The Charleston massacre led to the removal of the Confederate battle flag from the grounds of the state capitol. Many people saw it as an affront to the victims that the flag continued to fly over the state house, and the legislature voted to remove it. Controversy over the removal of Confederate symbols and monuments spread, and recently sparked violence in  Charlottesville, Virginia, where Nazis and white supremacists protesting the removal of a statue of Confederate general Robert E. Lee from a city park clashed with counter protestors.

Embed from Getty Images

In the aftermath of Charlottesville, more states, cities, and institutions are removing Confederate monuments from their public spaces.

• Baltimore quietly removed all four of its Confederate statues, after more than 1,000 people marched in the city’s streets.
• Maryland governor Larry Hogan (R) said it’s time to remove the statue of Supreme Court justice Roger B. Taney — slavery defender and author of the  Dred Scott decision — from the grounds of the state capitol.
• In Durham, North Carolina, Duke University removed a statue of Robert E. Lee from its chapel entrance.
• New Orleans removed four statues — including one celebrating a deadly white supremacist insurgency in 1874.
• Other cities have followed, including, Memphis, Tennessee; Lexington, Kentucky; Jacksonville, Florida; and Washington, DC.

Approximately 1,500 Confederate symbols exist on public land, including 718 monuments and statues. “Heritage” organizations placed many of them immediately after the Civil war. Others appeared following the Supreme Court’s  “separate but equal” ruling. There were rises in monument dedications between 1900 and the 1920s when states were enacting  Jim Crow laws; and from 1950 to 1960, when the Supreme Court struck down segregation.

Removing Confederate symbols isn’t erasing or rewriting history. It’s being honest about what those symbols stand for and acknowledging that what those honored by these monuments fought for was wrong, and shouldn’t be honored. President Barack Obama stated this eloquently in his eulogy of Charleston victim Rev. Clementa Pinckney.

“Removing the flag from this state’s Capitol would not be an act of political correctness; it would not be an insult to the valor of Confederate soldiers. It would simply be an acknowledgment that the cause for which they fought—the cause of slavery—was wrong. The imposition of Jim Crow after the Civil War, the resistance to civil rights for all people was wrong,” he said. “It would be one step in an honest accounting of America’s history, a modest but meaningful balm for so many unhealed wounds.”

Past and present attempts to obscure its importance notwithstanding, the southern states seceded and went to war defend not just slavery, but the belief at the foundation of the  “peculiar institution.” As I wrote in 2015, Confederates didn’t invent slavery. They reinvented it. Slavery, as practiced in the South, was firmly rooted in white supremacy: the belief that white people are superior to people of other races and should, therefore, have the right to subjugate other races.  Confederates were unambiguous that they were defending not only slavery but white supremacy itself.

• Several states explicitly named slavery as a cause in their secession documents.
• Georgia newspaper Editor William Thompson wrote, “We are fighting to maintain the Heaven ordained supremacy of the white man over the inferior or colored races.”
• South Carolina congressman James Henry Hammond argued in his “Cotton is King” speech, “Our slaves are black, of another and inferior race. The status in which we have placed them is an elevation. They are elevated from the condition in which God first created them, by being made our slaves.”

Not only did some Confederates believe that slavery was good for blacks (as do some conservatives), but it was the basis of white equality.

• Confederate president Jefferson Davis said in a speech before the Mississippi legislature, “You too know, that among us, white men have an equality resulting form a presence of a lower caste, which cannot exist where white men fill the position here occupied by the servile race.”
• Georgia governor Joseph E. Brown in a proclamation defending secession wrote: “Among us the poor white laborer is respected as an equal. His family is treated with kindness, consideration and respect. He does not belong to the menial class. The negro is in no sense of the term his equal. He feels and knows this. He belongs to the only true aristocracy, the race of white men.”

Even the poorest whites were invested in defending slavery because they belonged to the superior race. The poorest white man who could say contentedly to himself, “At least I’m not a nigger,” would aspire to the wealth of the plantation owners — instead of challenging the disparity between them. After all, they were both white men. The end of slavery would threaten the white supremacy that was the real foundation the “Southern way of life.”

White supremacy didn’t end along with slavery. It spawned Jim Crow and segregation. Its monuments and symbols proliferated. They are not just monuments to the Confederate “cause,” but to white supremacy itself.

The right-wing embrace of Confederate symbols grew with white anxieties about shrinking demographics and fading political and cultural primacy. They were stripped of the racial privilege that shielded them from harsh economic realities, and are losing their place at the center of American identity. Their identification with Confederate symbols reflects white conservatives’ anxiety over their place in an America that is growing less and less white. The removal of Confederate statues and symbols is almost a physical manifestation of the loss of primacy they feel — as though they are being erased from the culture.

Right now, a majority of Americans think Confederate statues should remain, but that is likely to shift along with racial demographics. The movement to remove Confederate symbols from public spaces will grow, along with the anxieties that feed the anger at their removal.

Now that I’m finding my way back to writing again, I wanted to share what’s been happening with anyone who might still be out there listening.

Since my last post on this blog, I’ve experienced several of the items on the list of most stressful life events.

In late summer of 2016, I was laid off from the job I’d held for almost ten years, where I spent much of that time writing about politics. It was the result of a merger between organizations, which made some workers redundant, myself included. I immediately began a job search, which turned up little more than a couple of interviews. I figured the election and the holiday season had delivered a one-two punch to the job search and vowed to renew my efforts in the new year.

Fate, however, had other plans.

The results of the election results left me reeling, and questioning further involvement in politics. It seemed like the worst thing that could happen.

It wasn’t.

On December 30, 2016, Rick — my beloved husband of 16 years — passed away suddenly and unexpectedly. We were expecting him home for dinner, and instead, a police officer came to the door to tell us that he would never come home again. Rick was just 50 years old. We learned later that he had an undetected, undiagnosed heart condition, and that was what caused his death.

It has been a devastating blow to the boys and me. The last eight months have seen us struggle with grief, and trying to put our lives back together; fighting to get on our feet, only to get washed away in grief with every special day, anniversary, or reminder of our loss.

I have been unable to write much beyond journaling about our grieving process. I decided to take an extended break from my job search to be here for the boys. Fortunately, we have enough resources that I can do that comfortably.

When the boys go back to school, I will start looking for writing work again. In the meantime, as the urge to write returns to me, I may be posting here more often. Even if there’s no audience and nobody reads it, the act of writing his healing to me.

I know it’s also what Rick would want. He knew me so well and understood that I am left deeply unhappy and unfulfilled without writing. Rick was always supportive of my writing and believed in my abilities as a writer. I know he would want me to keep writing.

So, I am finding my way back to writing and back to this blog, slowly; one step at a time.

Donald Trump Never Paid For Ryan White’s HIV Treatment, His Mom Says

WASHINGTON ― The mother of Ryan White disputed claims on Monday that Donald Trump paid for her son’s medical treatment and warned that the GOP presidential nominee’s bullying is setting a bad example for children. White contracted HIV at the age of 13 when receiving a tainted blood treatment for his hemophilia.

WASHINGTON ― The mother of Ryan White disputed claims on Monday that Donald Trump paid for her son’s medical treatment and warned that the GOP presidential nominee’s bullying is setting a bad example for children. White contracted HIV at the age of 13 when receiving a tainted blood treatment for his hemophilia.

Of course he didn’t. Why would he, just because he said he would? Remember, this is the guy who turned his back on his good friend Roy Cohn when he was dying of AIDS. Yeah, Cohn was a shitheel’s shitheel, but Trump counted him as a friend until he learned of his AIDS diagnosis. Ryan White was good “optics” for Trump, and probably got him some media attention at the time by saying he would take care of the medications from https://www.ukmeds.co.uk/emtricitabine-tenofovir but once White wasn’t any more use to him, Trump “dropped him like a hot potato, just like he did with Cohn.

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• Trump says he'll put Clinton in jail. It's a threat that should terrify us.
  He would use the presidency to persecute his personal enemies.
• Trump’s racist ruse: His farcical outreach to black voters is just white supremacy in disguise
  Donald Trump’s “outreach” to black voters is a farce. Luckily, the mainstream media is beginning to clue into the fact that when Trump speaks about black people, the message is about reassuring his white supporters that they aren’t really racist, more than trying to win over black voters.
• Luke Cage’s bulletproof body: “Marvel’s Luke Cage” is a needed dose of cool at a painful time
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• It's The Skin Color, Stupid
  You don’t like the choices? Trump or Hillary? You, and everyone before you, brought us to this point. For whites, it’s High Noon in Mayberry. For people of color, it’s high time for change.

To borrow quote from Pink Floyd, “Hello? Is there anybody in there?” Does anybody still read this blog? It’s been 13 years since I started it, and launched a career I’d never even imagined possible. Now, I’m back, blowing the dust off of it and trying to figure out what’s next.

Thirteen years ago this week, I started this blog. We were just about to round the bend on our first year of parenthood, and after discovering the blogs of some friends of mine, I decided to start one of my own. I’d always been a writer, and it seemed like a great way to create an outlet for that, and maybe even reach an audience.

It reached more people than I’d imagined. Six months later, I was recruited to be the Blogmaster for a new progressive internet firm called EchoDitto, Inc. (Now known as Echo & Co.) Suddenly, I was a professional blogger, one of a handful of people who had parlayed blogging into actual paying work — not necessarily making money from our own blogs, but getting jobs with non-profits, or new media, on the strength of our blogging.

I was swept into a new world so quickly, that I don’t think I stopped to fully appreciate my success. Instead, suddenly in a field where everyone seemed to be a least ten years younger than me, and about as many years ahead of me, I feel my shortcomings and deficiencies more acutely than ever, especially the time I lost due to untreated ADD. It took years before I could appreciate how I’d accomplished.

I left EchoDitto after about four years. The company’s business model was changing. It no longer made its money from the things I’d been hired to do. There wasn’t much of a need for teaching people about blogging after a few years, and business was moving towards more of a project management model. I was laid off, and hired as a consultant to deliver a training that I’d developed for the company, though I think I only developed one.

After about six months, and one failed adoption that consumed that summer, I was hired by Campaign for America’s Future, as an online producer. The position didn’t initially include a great deal of writing, but I eventually became a full-fledged member of the writing team.

Two weeks later, we became parents for the second time. A new job and a new baby delivered a one-two punch to this blog. I posted here less and less often. There just wasn’t time. When I did post, I mostly just crossposted things that I wrote for work, just to have some content to keep the site alive. I also found a way to post daily digests of stuff I flagged from my Feedly account.

Suddenly, I wasn’t writing about LGBT issues, which was what I think many readers came here for. Instead I was writing about economic issues and civil rights issues that weren’t specifically LGBT-focused. Over eight years of this, I watched the readership of this blog fall to 10 percent of what it was at its peak — if that much. At this point, I think more of my traffic comes from Google searches than anything else.

Well, here I am again, eight years later. Campaign For America’s Future merged with another organization this year, becoming part of People’s Action. Unfortunately, some of our staff was “made redundant” (to borrow a word from the Brits), myself included, and were laid off. I was hired as an independent contract worker, to continue writing for three months, which on September 30.

It’s taken me a week to even think about blogging and writing again. I’ve spent most of my time writing cover letters and emails. But I writing is something I need to do, like I need to breathe. So I’ll be doing more of it here again, even if there aren’t as many people there reading it.

Writer Maya Angelou once offered this sage advice: “If someone shows you who they really are, believe them.” With his latest misogynistic attack on Alicia Machado, Donald Trump dives into the gutter to show us once again who he really is.

It’s 3:00am. Do you know what your presidential candidate is doing? Apparently, Donald Trump was up at 3:00am on Twitter, directing his supporters to check out an alleged sex tape. Ladies and gentlemen, meet Donald Trump, candidate for slut shame and smut peddler in chief.

Did Crooked Hillary help disgusting (check out sex tape and past) Alicia M become a U.S. citizen so she could use her in the debate?

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 30, 2016

And he wasn’t done yet, either.

Wow, Crooked Hillary was duped and used by my worst Miss U. Hillary floated her as an “angel” without checking her past, which is terrible!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 30, 2016

Using Alicia M in the debate as a paragon of virtue just shows that Crooked Hillary suffers from BAD JUDGEMENT! Hillary was set up by a con.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 30, 2016

By now, everyone is familiar with the story. Donald Trump was seemingly blindsided when Hillary Clinton brought up how, as the owner of the Miss Universe pageant, Donald Trump publicly humiliated the new Miss Universe — former Miss Venezuela, Alicia Machado — when she gained weight after winning the title. Trump forced her to workout in front of a horde of media, and answer questions about her weight.

[fve]https://youtu.be/BahFRGhDomw?t=2m[/fve]

Trump was stunned, and asked “Where did you get this?” It’s no secret. Trump’s treatment of Alicia Machado, back in 1997, when she gained weight after winning Miss Universe, is a matter of record.

[fve]https://youtu.be/G56je5m2gIg[/fve]

Machado smiled, laughed, and talked very little as the two men — Trump and her personal trainer, talked about Machado and her weight like she wasn’t even there. Machado, who was about 9 lbs. low a healthy weight when she won the title, returned to a healthy weight after the title. Machado said she cried and pleaded with Trump not to make her do the press conference, but he bullied her into it. She wasn’t the only one either. Another Miss Universe contestant said Trump fat-shamed her. Former Miss Australia, Jodie Seal, said Trump told her to “suck your gut in,” and called the other contestants “some pretty horrible names.

Hillary Clinton baited the trap on Monday night. Trump took the bait, and has been stewing over it since, because it was undeniable. Finally, four days later, it bubbled over on Twitter. Clinton, in fact, tweeted her response to Trump’s Twitter tirade.

What kind of man stays up all night to smear a woman with lies and conspiracy theories?

— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) September 30, 2016

What kind of man indeed. How will he behave as president?

For what it’s worth, Machado isn’t backing down. Meanwhile, Latinos are stepping up to register to vote.

Donald Trump The Loser

It was bad enough watching Donald Trump bluster and sniffle his way to losing his first presidential debate with Hillary Clinton. To hear Trump demanding that his own allies stop saying he lost, almost makes you feel sorry for him. Almost.

After Monday night’s presidential debate, the verdict was swift and unanimous. Hillary Clinton bested the bully. While everyone was wondering which Donald Trump would show up for this debate, Clinton stuck to one absolute certainty about her unpredictable opponent: there is only one Donald Trump. He does not “pivot,” at least not for long. He can read a TelePrompTer well enough for one speech, but he quickly reverts to type; blustering and bullying his way through the campaign, or responding to every perceived slight via Twitter.

All Clinton had to do was keep her cool and get under Trump’s skin a little. She did, and it worked almost too well. Nobody knows that better than Trump’s own allies and advisors.

[fve]https://youtu.be/xnhMAAH4T2Y[/fve]

Trump’s immediate shift into damage control was pathetic. He claimed that moderator Lester Holt gave him “bad questions.” He even complained that his mic didn’t work. But the most pathetic damage control was absolutely that Trump has to demand that his own allies stop saying he lost the debate.

Getting Personal

Even when he tries to prove that he’s keeping things classy, Donald Trump can’t stay out of the gutter. Almost immediately after the debate, Trump congratulated himself for not going after Bill Clinton’s alleged infidelities. Never mind that in doing so he mentioned Bill Clinton’s alleged infidelities.

[fve]https://youtu.be/MDq2tuA4yME[/fve]

That’s rich, coming from a guy who started dating his second wife while still married to his first, and even assumed another identity when he bragged to the media about his affairs. Even Rudy Giuliani and Newt Gingrich got in on the act, two guys who know a thing or two about affairs.

Alabama Chief Justice Suspended

Some people never learn. Alabama Supreme Court Justice Roy Moore was removed from office in 2003, for refusing to take down a Ten Commandments monument at the state Supreme Court building. In 2015, in an effort to prevent same-sex marriages in Alabama, Moore ordered probate judges not to issue same-sex licenses to same-sex couples, in defiance of a federal injunction. More argued that the Supreme Court’s Obergefell v. Hodges decision only overturned same-sex marriage bans in the states explicitly challenged in the case, of which Alabama was not one.

Now, Moore has been punished again. The state’s Court of the Judiciary ruled unanimously to suspend Moore without pay for the remainder of his term.

[fve]https://youtu.be/tENeaMO-J70[/fve]

Hannity Goes Off On Media

Fox News host Sean Hannity went off on journalists who called the debate for Hillary Clinton. Hannity cited incredibly inaccurate online polls that claimed Trump won the debate. Hannity claimed that professional journaalists “with their fine wine lifestyles” just couldn’t understand the problems of “real Americans.”

[fve]https://youtu.be/99I-ST6BVvM[/fve]

Alt-Right Cat Fight

Looks like someone is about to get a taste of his own medicine as a fight breaks out between Donald Trump’s alt-right supporters. Daily Stormer founder Andrew Anglin plans to confront alt-right media persona Milo Yiannopoulos, because the Breitbart tech editor and famous troll is part Jewish.

• Don’t Ever Say Michelle Obama Didn’t Warn You About Trump
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  It seems that the legal system and the court of public opinion work in concert to place not just these particular people on trial in their deaths, but they simultaneously place blackness on trial, instead of the officers or individuals responsible for their deaths.
• Why the Museum of African American History Is About More Than the Past
  “The great force of history,” James Baldwin once wrote, “comes from the fact that we carry it within us, are unconsciously controlled by it in many ways, and history is literally present in all that we do. It could scarcely be otherwise, since it is to history that we owe our frames of reference, our identities, and our aspirations.”
• A Madoff in the White House?
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• The dangerous state laws that are punishing pregnant women
  In the past 10 years, arrests and forced interventions of pregnant women have skyrocketed.
• Fact-Checking Is Largely Irrelevant Because Deceit Is Not What’s Causing Moral Outrage, Clinton’s Gender Is
  People want to believe that Clinton is less truthful and trustworthy because they feel strongly that she shouldn’t be president. If truthfulness mattered, this election would be over today
• Imagine if Donald Trump was a woman. You simply can’t | Hadley Freeman
  Hillary Clinton triumphed in the first presidential debate, but she faces an opponent far more formidable than the absurdist Republican candidate – sexism
• In America, gun rights are for whites only
  Where is the NRA outcry over the deaths of Keith Lamont Scott and Philando Castile?

Little Zianna Oliphant, speaking through her tears at a city council meeting in Charlotte, said more about what’s really happening with policing in black communities than Donald Trump did in 90 minutes at Monday nights debate.

The candidates had a lot to say, at last night’s debate, when the question turned to police involved shootings of African Americans, and the problem of inherent racism in our criminal justice system. (A problem that Republican vice presidential nominee Mike Pence thinks we can solve by just not talking about it.)

When moderator Lester Holt referenced recent shootings in Tulsa and Charlotte, posed the question, “So how do you heal the divide?”, Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton acknowledged, “race still determines too much, often determines where people live, determines what kind of education in their public schools they can get, and, yes, it determines how they’re treated in the criminal justice system.” Clinton spoke of the need to restore trust between police officers and the communities they serve. More importantly, Clinton noted that respect between citizens and law enforcement should be a two-way street, saying, “Everyone should be respected by the law, and everyone should respect the law.”

Clinton’s criminal justice platform embraces the principle of mutual respect and trust that she called for in her remarks, by tackling the existence of inherent bias head on — just like Clinton did during the debate — and bringing police and communities together to solve it. Clinton’s platform includes $1 billion in first budget to find and fund the best training programs that address implicit bias, de-escalation, and community policing, and make them available nationwide. Clinton’s platform also addresses the use of excessive in law enforcement by limiting the availability of military weapons and equipment to police departments nationwide. The police response to the protests in Ferguson brought national attention the militarization of police departments.

This is the platform of the only one of the two major candidates to have sat down and listened the Mothers of the Movement, who have lost children to the volatile combination of implicit bias and the use of deadly force by police. It’s also the platform of a candidate who would almost certainly hear the voice of children like nine-year-old Zianna Oliphant, who poured out her heart at a city council meeting in Charlotte, North Carolina, after the police-involved shooting death of Keith Lamont Scott.

[fve]https://youtu.be/3Ae–2gSeXPU[/fve]

“I feel like that we are treated differently than other people. I don’t like how we’re treated. Just because of our color doesn’t mean anything to me,” she said before breaking down in tears.

… Speaking through sobs, Oliphant continued: “We are black people, and we shouldn’t have to feel like this. We shouldn’t have to protest because y’all are treating us wrong. We do this because we need to and have rights.”

She said she was raised in Charlotte, adding, “I’ve never felt this way until now.”

“I can’t stand how we’re treated,” she continued. “It’s a shame that our fathers and mothers are killed, and we can’t even see them anymore. It’s a shame that we have to go to their graveyard and bury them. We have tears and we shouldn’t have tears. We need our fathers and mothers to be by our side.”

Through her tears, Zianna gave voice to the normally unheard trauma of children in African-American communities. Their fear that a police encounter might mean a mother or father never comes home again, is the other side of the same fear African-American parents have for our children. It’s not hard to imagine Hillary Clinton, who’s spent much of career working in the interests of children just like Zianna.

Though she spoke volumes about the pain at the heart of protests in Charlotte and elsewhere, Donald Trump is unlikely to ever hear Zianna Oliphant’s voice over his own bluster. Trump hasn’t been shy about telling us what he thinks of African-Americans. “You’re living in poverty, your schools are no good, you have no jobs, 58 percent of your youth is unemployed — what the hell do you have to lose?” he said ostensibly to African-Americans while speaking to an almost entirely white audience in Wisconsin.

Trump’s response at Monday night’s debate dripped with the same contempt as his previous statements about African-American communities. “We have a situation where we have our inner cities, African-Americans, Hispanics are living in hell because it’s so dangerous. You walk down the street, you get shot,” Trump said. But Trump is wrong about crime, and his wild assertions about the “hell” that blacks and Hispanics walk through on a daily basis, are no more based in reality that his claims about President Obama’s birth certificate. The rate of violent crime is at a 45 year low — down 20.3 percent during President Obama’s term in office alone.

When Trump says crime is up, he’s talking about the uptick in violent crime in the past couple of years. An increase in one or two years does not a trend make, but it does make an opening for Trump to exploit the racial fears of his base. When Trump says we “have to bring back law and order,” he’s talking about the unrest in cities like Charlotte, Ferguson, Baltimore, and Milwaukee in the wake of police-involved shootings of African-Americans (who are often unarmed). His proposals regarding such reflect a view that the outrage at police violence in these communities must be tamped down with more of the same.

• In Wisconsin, Trump said that Milwaukee’s black communities needed more police.
• Last month, during a discussion at a Fraternal Order of Police lodge, Trump said that he would return military weapons and equipment to police departments.
• In an interview with Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly, Trump said his solution to what he saw as an increase of violent crime in “inner cities” is to give police permission to “go out and counterattack.”

A Trump presidency would result is even more police in African-American communities, with even more powerful weapons, and even more encouragement to use them. For African-American families, that would mean even greater chances of encountering police officers, armed with more deadly weapons, and more impunity in using them. It means more parents fearing for their children, and more children like Zianna Oliphant fearing for their mothers and fathers. It means that when it comes to safety and justice for our families and communities, the choice in this election couldn’t be clearer.