Pro WHOSE Life?

Pro WHOSE Life?:
Hey all – I’m Lainie. Single mama of two beautiful boys, homeschooler, rabble rouser, and member of Occupy Austin, Levanta/Rise UpTexas, and Unruly Mob media. I’ve spent pretty much every spare minute of my life this past month either at The Capitol or with my eyes riveted on the various streams and feeds. You can find a lot of my thoughts on my Twitterstream (@drublood), videos on my youtube channel and some on ustream, and photos on flickr. Thanks so much to the Rude Pundit for the opportunity to post here today. I’m pretty exhausted from all of the hubbub, but hopefully this post will provide some information about the organizing around these issues, and what it felt like to be on the ground during the various phases of bill passage. <3

What do for-profit prisons, stand your ground laws, and the forced birth bills proliferating through our nation’s state legislatures all have in common?

I’ll give you a hint. It’s a four letter word. Possibly the most obscene four-letter word.

ALEC:

A national consortium of state politicians and powerful corporations, ALEC — the American Legislative Exchange Council — presents itself as a “nonpartisan public-private partnership”. But behind that mantra lies a vast network of corporate lobbying and political action aimed to increase corporate profits at public expense without public knowledge.

It was because of ALEC that a large group of women and men from diverse backgrounds spent the last month at the Texas State Capitol building, trying desperately to get our legislators to listen to our varied personal stories of unplanned pregnancy, rape, fetal abnormalities, spousal abuse, poverty, and many other reasons why women need to have access to medically safe abortions, and the autonomy to make our own decisions about when it was necessary to access them. In return, we were ignored by senators and representatives alike, were called baby-killers, murderers, and a violent mob by those who disagreed with us, were herded around the capitol by DPS officers enforcing arbitrary rules and utilizing prison-guard tactics of divide and conquer, were denied access to food, water, and basic feminine hygiene products if we wanted to actually attempt to look those who were stripping our rights from us in the eye, and in the end, when we finally sat down peacefully to protest the passage of the bill, we were brutalized, tazed, beaten, and jailed.

Additionally, we were subjected to countless tales of forced abortions (sucks to not have a CHOICE, doesn’t it?), bad science, anecdotes about people who regretted CHOICES they made, and prayer after prayer after prayer after motherfucking prayer, and countless male senators salivating over the prospect of getting their dirty claws all over our ovaries. At one point, a representative whose name I can’t recall apologized for the graphic detail, but felt it was important that we should hear his version of what an abortion procedure looked and felt like. He included vivid descriptions of the process of inserting a needle into the cervix, and talked about “tiny hands and feet” flowing out of the vagina and washed down the sink. It would have been hilarious if it hadn’t completely sucked the air out of me and made me feel incredibly fucking violated. I remember I was at home listening to that testimony, trying to decide whether I should drive down to the capitol. In the end, I decided that I would feel less lonely and vulnerable in a crowd of my sisters, and drove down to be with my friends and allies.

And that is the shining star of this whole morbid tale. From the damp soil of our outrage and our shared disenfranchisement, our rage, our sorrow, our passion, there sprouted the roots of an amazing coalition. Groups of people who had never met came together to work on this issue. I met powerful sisters and realized the power of true male allies. It was as if we all just nodded at each other silently, rolled up our sleeves, and came together to form an Unruly Mob that our local and state government will have to be dealing with for a very long time.

Together we admitted that we had little to no chance of winning legislatively. We all knew this bill would have to see court battle to be overturned. But with that knowledge, we were empowered to think creatively and strategically about actions that would encourage and empower autonomy, diversity, and connection to the larger issues at hand. We formed sister coalitions: Levanta/Riseup Texas, to ensure our messaging was consistent, while our approaches to action were diverse. We formed media alliances, legal teams, and direct action affinity groups. We had a ground team talking to legislators, reminding them we were watching. Some of us organized marches, some of us facilitated trainings, some created songs and dances to keep people motivated. Media teams ensured livestream and live tweet coverage, amplifying the media being generated by independent individuals who were also at the Capitol, unorganized but no less willing to participate.

Community was created in those spaces, in a way that only public spaces being held by passionate individuals can create community. In line on Senate testimony day, I met a woman attempting to override the negativity of the forced-birth advocate standing in between us in line by having our own conversation and sharing our own stories. Her story was a powerful one. I immediately felt a kinship with her upon hearing it. It’s the same story that moved Victorian Prude to finally break and go off-the-cuff during her testimony:

I drove from Central Texas at 5:30 am and testified at little after 11pm.  It was a long day but I and many others have been used to it since our first citizen's filibuster on June 20th. Hours of watching antichoicers insult and talk to women, watching awful pseudoscience continued to enrage me. Finally, after I saw a woman named Vanessa (@lochnessa) testify angrily about the heartbreaking medically necessary abortion she had to have after countless IVF attempts, I knew I had to rewrite. Their baby had rare form of spina bifida and a 20 week ban would have hurt them. After she spoke an antichoice next to her cruelly said "I know people who adopted two children with spina bifida". Not a word from the chair. I scrapped my speech and began a rewrite that would call out each member of committee for their lack of expertise or past bad record on women's health. Took about 5 more hours until I was finally called along with the rest of Group 6.

And I am told I nearly rose from my seat to go after the allegedly pro-life woman who smugly mentioned the sacrifices her friends had made in what she assumed was a similar situation. Such was the nature of the relationships that were formed in line and in the bowels of the Capitol building.

On Friday, the day of the final vote, our team had multiple plans for ensuring our voices were heard. None of which, by the way, included throwing feces, urine, or feminine hygiene products. Wanted Posters were displayed (DPS took them away because they claimed they were materials that "threatened the lives" of the representatives depicted) Banners were dropped, cheers were led, women in bloody skirts chained themselves to railings in the gallery, paper shoes representing women who will die from illegal abortions were thrown from the second floor rotunda, and protesters in all areas of the building made sure they held a visible and audible presence throughout the Capitol building for the duration of the proceedings.

My goal was to hold the rotunda all day with the People’s Library, and I managed to do so. Amidst swarming masses of blue-shirted, rosarie-clutching motherfuckers spitting religion at me in a never-ending litany of vengeful Hail Marys that I swear to god almost had me speaking in tongues/barfing up pea soup, and very definitely caused me to respond more than once with a “Hail Satan” or a “Hail my Ovaries” or “Hail flying spaghetti monster” just to cleanse my brain and distract myself from the angry energy emanating from the woman towering over me with a gigantic wooden cross (which was mysteriously allowed into the building…prompting me to create this emergency feminine hygiene product):

I held my sign that said “Anti-poverty=pro-life/anti-war=pro-life” and was unable to find anyone at all who would tell me what sorts of policies they supported that ensure the health and safety of poor mothers, single mothers, rural mothers, and/or immigrant mothers. Because, you know, pro-life doesn’t actually mean what you think it means. The term pro-life is just another way to blame the victim of white supremacist patriarchy. Because, as many people repeated throughout the duration of this extended debate, the best way to reduce abortion – the best way to be ACTUALLY pro-life - is to reduce poverty, increase access to healthcare, provide comprehensive sex education and access to birth control, and improve our educational system so fewer people are confronted with an unintended pregnancy and those who are don’t have to choose to terminate based on purely financial reasons.

To the contrary, ALEC, along with most of those who support these kinds of bills reject worker’s rights, undermine consumer rights, obstruct environmental protections, promote for-profit prisons, and interfere with expansion of Medicaid for the working poor…among many many other things.

You can't get much more anti-life than that.

In the end, of course, the state reared its ugly head and brutally tazed and beat peaceful protesters who ended up locking arms and sitting down in the hallway in front of the Senate floor. DPS officers gave no warning before descending on the crowd, snatching targeted individuals, sending one to the hospital and battering, humiliating, and traumatizing many more. 

It is my hope that at the very least, the actions of the state have radicalized some of the more moderate participants in the crowd, and that we will continue to fight for the rights and dignity of all people, because all of our issues are related and connected. We must all rise up together.

Texas, Women's Rights, and the Elephant in the Womb

It's July in Austin, Texas. The calendar says it's the 21st century, but S.B. 5, the legislation that has just come out of the Texas Capitol, has set women's rights back decades, if not centuries.

First, a disclaimer: I'm not a Texan. I'm a 51-year-old medical librarian who moved to Texas from Boston when I was nine. I'm often told "Well, surely you're a Texan *now*!" - and maybe I should be - but whenever something like this abominable attack on human rights happens here in Texas - and it happens far more frequently than news coverage would indicate - I'm ashamed to admit to being a Texas resident.

When I was a young woman, a college student with a marginal income, I understood the importance of general health, sexual health, and women's health, and I was able to make use of the excellent and affordable services provided by Planned Parenthood. If I were a young woman today, I would have to amend that to say "...and I hope I'm lucky enough to be able to make use of..." those services. And luck should never have to be part of anyone's well care.

The recently approved bill professes to have the best interests of women's health at heart, but reducing the number of clinics in which women can access services - all services - will not improve anything. In fact, this could very well have a devastating effect, returning us to the days of backroom abortions - except, of course, for the female companions of wealthy men who need to take care of their indiscretions.

Now I, personally, never had a need for abortion services. I've never had any children, by my own choice. I feel very strongly that people who want children should endeavour to have them, and those that do not should not be forced either by societal pressures or circumstances to do so. I do, however, know several women - smart, thoughtful, responsible women - whose circumstances brought them to need abortion services.

Proponents of S.B. 5 would have us believe that anyone who gets an abortion, nay, anyone who would even consider an abortion is a baby killer, a godless welfare queen, a slut who uses abortion as birth control. I am astounded that anyone lives in a world that is unequivocally black and white. Not a single woman I know who has been through this experience treated it as anything less than one of the most difficult physical and emotional decisions of her life.

That doesn't mean there aren't women who treat having an abortion dismissively. There are also men who treat it equally dismissively - and this is not an attitude exclusive to "god-hating liberals." There are thoughtless people everywhere.

Further, there are those who would otherwise eschew science claiming that “The baby can feel pain at 20 weeks!” First, very few abortions occur at 20 weeks (fewer than 2%) and those that do are almost all done for the safety of the mother.

And now for a little science lesson: First, it's not a baby yet.

From the time of conception until the 10^th week of gestation, it's an embryo. From then until birth, it's a fetus. Once it's born, then it's a baby. Using less than clinical terms may be fine for planning a nursery, but if you're going to talk about science, then using terms designed to elicit an emotional reaction is less than authoritative.

Also, about that pain thing: In a meta-analysis published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, researchers concluded that fetuses are unlikely to feel pain until the third trimester. Research that makes conclusive statements about fetal pain are extrapolating from research on premature babies which, to my mind, makes as much sense as studying fish which live in shallow waters and presuming you've got a handle on deep water fish.

Oh, and why all the screaming about Plan B birth control? I'm astounded by the idiots (no, this is not an ad hominem, this is an accurate assessment of those who embrace ignorance) who insist Plan B is a form of abortion. It's not. Plan B (levonorgestrel) cannot prevent implantation of a fertilized egg. It works by inhibiting ovulation and is used in emergency situations. I've also heard the ranting that anyone of any age can buy this product over the counter. Why yes, that's true. But I would suggest you be more concerned about your nine-year-old daughter buying a large bottle of gummy multivitamins (which are also available over the counter to anyone of any age) and eating them like they're candy than about the remote possibility that she'll grab a Plan B box off the shelf. I can only presume this is yet another effort to control women via a reproductive anchor.

When I hear someone say they'll do whatever it takes to "save even one baby", a great many questions come into my mind. How many children has this person adopted or fostered? Do they support efforts to help children after they're born, such as public education, school lunches, pediatric health care, etc.? Hell, do they help provide support in the form of prenatal care for mothers with less wherewithal while they're pregnant? Why does it seem like the fetus is more valuable than the actual child? Why is the fetus more valuable than the woman who is carrying it?

But, strangely, so many of the people I know who believe the contents of any woman's uterus is their business also scream at the prospect of background checks for guns. They'll do whatever it takes to save even one baby, but if those babies can function out of the womb and happen to be slaughtered by someone exercising their god-given right to firearms then it's all hunky-dory.

The hypocrisy blows my mind.

View from Inside the Orange Microscope Slide - part 2

View from Inside the Orange Microscope Slide - part 2


 This is part 2, my personal anecdotes and the highlights reel of my three weeks of protest. --TexBetsy from Relaxed Politics and The Head On Radio Network

Photoshopping by Texteen

On a personal level, most of the protesters were pleasant.  Everyone generally used their southern manners -- doors were held and pleasantries exchanged.  But the tension was palpable as busloads of the anti-choice protesters in blue clothing walked into a room. 

Perhaps the most disturbing experience was on the first Sunday of the protests, my first trip to the capitol for this particular issue in the legislature.  I was waiting in line to enter the gallery and a woman walked out with a tiny green-shirted infant in a stroller.  When she paused to adjust her diaper bag, I looked over and cooed “Oh how adorable!  How old?”  Her response floored me.  “He’s five days old, which means that six days ago YOU PEOPLE would have been just fine with letting me MURDER him.”  Then she sauntered away as my eyes bugged out, like in cartoons.  I asked the people around me, “Did that just happen?”  Someone conjectured that she had been invited into the gallery with her prop.  Only later did I recall that when my own son was five days old, he hadn’t had any vaccinations yet and was not allowed out of the house except to go to the doctor.  Even on an individual level, the health of the pre-born outweighs the health of a living, breathing, and adorable newborn. Which of us really values life?

The other really bizarre incident occurred on the day that hundreds waited in hours-long lines to sign up to give testimony to the senate. I heard a woman in a blue dress ask in Spanish if anyone could interpret for her. In the interest of bipartisan camaraderie, I agreed, then realized that I couldn't stand the whole morning, so I looked for her to offer my twitter handle if she wanted to contact me when she got to the front of the line. I found her a few minutes later, speaking English as well as I do.
Over the course of the three weeks I made new friends and reconnected with old ones as I watched my state house become a police state, with more and more DPS troopers materialize every ten minutes. Our access to electricity and wifi became intermittent and unpredictable, even as the guidelines about where we could sit and stand grew. The fact that, by the final night, we could carry permitted handguns into the gallery but had tampons and medication confiscated is more of a Texas feature than a bug.

One of my new friends stayed in the same hotel as many of the troopers from East Texas. She befriended them over breakfasts and was told that the troublemakers who got arrested Friday night were actually hired to make trouble while wearing orange shirts. I believe her, but have not heard this elsewhere.
On a side note, I am also a disability rights advocate and an education funding activist, I am horrified at the myriad ways that the capitol and the legislative rules themselves discriminate against the mobility-impaired. I had occasion to advise two other women on ramp locations, drop-off points and a secret elevator on the supreme court side of the annex, but that sort of thing shouldn't be left to twitter and happenstance. But that's an entirely different post.

In no particular order, other highlights included:

• Meeting some of my new favorite legislators, including Senfronia Thompson and Jessica Farrar. Farrar was kind enough to allow large groups of us to accept pizzas and baked goods, and watch the proceedings from her office.
• Going onto the senate floor the last day as part of a tour group, then staying behind to take pictures of Senator Wendy Davis's desk. I even asked a photographer to snap a pic of me near her desk, and was trying to leave her a thank-you card when the troopers and bomb-sniffing-dogs came to clear the chamber.
• Seeing two hours of Davis's filibuster from the gallery, then being part of the group that stormed the rotunda with screams after her third strike.
• Meeting Tampon Lady, who decorated her hat with tampons and gave each of us tampon-brooches for entry into the capitol Friday evening.
• Wearing bright Ohio Northern University t-shirts that a good friend sent me, only to have at least one person daily ask me where in Ohio I'm from, what year I graduated, or whether I was here to learn about the protests so I could teach friends "back home" how to be activists.
• Having a state trooper inform me that I had to remove my hat before entering the house chamber, standing up for my rights and traditions, and having him back down when I walked past him and took a seat, hat firmly on my head.
• Hearing two of my rabbis speak eloquently from the stage, and hearing Natalie Maines of The Dixie Chicks sing "Not Ready to Make Nice" all in the same afternoon.
• The food and water that arrived in great quantity and with greetings from pro-choice activists from other states. Someone made a point of sending vegan pizza and donuts to Representative Farrar's office.
• Having my son and his girlfriend protest with me for the first time ever on any issue. Of course I put them both to work via the Planned Parenthood volunteer table.
• Finally getting my own official "Stand with Texas Women" shirt at about ten minutes until midnight on the final night.
• Getting a chance to blog about my experiences right here! (Thanks Rude Pundit!)

Assorted pix and videos from the whole three weeks:

View from Inside the Orange Microscope Slide - part 1

View from Inside the Orange Microscope Slide - part 1


This is part 1, my philosphical musings about the abortion debate in general and the results of  three weeks of protest.

 --TexBetsy from Relaxed Politics and The Head On Radio Network


 I'm an Austin resident, and a sometimes blogger over at Relaxed Politics, a blog that has fallen from its glory into a definite relaxed state.  Texas, on the other hand, is NOT a relaxed state. Not when it comes to women's reproductive rights. Over the three weeks of abortion rights hearings and legislative sessions, I think I spent most or all of seven days wearing orange and protesting at the capitol. Three of those days went late into the night.  I saw parts of Wendy Davis's filibuster live and in person.  I stormed the rotunda that night and screamed myself hoarse at least four times. Here are a few of my reflections.

I got discouraged a few times over the course of the protests, especially during the second special session, as it became obvious that the bill would pass in spite of our best efforts.  So why continue? What was the point?  Why wake up early, dress again in a color that makes my skin look like I'm related to Boehner, pack up an electronics bag, snacks, and take the bus down to the capitol; the results are a foregone conclusion with the party line votes and the supermajority in both chambers?

As I am sure you know, this is NOT a debate about women's health or about life, at least not in the sense that the republicans are framing it.  If it were any of these things, the legislators would have adopted the amendments that might actually keep women and babies healthy, or prevent unwanted pregnancies to begin with. A  truly “pro-life” cause does not reject federal medicaid money, cut WIC benefits, or deny TANF to pregnant women. Pro-life must be pro-Quality Of Life for all those involved. This is something more than pro-existence.

I am a professional in what a friend refers to as "the religion industry" and my religious beliefs inform my politics and most aspects of my life. (In my case, my religion teaches that the life and health of the mother take precedence over the developing fetus in all cases.) As important as it is to me, religion should not inform public policy, and no lawmaker has the constitutional right to devote his or her floor speeches to how the legislation under consideration aligns with the Baptist Convention. No legislator speaks for God, and I resent that even the pro-choice democrats feel the need to talk about and name their savior while opposing a bill. Is this a theocracy?

So why continue to protest when we had no chance of winning in the second session? The effort matters because the world is watching.  Our orange marches and protests and screaming matches focused the eyes of the world onto the abortion politics and the insanity in this country.  Our Twitter feeds and Facebook pictures and YouTube posts showed the rest of the world exactly how corrupt and conniving the pro-birth politicians are, not just here in Texas but all over the country.

Misogyny: It's What's For Dinner

Misogyny: It's What's For Dinner

Texas woman Susan Schorn here--I'm a black belt and self defense advocate living in Austin, and I write about women and fighting for McSweeney's Internet Tendency. Book here, Web site here, video of me beating up my husband behind a dumpster here. Many thanks to His Supreme Rudeness for letting me indulge my penchant for extended livestock analogies on his blog today. Solidarity, ya'll.

There's a reason the average Texas woman is meaner than a goddamn snake: She lives with Texas men.

Texas women live among men who believe they have a divine right to control other people. Men who are so sure of this privilege that they've never wasted a moment reflecting on the corresponding responsibilities it might entail, nor bothered to employ any sort of nuance as they go about exercising it.

The quintessentially awful Texas man is rarer than he used to be, praise Jesus, but he still owns the state government. Here in Texas, we women have our laws made for us by men like David Dewhurst, who blamed an "unruly mob" of females for derailing his first effort to ram through a draconian anti-abortion law, and then huffed on Twitter, "be assured that I'll strictly enforce rules to uphold decorum, ensuring our democratic process isn't interrupted." Men like Rick Perry, who lectured Wendy Davis on how she ought to have learned from her own life experiences, because clearly a Harvard lawyer needs remedial instruction from a man who barely scraped a C in his college course on Reproduction in Farm Animals.  And men like Jonathan Strickland, who Tweeted his gratitude for the Second Amendment when faced with all the scary gals waving coat hangers. In Texas, women like me live with men who have never doubted their right to rule us, school us, or shoot us.

Frankly I'm a little surprised that Perry didn't earn a better grade in his study of the forced breeding of cattle, because he and his fellow Texas womb police show an innate understanding of the concept. A conservative male Texas legislator, contemplating the problem of female sexuality, basically sees himself as a bull--not a tough, range-savvy Longhorn, but a pampered, cosseted beef industry breeding machine, with all the female fecundity of his species as his lawful due. He feels entitled to respectful handling, ready access to his herd, and docile receptacles for his valuable seed, which it is his right and duty to propagate.

The fate of those adorable knock-kneed calves after they're born doesn't concern him; that a sizable percentage of "his" cows are lost to the rigors of calving each year is not his problem. All he's concerned with is leaving the imprint of his own turgid balls on as much of the future as he possibly can. And that requires an orderly breeding operation.

Which explains Dewhurst and his peers' ruttish outrage at being interrupted in the midst of their sweaty, red-faced lawmaking. Davis's filibuster thwarted them in mid-thrust, and provided a climax very different from what they were anticipating. And thus the bellowing commenced--and the arrests, and the nonsensical, yet oddly telling, confiscation of feminine hygiene products (did you know that in a commercial beef breeding operation, all the cows are kept on the same estrus cycle? They call that "quality control."). Watch the video of the DPS trooper handcuffing a 74-year-old women, and you'll be surprised that he doesn't throw his hands up in the air when he's finished, like a contestant at a calf-roping. Because when you live with these big ugly lumps of beef, you know that the last thing they can tolerate is chaos in the breeding barn. Animals that don't cooperate have to be roped and wrangled into submission. The cows cannot be allowed to decide whether or when they want to be serviced.

Rational people might call this approach to reproductive rights rape culture. I certainly do. Living with it--and with the people who perpetrate it, and normalize it, and make sanctimonious speeches about it--does not incline me to sweetness and light.

Some women, in Texas and elsewhere, are patient and docile, and amble willingly into the breeding chute. They moo about the sanctity of life, even when it's engendered by force. A few prize heifers actually help the bulls run their breeding operation, like Jodi Laubenberg, whose sponsorship of the recently-passed legislation recalls the moment in Animal Farm when the pigs stand up and start walking on their hind legs. (Laubenberg is the same gold-plated brainbox who claimed that “In the emergency room they have what’s called rape kits where a woman can get cleaned out.") 

But most of us Texas women are not docile, and we've run out of patience. We're sick of being regarded as incubators, tired of being told we're less important than a non-viable fetus. So you can expect to hear a lot more whooping and hollering from Texas in the coming days, as we round up this bunch of worn-out old bulls, and send them to the packing plant. 

And then, we will have one hell of a barbecue.

A Brief Note Regarding the Zimmerman Verdict: At Long Last, the Most Perfect Crime:
Mystery novels are filled with criminals who attempt to commit the perfect crime. That is, a murder, usually, that they get away with. Most of the time, there is some cat-and-mouse game between the detective trying to solve the case and the killer. The perfect crime is the one that the killer never even gets arrested for, the one where, perhaps, as in the case of Roald Dahl's "Lamb to the Slaughter," the cops unwittingly eat the murder weapon.

But the verdict in the case of George Zimmerman, accused of murdering Trayvon Martin, proves that everyone from Agatha Christie to James Patterson has been thinking small. The perfect crime is not just the one you get away with. The perfect crime is the one for which you are acquitted in a court of law. In fact, the most perfect crime of all is the one where, no matter what your true intent, the law supports and sanctions your right to murder in cold blood.

The shooting of Trayvon Martin, it turns out, was that most perfect of crimes.

This blog has previously discussed the complicity of the Florida legislature in making laws that are so ludicrously pro-murder that a Trayvon Martin-type killing was inevitable. It has also argued that the police and conservative media figures successfully turned Martin into a nigger thug who was looking for trouble. It has shown, quite clearly, that Stand Your Ground and other so-called "self-defense" laws do not apply to African Americans who choose to defend themselves. Any anger the Rude Pundit feels, at Zimmerman, at the verdict, at the prosecutors, at the defense attorneys, he expressed last night on Twitter; it has been expressed by others and is being expressed in the streets of America tonight. He agrees with Ta-Nehesi Coates that the law in the state of Florida, a law passed by politicians who can be voted out of office if the people of the state really want it changed, demanded that George Zimmerman be let free and given back his gun.

So he'll just say this: On that night last February, when he got out of his car, George Zimmerman became the judge and jury of Trayvon Martin, accused of the crime of being a black male teenager walking in a neighborhood. Zimmerman then became Martin's executioner because, like so many oppressed people before him, Martin resisted Zimmerman's judgment. So Zimmerman did what scared people in power do all the time. He used overwhelming force to stop Martin's resistance. It is the same kind of force that has killed people and movements in America and all over the world.

George Zimmerman wanted Trayvon Martin to submit to his power, to be what Zimmerman had adjudicated him to be. Trayvon Martin refused. Trayvon Martin resisted. And that's why Trayvon Martin, like so many resisters before him, had to be killed.

There was no way George Zimmerman was going to be found guilty because his guilt would have made Trayvon Martin innocent and said that the law was wrong. Even worse, it would have made Trayvon Martin, the black male teenager, right in his resistance, and the state of Florida, if not the entire nation, would not allow that to happen.

Next Week: Rude Women Will Kick Your Ass Over Abortion Rights:
The Rude Pundit will be on vacation next week because if he doesn't get his brain off the crack of politics for a while, he's gonna stab the next person with an anti-Obamacare bumper sticker. But never fear, for there will be writers taking over, a bunch of righteously pissed-off women, and they will kick your ass.

As state after state lines up to be total assholes about women's rights and women's health clinics, this here blog is gonna feature women who live or just left those places that have decided that the government owns all uteruses. You're gonna hear from women who are involved in boots-on-the-ground activism, as well as women who have never blogged or marched, but want to tell their stories: of what Planned Parenthood has done for them, about what they want for themselves or their daughters.

The schedule will go like this:
Monday will be an all-Texas day.
Tuesday will feature the middle of the country, with writers from Oklahoma, Kansas, and Wisconsin.
On Wednesday, we'll head to Ohio, where former Fox "news" goon John Kasich has driven the state incredibly rightward.
On Thursday, we're going south, with North Carolina and Mississippi writers.
Friday finishes the week with Virginia and Alabama (and a touch more Texas).

The full list of names will be up later today.

The response the Rude Pundit received to his call for women writers was both sad and amazing. The fact that over four dozen women wanted to write to the world bespeaks an awful backlash against women, again, in this nation. But the fact that so many refuse to stay silent, as we see every day in the protests at capitals around the nation, is incredible.

To everyone who wrote in, a sincere hat tip of gratitude.

Next week is gonna be awesome around here.

Newt Gingrich's Daughter Doesn't Seem to Know Who Her Father Is:
Truly, there are other, more important things to write about, but the Rude Pundit just couldn't face scribbling another "Man, those Republicans sure are motherfucking, obstructionist, traitor dickheads" post. Let's just let it stand as more or less uncontestably true: Those Republicans sure are motherfucking, obstructionist, traitor dickheads.

Luckily, he came across the latest scrawlings of conservative writer and speaker Jackie Gingrich Cushman, aka "NewtSpawn." Yes, yes, the daughter of the former Speaker of the House just wrote a "column" (if by "column," you mean, "the most craven attempt you have seen to get a father to love his child") that is so jaw-droppingly blind and so head-slappingly un-self-aware that you have to question if Ms. Cushman actually has ever met her own father, Newt Gingrich.

Because, see, the point of the column - and, really, you need to keep in mind that this was written by Newt Gingrich's daughter - is to ponder the question she poses early in it: "Why are the dually disgraced Eliot Spitzer and Anthony Weiner running for office after engaging in public peccadilloes that would have doubtless persuaded many a lesser man to stay home?"

Now, you might read that and go, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, there, Jackie. Have you ever read even the briefest biography of your father? You do know that there are reasons why he's called 'disgraced former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich,' right? Right? And that those reasons include fucking around on your mom with the woman who became his second wife and then fucking around on her?"

Strangely, or not, depending on your level of incredulity, Cushman doesn't mention dear old Dad, who had asked his second wife for an open marriage so he could bang the woman who became his third wife without feeling guilty, and his run for, you know, the presidency of the whole damn country as an example of a "pervert" trying to get back in good electoral graces.

Yes, Republicans continue to be motherfucking, obstructionist, traitor dickheads. And we could easily add "delusional" in there, too. 

Late Post Today:

The Rude Pundit is swimming through the tidal wave of email from women who want to kick some legislators' asses (rhetorically, sure) over abortion rights by writing for this here blog. Keep it coming. 

Back later with more rudeness.

The Neverending Abortion War: The Rude Pundit Is Seeking a Few Good Women Writers:
Starting Monday, the Rude Pundit is taking a week off from the rigors of bloggery. But rather than just go dark for five days, he wants to make an offer.

He would like to feature the writing of women in states whose governments have passed or are about to pass cruel anti-choice laws. So, going down a list from a recent Salon piece, he'd like to hear from women in Texas, North Carolina, Ohio, Virginia, Mississippi, North Dakota, South Dakota, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Kansas. If you've got another vicious state in mind, please toss it in. Looking at you, Louisiana.

Ideally, the writers would be either involved in the battle to save abortion rights, have used or relied on women's health clinics that provide abortion services (like Planned Parenthood Centers), or have seen the effects of the closing of these clinics. Have you protested in Austin? Seen what has happened now that Mississippi is down to one clinic? Then the Rude Pundit wants you to tell your story or give your point of view. This blog should take a break from mansplaining the issue.

Here's the deal: If you are interested, just contact the Rude Pundit through the magic of email. Tell him what state you're from, your connection to the issue (which might just be, "Um, I'm a woman living in North Dakota"), and, briefly, what you think you'd like to tell the legions of rude readers. Also, say what days next week are best for you to write.

Then, if you get the go-ahead, all you need to do is simple. Write a single blog post on the date assigned, from July 15-19. That's it. You can say anything you like in whatever way you like using whatever words you want, even those you're not supposed to say.

(The only rule is not to directly threaten anyone's life in a realistic way: There's a difference between the rhetorical "I'd like to see Rick Perry beaten out of town like a rabid cur" and the creepier "I'm heading to the statehouse with a machete.")

Oh, and if you have your own blog or website, feel free to promote it all that you want. And it'll join the roll on the side. If you've never written a blog post in your life, well, this is a damn fine place to start. Previous guest posters here have included Pam Spaulding, Lindsay Beyerstein, and Jill Filipovic.

If you're interested, email "rudepundit_at_yahoo(dot)com".

A Tale of the Little Gay Flag That Made Cajuns Angry:

See that lovely rainbow flag up there, floating out on a flag pole over the azaleas? It's in Girard Park in Lafayette, Louisiana, which just happens to be the Rude Pundit's hometown, where he goes when he visits the Rude family. The group Acadiana OUTspoken Alliance co-sponsored an event to mark the closing of Gay Pride Month, and, by news accounts, a fine time was had by all. Indeed, the event was celebratory for a couple of reasons. The obvious one is that the Defense of Marriage Act had been overturned by the Supreme Court. The other was that the group had no problem getting permission to hoist the flag. Said AOA board member Angelica Vedol, "I thought we’d have to petition to raise the flag, but it wasn’t like that...It was like, ‘Yeah, you can use it.’" In the heart of Cajun Catholic South Louisiana, no one seemed to have a problem with the flag.

Of course, that was until cranky old veteran Ray Green was offended by it because, goddamnit, he didn't fight in Korea for the queers to be able to have free expression on public property in the form of a flag on an otherwise empty flag pole. So Green contacted Lafayette City-Parish Council Member Andy Naquin, who agreed with the principle of flag censorship. Naquin said, "Government flag poles really should be meant to fly only government flags." So he's come up with a solution: outlaw anyone from flying a non-government flag on a government flag pole, perhaps even from all public property. That'll show 'em that the flag pole ain't a fag-pole. (Boo-yah! Up high! Anyone?)

And while he hasn't proposed anything specific yet, Naquin is worried about the precedent that will be set if the Gay Pridesters are allowed to let their freak flag fly on a pole paid for by our taxes. "What would happen if the Catholics were to fly a flag or a pro-life flag was flown or KKK flag was flown or even Taliban flag was flown? Who would you say ‘no' to when you open those doors?" he asked.

Indeed. You never know what might happen if anyone is allowed willy-nilly to fly the flag of its group on a guv'mint pole.

That up there is the New Rochelle, NY armory. It is public land. That's a government owned and operated flag pole. And right there under the American flag is the Gadsden flag, the "Don't Tread on Me" flag, or, as it's known now, the Tea Party flag. Veterans in New Rochelle raised it without permission while changing an old American flag, and it was taken down by order of the city council, upsetting teabaggers everywhere.

Now, let's make this fun:

Andy Naquin was endorsed by the local Tea Party when he ran in 2011. The Rude Pundit has been to a Tea Party event in Lafayette where you can sure as shit bet that non-government flags were flying high in a public park and in the rec center there.

So, Council Member Naquin, do you support banning those flags, too? Your supporters deserve an answer.

In Brief: What Ought to Happen Regarding NSA Surveillance and FISA Court "Oversight"

In Brief: What Ought to Happen Regarding NSA Surveillance and FISA Court "Oversight":
(Note: Yesterday, the Rude Pundit was forced into the demonic choice of eating at Five Guys or Panera. Despite previous incidents, he went with the "healthier" Panera, and today, as before, his stomach is suffering mightily, as is his much-abused bathroom, from waste extrusions above and below. So this will be brief as he feels a heave approaching.)

This morning on The Stephanie Miller Show, the graceful, demure Ms. Miller asked the Rude Pundit a question that, truth be told, he should have had an answer for. "What would you do?" she asked, in the wake of a discussion of the increasingly disconcerting revelations about the National Security Agency's routine collection of, well, shit,  seeming every piece of information about electronic/digital/sky-flying communication except for content (although, really, at this point, can you be sure?), as well as the New York Times article this weekend about the rubber stamp work of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (or FISA court, when A=Act). See, a group of 11 judges, appointed with no oversight, no checks, no balances by Chief Justice John Roberts, hears secret evidence on secret cases to grant secret warrants for the NSA to secretly collect, well, shit, pretty much everything. Oh, and it's taken the Patriot Act and FISA to mean that the NSA can collect, well, shit, pretty much everything (with a big assist from telecommunications companies). And the Obama administration has taken that to mean it has free license to go nutzoid on collecting...

All nice and legal and secret.

If we had not been on FCC-sanctioned radio, the Rude Pundit would have said, "Well, fuck me. That's a great question." Instead, he took the politic route and said, "That's what we need to figure out." But that's not good enough. Put the fuck up or shut the fuck up, you know? So here goes, in a few easy steps:

 1. Okay, so Obama wants (or has been forced into) a "national conversation" about what we're going to do about "security" since we have all these "threats" around us? Let's have that conversation. But let's please stop having it through all the cunts and cowards on TV palavering about it.

2. Instead, let's have it out in Congress. This presumes a Congress that could have a debate. Let's debate if we're cool with the metadata pond that allows intelligence officials to go fishing or whatever stupid fucking metaphor you wanna use.

2a. Yes, we can debate this in the open. If you don't believe that we can, if you think "the terrorists will know" or some idiocy, then you have allowed fear to dictate the terms of democracy and that's how democracy withers away.

2 (cont'd). And, assuming a functioning Congress, pass laws that set the terms of surveillance and data collection in a post-privacy era. Those terms may be "Go right ahead. Collect, well, shit, everything. And, what the hell, put cameras everywhere." Or they may be "Whoa, whoa, get the fuck out of our browser histories. Spy on the bad guys only."

3. 'Cause, see, then we'd know. And then we get to decide, through elections, if we agree with what came out of the "national conversation."

4. 'Cause, see, then we'd know who we are and where we stand. Are we the nation that has sanctioned its intelligence services to monitor us? Or are we the nation that says, "Oh, fuck no"?

5. 'Cause, see, even if we as a nation decide "Whatever, fine, go ahead" when it comes to surveillance, that'd make us different than the Soviet Union, China, East Germany, whatever example of secret surveillance you wanna use. Transparency goes a long, long way to restoring trust.

"We have no one to blame but ourselves" is a far better position than "Shut up and take it."

Among the Huddled Masses on the Fourth

Among the Huddled Masses on the Fourth:

Another Fourth of July on the Jersey side of the Hudson, another sunny afternoon spent in great company, getting progressively wasted at a bar before joining the teeming masses on the piers of Hoboken to see the fireworks with the skyline of Manhattan as a backdrop without a note of goddamn Usher music. The Rude Pundit received another text from his conservative pal in Dallas, this time awaiting a concert by Rick Springfield before the sky lit up there. We tried to figure out a song besides "Jessie's Girl" that Springfield sang but couldn't. So that must have been an awkward hour or so of "Oh, yeah, he did sing that one," like a little surprise party.

Out on the piers, the Rude Pundit witnessed every kind of ethnic stereotype you could imagine. Large Hispanic families on lawn chairs, downing empanadas with rice and beans. The Indian young man with his more traditional-looking parents, Mom in a sari, pointing to lower Manhattan and saying, "Want to see where I work, Pop? Look at the tallest building in America and right next to it is my office." The Japanese man who asked the Rude Pundit to take his picture with the city behind him. The arrogant, douchey young white people.

The Rude Pundit's partner pointed out the one cigar-smoking man, who said, "I don't smoke these often." To which the Rude Pundit added, "So when I do, I want to do it in a crowd to make sure I'm as much of a dick as possible."

Yes, alternating between weary disgust and simple good humor about the people around us, we watched the rockets red glare, a nice breeze coming off the water, lights of phone cameras forming a dotted line below the burning blossoms, the Arab family pushing their children through the people, insisting that everyone get out of their way, the black family arriving just a little late for the start, the polyglot reactions to the smiling face or the heart fireworks, all of it, in its hand-holding good, its uncaring bumping bad, its cigar-smoking ugly, so very, for lack of a better or more nuanced word, American.

For Independence Day, Let's Remember a Leak That Helped Spur on the Revolution

For Independence Day, Let's Remember a Leak That Helped Spur the American Revolution:
By the end of his life, no one loved former Massachusetts governor Thomas Hutchinson. A loyalist's loyalist, Hutchinson led the state during both the Boston Massacre and the Boston Tea Party. He was hated by the Americans and never fully accepted by the leaders of Great Britain, where he lived after fleeing the gathering war fever. After he died, John Adams pretty much called him a dick.

But the man wrote letters, tons of 'em. Someone gave Benjamin Franklin a stack of letters that Hutchinson, as chief justice and then governor, along with province secretary Andrew Oliver, wrote to Great Britain in 1767-1769, letters that said things like, "I wish the good of the colony when I wish to see some further restraint of liberty rather than the connection with the parent state should be broken," as well as asking for more British troops to help squelch the nascent rebellion. Hutchinson implored the receiver to keep the communications secret.

For his part, in 1772, Franklin showed the letters only to the leaders of the Revolution, but Adams said, "Fuck that," and printed some of them in the Boston Gazette in 1773, which, of course, caused a huge public uproar against Hutchinson and fanned the flames against the British. When three people were charged by the British with the leak, and two others were going to duel over accusations of who stole them, Franklin stepped up and said he did it. It cost him his job as Postmaster General. Hutchinson put himself into exile in England for the rest of his life rather than face impeachment at home. He became something of a right-wing troll for the crown, as one letter of his criticizing the Declaration of Independence demonstrates.

In his confession, Franklin admitted to the leak of the letters, but he defended his intentions: "They were written by public officers to persons of public station, on public affairs, and intended to procure public measures; they were therefore handed to other public persons who might be influenced by them to produce those measures." And then Franklin concluded with a great middle finger to those accusing him of some kind of treason: "The chief caution expressed with regard to privacy was to keep their contents from Colony Agents, who the writers apprehended might return them, or copies of them, to America. That apprehension, it seems, was well-founded; for the first agent who laid his hands on them thought it his duty to transmit them to his constituents."

Franklin thought that the people deserved to know what their leaders were plotting against them. That we honor him today must mean we believe there is some good to such actions.

A Bolivian Steamer

A Bolivian Steamer:
The Rude Pundit just wants to pause for a second to see if he can get his head around this: Based on something, a rumor, intel, a Scooby-Doo hunch, a tingle in James Clapper's balls, the plane carrying Evo Morales, the democratically-elected president of Bolivia, from a meeting in Moscow was blocked from entering the airspace of nations that it needed to, you know, fly across and was forced to land in Austria, where the plane was searched to see if Edward fucking Snowden, the NSA whistleblower, was on board. He wasn't. It's pretty much a guarantee that the United States (also known as "us") was responsible. That's deranged, man.

Let's give some advice here to the Obama administration. If you're gonna provoke an international incident, you better have a fucking photo of Snowden toasting Morales with a mini-bottle of vodka. Otherwise, you just look like an imperialist dickhead who knew he could bully the little brown leftist. You can bet that if Snowden had been getting banged by prostitutes wearing Biden masks on Vladmir Putin's jet, the flight wouldn't have been stopped at all. This is a big fucking deal, with leaders in Argentina and Peru (not just those putas in Ecuador and Venezuela) calling for a meeting of South American nations to respond.

Gotta say: this shit's embarrassing. Is this how the greatest superpower in the history of the whole goddamn world, as we're told again and again, is gonna act to try to catch a poindexter who handed flash drives to journalists? Snowden already gave away all that he had. Catching him ain't gonna stop a single secret from coming out anymore. It ain't worth pissing off an entire continent.

This whole thing feels so degrading, like getting a sweaty, drunken blumpkin in a festival port-a-potty.

Bolivian government officials are calling this incident a "kidnapping" of its president. And it's hard to argue. What would have happened if Snowden had been on the plane with the promise of asylum? Would we have arrested Morales as an accessory? How far would we go in violating international law just to show the world that only this America gets to decide what's right and wrong?

Random Thoughts on the NSA, Secrets, and Snowden

Random Thoughts on the NSA, Secrets, and Snowden:
1. Man, it's exciting, isn't it? Where will NSA leaker Edward Snowden end up? Will he live in limbo in a TGI Friday's in the Moscow airport? Will he get asylum? Where will he take a shit? Does he have access to shampoo? Holy fuck, tell us more about his plea bargain deal offers and his attempts to find a country to take him. Tell us more because the more we hear about Edward Snowden, fugitive from the butthurt U.S. government, the less we have to grapple with what Snowden's leaked documents actually reveal about the U.S. surveillance state.

2. What should have happened is that Snowden should have been arrested in the United States and tried for whatever crimes in open court so that the public could learn if any actual harm was done to the nation, as he's being accused of doing without those making the accusations needing to prove any of it.  Yeah, Snowden should have gone the typical whistleblower route, but, fuck, if you saw what happened to Bradley Manning, if you saw the Obama administration's war on whistleblowers, you'd have probably run, too. We're not the nation that wrestled with Daniel Ellsberg's disclosure of the Pentagon Papers, a nation that was actually shocked by the espionage against Ellsberg, which led to the dismissal of all charges. Today, we'd just say of the wiretapping, surveillance, and the break-in that led to the Watergate scandal, "Well, of course the government does that. How else can they keep us safe?" And we'd simply nod and go along with any trial that needed to be conducted with the defendant's lawyers not having access to information because it's too fucking secret.

3. Snowden wouldn't have needed to exist as a leaker had the White House been straight with the American people. "Yes," they could have said, "we specifically want to collect your phone call data. We want to collect this internet data." Why the fuck not go to Congress with that? Why not allow that to be debated instead of being approved by a secret court from secret interpretations of the laws that Congress did pass? Senators Ron Wyden and Mark Udall practically begged the Obama administration to be transparent. Wyden gave James Clapper the chance to come clean. At some point, shit was gonna leak. It always does. The problem with the leak is that you can't control it; hence, all the other information about U.S. spying that's been revealed because Snowden apparently just fuckin' took everything.

4. The reaction that most infuriates the Rude Pundit is that Snowden didn't do the nation any favors because, well, fuck, we all knew that our phone calls and other information was being monitored. As David Ignatius said last week, "In more than 34 years of traveling regularly overseas, I have assumed that foreign intelligence services are picking my communications clean." Yeah, but there's a huge difference between strongly suspecting that your husband is fucking around and being shown pictures of him balling the babysitter. There's vast gulf between "knowing" and knowledge. The intelligence services have been forced to say, "Okay, yeah, you caught us." The twist is that they're adding, "And, oh, by the way, we're gonna keep boning the babysitter. Just try to stop us from fucking her."

5. The Snowden chronicles (and, to a lesser extent, the irrelevant Glenn-Greenwald-is-such-an-asshole attacks) are an enormous distraction from the real stories, the massive extent of spying on Americans without suspicion or warrant (which, the Rude Pundit has said repeatedly, is something that at least deserves a good debate) and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper lying to Congress. And if these things don't matter to you, especially those of you on the left side of the political wall, if you think "security" has been compromised or some such shit that hasn't been demonstrated at all, well, congratulations. You're finally on the side of George W. Bush, John Yoo, Dick Cheney, and other assorted war criminals.

Photos That Make the Rude Pundit Want to Shove a Bayonet Up Someone's Ass:
This was the scene yesterday on the land where the Battle of Gettysburg took place 150 years ago today.

That's a reenactment of that bloody battle. Boy, it's smoky. Hope no one's asthma acted up.

Here's what pretty much the same location looked like back in 1863:

Those are dead Confederate soldiers. They were traitors.

Hey, you wanna have a hobby? You wanna dress up and play soldier without a risk of anything beyond a twisted ankle and a few sweat stains? It's cool. Hell, you wanna play the bad guys, the South, that's cool, too. Anything to get you out of the house, you know? Everyone loves to be Darth Vader.

But if you dress up like a rebel and say you do so because you believe in the "cause" of the Confederacy, as some of the re-enactors do? If you still use bullshit phrases like "states' rights"? Then you don't really understand the meaning of the battle. And you further dishonor the dishonorable dead.

Late Post Today:
The Rude Pundit is wondering what oath he has to violate to get paid as much as David Petraeus for professorin'.

Back later with more adulterous rudeness.