmissions, we still don’t need to compound the problem.

Today, I’m calling for an end of public financing for new coal plants overseas — unless they deploy carbon-capture technologies, or there’s no other viable way for the poorest countries to generate electricity. And I urge other countries to join this effort.

And I’m directing my administration to launch negotiations toward global free trade in environmental goods and services, including clean energy technology, to help more countries skip past the dirty phase of development and join a global low-carbon economy.

I don’t really know enough about trade policy to guess how the second point would effect anything beyond, well yeah, that sounds good. And the first point sounds promising as well, though I’m left wondering–what about the coal itself? Apparently we ship a lot of coal overseas. What about that?

So I’m going to need all of you to educate your classmates, your colleagues, your parents, your friends. Tell them what’s at stake. Speak up at town halls, church groups, PTA meetings. Push back on misinformation. Speak up for the facts.

A little bit in love again. Though you know what would help this effort? Having a readily available resource (say pamphlets) that lay out all the information in laymen’s terms. Like the Skeptical Science phone app. I wonder if the President has a strategy for that, or has thought about it? Because it’s all well and good telling people to educate each other, but it’s a complex issue and deniers tend to gallop out their bullshit questions in herds. I can’t believe I’m the only one that’s thought about this, but maybe I will attempt an e-mail on this matter.

So generally, this speech has left me optimistic, and it’s worth a read. It actually fills me with a lot of joy to see the President coming down hard on the reality that climate change is happening, and that people who deny it are wrong. The policy itself? There’s some good stuff there, more details necessary as always, but you’re not going to get that in the speech.

I think the next most important point is this, though–it’s a public acknowledgment that Congress is basically worthless at this point. He’s included points about his proposed budget, but then again, he has to propose a budget. But other than that, he’s not really calling on Congress to do anything, because he knows that they won’t. It’s good to see the President trying to do as much as he can within the powers of the Executive Branch. But it’s a sad reminder that the Legislative Branch has, hopefully just temporarily, rendered itself completely dysfunctional and futile.