We Resist: Day 901

One of the difficulties in resisting the Trump administration, the Republican Congressional majority, and Republican state legislatures (plus the occasional non-Republican who obliges us to resist their nonsense, too, like we don't have enough to worry about) is keeping on top of the sheer number of horrors, indignities, and normalization of the aggressively abnormal that they unleash every single day.

So here is a daily thread for all of us to share all the things that are going on, thus crowdsourcing a daily compendium of the onslaught of conservative erosion of our rights and our very democracy.

Stay engaged. Stay vigilant. Resist.

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Late yesterday and earlier today by me: Barr Says Trump Can Ignore Supreme Court; Add Citizenship Question to Census and Amy McGrath to Challenge Mitch McConnell for His Senate Seat and Primarily Speaking.

Here are some more things in the news today...

Priscilla Alvarez and Jeremy Herb at CNN: House Democrats Plan Subpoenas for Jared Kushner, Trump Officials, and Immigration Documents.

The House Judiciary Committee moved Tuesday to authorize subpoenas for two separate issues: an array of documents and testimony related to the administration's immigration policies and to former and current Trump administration officials, including the President's son-in-law Jared Kushner, as part of its probe into potential obstruction of justice.

The committee is planning a Thursday vote to authorize the subpoenas, which would ratchet up the Democrat-led panel's investigation into possible obstruction of justice and examination of the Trump administration's immigration policies. The vote would allow Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler, a Democrat from New York, to issue the subpoenas at his discretion.

The committee has previously requested numerous documents related to immigration matters from the administration, but Tuesday's notice to authorize subpoenas is an escalation of those requests. It shows the committee is broadening the investigation into [Donald] Trump as Democrats weigh whether to start an impeachment inquiry and comes ahead of former special counsel Robert Mueller's testimony before the House Judiciary and Intelligence Committees next week.

Good. Hope this matters. Don't understand why it's taking so long to make these critical decisions.

Meanwhile... Katie Benner at the New York Times: Barr Says House Subpoenaed Mueller to Create 'Public Spectacle'. "Attorney General William P. Barr accused House Democrats on Monday of subpoenaing testimony from Robert S. Mueller III to 'create some kind of public spectacle,' rather than elicit facts, pointing to Mr. Mueller's declaration that he would discuss only the facts laid out in the Russia investigation report. ...He also called the idea that Mr. Trump worked with the Kremlin to subvert the election 'bogus' and said the early stages of his review of the Russia inquiry suggested that he needed to toughen protocol for investigating political candidates."

So, just to be clear, the Attorney General of the United States just publicly accused the Democrats of theater for expecting a Special Counsel to give testimony on his findings, and then suggested he will use the Russia inquiry as justification for investigating political candidates — which naturally means Donald Trump's Democratic opponents.

We are in so much trouble.

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[Content Note: Sexual violence] There is a lot about Jeffrey Epstein in the news today. I am frankly not inclined to cover this story ongoingly; it's easy enough to find updates if you are so inclined. If something notable happens, I will report it. Today, I will just recommend a piece at the Daily Beast by Vicky Ward, who tried to warn the world about Epstein 16 years ago and was silenced by her editor: Jeffrey Epstein's Sick Story Played Out for Years in Plain Sight.

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Michael Isikoff at Yahoo News: The True Origins of the Seth Rich Conspiracy Theory: A Yahoo News Investigation.

In the summer of 2016, Russian intelligence agents secretly planted a fake report claiming that Democratic National Committee staffer Seth Rich was gunned down by a squad of assassins working for Hillary Clinton, giving rise to a notorious conspiracy theory that captivated conservative activists and was later promoted from inside [Donald] Trump's White House, a Yahoo News investigation has found.

Russia's foreign intelligence service, known as the SVR, first circulated a phony "bulletin" — disguised to read as a real intelligence report —about the alleged murder of the former DNC staffer on July 13, 2016, according to the U.S. federal prosecutor who was in charge of the Rich case. That was just three days after Rich, 27, was killed in what police believed was a botched robbery while walking home to his group house in the Bloomingdale neighborhood of Washington, D.C., about 30 blocks north of the Capitol.

How/why in the hell would the Kremlin even know who he was, get news of his "random" murder which police attribute to a botched robbery, and have that narrative ready to go within 3 days?

If this report of the conspiracy theory's origins are indeed accurate, that looks to me like the Russians killed him with the intent of using his death to launch their prepared narrative — which was that Hillary Clinton had him killed.

Which only underscores the likelihood that the Kremlin had him killed: Every conspiracy theory has a grain of truth, and the grain of truth to this one is that someone had him killed. Fucking gods.

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[CN: Video may autoplay at link] Jonathan Cohn at the Huffington Post: Obamacare Is Going Back on Trial, with Insurance for 20 Million at Stake. "A federal appeals court is about to take up a Republican lawsuit that could wipe out the Affordable Care Act and, with it, health insurance for something like 20 million people. ...Now the case is before the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, where a panel of three judges will hear oral arguments on Tuesday. Two of the judges are Republican appointees and have ties to the conservative Federalist Society, just like the federal district judge who ruled in favor of the case in November." Goddammit.

D. Parvaz at ThinkProgress: Mike Pompeo Says 'We're Not Done' with Iran. "Speaking at the Christians United For Israel event in Washington, D.C., on Monday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo threatened that the Trump administration is 'not done' with Iran. 'We've implemented the strongest pressure campaign in history against the Iranian regime and we are not done,' said Pompeo, adding that U.S. sanctions have deprived Iran of funds it would have used 'to destroy the state of Israel.' (Iran has never been at war with Israel.)" Everything about that is terrifying.

Ann E. Marimow at the Washington Post: Trump Cannot Block His Critics on Twitter, Federal Appeals Court Rules.

[Donald] Trump cannot block his critics from the Twitter feed he regularly uses to communicate with the public, a federal appeals court said Tuesday, in a case with implications for how elected officials nationwide interact with constituents on social media.

The decision from the New York-based appeals court upholds an earlier ruling that Trump violated the First Amendment when he blocked individual users critical of the president or his policies.

"The First Amendment does not permit a public official who utilizes a social media account for all manner of official purposes to exclude persons from an otherwise open online dialogue because they expressed views with which the official disagrees," wrote Judge Barrington D. Parker in the unanimous decision from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit.

Exactly right. Trump can't simultaneously use Twitter to make official announcements and engage in foreign policy and generally do most of his daily presidenting from that platform, and also claim that he's allowed to block people. Nope. Doesn't work that way, pal.

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[CN: Gun violence; death]

Almost all the people who carried out mass attacks in the United States last year made threatening or concerning communications beforehand, and more than three-quarters prompted concern from others, the Secret Service said in a report Tuesday.https://t.co/9m6E4J3vsv

— Pete Williams (@PeteWilliamsNBC) July 9, 2019

This was the second analysis by the Secret Service of mass attacks. Its report from a year ago found that most attacks in 2017 were motivated by workplace or domestic issues, and that more than three-fourths of them had made threatening or concerning communications.

— Pete Williams (@PeteWilliamsNBC) July 9, 2019

[CN: White supremacist violence; eliminationism; death] David Williams at CNN: Police Say Man Cut Arizona Teen's Throat Because Rap Music Made Him Feel Unsafe. "Police say a man accused of fatally stabbing a 17-year-old in the throat at an Arizona convenience store told them he felt threatened because the teen had been listening to rap music. ...Witnesses told police that the man, who's been identified as Michael Paul Adams, 27, walked up behind the teen, grabbed him, and stabbed him in the neck, according to a probable cause statement obtained by CNN affiliate KPHO/KTVK. ...The witnesses told police that [the teen, Elijah Al-Amin] hadn't done or said anything to provoke the attack. One said Adams didn't say anything to the teen before stabbing him." Rage. Seethe. Boil.

I don't believe the killer was legitimately fearful (and it wouldn't justify murdering someone even if he were), but, given that's his explanation, here is some relevant reading: On Sitting with Fear.

[CN: Police brutality]

The family of a 17-year-old girl shot and killed by a Southern California police officer are demanding answers about the deadly Friday night shooting. https://t.co/8HxC5eO2jv

— NBC News (@NBCNews) July 9, 2019

[CN: Ableism; suicidal ideation] Amanda Michelle Gomez at ThinkProgress: Chronic Nuisance Ordinances Are Forcing People with Disabilities out of Their Homes.

Emily Doe was nearly exiled from Maplewood, Missouri, because crisis hotline volunteers sent police to her home too many times within one year.

Emily, who's bipolar and suffers from anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder, called a crisis hotline because she was suicidal. Crisis volunteers sent emergency personnel to her house on three different occasions, and in one instance, she was taken to a psychiatric hospital for evaluation and treatment.

For doing what's medically recommended — that is, calling for help — Emily received a citation and summons from the City of Maplewood to attend an ordinance enforcement hearing for "generating too many calls for police services." Had the city determined her a "chronic nuisance," officials would have not only evicted Emily but revoked her occupancy permit, effectively exiling her from the community for at least six months.

"It's just so callous it's hard to believe," said Sejal Singh, co-author of a new paper titled "When Disability Is a 'Nuisance'" and published Monday in Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review.

Awful.

What have you been reading that we need to resist today?

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Michael Dunn Sentenced to Life without Parole

[Content Note: Murder; racism.]

Michael Dunn, the white man who killed unarmed black teenager Jordan Davis, has been sentenced to life without parole.

Michael Dunn, 47, was convicted of killing Jordan Davis, 17, in November 2012 after he shot into a SUV of four teenagers 10 times when an argument broke out over loud music coming from the teens' vehicle. Dunn was sentenced to an additional 90 years in prison for three attempted murder convictions and another 15 years for firing into an occupied vehicle. "Our justice system works. This case demonstrates that our justice system does work," said Judge Russell Healey at the sentencing.

The justice system worked, as much as it ever works.

But I want to quote Mychal Denzel Smith on what real justice looks like:

Justice for Renisha would have looked like Michael Brown being able to attend college. Justice for Trayvon would have looked like Renisha McBride getting the help she needed the night of her accident. Justice for Oscar Grant would have looked like Trayvon Martin making it home to finish watching the NBA All-Star game, Skittles and iced tea in tow. And so on, and so on. Justice should be the affirmation of our existence.

Black lives matter. That is not a statement which can exist in a void. Justice for Jordan Davis has to mean that no more young black men are killed because white people with guns rob them of their lives for no fucking reason but rank dehumanization.

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Different Perspectives, by Necessity

[Content Note: Fear/threat assessment; harassment; privilege.]

In my previous piece, I linked to my essay "On Sitting with Fear," which includes this passage:

Women live a life of sustained fear. Which is not to say that most women exist in a state of heightened anxiety at all times, but is to acknowledge the reality that our lives are fundamentally different from men's because of a real threat of rape/violence at the hands of men, mostly men we know. (And because we are stupidly and wrongly tasked with its prevention.) Men's and women's lives are very different in that way.

Recently, I had an experience that perfectly highlighted this difference.

Iain and I had just finished dinner at a restaurant and were walking across the parking lot to our car, which was parked on the edge of the lot near the sidewalk, which runs alongside a busy four-lane road. Most times, after we finish a meal, we like to stand by the car, just hanging out and chatting, let our meals settle, maybe having a cigarette if one or both of us is off the wagon.

This particular evening, however, when Iain suggested standing for a bit, I said, "Let's just get in the car; otherwise, that guy's going to keep us here forever." I opened the door and was in the car before Iain had finished saying, "What guy?"

The man about whom I was speaking had been making a beeline for me, and, once I made myself unavailable, he turned direction and headed straight for Iain, trapping him in a conversation for what seemed like forever, asking for whatever he thought Iain might have to offer—money, cigarettes—and ignoring Iain's first few attempts to politely extricate himself.

I just waited in the car. It was going exactly how I knew it would go.

When Iain got in, he grumbled a sort of mild complaint about how difficult it was to get away from him. "That's why I got in the car quickly," I explained. Iain replied, "I didn't even see him before he started talking to me."

I knew this, too. Which is why I had warned Iain to get in the car. Because, as we were walking across the parking lot, continuing our languid conversation begun at the table, I had, without any effort or distraction, noted the man ambling down the sidewalk, noticed him noticing us, calculated that he was exactly like a hundred other men who have approached me with faux friendly overfamiliarity in the hopes of extracting something from me, and assessed that he would be likely to ignore any attempt to draw a boundary, and in fact was likely to get increasingly more aggressive the more I tried to get away.

I knew how long it would take him to reach us, the route he'd take to try to conceal himself behind other cars as long as possible, that he'd go for me first instead of Iain, and exactly the spot in which he'd intercept us if I didn't ever so slightly quicken our pace.

All of that happened within seconds. In a part of my brain that barely penetrates my consciousness until the conclusions have been made and recommended course corrections been established, just buzzing around in the background of my daily movement.

Meanwhile, Iain hadn't even noticed him at all, until he was right there.

I observed this disparity to Iain, and he acknowledged it. And then he added, not in a diminishing way, "Well, he was harmless anyway."

That, too, is a difference in the way we experience the world. The man who was, indeed, perfectly harmless if a little annoying to Iain might not have been harmless to me.

Maybe he would have. Or maybe he would have been one of the men, multiple men, who have approached me in precisely the same way, but wouldn't leave me alone. No matter how polite I was. No matter how long I listened to them tell me a rambling story. No matter if I gave them money or a cigarette or part of the sandwich I was eating or whatever. One of the men who clung and stayed and got closer, and maybe started touching me, as I tried to move away, as I told them I needed to go now, I'm sorry. One of the men who escalated into rageful shouting, because who the fuck did I think I was, anyway, fucking bitch.

Men who people dismiss as "crazy" or "drunk," and who may well be people with mental illness or addiction, but do not approach Iain, or other men, in the way they approach me, or other women. Which seems rather more important.

There are people who will be very keen to not understand what I'm saying who will believe that I'm racist, or fearful of homeless people, or stingy. And I won't be able to convince them otherwise, even though, as it happens, this man was white and didn't appear to be homeless, and I happily give whatever I've got to spare to most people who approach me.

This is about how, by necessity, I have learned, like many women learn, to move through the world with a heightened awareness; to move through our daily lives in a way that most privileged men never will.

It's important to note this difference, because it's a cost to women. It's a cost to us, to expend this sort of psychological energy, in an effort to keep ourselves as safe as we can, in whatever ways are within our control.

And it's important to note in order to underline the difference in perspectives, to ask men to consider that men who look harmless to them may look very different to women, not because women are weak or mean or unjustifiably paranoid or "profile men," but because those men are actually not harmless for us.

And because privilege allows a certainty of safety and freedom for fear that some men—George Zimmerman, Michael Dunn, Theodore Wafer—turn into justification for killing anyone who they assert interrupts their physic tranquility, even for a moment.

Other people sit with fear, and/or heightened awareness, our whole lives. And we manage not to harm people who make us uncomfortable, or annoyed, or even afraid.

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The Backdrop of My Womanhood

[Content Note: Misogyny; violence; self-harm; hostility to privacy, agency, and consent. NB: I am speaking about my personal experience as a woman in this piece. Other women's experiences may be different; some men and nonbinary people may share some of these experiences, which are not limited to womanhood.]

Today, I have read three stories about how USian women and other people with uteri can perform medical or surgical abortions on themselves, or one another, if they cannot access abortion clinics. These are stories that once upon a time I never imagined I would read in my lifetime, except as part of a historical chronicle of the dark days before Roe.

I fear becoming pregnant. I fear needing and being unable to access abortion, even if my life depends on it.

This fear is part of the backdrop of my womanhood.

Today, I read this piece by Pamela Jones about closing down her website because of digital invasions into our privacy. She excerpts Janna Malamud Smith's Private Matters: In Defense of the Personal Life, which argues that privacy is central to human dignity. And then she says: "I can't stay online personally without losing my humanness, now that I know that ensuring privacy online is impossible."

I fear the invasions of my privacy, when so much of my life is lived online. When so much of my work challenges the very encroachments upon our privacy, whether via surveillance or the denial of bodily autonomy.

This fear is part of the backdrop of my womanhood.

What creeping may be going on through the back doors of my virtual properties is, on the average day, the least of my concerns. I am primarily consumed with threats of violence being done to me, with my address and phone numbers and photos of my home being posted online, with orchestrated campaigns of trouble-making in comments, with my photo being misused by bigots or turned into a pornographic joke or threat or both. The harassment that is the cost of being a woman online, which sometimes makes me fearful.

This fear is part of the backdrop of my womanhood.

I am advised, by people who imagine that rape prevention is the responsibility of potential victims and survivors, that I must be careful what I wear, how I wear it, how I carry yourself, where I walk, when I walk there, with whom I walk, whom I trust, what I do, where I do it, with whom I do it, what I drink, how much I drink, whether I make eye contact, if I'm alone, if I'm with a stranger, if I'm in a group, if I'm in a group of strangers, if it's dark, if the area is unfamiliar, if I'm carrying something, how I carry it, what kind of shoes I'm wearing in case I have to run, what kind of purse I carry, what jewelry I wear, what time it is, what street it is, what environment it is, how many people I sleep with, what kind of people I sleep with, who my friends are, to whom I give my number, who's around when the delivery guy comes, to get an apartment or condo or house where I can see who's at the door before they can see me, to check before I open the door to the delivery guy, to own a dog or a dog-sound-making machine, to get a roommate, to take self-defense, to always be alert always pay attention always watch my back always be aware of my surroundings and never let my guard down for a moment lest I be sexually assaulted and if I am and didn't follow all the rules it's my fault, which I already know firsthand from having been raped and seeing about 1 in 6 of my female friends and about 1 in 10 of my male friends going through it and getting victim-blamed, at least once and frequently more.

I am persistently terrorized by the ever-present possibility of sexual assault that I am tasked with preventing and the knowledge, the first-hand knowledge branded into my memory like a scar that never quite heals from the sizzle of the iron that left it, that if I am harmed, there will likely be no one there to advocate for justice on my behalf, no matter how loudly I shout nor how deeply I dig my own fingernails into my skin to escape the agony of injustice and neglect for a blissful moment of self-directed pain.

I fear being hurt again, and I fear being a failure at surviving.

This fear is part of the backdrop of my womanhood.

I fear being denied medical care, being misdiagnosed, being refused by emergency crews, being told I must lose weight as a condition of care, because I am fat. I fear dying because of fat hatred.

This fear is part of the backdrop of my womanhood.

These are not my only fears. I fear hurting people, I fear letting people down, I fear war being waged in my name, I fear climate change and drought and losing someone I love and choking on a sandwich. Lots of stuff.

But these are the fears that feel permanently attached to my womanhood, because of entrenched oppressions that privileged people refuse to let go.

And I want to share them, I want to say that I am afraid sometimes, because I want the people with those privileges to know at what expense to the rest of us they maintain them, and because I want the people with my marginalizations (and others I do not share) to know that they are not alone when they feel afraid, too.

I'm not fucking stone, but you don't have to be stone to be strong.

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For all my friends and compatriots, known and unknown to me, who need strength in this moment.

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Michael Dunn's Trial Begins in September

[Content Note: Racism; guns; eliminationist violence.]

Also: In November of last year, I wrote about the murder of 17-year-old Jordan Davis, a black boy who was shot by 45-year-old white man Michael Dunn after Dunn asked the car full of teens in which Davis was a passenger to turn down their music in a public parking lot and they refused. Dunn shot at the car "eight or nine times" and then fled the scene.

Dunn, who "has been charged with first-degree murder in Davis' death and also faces three counts of attempted first-degree murder for shooting at the three others in the vehicle who survived," pleaded not guilty and has claimed self-defense because "he felt threatened."

By a car full of unarmed teenagers in a public parking lot who were listening to music loudly than Dunn wanted.

Dunn's Florida trial is scheduled to begin in September.

Let me reiterate why these laws, which justify murder if the killers can prove they "felt threatened," are wholly unjust: Privileged men—like George Zimmerman, like John Henry Spooner, like Michael Dunn—don't learn how to sit with fear.

One of the things that privilege does is insulate one from legitimate fear.

Most very privileged men—white, straight, cis, able-bodied, middle- or upper-class men—spend their lives without knowing sustained fear. Every person knows individual moments of fear—the sort of fear that grips a human moments before a car accident one can see coming but cannot avoid, or in the moment one begins to choke on a bit of lunch while eating alone, when one isn't sure if a cough will dislodge the intruder. Privilege doesn't insulate any of us from that kind of fear.

But the sustained fear of being hurt, being victimized, being exploited—unexpectedly, at any moment, and most frequently by people one trusts—is something that the very privileged do not know intimately, the way the rest of us do.

Privileged men's lives and the lives of marginalized people are very different in that way—and that difference underlines privileged men asserting that they have a right to feel safe. And law enforcement, and the courts, agreeing with them.

Because of this difference, most marginalized people learn how to live their lives against a backdrop of present threat, to a soundtrack of the dull roar of constant fear. For the most part, we learn to ongoingly process fear as we move through our days on such a subconscious level it's as natural as our hearts beating without conscious thought—women, for example, position our keys in hand as a potential weapon and scan deserted parking lots for signs of danger and size up dates in search of anything dangerous with the ease that we execute any one of thousands of other routine daily tasks.

Privileged men don't understand this reality, and, upon having it explained to them, will often react with disgust, with contempt. They accuse marginalized people of being oversensitive, of having a pessimistic view of the world, of profiling men, and yawn gaslight blah fart.

Fear—or, perhaps, fear management—is a central part of marginalized personhood in a way it is simply not a central part of privileged manhood.

So boys, especially privileged boys, don't learn how to sit with fear the way girls do. We tell boys explicitly not to be afraid; we tell them that being afraid makes you a pussy. They learn that to be afraid is to be like a woman, and to be not a man.

And then we structure the world so that privileged men don't have a lot to be afraid of, so that it is easier to maintain an identity that is rooted in not being fearful, even though fear is a normal part of human experience.

So, there are large parts of the male population in this country who don't know how to process fear. And then there is this entire industry that is dedicated to planting manufactured fear in those very people. The Republican Party. Fox News. Conservative Christianity. A vast weapons industry whose marketing is based on the specious premise that there is Something to be afraid of, Something from which you need to protect yourself.

The same people whose privilege affords them the luxury of never having to learn how to sit with, how to live a life in the echo of, how to process fear are the target demographic for manufactured fear.

And the less privileged among their ranks—the working class men of otherwise undiluted privilege—have real fear about job insecurity or healthcare access or how the fuck they're going to pay the mortgage next month. They are fears that are out of their personal control, and for which the Fear Manufacturers are happy to provide scapegoats—immigrants and brown people and feminists and kissing boys—lest anyone notice the Fear Manufacturers have been the architects of that real insecurity, too.

What is one to do when one has no capacity to process fear, no ability to sit with it and live with it, no developed strategies for coping with fear?

Well, in a lot of cases, one buys a gun.

And when that doesn't make the fear go away, one buys another one. And another. And another. And magazine clips that shoot more bullets. And more deadly bullets. And so forth and so on.

Only privilege masks the material difference between feeling safe and being safe, to only the latter of which is one actually entitled. A threat to one's privilege is not actually a lack of safety. It's a feeling of insecurity, which is the closest thing to the existential threat with which marginalized people live every day that many privileged men will ever experience.

"He felt threatened." That isn't good enough. It can't be. Not in a culture where we fail utterly to teach privileged male people that it's okay to be afraid, and how to live with fear.

Fear is a part of a mortal life. Only privilege makes it seem like it could ever be otherwise.

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