Policing and the Sanctity of Life

This is so much bigger than personal accountability.

Yes, the four police officers present at the Memorial Day killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis were fired the next day. The case is being investigated by the FBI. And the mayor of Minneapolis and lots of other politicians are talking about “values.”

Laid-off worker refuses to leave shuttered factory

Working Man is a modest story set against the economic landscape that has left thousands of factory workers without jobs. It’s like a fictional counterpart of last year’s award-winning documentary American Factory. (Until it isn’t—of which, more later.)

Peter Gerety stars as Allery Parkes, who has spent decades toiling in a small-town plastics factory. He’s so devoted to the job that, after the owners shut the plant down, he breaks in through a back door and continues reporting to “work” every day. Unable to restart the assembly line because the power has been shut off, he simply switches to cleaning the machinery rather than running it.

Like a modern-day version of Herman Melville’s Bartleby the scrivener, Allery stubbornly clings to a job that no longer exists.

A brief scene in the beginning reveals that the plant shutdown isn’t the first heartache Allery has faced. Years earlier, he and wife Iola (Talia Shire) lost their son to suicide, leaving a mark on them and, no doubt, their marriage. Maybe that helps to explain why Allery is so loath to accept this latest loss in his life.

Wait, What If War Isn’t Humanitarian?

Dan Kovalik’s new book, No More War: How the West Violates International Law by Using “Humanitarian” Intervention to Advance Economic and Strategic Interests — which I am adding to my list of books you should read on why war should be abolished (see below) — makes a powerful case that humanitarian war no more exists than philanthropic child abuse or benevolent torture. I’m not sure the actual motivations of wars are limited to economic and strategic interests — which seems to forget the insane, power-mad, and sadistic motivations — but I am sure that no humanitarian war has ever benefitted humanity.

Wide variety of Wednesday Webinars

Old fashioned phone and words Organizing Leadership Call May 27

Art & Activism: A Workshop on Resisting Drone Warfare
Wednesday, May 27, 2020, 7:00 PM
Essam Attia.  Essam served for three years as a geospatial analyst in the US Army, he then earned a BFA in photography from the School of Visual Arts and went on to create his most notable artworks, Drone Zones and The Drone Campaign. These seminal works garnered international press and have been featured in The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, CNN and Fox News. Online - Register here.

A minority Memorial Day reminder

This past Memorial Day, May 25, 2020, during the middle of a pandemic and the reopening of more business establishments in the USA, the community, especially the black community, was given a minority Memorial Day reminder by two white police officers of the Minneapolis Police Department. The reminder? We can and will kill you, if we choose to do so, and our partner(s) will watch us do it in silence, and “NO" we don’t care if its videotaped.   The Minneapolis Police Department announced early Tuesday that an “unknown man” in his 40s died of a “medical incident” after police responded to a report of a forgery in progress. A video that was posted on Facebook surfaced and showed the man laying face down on the ground with the knee of a white police officer on his neck. In the video the man is crying and saying he “can’t breathe” while people watching it happen are pleading with the officer to take his knee off of the man’s neck. He eventually took his knee off, but only after the man became unconscious and no longer begging for his life. The FBI and state authorities are reportedly “investigating” the death.   

543 Dead Horses -- Mass Graves & A Spreading Virus

 
BANGKOK, Thailand -- An uncontrolled virus killed at least 543 horses
and many are being buried in mass graves, amid suspicion that imported
zebras brought the disease which is ravaging Thailand's international
multi-million-dollar racing and horse show industry.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture's Animals and Plant Health
Inspection Service declared on March 30 a 60-day quarantine on all
horses imported from Thailand to stop the insect-borne African Horse
Sickness (AHS) virus spreading to America.

The only quarantine facility in the U.S. for horses suspected of
carrying AHS is located at the New York Animal Import Center, in Rock
Tavern, New York. The U.S. also prohibited imports of horse semen and
embryos from Thailand.

The World Organization for Animal Health, based in Paris, cancelled
Thailand's status as an "AHS-Free Country" on March 27 after the first
42 horses died.

The outbreak, which does not make humans ill, began on February 24 and
rapidly spread among horse breeding, riding, training, and rental

Constitutional Rights During COVID-19: Juntos tenemos Voz

Man holding sign saying I Demand A Voice

Tuesday, May 26, 2020, 2:00 - 6:00 PM
Protest for Human Rights for Immigrants in the time of Covid-19.  Bring your own mask.  Some free masks will be provided.  Social Distancing rules will be respected. It's time to tell the Governor and the public that the state can no longer neglect the health and human rights of immigrants. America needs us!! Hope to see you there! Location:  n front of the Statehouse, Broad and High.  Facebook Event. 

Make a t-shirt with Edith!

Words Solidarity with Edith Espinal and a heart

Children of all ages are invited to submit their drawings for a t-shirt design competition!

Mary Jane’s Guide: Four little words: is the Pharmacy Board prohibiting edibles?

Store with shelves of edibles

On May 8th, a seemingly innocuous document showed up on social media entitled “CSI – BIA – Medical Marijuana (Comments Due 5.25.20).” As an “Active Rule Package” submitted by the Pharmacy Board, it referred to “Executive Order 2011-01K and Senate Bill 2 of the 129th General Assembly, which require state agencies, including the State of Ohio Board of Pharmacy, to draft rules in collaboration with stakeholders, assess and justify an adverse impact on the business community (as defined by S.B. 2), and provide an opportunity for the affected public to provide input on the following rules.” OK, sounds meritorious.

The official sounding doc listed eight sections of the Ohio Administrative code to be amended. It made a few semantic modifications, added legal guardians, deleted THC tiers and revised the notorious “90-day supply.” OK, fair enough.

But the devil, as they say, is in the details. Given no more than cursory mention is Section 3796:8-2-03 (Forms and form variations considered attractive to children) where four little words – “cookie, or other confection” – could change everything.

20 Ways Vote by Mail Could Revolutionize Our Democracy and Save Our Nation - if Election Protection Activists Make It Happen

Vote by Mail will decide the 2020 election. Trump and 50,000 of his armed backers will try to say otherwise.

But VBM could turn us forever from hackable touch screens to paper ballots. To make that happen, election protection activists must overcome Vote by Mail’s many vulnerabilities to make mail-in paper ballots an instrument of real democracy.

The odds are long, but the chances are real.

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