Front Desk by Kelly Yang

One of my kids gave me the American Library Association's book of 52 books that are targeted by book banning groups, and this book is on that list. I am working my way through it, and this one is aimed at a middle school audience, which is not a genre I read at all. I related to a review that I read that noted that she did not read younger than Young Adults (although I do like a good picture book on occasion and I do have grandchildren who are getting old enough to be covered in this genre and I will be doing more of it as a result). The reason that that this book is being targeted by angry white adults is that they are scandalized that a children’s book would dare talk about racism. The racism in this book is very much in your face rather than more subtle, which is what I would expect for a book aimed at a middle school audience, but which was a bit glaring and heavy handed to my adult ear. The story is about Mia, who helps her parents manage a low end motel where there are some long term residents. She faces prejudice at school and while she works, and it is quite recognizable. Mia sees that immigrants and Asians are not the only people targeted, and when she sees a favored hotel resident who is African American get treated unfairly, she sticks up for him in an anti-racist manner that is very appropriate and is a great example of how to do that.

A Business Owner's Right To Choose

An owner's right to refuse to host a meeting by an organization that is against a woman's right to have autonomy over her body set off a tsunami. Jim Sheehan, the owner of a coffee shop in Driggs, was filmed in mid-August telling members of an anti-abortion rights group not to hold a meeting in his cafe, he has found himself the subject of national news stories and columns. He and his wife have been doxxed, and his business received so many angry calls — even death threats — that staff turned off the phones. Ironically when people try to protect a woman's body autonomy people threaten to kill them, making it all too clear that this is not, in fact, about life. No, it is about controlling women, making them at best second class citizens when you take away their ability to choose what is best for their bodies. It all started with a Facebook post by members of Students for Life of America, a group that opposes abortion rights, advertising that it would hold an Aug. 17 meeting at Wydaho Roasters to discuss efforts surrounding Proposition 1, a 2026 ballot initiative in Idaho that seeks to increase access to abortion. Sheehan, who supports Prop 1, also called the Reproductive Freedom and Privacy Act, responded to the Facebook post in a comment, asking the group to hold its event elsewhere. He said he didn’t give the topic much more thought after that. But the next day, he said, he looked up from grinding coffee to see that the meeting was taking place anyway. He confronted the group, reiterating that he didn’t want them meeting in his shop. An event in the cafe, he reasoned, would give the appearance of support from the business and its owners, and he strongly opposed this group’s efforts. In a confrontation the activists filmed, they pressed Sheehan on what they saw as hypocrisy. His shop advertises its desire to be inclusive, flying an LGBTQ+ Pride flag and displaying a sign that reads, “Everyone is Welcome Here.” Well, not racists and not people who see women as less than worthy of the rights that men are afforded. They can buy coffee, but they cannot advertise they are holding meetings in a business without the owner's permission.

The Devil Is Busy (2025)

Here we are on the front lines of the war on women. While the sex trafficking of underage women by powerful men is minimized by the current administration--we can all guess why that might be--they are waging an equally destructive war on reproductive health care for women of child bearing age. This is a front row seat into what that health care looks like in the post-Roe era. This is nominated for an Academy Award in the Short Documentary category. The film focuse on Tracii, a staff member at Atlanta’s Feminist Women’s Health Center—now renamed the Feminist Center for Reproductive Liberation—whose workday begins long before sunrise. Her mornings are marked by both practical vigilance—ensuring the safety of the clinic and its patients—and private prayer that sustains her through a job fraught with protest, legal restriction, high stress, and real danger. The film captures the tense choreography of daily life at the clinic: security guards patrol parking lots, staff screen patients to comply with increasingly complex laws, and protesters wield megaphones and scripture as tools of intimidation. Most telling is a man who literally murdered someone himself who spends his days telling women that god will not forgive them while he believes himself forgiven. The audacity and conceit of men is on full view here, once again giving Christianity a bad look, having fully strayed from the teachings of Christ. Yet amid this hostility, the documentary emphasizes compassion—the small gestures of reassurance that Tracii and her colleagues offer women at their most vulnerable moments.

Black Moses by Caleb Gayle

This was recommended by Jacqueline Woodson, author of Brown Girl Dreaming, and of course also by the National Book Award as well. It is about Edward Preston McCabe, who was born free to free parents, and who appears to be a classic success story of the Reconstruction period. In 1878, after stints as a clerk in New York and Chicago, he arrived at the forlorn town of Nicodemus, Kansas, and took over the local government. He enticed more settlers and helped to foster the town’s increasing prosperity. After two terms as state auditor, McCabe then lit out for the Oklahoma Territory, where he co-founded the town of Langston, played a prominent role in the founding of Langston University and served as the territory’s assistant auditor. In 1890, he met President Benjamin Harrison in the White House, where he angled for an appointment as territorial governor. But McCabe was a Black man in Jim Crow America, and while he appeared to have a lot of things going for him, the reach of his dreams of a place for black Americans to be in charge, to command their own fate, became too great a liability for white Americans. Racism shaped the contours of his ambition, and then it crushed him. The retelling of his life is one way for him to live on, which makes it extra important to read and know about.

Why Do We Keep Talking about 1930's Germany?

Because it seems so relavent. And also because whatever comes out of the president's mouth is the opposite of the truth--almost without fail. And sometimes it seems all too true, like this campaign video mentioning The Reich. The disappearing of people with brown skin, taken by people out of uniform and into unmarked cars to places we don't know--that sounds like people who the Nazi's found undesirable were sent away and murdered. So here goes: What is happening in America Actions against the judiciary: Concerns have been raised about actions and rhetoric that show a disregard for court decisions, including a instance where the Trump administration was held in criminal contempt for ignoring a court order. Attacks on the press: The press has been labeled as the "enemy of the people," a comparison that has drawn criticism. Civil Service and "Purge": There are concerns about plans to purge the civil service and replace bureaucrats with political loyalists, a move some have compared to Hitler's actions. Rhetoric and Legal Actions: Rhetoric concerning immigration has led to comparisons between immigration enforcement tactics and the Gestapo. Additionally, Trump has proposed using executive actions that some critics fear could be abusive, such as potentially suspending habeas corpus or using the Insurrection Act. Criminal Charges: Trump faced federal criminal charges for allegedly conspiring to defraud the government and obstruct the January 6 Capitol attack. "Dictator" Rhetoric: Trump has stated he would be a "dictator on day one" as a mode of governance, a statement that has been seen as concerning due to its potential for abuse. Where are we headed? Nazi Germany was responsible for systematic persecution, genocide during World War II, and crimes like massacres and forced labor. Comparisons to Donald Trump's America are often based on specific actions and rhetoric, such as attacks on the press and the judiciary, plans to remove federal employees, and rhetoric concerning immigration and potentially suspending legal protections like habeas corpus. azis used their state power, including the Gestapo (secret police), to persecute opponents and detain individuals without charge in concentration camps.

White Supremacy

This is bad. The text messages released from the NY chapter of the Young Repbulicans group chat are vulgar and leave nothing to the imagination. Then again, they reveal nothing that hasn't been said publicly in so many words by other members of the GOP. They wonder why they are called Nazis, but they say they love Hitler and they think gassing of Jews is the way to go. They wonder why they are called white supremacists when they are pro-slavery. Why not admit their commonality with the Ku Klux Klan and the tenets of the Confederacy. They are misogynists. They talk about women who should be raped. Their disdain for women is consistent with the GOP being determined to make all women second class citizens. Some have openly bemoaned the fact that women can vote. All of this is consistent with the current administration. The president wonders why domestic violence assaults are considered part of crime statistics. JD Vance, 41, considers these 18-40 year old men to be "young boys". Two things. First is that he is does what rape culture does, he excuses them. Too bad it went on their permanent record. Second, these are men, some of them his age, some of whom hold positions of importance in politics. Finally, we know that these beliefs reflect the moral values othe person at this age--they are not about to change any time soon if ever. The fact that he says he thought and said offensive things when he was "younger" is more damning of him than an excuse of their behavior. So why disavow them? That is what is unclear to me, other than that in these texts there is no mistaking the message. It is the actual text, not the subtext. Their core tenets are unequivocally stated.

The Right To Peacefully Protest

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We are exercising our first amendment right to free speech. I am a Daughter of the American Revolution, both sides of my family were in America before the war. We are a people who do not want to be ruled by dictators or kings. We are against the fascist government in power. They are male white supremacists, which is not illegal, but it is undesirable.

What does Fascism look like? The punch line is that we have a leader who has said and done every one of these things Forge alliances with elites. Fascist parties ally with powerful conservative groups, such as the wealthy and business owners, who fear a leftist or socialist revolution. These elites often believe they can control the new movement. In Italy in 1922, the king appointed Mussolini as prime minister after conservatives feared a civil war could break out. Subvert institutions. Once in power, the fascist leader works to dominate the government and dismantle democratic institutions. This can involve banning opposition parties and passing laws that consolidate power and eliminate oversight. Impose radical changes. With consolidated authority, the regime introduces radical changes. This may involve controlling the media, suppressing labor movements, and persecuting perceived enemies. The nation shifts towards extreme nationalism and totalitarian control. Propaganda and control of information: The government takes control of mass media to promote its ideology and create a culture of fear. Suppression of dissent: Opponents are silenced through imprisonment, violence, and intimidation. Militarism: The military is glorified, and violence is used to enforce control and settle political disputes.

There Is No Place For Us by Brian Goldstone

There is one common thread when reading about homelessness in America--it is always gut wrenching and unfair. This is no exception. The twist is that the five families that the author follows in Atlanta are all working. The people in this book work a lot, and earn very little. Sleeping in cars, crashing with friends or paying for a decrepit room in an extended-stay hotel, they are trapped in an endless circle of poverty and uncertainty. Politicians have been incentivized to define homelessness narrowly, including only people living in shelters or on the street. A true measure of homelessness in America would be six times the official figure, pushing the number up to more than four million. It always leaves me wondering how you can feel exceptional when as a country you step on the most impoverished amongst us. The allowance for wages that do not add up to being able to feed, cloth, and house one's family is what underlies this tragedy. That things like food stamps and Medicaid serve to make people depend on government subsidies when the companies that employ people should be shouldering that burden.

The United States Governed by Six Hundred Thousand Despots by John Swanson Jacobs

The story behind this publication is in some ways cooler than the book itself and perfect for Juneteenth. Schroeder, who wrote the biography of the author that is included in this publication, is a literary historian, and he knew the story of Harriet Jacobs, the abolitionist who famously wrote about her life and abuse while enslaved, her secret relationship with a white politician and her escape to freedom in the 1800s. Schroeder searched a database of historical documents for details on Harriet's son. He wasn't getting far, so he tried another search term focused on Harriet's brother, Johnathan S. Jacobs. That is how he stumbled upon an autobiography by John Swanson Jacobs, first published in Australia in 1855 and largely lost to time - until now. Six hundred thousand despots is a reference to the number of slave owners in the U.S. at the time. John Swanson Jacobs was born in 1815 in Edenton, N.C., and he was born a sixth-generation slave. Today, he's a footnote in the life of his older sister, Harriet Jacobs, who is the best-known Black female author of the 19th century. He was an abolitionist in the U.S. and U.K. He was a gold miner in California and Australia. He was a sailor on four oceans and four continents. And he was an expat for nearly all of his free life. He had become a gold miner after the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act in 1850. He left the U.S. for California, and then for Australia, which was going through its own gold rush at the same time as America's gold rush. And he eventually struck it rich or at least did well in the Australian gold rush. And that gave him a rare moment of time off from the kind of labor that dominated most of his life to go to Sydney and to finish the life story that he had begun practicing in the 1840s as an abolitionist in William Lloyd Garrison's Boston and Frederick Douglass' Rochester. This is a recreation of his autobiography, and then a biography of what we know about him now with the help of time.

Your Body, My Choice

This is the mantra that flooded X after the 2024 election, and while I hate almost everything about it, the thing I love is that it makes it crystal clear that the agenda is NOT "pro-life" or even "pro-birth" (because afterall, the GOP agenda is about not supporting life after birth), it is about power and control over women. Period. Any talk of when life begins and what various religions might and might not support or prohibit is just a distraction, a way to put a pretty bow on an ugly message, which is that men who are attracted to the GOP messaging want to have power and control over women. No wonder it is causing trouble in people's homes. Nobody wants to be a slave to anybody, and the impulse to control people is in itself very unattractive. But at least now it is out there on the table for all to see. This is what you voted for and this is what you want. Is it any wonder that many of us are upset to find out that over half the voting public wants this?

The Burial (2023)

I think when all is said and done that this is a better storty than it is a movie. Here's the story--a southern gentleman who has a string of family owned funeral homes is in deep financial trouble because he made some bad investment choices, lost a lot of money, and while he avoided going to jail, the person he invested with did not, and he lost not just his money but also other peoples. He had thirteen kids and he is trying to save the business he inherited from his father so that he can pass something on to his kids. So his lawyer, who is unlikable in the movie and probably in real life, a privledged southern good old boy who wears his racism front and center, hooks him up with a flashy potential buyer of three of his nine funeral homes, so that he will again be liquid, not loose his ability to sell funeral insurance, which is where he makes most of his money, and all looks to be good except for one thing. The big corporate saviour doesn't sign the contract, and drags everything out so that the southern gentleman is in danger of loosing it all. He doesn't see it coming, but his son's friend, a young black freshly minted lawyer does and they decide to get a flashy attorney and take on corporate America. You see where this is going, and really this is not a spoiler because you can see it coming a mile away. It is a'90s inspirational courtroom drama pitched to extreme comedy, and it comes as simple and sweet as a cool summer breeze when flashy personal injury lawyer Willie E. Gary (Jamie Foxx) arrives in Mississippi to defend the mild-mannered Jeremiah O’Keefe (Tommy Lee Jones). These two heavy hitters portray both a battle and a friendship that warms the heart, even if there are no surprises.

The Other America

And I’d like to use as a subject from which to speak this afternoon, the other America. And I use this subject because there are literally two Americas. One America is beautiful for our situation. And in a sense, this America is overflowing with the miracle of prosperity and the honey of opportunity. This America is the habitat of millions of people who have food and material necessities for their bodies and culture and education for their minds, and freedom and human dignity for their spirit. In this America, millions of people experience every day the opportunity of having life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness in all of their dimensions. And in this America, millions of young people grow up in the sunlight of opportunity. But tragically and unfortunately, there is another America. This other America has a daily ugliness about it that constantly transforms the buoyancy of hope into the fatigue of despair. In this America, millions of work-starved men walk the streets daily in search for jobs that do not exist. In this America, millions of people find themselves living in rat-infested, vermin-filled slums. In this America, people are poor by the millions. And they find themselves perishing on a lonely island of poverty, in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. In a sense, the greatest tragedy of this other America is what it does to other children. Little children in this other America are forced to grow up with clouds of inferiority, farming every day in their little mental skies. And as we look at this other America, we see it as an arena of blasted hopes and shattered dreams. Many people of various backgrounds live in this other America. Some are Mexican-American, some are Puerto Ricans, some are Indians, some happen to be from other groups, millions of them are Appalachian whites. Probably the largest group in this other America, in proportion to its size and the population is the American Negro. The American Negro finds himself living in a triple ghetto. A ghetto of race, a ghetto of poverty, ghetto- Is to deal with this problem, to deal with this problem of the two Americas. We are seeking to make America one nation, indivisible with liberty and justice for all.

Take PRIDE

I cannot even say just how much I love this photo, featuring Dr. Kevo Rivera! I am so proud to work with them! So many great things have happened in my work place this year, and all in the year of COVID, which was very bad indeed, so a true rainbow, sun shining through clouds as the rain storm passes. My only regret is that it has taken me this far into June to say how proud I am of what has happened in my life time to protect the civil rights of LGBTQIA+ Americans. Writing this on the heels of Juneteenth, and seeing where we are vis-a-vis the civil rights of the descendents of slaves, it is sobering how poorly we have done in that realm, and even more impressive the strides forward, all the while recognizing that it took altogether too long. I know that I make mistakes, I use the wrong pronouns sometimes, I am not always aware of my biases and how my language affects others, but I am working on it and I am excited to see what is coming. I know it will be colorful.

The Devil's Highvway by Luis Alberto Urrea

This book was published almost 20 years ago and describes how the immigration system in the US is broken on every level. He describes a particular crossing of a dangerous part of the border in a desert with no shelter or water that lead to multiple deaths and for those who survived, a costly rescue and resuscitation effort. The author is best known for his depiction of the border country. He portrays the Coyotes as people who exploit immigrants for money; for them, the goal is to get people across the border under whatever conditions are convenient. This includes packaging people in trunks and leading them into hazardous terrain, all while simultaneously extorting most of their money and savings. Ultimately, most immigrants have limited education and understanding of the border, and can’t find other options for entry. The amount of money that is spent rescuing people from the desert could be better spent on improving the circumstances in Central America and decreasing the situations that lead to the desperation that sends people northward .

Justice for George Floyd

I am going to let others speak for me. This week was one tiny dtep in the right direction. "The jury's verdict delivers accountability for Derek Chauvin, but not justice for George Floyd. Real justice for him and too many others can only happen when we build a nation that fundamentally respects the human dignity of every person. The trauma and tragedy of George Floyd's murder must never leave us. It was a manifestation of a system that callously devalues the lives of Black people. Our struggle now is about justice—not justice on paper, but real justice in which all Americans live their lives free of oppression. We must boldly root out the cancer of systemic racism and police violence against people of color." --Bernie Sanders "True justice requires that we come to terms with the fact that Black Americans are treated differently, every day. It requires us to recognize that millions of our friends, family, and fellow citizens live in fear that their next encounter with law enforcement could be their last. And it requires us to do the sometimes thankless, often difficult, but always necessary work of making the America we know more like the America we believe in. While today’s verdict may have been a necessary step on the road to progress, it was far from a sufficient one. We cannot rest. We will need to follow through with the concrete reforms that will reduce and ultimately eliminate racial bias in our criminal justice system. We will need to redouble efforts to expand economic opportunity for those communities that have been too long marginalized." --Barack Obama

MLK-FBI (2020)

This is the year, when George Floyd was killed in front of three other police officers who did nothing to stop him and an onlooker who filmed the whole thing so that the rest of us, particularly white America could see irrefutable evidence that the police brutalize black Americans and sometimes do not stop at humiliating them, but go all the way to killing them in cold blood on the street. This year we are also reckoning with other abuses of law enforcement from the past. Hoover sees MLK as a threat, and he also probably sees the civil rights movement as a threat. He attacks King on two fronts. One is his association with Stanley Levison, a white Jewish lawyer and CPA who had a history of association with Communist groups. The FBI, still embroiled in the war against Communism, saw the presence of Levison as a red flag, a sign that the Communist menace was embedded in the struggle for Civil Rights. We see a fascinating clip of King, in a television interview with Dan Rather, saying that he thinks it’s one of the miracles of the 20th century that so few African-Americans have turned to Communism, given their history of desperation and oppression. Nonetheless, King is warned off Levison at the highest level of government. Then there is the wiretapping and the bugging of King's hotel rooms. Through this activity the FBI learns that King is not monogamous, and they seek to humiliate him using this information. They alert church leaders and other influential people, including his wife, in the hopes that he would retreat. Through it all, King marches on, and is living with the daily anxiety that he’ll be exposed. Yet in no way does it tamp down on his activism. The film captures how radical the stand King took in 1967 against the war in Vietnam really was. He was willing to make enemies and to risk his personal reputation for his beliefs. In the end, it is hard not to see a role for the FBI in the end game. The FBI killed Fred Hubbard, the head of the Black Panthers, and they may also have led to the assasination of MLK.

White Supremacists in Law Enforcement

The fury in the response of police officers to protesters across the nation is shocking to me.   The kettling of protesters so as to shoot them with rubber bullets and gas is purposeful and malicious.  The use of chemical inhalants meant to disable people in the time of a respiratory pandemic with no treatment or cure is in and of itself a crime, in my mind.  Video after video of police officers approaching kneeling or with their hands up, ripping their masks off, spraying them directly in the face, pushing them over is so violent and unnecessary in the use of force makes it very hard to believe that these officers in uniform are working for the community they are employed by.  They appear to be acting like hired gangsters.
Why is this happening?  The police I work with would work assiduously to de-escalate these situations, not throw gasoline of them and throw a match.  The answer has been known for quite some time.  The 2006 report by the FBI describing the systematic infiltration of law enforcement with white supremacists being a pervasive problem to be addressed has been ignored.  The current administration encourages and glorifies the demonstration by white nationalists of violence as a means to an end.  The time has come to look at other ways than policing to address the enforcement of laws in cities across the nation.  Minneapolis, Los Angeles, and New York City are already moving in that direction, and there needs to be more decisive action in this arena.

White Coats for Black Lives

Today is the day that we kneel.
Health care workers see the societal issues that lead to health care disparities in the African-Americans in  America.  We are emerging from a pandemic where people of color have been disproportionately affected than whites.  The lack of insurance, the effects of poverty on health, and the lack of access to health care are all factors that lead to pre-existing risk factors.  In my state, where the majority of the meat in the United States is processed, workers are working shoulder-to-shoulder without PPE and they have tested positive for COVID in astounding numbers.  These workers are immigrants with brown and black skin.  These things existed before George Floyd was brutally murdered by a police officer in uniform, while three other officers looked on. 
In that one shocking event, which comes heaped upon many others, but in close proximity to a video that demonstrated white vigilantes gunning down a black jogger, and a white woman on video threatening to call the police and tell them a black man was threatening her because he asked to to leash her dog.   It is just too much, and so today, we kneel.
Tomorrow we continue to work for social justice, but today we take a moment to kneel, to mourn, to pray, and to acknowledge the pain of those that we provide medical care to.

Just Mercy (2019)

I chose this as the movie to watch for Mother's Day.  I think the thing that I hope for as a parent is to raise children who are good.  The more we know about injustice the better we are able to articulate why it is wrong, why we fight against it, and that knowledge is power.
This is the story of Bryan Stevenson, who started the Equal Justice Initiative and ultimately the museum and memorial in Montgomery, Alabama.  The powerful thing that happened to me there that was part of the living aspect of the experience is that there were bus loads of African American family reunions coming to see these two sites, as well as the church where Martin Luther King preached.  The museum demonstrates that prison is the new slavery, and it isn't about justice for people of color in the American South.
So I was happy to see this movie, with some heavy hitting stars playing the key figures in the story.  It is emotionally powerful, as you would expect a movie about people unjustly incarcerated on death row to be, but ultimately a step in the right direction.  As we watch angry white men armed with assault weapons storm state capitals around the country, it is very clear that they are the terrorists that we need to fear. 

The Ingredients of Genocide

Lets not go back to the Holocaust to look at the beginnings of genocide.  Let's look at a more modern genocide to see where we are here, in the United States, with the current immigration policies that have separated families and left people dehumanized in cages.
Between April and June 1994, an estimated 800,000 Rwandans were killed in the space of 100 days.  Most of the dead were Tutsis - and most of those who perpetrated the violence were Hutus.  The genocide was sparked by the death of the Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana, a Hutu, when his plane was shot down above Kigali airport on 6 April 1994.  Whoever was responsible, within hours a campaign of violence spread from the capital throughout the country, and did not subside until three months later.
But the death of the president was by no means the only cause of Africa's largest genocide in modern times.  There was violence and ethnic tensions that went back to the 19th century.  There were many ingredients that are listed above in our current administrations treatment of Central Americans seeking asylum.  And let's remember, until the mid-19th century, all the border land in the US belonged to Mexico.  We took the land and then appear surprised that there are Mexicans living on it.  This is no more excusable than the slaughter of Rwandans 25 years ago.