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Reports of protests are overblown. A few incidents around the country, but nothing major.

5 (45.5%)

A few major incidents in capitals, but nothing much in DC.

5 (45.5%)

A major incident in DC, but nothing much around the country.

0 (0%)

More than 10 capitals have major upheavals, but nothing much in DC.

0 (0%)

A major incident in DC plus more than 10 capitals with significant upheavals.

1 (9.1%)

More than half the capitals around the country have problems with protesters, but DC is quiet.

0 (0%)

DC has major problems, while more than half the capitals around the country also have considerable trouble with protesters.

0 (0%)

Huge disruption to the day.

0 (0%)

Total Members Voted: 9

Voting closed: January 19, 2021, 10:49:21 PM

[bodiddley]

About those Chinese.

And lo and behold the WHO just a few days ago admitted it first learned of the Chinese virus (now call COVID-19) from the internet, not the Chinese
Government.

It's well-known that the Chinese gov't reacted poorly to the initial reports of the virus and tried to cover up, or at least keep things in official channels (and punish those who didn't) until they had a gov't response ready.

What I have read previously is that China met its minimal obligations to report to WHO (I think countries have 3 days to report).  But weren't overly forthcoming. 

[facilitatorn]

Okay. The perception would be that it's race based.

The harm was race based.  So the reparations necessarily are too.  Not very hard to understand.

That was the whole deal with affirmative action.  The 14th A doesn't allow police and schools and local governments to hire based on race or universities admit students based on race.  That would be illegal discrimination.  But since such illegal discrimination happened in the past, these government entities had illegally kept Blacks out of jobs.  The remedy was to allow them to hire more Blacks based on race to make up for earlier illegally not hiring Blacks based on race. 

So almost every major city police and fire department documented all their illegal past racial hiring practices.  So that they could start preferring to hire Blacks.  It makes for some interesting reading (I've read excerpts, mainly from Detroit).  Like all the creative ways they prevented blacks from voting over the years.  And there's no disputing the facts, as these government agencies compiled their own misdeeds from internal records.

No, it's easy to understand. it's just a hard sell, and so far you aren't remotely considering the marketplace for your idea.

It's like the old joke about how many psychologists does it take to change a light bulb. Just one, but the light bulb has to want to change. I think you're forgetting how many dim bulbs are out there that are going to resist being changed.

He’s not selling it to mid 1990’s America. We are moving rapidly into a space where racial disparities and institutional as well as personal racism are widely acknowledged as both real and highly problematic. I think Bo is on a good tack.

Keep marching.

[bodiddley]

Look at gay marriage.  Try one yourself.  It's legal.

How did that happen?

You need to put an idea out there, let folks absorb and get accustomed to it, improve your arguments, mobilize, and then a sea change is possible.

As I've said, I think it's too easy for folks to dismiss slavery due to its remoteness, but 100 years of legalized segregation was still in place during many folks lifetime.  And the past 50 years of race discrimination hasn't been fair and has caused great harm too.

[barton]

http://www.vox.com/2020/7/9/21316912/joe-biden-housing-plan-section-8

One of the best approaches to a lot of poverty problems.   Bang-for-buck,  this is a good fix and removes a repeating cycle of crisis from people's lives.   

CBPP data shows that receipt of housing vouchers leads to a decline in children experiencing separation from their parents, a decline in domestic violence, a decline in food insecurity, and, most of all, a steep decline in housing instability.

[LarryBnDC]

What about the poor White folk in America who are living on food handouts, and have forever been treat like "trash"?
Surely they should be entitled to some of the reparation money.

Reparation for what?

Were their ancestors enslaved? Were they denied the right to vote? Is there a pattern of discrimination against them for their color or religion or nationality? What was taken from them by society and government?

Their jobs.

They voted for the guys who keep screwing them.

[facilitatorn]

There is so much to be gained from destroying the republican party and removing all of its agents from positions of responsibility and power.

[LarryBnDC]

I just think slavery seems very remote to most Americans, so much so that they can hardly conceive it existed.  And then they dodge that their ancestors came over later, or they were all Northern folk or whatever.  I think if you want to talk about reparations or some serious wealth transfer, you need to make it more immediate and closer tied to today.

I get your point that some will never see what they don't want to see.  But I think switching from slavery to segregation/racism reparations. you can win over a significant chunk of more moderate white folks who would be resistant to any compensation for slavery.

So, if it's sold to them on the basis of how the black community has "always depended on the kindness of strangers", that will work?

Seriously, taking money from any group of Americans to give to another group of Americans based on race is a terrain that even the most committed egalitarians among us would tread upon with fear and trepidation.

Not just based on race,  but upon past treatment.   A discriminated group doesn't have to necessarily defined by race.   If, say,  a slave trade had been built on kidnapped Belgians,  with later segregation,  redlining,  etc.  would that cause "fear and trepidation"?  (Bruges = shithole)

Okay. The perception would be that it's race based.

So?

All the shit rained down on everyone who isn’t white is race based.

[LarryBnDC]

There is so much to be gained from destroying the republican party and removing all of its agents from positions of responsibility and power.

[Hamilton Samuels]

Okay. The perception would be that it's race based.

The harm was race based.  So the reparations necessarily are too.  Not very hard to understand.

That was the whole deal with affirmative action.  The 14th A doesn't allow police and schools and local governments to hire based on race or universities admit students based on race.  That would be illegal discrimination.  But since such illegal discrimination happened in the past, these government entities had illegally kept Blacks out of jobs.  The remedy was to allow them to hire more Blacks based on race to make up for earlier illegally not hiring Blacks based on race. 

So almost every major city police and fire department documented all their illegal past racial hiring practices.  So that they could start preferring to hire Blacks.  It makes for some interesting reading (I've read excerpts, mainly from Detroit).  Like all the creative ways they prevented blacks from voting over the years.  And there's no disputing the facts, as these government agencies compiled their own misdeeds from internal records.

No, it's easy to understand. it's just a hard sell, and so far you aren't remotely considering the marketplace for your idea.

It's like the old joke about how many psychologists does it take to change a light bulb. Just one, but the light bulb has to want to change. I think you're forgetting how many dim bulbs are out there that are going to resist being changed.

He’s not selling it to mid 1990’s America. We are moving rapidly into a space where racial disparities and institutional as well as personal racism are widely acknowledged as both real and highly problematic. I think Bo is on a good tack.

Keep marching.

I hope you're right. But i don't think we are as far down the yellow brick road as you think you are.

"No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people..."---Mencken

[Hamilton Samuels]

I just think slavery seems very remote to most Americans, so much so that they can hardly conceive it existed.  And then they dodge that their ancestors came over later, or they were all Northern folk or whatever.  I think if you want to talk about reparations or some serious wealth transfer, you need to make it more immediate and closer tied to today.

I get your point that some will never see what they don't want to see.  But I think switching from slavery to segregation/racism reparations. you can win over a significant chunk of more moderate white folks who would be resistant to any compensation for slavery.

So, if it's sold to them on the basis of how the black community has "always depended on the kindness of strangers", that will work?

Seriously, taking money from any group of Americans to give to another group of Americans based on race is a terrain that even the most committed egalitarians among us would tread upon with fear and trepidation.

Not just based on race,  but upon past treatment.   A discriminated group doesn't have to necessarily defined by race.   If, say,  a slave trade had been built on kidnapped Belgians,  with later segregation,  redlining,  etc.  would that cause "fear and trepidation"?  (Bruges = shithole)

Okay. The perception would be that it's race based.

So?

All the shit rained down on everyone who isn’t white is race based.

All?

All?

That's convenient to believe, but ignores a multitude of other factors.

Even so, the change is about CONVINCING THE MAJORITY to change, and telling them to pony up SOLELY based on race is a non-starter for about 75% of the population you wish to sway.

 

[FlyingVProd]

Dodge College of Film & Media Arts

21 hrs ·

Chapman has joined action in support of Harvard and MIT’s suit challenging the ICE rule. We are actively supporting international students across the country so they can continue their studies without the threat of deportation.

-------------------------

We need for our Statue of Liberty to stand for what we are about, not a wall. And all men are created equal.

Anyone who can get accepted into our schools should be able to study here without fear of deportation.

Of note, the President of Colombia, President Iván Duque Márquez, attended Harvard. And Prince Albert of Monaco attended school here in the USA.

We need to keep our schools welcoming.

Salute,

Tony V.

[Hairy Lime]

Look what these OHIO

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/annehelenpetersen/bethel-ohio-black-lives-matter-protest

THUGS DID!!!

Watching footage of the day, you can see the energy grow darker and heavier. You can hear a man yell “you came to the wrong fucking town,” a woman scream “you’re supporting the goddamn niggers,” another man threaten to “break your fucking jaw, bitch.” You can see rifles and handguns and a literal bag full of baseball bats. You can see a woman in a pink sweatshirt repeatedly calling a Black woman the n-word. You can see people grabbing sign after sign from the pro-BLM demonstrators and ripping them to shreds. You can see a biker come up behind Nick Reardon and punch him directly in the skull. And you can see the police officers watching the encounter do nothing.

“People were screaming at us to go back where we came from,” Anwen Darcy, who attended the demonstration with her mom and sister, recalled. “But I was looking around, and I saw Mrs. Dennis, who’d been a teacher for 30 years. I saw my mom, who’d been on the PTA for years and served as the drama director. I saw the woman who ran all the prom fundraisers and a city councilman. The people yelling at us weren’t from here, because if they were, they would’ve known we were home.”


When Lois and Andrea first entered the scene, someone yanked Lois’s sign and tore it in half. She didn’t recognize that person, or any of the others pushing her around. But later, once she’d made it to the rest of the demonstrators, she looked across the street. Like everyone else, she saw people she knew. She got in a “stare down,” as her daughter later described, with one of her former colleagues.

“Lois, I cannot believe you’re here,” the other teacher yelled.

Andrea and her mom knew it was time to go. When they arrived home, Lois walked straight to the backyard to debrief with her husband and drink a glass of water. Andrea thought her mom would be mad at her. But Lois was resolute. “I wanted to be there,” she said. “I needed to be there.”

Lois Dennis needed to be there, she later told me, because when she was a kid, growing up 30 minutes away in Ripley, Ohio, she would spend her summers at the local pool. From that pool, she could see a nearby hillside. And on that hillside, silently watching the kids in the pool, were her Black classmates. The schools weren’t segregated. But private pools still could be. “I never questioned or asked why. That’s why I want to stand with Black Lives Matter — that sort of quiet racism, that’s accepted for so many years, and never questioned.”

So glad I'm not from that backwoods state.

To be fair,.that's the part of Ohio generally referred to as Northern Kentucky. Anything below I-70 might as well be Alabama.

not sure why you would insult the Alabamans like that.

Nick Satan.

[Echo4]

https://twitter.com/Tom_Winter/status/1281675261931671552?s=19&fbclid=IwAR2tDz2JOkjeBMsnIX4tk_4WycIx8CyfRWREEQZYtUP7q7SEwpV6d_YglUU

Judge in NY ordered Vance and Trump attys to tell him next week how they want to proceed.

[facilitatorn]

All?

All?

That's convenient to believe, but ignores a multitude of other factors.

Even so, the change is about CONVINCING THE MAJORITY to change, and telling them to pony up SOLELY based on race is a non-starter for about 75% of the population you wish to sway.

You fund whatever initiatives you finally decide on to address racism and racial inequities through a wealth tax that is based on a numeric calculation of net wealth and or real property and or corporate earnings, and is thus race blind in terms of ponying up.

You are harvesting funds from all those who fairly have the good fortune to qualify to provide for the needs of a smaller subset with a particular need just as we do for veteran’s benefits, social security, and fossil fuel subsidies or flood insurance.

[bodiddley]

http://www.vox.com/2020/7/9/21316912/joe-biden-housing-plan-section-8

One of the best approaches to a lot of poverty problems.   Bang-for-buck,  this is a good fix and removes a repeating cycle of crisis from people's lives.   

I'm still in favor of giving gov't housing project apartments to their tenants.  Gives them equity, would kick of a renovation boom, and there's no reason for the gov't to continue owning them.  It doesn't have to be totally free, that could be income -based.

Furthermore, when the gov't is your landlord, there are a million rules to follow.  You can't even paint a wall without getting permission.  You need permission for friends or relatives to stay with you for a time, etc.  They can also kick you out if say your kid got caught smoking marijuana on the grounds.  In other words, they are subjected to all sorts of oversight and regulations normal renters don't face.  The Right likes to complain about gov't intrusion, except when it affects poor people, they are happy to tell them what to do in exchange for any benefits and micromanage their lives and jerk them around if they make a mistake.

I'm wary of any plan that puts the gov't in people's housing decisions.  My father was renting to guy who was on disability I think it was.  So the gov't paid like 80% and the renter paid 20%.  To qualify to rent to such a person, the gov't had to come and inspect and make sure it met their standards.  So some alterations had to be made.  There was a lot of paperwork.  The renter knew he could get away with a lot because he was only kicking in 80% and you actually need to institute eviction proceedings to remove a tenant who doesn't want to leave.  I forget the details, but it was bureaucratic, complicated and the tenant had little incentive to behave.
Btw, my father was something of an accidental landlord, as he inherited the house from a relative and has since sold it. 

I'd condemn some empty lots and derelict buildings in NYC and other cities and have the gov't build decent 2 bedroom apartments and give them away to poor people.  And homeless folk.   My main rule would be they can't be resold for 5 years, so  the people don't get ripped off quickly, and the market can set a fair value.

I'd also offer free university for all Black folks who qualify.