In the aftermath of the death of singer Whitney Houston on the eve of the Grammy Awards, her talents have been fittingly celebrated. Her early death, like that of too many other stars, presents a cautionary tale of the pressures of fame. What has annoyed me in the past few days, though, has been the endless series of short clips showing her singing just a few bars of this or that.
Here, then, is the complete video of her glorious rendition of the American National Anthem at the Super Bowl in 1991, in honor of those who served in the first Gulf War. Speaking of the troops, taking care of each other is one of the hallmarks of military training and bonding. The lesson to take from Houston's untimely death is not only to take care of yourself, but to look out for each other. Addiction is not something one can overcome alone.
In watching her performance again, the long-held final note is the most glorious thing of all. She had good teachers, including her mother. This was a young woman who knew the mechanics of singing and put it all together to make the absolute most of her gifts.
Jonathan Wilson at WAMUreports that the National Park Service has ordered Occupy DC protesters to vacate McPherson Square and Freedom Plaza by Monday. He quotes one protester as refusing to leave. Those who refuse to remove their camping and cooking materials from the parks face arrest.
Nick Barron of Advisory Neighborhood Commission 2F, which includes McPherson Square, politely asks the protesters to comply with the NPS order. As he observes, they have delivered their message, their neighbors have been either supportive or quietly tolerant of the months-long occupation, and it is time to move on to the next phase of their effort, one that does not involve monopolizing a public park. Indeed Mayor Gray and other D.C. officials have been supportive of the Occupiers. But the public's patience runs out eventually. Barron notes that McPherson Square had been refurbished in the fall before the occupation began, and the then-new grass has been destroyed by the encampment.
It is clear that many of the Occupy DC folks have nothing else in their game plan other than staying in these public parks. That's all they've got. That is embarrassing to the cause of reform. Someone needs to explain to them the concept of political organizing. I understand that the Occupy movement has garnered a lot of attention for the problem of income inequality in this country, including policies that result in the upward redistribution of wealth. But that point has been made. They can forget about any serious reform happening if the Republican champions of the wealthiest few win the election in November.
Many of the occupiers scorn the electoral process; all that means is that they have decided to replace the actually existing political process with magical thinking: if they occupy these public spaces long enough, somehow vulture capitalism will be defeated. They need to get real. And who do they think will be helped by a mass arrest? But such arrests are liberating, at least in the minds of some. Fine. Liberate them, and liberate the parks. Those people who are politically serious recognize what is at stake in the coming election, and will become involved accordingly. Do those who just want to continue the Occupation indefinitely prefer battles with the police? That worked so well for progressives in 1968.
Jenna Marbles offers advice, in the form of a rant, to her fellow white girls who go to the club. Someone hold me back — she makes these girls sound so attractive! Of course, the fallacy in this is that if you hang out at clubs, you are going to be spending time with an unrepresentative population sample consisting of other people who hang out at clubs. This brings with it a higher likelihood of drunkenness. Chivalry compels me to note that my own lovely nieces, most of whom are white, do not behave as Ms. Marbles describes. As far as I know.
Charlie Watson has posted separately on concerns about the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), which is under consideration by the House of Representatives and which, along with the Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA) being considered by the Senate, is the reason for today's blackout of several websites including Wikipedia. Some of Wikipedia's volunteer editors are unhappy with the 24-hour blackout of the site.
In the case of GLAA's websites, while I am inclined to agree with the people running Wikipedia in their opposition to SOPA and PIPA, going dark is not my idea of an empowering act, any more than the days of silence held annually in some schools. Silence, boycotts, and withdrawals in general are not not my approach to activism. We don't get much traffic at GLAA, but — as I discovered yesterday when a campaign staffer for a D.C. Council candidate contacted me about a bad link to a 2008 item she needed to examine — it is a valuable tool for activists, researchers, reporters and others. There are other ways of making a point besides a one-day strike. That's my opinion, anyway. So if GLAA's web pages go dark at some point, you will know it wasn't my idea.
Update: Several of the darkened sites that I looked at were not quite dark but featured a statement about what they were doing and provided help in contacting one's member of Congress. Many calls were generated, which have had a significant effect. D.C.'s non-voting delegate to Congress, Eleanor Holmes Norton, is so good on our issues that GLAA doesn't have to ask our members to tie up her phones with appeals. But well-focused efforts of this sort are useful tools of activism. I am wondering, though: Can't such appeals be made on an entry screen without blocking access to the website? Maybe sometimes you need a gimmick in order to get people's attention. Okay.
The masked fashion models marched onto the stage with fists pumping and feet stomping in unison, music blaring, before all 15 crouched in silence. One by one, to the sounds of explosions, they leaped up to share their experiences with rough city life as gang members.
One started stealing cars when she was 13, then lived on the streets and sold drugs before getting locked up for armed robbery at 17. Another had been sexually abused and raped. One was neglected by parents who were addicted to crack cocaine....
The young men and women are members of Check It, a gay crew that started in the Trinidad neighborhood in Northeast, and its sister gang, Unexpected....
But on Saturday night, Check It and Unexpected members tried to show a different side to their personalities by hosting “Fashion Transformation,” a fashion show at the D.C police department’s Boys and Girls Club on Shepherd Street NW, where they unveiled their own T-shirt designs and showed off their modeling talents and dance moves.
Good for them, and good luck to them. We wrote about them here.
“Every barrel of oil that comes out of those sands in Canada is a barrel of oil we don’t have to buy from a foreign source,” Perry told a campaign stop in Clarinda, Iowa.
Rick Perry for President. Get in touch with your inner nitwit.
Someone should break it to this lady that the unity in question was not meant to include her. And guess which of the Seven Principles you are violating if you buy a Kwanzaa card from Hallmark. Those white folks try to take over everything! My friend Jasper said, "Actually...who eats cocoa cinnamon cake with apple filling?" I replied, "I don't know... Just hearing it makes me want to get in touch with my African ancestors--you know, way, way back in the Olduvai Gorge."
As I wrote in 2003, Maulana Karenga's main guiding philosophy for Kwanzaa, behind its amalgam of African elements, is Marxism. What does Karl Marx have to do with Africa? To quote my article, "Ujamaa, the fourth principle of Kwanzaa (Swahili for 'familyhood,' from the Arabic for 'community,' translated by Karenga as cooperative economics), was the very word used by former Tanzanian President Julius Nyerere when he forcibly relocated tens of thousands of his citizens to collective farms in a disastrous socialist experiment. Nyerere actually suppressed an existing coffee cooperative that did not conform to his theories, while demonizing the Swahili concept of soko huria, or free markets."
I mentioned the heavy Arabic influence on Swahili to show that Karenga, in fleeing Western cultural influences in favor of African traditions, embraced language traceable to the Arab slave trade in Africa. Swahili is certainly euphonious, but that doesn't make any of this liberating or more authentic (to invoke a slippery word). Actually, in my experience, most African Americans don't practice Kwanzaa. But hey, it's an excuse for a party.
As I said to fellow GLAA veteran Craig Howell over a pleasant Christmas lunch, I admire the late Christopher Hitchens and have cheered the many well-deserved "Hitchslaps" he administered against religious authoritarians and assorted other rogues; but I do not in the least share his dislike for Christmas festivities. Why wear oneself out or make oneself miserable growling and sneering at all the Christmas goings-on that begin before Halloween? Better to spend your energy on something else. Of course, Charles Dickens ensured that the story of Christmas includes a role for a curmudgeon, so the "Bah, Humbug" chorus has long since been annexed no matter how much they squawk.
I have always sympathized with Ebenezer Scrooge's incorrigibly cheerful nephew; also with his long-suffering clerk Bob Cratchit, except that I could never endure so much abuse without saying, "Screw you, you miserable old bastard." Indeed, without the job protections built into the federal civil service, I am sure I would have been fired long before I qualified for an annuity. My competence and reliability helped, but that can only carry an outspoken person so far. But for all my resistance to dogma and authority of various kinds, I don't think Christmas in a cultural sense is mainly about that. It is inextricably interwoven with ancient winter solstice festivals, and I share the common impulse to light candles and share good food and drink with friends and family on the longest nights of the year.
The last two weeks of the year are also among the quietest here in the nation's capital — partly because so many leave town to be with loved ones elsewhere, and partly because those who remain are largely inclined to relax a bit. The First Family is generally away at Camp David or some other retreat (in the present case, the President's original home state of Hawaii), the Capitol empties out, civil servants take their use-or-lose annual leave, and the streets are quieter. A few minutes ago, one of the destitute 17th Street regulars came by to ask for some food, and I shared some of the goodies I'd received.
Craig went off after lunch to the E Street Cinema, and I am relaxing at home. Turner Classic movies just started showing the 1961 film King of Kings, starring Jeffrey Hunter as Jesus Christ. Ben Mankiewicz, who introduced the movie, mentioned the fact that Hunter played Captain Christopher Pike in the original Star Trek television pilot. Besides Hunter, the film includes Hurd Hatfield (star of the 1945 film The Picture of Dorian Gray) as Pontius Pilate; gay Australian actor Frank Thring (who played Pontius Pilate in the 1959 Ben Hur) as Herod Antipas, and narration by Orson Welles. But I've seen the film before, so I think I'll catch up on some reading. For one thing, the second volume of Sondheim's collected lyrics beckons me.
Monday morning will be a good occasion to catch up with the denizens of my favorite coffee shop who stayed in town. In the afternoon I'll head to Maryland for the Rosendall family gathering, a pot luck affair to which my contribution is a couple of bottles of liquor. There'll be emails and phone calls to catch up with various friends. On Christmas Eve I phoned my boyfriend, who is in Thailand for a few weeks on business, and sang him "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" from the 1945 Meet Me in St. Louis (the lyric "Someday soon we all will be together" having brought it to mind). He said (as he has very sweetly said before) that I should be a professional singer, though he helpfully added that I was too old to start such a career; then I learned that he had never heard of Judy Garland. It did not come as a shock to me, after ten years, that a man who grew up in the Congo River valley did not share my cultural signposts. A little perspective and humility are useful in this season.
Last night, Pope Benedict XVI at Christmas Eve Mass gave a predictable critique of the commercialization of Christmas. (If I hear one more priest pompously telling me that I forgot the baby Jesus, I'll do something drastic; but there's Hitch's ghost again.) Dozens were killed across Nigeria by a radical Islamic sect in a series of Christmas bombings. People in Christchurch, New Zealand were recovering from an earthquake. An Afghan lawmaker and a score of others were killed in a funeral bombing in northern Afghanistan. I said something nice about Catholic Charities to a gay friend who was chagrined at a donation having been made to them in his name for Christmas (many people have done admirable work for the organization, notwithstanding the nasty boys in red hats who hold authority over them). On television, Salome has just demanded the head of John the Baptist. And so it goes. "Peace on Earth" is a valuable sentiment precisely because of the general lack of it. Here's wishing it to you and yours.
(Christmas Mass in St. Peter's Basilica. Photo by Andrew Medichini / AP)
It's been almost a year and a half since the July 2010 closing of the Starlite Lounge, the oldest Black-owned LGBT bar in New York City and one of the oldest such bars in the nation. Two filmmakers are producing a documentary about about the now-shuttered historic lounge in Brooklyn, reports the NY Daily News....
For more than 40 years, the location at 1086 Bergen Street in Brooklyn's Crown Heights was home to the Starlite Lounge. The Starlite had been a fixture since the 1960s and became a rite of passage for many black LGBT New Yorkers.
A research organization is growing human skin in the hope of using it to trial cosmetics and medicines, reducing the need for animal testing. The synthetic skin is made using cells from infant foreskins.
The idea of a "skin factory" may sound sinister, but that is exactly what scientists at the Fraunhofer Institute in Stuttgart have created. Their so-called Hautfabrik grows tiny swatches of skin - not for skin grafts, but for testing consumer products.
The renowned institute is presenting their ground-breaking invention as an affordable and sustainable alternative to animal testing, which many consider unnecessarily cruel.
Right Wing Watchreports on the sad spectacle of advertisers withdrawing from TLC's "All-American Muslim" because the reality-TV program fails to portray American Muslims as terrorists. Instead, it shows Muslim residents of Dearborn, Michigan as ordinary Americans going about their lives.
The right-wing Florida Family Association, which (surprise) also denounces gay people, is behind this intolerance.
The advertisers that have caved to this anti-Muslim bigotry include the Lowe's hardware chain and the Kayak travel website. Boycotts have rightfully been called against these advertisers.
Rep. Keith Ellison, the first Muslim elected to Congress, responds to Lowe's and the other panderers with reason.
Americans United for Separation of Church and State weighs in.
Mike Rogers at Bilerico once again reveals his inner puritan by saying that "every self-respecting LGBT person should" toss out the Gideon Bible they find in their hotel room, on account of the handful of anti-gay passages it contains.
Since he was thoughtful enough to ask what others think, my opinion is that his reaction plays into our opponents' hands by (1) conceding too much importance to those few passages, and (2) behaving in a boorish manner that will be used by the radical religious right to play up what victims they are.
I much prefer the perspective of lesbian comedian Lynn Lavner, quoted yesterday by longtime GLAA stalwart Craig Howell:
The Bible contains six admonishments to homosexuals and 362 admonishments to heterosexuals. That doesn't mean that God doesn't love heterosexuals. It's just that they need more supervision.
I am proud to have persuaded the Gay Men's Chorus of Washington some years ago to hire Ms. Lavner as a guest artist. As I recall, she was suggested by another GLAA stalwart, Barrett Brick, and was very funny.
Rogers' reaction to the Gideon Bible in his hotel room reminds me of a tweeted response by GetEqual to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's landmark speech yesterday in Geneva on LGBT equality:
@GetEQUAL: We question hypocrisy of Sec. Clinton spch when in the US #LGBT ppl live unequal & under gov't sanctioned Homo/Bi/Transphobia #Dignity4all
Okay, I too have a question: Are Mike Rogers and GetEqual more interested in moving us forward or in collecting grievances? As it happens, Secretary Clinton was quick to point out in her remarks yesterday that the United States has its own failings. For GetEqual to respond as it did suggests that only a saint on earth would have the standing to advocate international LGBT equality. Who might that be? This overzealousness from the gay left got tired a long time ago.
Michael Petrelis and friends demonstrate how to accomplish nothing and alienate your allies, as they conduct an "Occupy HRC" march in the Castro. Who but our opponents benefits from this silly infighting? Notice how Petrelis insults gay donors.
Stephen Colbert romances with Apple's voice-recognition software, called Siri. I only heard of Siri on Thanksgiving when a friend used her to type a message to me because he was too drunk to type after a drinking game that involved downing a shot every time a certain columnist referred to himself in his latest piece.
President Obama and his daughters Sasha and Malia visited Kramerbooks at Dupont Circle yesterday in support of Small Business Saturday, about nine blocks from the White House. I was lunching by the Hudson at the time, so I missed the presidential security bubble passing through the neighborhood. Actually, I wish the security would rub off a bit more; a friend reported a couple of break-ins a few blocks north on Swann Street.
Arianna Huffington has an excellent commentary on the excessive use of force against Occupy protesters at the behest of mayors and college administrators:
This weekend, while listening to an NPR story about police using tear gas and rubber bullets to break up a demonstration, I was actually surprised when it turned out the newscaster was talking about Tahrir Square -- I had assumed it was about another brutal response to a peaceful protest here at home.
All across the country -- most recently on the campus of UC Davis -- a war is being waged. This isn't a battle over parks and tents and sleeping bags. Though many of our leaders don't seem to realize it, this is a battle about their credibility -- even their legitimacy -- about how they represent us, about whom their real allegiance is to. Their misguided response to the Occupy protests has actually proved the point of the protesters more than any sign or chant could....
Each week brings an image more iconic than the last. There was the NYPD officer calmly walking up to several women who were penned, pepper-spraying them in the face and then slinking off. There was the 84-year-old woman pepper-sprayed in Seattle, along with a pregnant 19-year-old and a priest. There was Iraq War veteran Scott Olsen splayed on the ground with a serious head injury after being assaulted by police in Oakland. There was the picture of Elizabeth Nichols being pepper-sprayed directly in the face at close range by police in Portland.
And there were the indelible images from the surprise 1 a.m. raid on Occupy Wall Street's Zuccotti Park encampment by the NYPD -- which, Mayor Bloomberg claimed, was because it had become "a health and fire safety hazard." Really? Does the city traditionally take care of "health and fire safety hazards" under cover of darkness? ...
City officials usually like to publicize their efforts fighting "health and fire safety hazards" for their citizens. But not this time. Not only were the media not allowed to report on the raid on Zuccotti, many reporters were barricaded, blocked, manhandled and even arrested. "The first thing the police did was clear out the journalists so that they could not see what was going on," writes Eric Alterman, "just as they routinely do in totalitarian nations."
I think the actions Bloomberg authorized against reporters, and his lying about it, make him unfit for office. He has flagrantly violated two First Amendment clauses: freedom of the press and the right of the people peaceably to assemble. He has to go, every bit as much as the chancellor at UC Davis.
BTW, when I saw the images of tear gas etc. from Tahrir Square, I had the same initial reaction as Arianna, thinking they were images of another police assault against Occupy protesters. This should embarrass every American. I can only hope that a tragedy similar to that at Kent State four decades ago does not have to happen before these abuses stop. Such police abuses are in effect destroying America in order to save it. No. It is not acceptable.
The outrage against the casual and sadistic police use of pepper spray against nonviolent protesters at UC Davis will be useful if it is channeled into political organizing.
Here's a powerful look back at Occupy Oakland's general strike (feels like forever ago, doesn't it?) by spoken-word artist Drew Dellinger and filmmaker Velcrow Ripper. And if you want to relive that intensely crazy night, here's our liveblog from November 2nd.
This is a lovely video. Share it widely. Incidentally, I need to come up with a nom de guerre as cool as Velcrow Ripper.
Lt. John Pike casually uses pepper spray against a line of nonviolent protesters at UC Davis. Joan Walsh writes at Salon:
What the UC Davis protesters did Friday was non-violent. What the cops did in response was brutality. The video is very hard to watch. But if you watch the whole thing, you’ll see the remaining students begin to chant “Shame on you!” and slowly move toward the police. And you’ll see the cops begin to retreat, maybe because their work is done, but maybe because they’re feeling the moral and political power of that non-violent crowd. Some of the cops really do look ashamed, including Pike himself (in my opinion; you might see it differently.)
There has been too much of this casual police brutality in response to OWS. That the offending officers are unlikely to be punished for it makes it no less criminal. This is not what we are paying for with our public safety dollars.
The factually- and decency-challenged Newt Gingrich repeats the cynical Republican "get a job" meme to disparage the Occupy Wall Street movement. Hey Newt, how about cutting back on the bling and hiring a few people yourself? It is highly doubtful that a man with so much baggage, who is so unlikeable, who indeed was forced out of the Speaker's chair by his fellow Republicans, will stay long atop the GOP presidential field. But it sure would be an entertaining spectacle if he somehow won the nomination.
The news is very good in Tuesday's off-year elections. Ohio voters have overwhelmingly rejected Governor John Kasich's anti-union law. Mississippi voters defeated the so-called personhood amendment, which would have defined a fertilized egg as a person. And Maine voters restored the state's voter registration law that Republicans had overturned. Kentucky's Democratic governor has also been re-elected. All this on top of a conservative judge on the D.C. Court of Appeals writing the ruling upholding the constitutionality of President Obama's signature legislative achievement, the Affordable Care Act.
The results in Ohio, Mississippi, and Maine show the miscalculation the Republicans have made in their radical overreach against workers, women, and the voting franchise. It turns out that voters do not want to repeal the Twentieth Century. Note to timorous Democratic politicians: please pay attention and grow a pair already.
A study has been published in the Journal of Urban Economics that claims the presence or absence of same sex couples has an effect on housing prices. In extremely conservative neighborhoods, the presence of one or more same-sex couples for every 1,000 households is linked to a one per cent drop in housing prices.
Affirming previous research, their analysis showed that sexual diversity was positively correlated with housing prices in most neighbourhoods — and most significantly in very liberal areas, dubbed "gaybourhoods."
In communities with high levels of conservatism, however, greater concentrations of same-sex couples was linked with lower housing prices.
Washington DC is not extremely conservative. Quite the opposite, it is the most liberal place in the country according to the Gallup poll. Housing discrimination doesn't get much attention in the fight for LGBT rights though protection against housing discrimination is broadly supported.
Oakland police use flash grenades, tear gas and rubber bullets against Wall Street protesters. I'm all for criticizing police excesses, including their thinly-veiled excuses for rioting against citizens and getting the citizens to pay them for it. But let's step back and look at the bigger picture here: this is turning into a story about police brutality, not Wall Street abuses. How does this help the cause of reform? As the editors of TNRwrite:
One of the core differences between liberals and radicals is that liberals are capitalists. They believe in a capitalism that is democratically regulated—that seeks to level an unfair economic playing field so that all citizens have the freedom to make what they want of their lives. But these are not the principles we are hearing from the protesters. Instead, we are hearing calls for the upending of capitalism entirely. American capitalism may be flawed, but it is not, as Slavoj Zizek implied in a speech to the protesters, the equivalent of Chinese suppression.
The more this starts to resemble Chicago 1968 (that is, for the youngsters out there, the scene outside the Democratic National Convention in which Mayor Richard Daley's police brutalized protesters), the more it will distract people from Wall Street abuses and help the Republicans who want to repeal banking regulations, not strengthen them. And the trouble is, it's not clear that many of the Occupiers care. We need to connect the protests to the political process. In that regard, we need to ask the protesters: do they want to help with the long and difficult work needed to change things, or do they just want to vent?
Sgt. Shemar Thomas shames NYPD officers for brutalizing unarmed Occupy Wall Street protesters. Thank goodness for him, for nonviolent protest, and for television cameras. Incidentally, cell phone cameras are great if they're all that's available, but their grainy and jumpy images are no match for professional videography.
Rachel Maddow discusses the Occupy Wall Street protests that are spreading around the globe, and interviews Rep. Barney Frank (who appears at 10:00 in the above video). Barney says the protests are fine, but do not in themselves affect policy. As he has been saying for decades, political participation is essential, and those who withdraw from the political process out of generalized disgust are ceding the field to the Tea Party members who do vote (as they demonstrated in 2010). No message at this point is more important: the charge that "they're all alike" is demonstrably false (for example, Senate Republicans voted unanimously against the President's jobs bill, whereas all but a few Democrats voted for it), and staying home on Election Day in protest is suicidal.
By now, no one can be surprised by the despicable lies of Glenn Beck. In this case, his insistence that the Occupy Wall Street protesters are bloodthirsty murderers is but the most extreme example of the right wing's over-the-top vilification of the grassroots movement spreading across the country against abuses by Wall Street and corporate bosses. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor decries what he calls "growing mobs." Mitt Romney has issued a denunciation. I could fill pages with links to various Republicans denouncing the protesters as America-haters, etc.
Happily, there are contrasting voices. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi points out that Cantor and his Republican colleagues showed no similar concerns when the Tea Party emerged two years ago, even after Tea Partiers spat upon members of Congress. And unlike the Occupy Wall Streeters who have repeatedly stressed their commitment to non-violence, Tea Party rallies routinely featured the prominent display of guns. Can you imagine what the reaction would be from the right wing if the OWS protesters did the same?
Eugene Robinson celebrates the OWS protests. It is pretty clear that the reason for the denunciations by the GOP is simply that they don't think they can manipulate the OWS protesters to their partisan advantage. It is helpful of the Republicans to advertise their contempt for the citizens in this way.
A few thousand protesters held an "Occupy DC" rally Thursday afternoon at Freedom Plaza, and later marched to the National Chamber of Commerce. Reports by Annie Gowen,
Petula Dvorak, Maggie Fazeli Fard, and AP.
I went down to the rally to check it out. The event itself was well organized, with a stage, sound system, chairs, a media tent, and a large "We the People" [correction: as you can see above, that's "We the Corporations"] backdrop that was later carried in the march. The anti-Wall-Street speeches included some blue language, and there were several protest songs. The signs people carried were all over the map, some professionally printed and some hand-written. Here is a sampling of what I saw: "Reform the Monetary System," "The People vs. the Profit System," "Eat the Rich," and "Stop Cheating Moviegoers". There was an old lady dressed in black with a long black veil. Someone carried a flag for Veterans for Peace.
Someone quoted Cornell West from the Occupy Wall Street protests in NYC: "We are the 99 percent!" One speaker said that Obama's health insurance mandate was no good because it puts money into corporate hands; in other words (as I interpret it), anything that can actually pass is unacceptable. Someone said, "We need to stop waging war and start waging peace." A man named Vance 'Head-Roc' Levy from Washington Area Lawyers for the Arts performed a rap number. Dick Gregory said that Martin Luther King, Jr. was killed because he was the first African American in a position to change public policy.
I ran into civil rights veteran and longtime Washington activist Lawrence Guyot, who told me about his recent Constitution Day address to students in Norfolk on "Youth Empowerment and the 1965 Voting Rights Act," as well as his participation in a History Makers in Schools program at the University of Florida. My friend Mark Thompson of Sirius/XM Radio came down from NYC to cover the rally, and he interviewed me (I said we need to go beyond rallies and be just as engaged in the nuts-and-bolts of the political process as people like multi-millionaire Art Pope who has worked assiduously to take over the North Carolina legislature for the purpose of helping the GOP in the congressional redistricting). After the rally, Mark and I went for drinks with Dick Gregory, Sirius/XM host Joe "Black Eagle" Madison, and fundraiser Art Rocker; but the Marriott hotel (whose bar I had suggested) was in full lockdown (God knows what they were afraid of), so we walked up 14th Street to Ceiba. Much dirt was dished over those drinks (Joe and I had mojitos), but you had to be there. I will only say that the Black Eagle looks very good in his beard.
As to what will come of these burgeoning protests, time will tell. President Obama rightly expressed sympathy yesterday for the protesters, while Herman Cain accused the White House of orchestrating the protests. My reaction to that charge is that the Obama campaign was better organized.
His innovative and elegant designs transformed the computer, telephone and music industries and made Apple Computer one of the world's top publicly traded companies. A century after the heyday of Edison and Ford, at a time when Americans increasingly became rich from acquisitions and dubious financial instruments like credit default swaps, Steve Jobs created wealth by inventing things that millions of people wanted. He said at a commencement ceremony several years ago, "You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart."
Here's a thought: those Occupying Wall Street who are carrying one or more of his devices while attacking capitalism in a generalized way need to think more carefully. For all its faults, capitalism has improved the lives of more people than any other economic system in human history. We need to regulate better and halt the radical upward redistribution of wealth without pulling the house down on ourselves. We need solutions, not just critiques. We need to raise up creators like Steve Jobs who carry on the entrepreneurial tradition that made America's economy the world leader. Jobs was a real job creator, unlike the plutocrats who sit on vast sums of money but are too cautious to invest them. We are plagued not by capitalism generally but by unproductive people with a sense of entitlement who acquire wealth rather than create it, and who buy patents to thwart competition rather than create or improve anything. So the question is, how do we reward the right people?
Keli Goff offered this commentary on the Dylan Ratigan Show on Monday on why the recent feminist "Slutwalk" protests in various cities are unlikely to accomplish anything but give the media some racy images. I completely agree with her, and offered similar criticisms to organizers of the Slutwalk in D.C. this past summer. My comments were not welcome. These demonstrations are about emotional catharsis and acting out, not about actually changing a goddamn thing.
I have similar concerns about the Occupy Wall Street protests, which so far have been unfocused and undisciplined. The main image from those protests in the past few days has been of people dressed up as zombies, apparently making a generalized countercultural protest against capitalism. That will accomplish nothing. Harold Meyerson in today's WaPoexpresses the hope that the infusion of more mainstream activists — from trade unions, for example — will help bring a more productive focus to this developing movement. I agree with such goals as foreclosure reform and putting back into place the 1932 Glass-Steagall Act's firewall between ordinary banking and investment firms; but street spectacles highlighted by anarchist exhibitionism will be all too easy for the Wall Street oligarchs to dismiss.
Speedo sues over gay porn sites, seeks to protect the substantial and valuable reputation and goodwill associated with the swimsuit and its use among fat, clueless bastards.
Be there or be square! It’s a free community event, running from 2 to 6 pm. Come check out your area businesses, non-profits and blogs (hint, hint). Visit the pet zone or kid zone to see dogs, people who think their dogs are babies and the kid-friendly attractions. When all the excitement has worn you down, calm your nerves with a beer in JR.’s beer garden (admission to the festival is free, the garden costs $5 and goes to the festival). If you need any other reasons, the Washington Blade does a bang-up job of explaining the importance of building a sense of community in the area....
The Blade piece is by business columnist Mark Lee, who touts a young community activist named Stephen Rutgers and writes:
Sensing a neighborhood being left behind as community economic development and new retail shifts eastward, even the Dupont Circle Advisory Neighborhood Commission (ANC) has softened its historically anachronistic posture as a result of resident wariness over past anti-business shenanigans and the injection of new faces on the commission – and in the neighborhood. Although obstructionists such as long-time gay commissioner Ramon Estrada, a veteran of nearly every acrimonious battle fought in the neighborhood during the past two decades, are now more isolated and impotent among the nine member group, recommendations to city agencies by the merely advisory body are never easy to predict.
The well-known city licensing struggles suffered by respected and popular neighborhood eatery Hank’s Oyster Bar – only one of a lengthy litany of additional community business fights with the ANC and small cadres of neighborhood objectors over the years – soon became familiar history to Rutgers.
That history also became his motivation to continue coordinating activities for the street festival – as well as serving as vice president of the recently formed Urban Neighborhood Alliance. Alongside existing community organizations Dupont Circle Merchants and Professionals Association and Historic Dupont Circle Main Streets, a small group of volunteers seeks to support community enterprises and local independent retail. They strive to unite businesses and residents to support a lively and prosperous urban environment celebrating the shops, restaurants, bars and entrepreneurs in the area.
One "marmett" commented below Lee's article:
Mark Lee seizes every opportunity to rewrite neighborhood history according to his biases and stir acrimony. Long-time bitter community member.
I responded:
Commenter marmett’s claim is supported by no examples, in contrast to Mark Lee’s observations. I’d say Mark is tart, not bitter. Judging by the evidence on this page, it is marmett who is bitter. As a neighborhood resident for nearly three decades, I have observed a small number of people behave as if they are entitled to have their delicate sensibilities catered to at the expense of all other stakeholders. They are perfectly happy to force good merchants and business owners to lose hundreds of thousands of dollars in delays and legal expenses in response to routine, endless and usually groundless complaints. They remain resolutely deaf and blind to the likely alternative being replacement of locally-owned businesses by chains whose owners live far away. They deserve such a result, but the rest of us do not. Cheers to Mr. Rutgers, the Urban Neighborhood Alliance, and the other constructive groups for their efforts. I have an overscheduled weekend ahead, but I look forward to dropping by the 17th Street Festival.
Mark and I have had our disagreements, chiefly on the Smokefree Workplace law and the attendant issue of whether secondhand smoke is a health hazard; but on the issue of NIMBYs trying to dictate to the rest of the neighborhood, we are as one.
The District of Columbia has launched the first program in the country to help transgendered women and men overcome workplace discrimination.
It's been a violent year for transgendered women in D.C. with one murder and multiple assaults. It's no surprise for Latisa Mormon, who 's been a sex worker in the District.
"I've been brutally beat on my head with seven baseball bats, left me unconscious," she says. "I've been stabbed in my face as you can see. I've been a victim of a gunshot."
A total of 21 transgendered people, including Jamie Gunner, are participating in Project Empowerment's pilot program to help them escape unemployment and, in some cases, the mean streets of D.C.
"I want to be a productive citizen of society," says Gunner. "I want to get back into the workforce."
Entering the workforce isn' t easy, explains Gunner: "Sometimes you can over-qualify for the job and when you get there and they see that you're transgendered, they don't hire you."
When I joined several transgender activists in a meeting with Mayor Vincent Gray on August 4 dealing with transgender employment issues, the Mayor made it clear he wanted action items and not just a pleasant conversation. This is the first step. The employment barriers faced by transgender people are daunting, and require a persistent, proactive approach by public officials to combat. Thanks to the Mayor for making a start. We never even got a meeting with his predecessor.
Not What a Lawyer Would Advise: Cornell Jones, a former drug kingpin who is being sued by the city for allegedly using city AIDS funding to renovate a strip club, took to the airways to say he's being targeted because he is black and because openly gay Councilmembers Jim Graham and David Catania are "a couple of gay guys who sometimes get to acting like little faggots," TWTreports. Nothing like playing the race card along with the aggressive homophobia card at the same time. Cheers, Mr. Jones, stay classy. Also, how did the city ever get into business with this guy?!
LL's last question is an excellent one. Whatever the answer turns out to be, Mr. Jones is radioactive now. Political patronage is one thing; embarrassing your patrons is another. I mean, diverting AIDS funds for a strip club? And he tops that by calling two city council members "little faggots?" Gee, who do you think will get the last laugh on this one? (Personally, if someone called me a little faggot, I'd say, who are you calling little?)
I note that Jones directs a nonprofit called Miracle Hands. Could that be a reference to his skill in slipping cash out of the public till? (Come to think of it, I once dated a guy with miracle hands, but that's another topic altogether.)
The Stadium Club plot thickens: a co-owner of the strip club -- which was allegedly built in part with city grant money meant to help house people with HIV/AIDS -- was one of the largest donors to Team Thomas, the under-investigation nonprofit run by Ward 5 Councilmember Harry Thomas, Jr. ...
Obviously, there are those out there who find such donations fishy, especially after yesterday's revelations concerning the gentleman's club. Thomas, after all, was staunchly against relocating strip clubs displaced by the construction of Nationals Park to Ward 5 in 2007, but then went so far to call such establishments good corporate neighbors earlier this year.
That's lovely, Councilmember. I can't improve on my comments from July 11.
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