Category Archives: Activism

Activism, environment, Just me, Just me, Political, soapbox

A Week in Trump USA Part 1…

Leave a comment

My high school choir Director, a brilliant artist and loving man, posted this on his Facebook page yesterday:

“Those who study authoritarian regimes suggest keeping a list of abnormal events after a demagogue is elected, as a way to remind yourself that this isn’t normal and to keep from being overwhelmed into acceptance by the onslaught of attacks on our rights.
Here is a list below. We are 4 days in. As one author says, “when you see all of this in one list, it is easy to get overwhelmed, at first– it is also easy to see a pattern and to finally, finally recognize that none of this is normal, nor is it ok.”

  • On January 19th, 2017, DT said that he would cut funding for the DOJ’s Violence Against Women programs.
  •  On January 19th, 2017, DT said that he would cut funding for the National Endowment for the Arts.
  • On January 19th, 2017, DT said that he would cut funding for the National Endowment for the Humanities.
  • On January 19th, 2017, DT said that he would cut funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
  • On January 19th, 2017, DT said that he would cut funding for the Minority Business Development Agency.
  • On January 19th, 2017, DT said that he would cut funding for the Economic Development Administration.
  • On January 19th, 2017, DT said that he would cut funding for the International Trade Administration.
  • On January 19th, 2017, DT said that he would cut funding for the Manufacturing Extension Partnership.
  • On January 19th, 2017, DT said that he would cut funding for the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services.
  • On January 19th, 2017, DT said that he would cut funding for the Legal Services Corporation.
  • On January 19th, 2017, DT said that he would cut funding for the Civil Rights Division of the DOJ.
  • On January 19th, 2017, DT said that he would cut funding for the Environmental and Natural Resources Division of the DOJ.
    * On January 19th, 2017, DT said that he would cut funding for the Overseas Private Investment Corporation.
  • On January 19th, 2017, DT said that he would cut funding for the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
  • On January 19th, 2017, DT said that he would cut funding for the Office of Electricity Deliverability and Energy Reliability.
  • On January 19th, 2017, DT said that he would cut funding for the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy.
  • On January 19th, 2017, DT said that he would cut funding for the Office of Fossil Energy.
  • On January 20th, 2017, DT ordered all regulatory powers of all federal agencies frozen.
  • On January 20th, 2017, DT ordered the National Parks Service to stop using social media after RTing factual, side by side photos of the crowds for the 2009 and 2017 inaugurations.
  • On January 20th, 2017, roughly 230 protestors were arrested in DC and face unprecedented felony riot charges. Among them were legal observers, journalists, and medics.
  • On January 20th, 2017, a member of the International Workers of the World was shot in the stomach at an anti-fascist protest in Seattle. He remains in critical condition.
  • On January 21st, 2017, DT brought a group of 40 cheerleaders to a meeting with the CIA to cheer for him during a speech that consisted almost entirely of framing himself as the victim of dishonest press.
  • On January 21st, 2017, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer held a press conference largely to attack the press for accurately reporting the size of attendance at the inaugural festivities, saying that the inauguration had the largest audience of any in history, “period.”
  • On January 22nd, 2017, White House advisor Kellyann Conway defended Spicer’s lies as “alternative facts” on national television news.
  • On January 22nd, 2017, DT appeared to blow a kiss to director James Comey during a meeting with the FBI, and then opened his arms in a gesture of strange, paternal affection, before hugging him with a pat on the back.
  • On January 23rd, 2017, DT reinstated the global gag order, which defunds international organizations that even mention abortion as a medical option.
  • On January 23rd, 2017, Spicer said that the US will not tolerate China’s expansion onto islands in the South China Sea, essentially threatening war with China.
  • On January 23rd, 2017, DT repeated the lie that 3-5 million people voted “illegally” thus costing him the popular vote.
  • On January 23rd, 2017, it was announced that the man who shot the anti-fascist protester in Seattle was released without charges, despite turning himself in.
  • On January 24th, 2017, Spicer reiterated the lie that 3-5 million people voted “illegally” thus costing DT the popular vote.
  • On January 24th, 2017, DT tweeted a picture from his personal Twitter account of a photo he says depicts the crowd at his inauguration and will hang in the White House press room. The photo is of the 2009 inauguration of 44th President Barack Obama, and is curiously dated January 21st, 2017, the day AFTER the inauguration and the day of the Women’s March, the largest inauguration related protest in history.
  • On January 24th, 2017, the EPA was ordered to stop communicating with the public through social media or the press and to freeze all grants and contracts.
  • On January 24th, 2017, the USDA was ordered to stop communicating with the public through social media or the press and to stop publishing any papers or research. All communication with the press would also have to be authorized and vetted by the White House.
  • On January 24th, 2017, HR7, a bill that would prohibit federal funding not only to abortion service providers, but to any insurance coverage, including Medicaid, that provides abortion coverage, went to the floor of the House for a vote.
  • On January 24th, 2017, Director of the Department of Health and Human Service nominee Tom Price characterized federal guidelines on transgender equality as “absurd.”
  • On January 24th, 2017, DT ordered the resumption of construction on the Dakota Access Pipeline, while the North Dakota state congress considers a bill that would legalize hitting and killing protestors with cars if they are on roadways.
  • On January 24th, 2017, it was discovered that police officers had used confiscated cell phones to search the emails and messages of the 230 demonstrators now facing felony riot charges for protesting on January 20th, including lawyers and journalists whose email accounts contain privileged information of clients and sources.”

Thank you to Mr. Taylor for the information.

In further news, after various government agencies were asked to stop reporting scientific information about the environment numerous alternative twitter feeds for these agencies popped up. I never imagined the National Parks Service would lead the revolution but ladies and gentlemen it certainly has. Follow these alternative feeds for publications about science that the Trump administration cannot stem:

16195774_1673492996009402_3965945225241525195_n

Finally, are you looking for something to do to improve your mind? How about a little light reading courtesy of the Freedom of Information Act? Take a gander on over to the FOIA.Gov site and read through how to make a FOIA request. Since the Trump Administration has put a gag order into place I suggest we help these agencies out.

FOIA requests can cost some research time and reprinting costs however, you may request a waiver of fees. “Under the FOIA, fee waivers are limited to situations in which a requester can show that the disclosure of the requested information is in the public interest because it is likely to contribute significantly to public understanding of the operations and activities of the government and is not primarily in the commercial interest of the requester.”

I would argue that requesting the release of scientific information gathered by our government on the status of our environmental health during a time when the Executive branch has restricted the release of any information falls quite clearing under the requirements for fee waivers.

 

Activism, Food, garden, Just me, Just me

The bees knees…

1 Comment

We are getting bees!!

It started like this:

Mom and I were driving home the other day when she asked me if that man in our alley was wearing a hazmat suit. I peered beyond her and declared it was a beekeeper!!

We immediately halted the car, rolled down the windows, and fairly mobbed him with questions. He is an Urban Farmer and beekeeper. He has a hive a few doors down from us and soon will put one in our yard!

He does all the maintenance and beekeeping while we get honey and bees!! My plants will have more bees and I can finally feel like I’m doing more for the vanishing bee population than just planting flowers.

Best of all my kids will get as-local-as-you-can-get honey for their allergies and they will get to learn about co-existing with these amazing time creatures that do so much for our food supply.

Oliver and I have already been setting out water for the neighborhood bees and we sit in the garden and watch them line up to drink. Their tiny furry bodies rest on the edge of the water pool as they delicately sip. Yum. He is super excited to have a hive of our own and has been telling me all about how to stay still when they land on you so they don’t feel threatened.

I plan to put up a page on the hive’s progress so keep your eyes out!

Update:

They are here!!

wpid-wp-1436734984380.jpg

The Sooky Foo Honey Company brought our lovely little hive early this afternoon!

wpid-wp-1436734762212.jpg

It’s so wonderful to see them out in the garden. Many of our neighbors have stopped by to see them and the dog has already been checking them out.

wpid-wp-1436734762601.jpg

Squee!! We have bees!

Activism, equality, Law, Motherhood

Interview with a woman in a position of power…

7 Comments

I had my lunch meeting yesterday and spent a very agreeable nigh two hours discussing law, politics, and gender bias over tamales and taco salad.

The woman I met with has a colorful reputation, and has many times been referred to in less than flattering terms. However, she is in a position of power in a field of law still dominated by men, and as such, I think she gets that lovely double whammy of the double standard. I mean seriously, how can you be tough on crime and feminine, it can’t happen, you must be a bitch to lay down the law. Of course, men can be completly tough and manage to appear “direct” or “authoratative” instead of prickish, but that is the way the cookie currently crumbles.

Happily, I might actually get to work for a woman who knows what I am talking about and isn’t afraid to discuss it. In fact, during our interview, she told me she was impressed that a woman my age was even aware we still had gender bias issues, as so many woman my age seem to think they are things of the past. (Don’t ask your male co-workers what they earn ladies, you won’t like the answer.) I explained to her that after nearly a decade in politics and legal education of one kind or another one would have to be an idiot not to see how differently our nation treats our female leaders and representatives from our male ones, the most recent election being an easy example.

Then she surprised me by telling me that she stopped wearing full fledged suits in court and acting unfeminine. She believes our legal system will never get used to seeing women in positions of authority if all we do when we get there is emulate men. She encouraged me to wear suits with flowing and feminine styles, lots of colors, jewelry, etc. She explained the jury will likely identify with me more too, if I look like a woman, instead of a woman trying to look like a man. Win/Win in my opinion. I would love to wear bright teal to work, and a fish hem looks heaps better on me than an a-line.

She encourages her attorneys to bring their children into the workplace, not minding if their offices contain cribs, so long as the babies don’t really distract other co-workers. She encouraged me to take work home so I can have dinner with my family and tuck my children into bed, you know, so I can actually have a work life balance.

It’s a dream within a dream, a chance to become an attorney with the experience that punches my union card without waving goodbye to my husband and kids for a decade. It’s a chance to work with a boss who gets the woman’s point of view, who understands how patronizing some people become when your suit happens to accomodate breasts and a uterus. It’s a chance to come home at the end of a frustrating day, filled with gender bias and condensencion, and know in my heart that none of it came from my boss. Not one little bit.

I am thrilled. It’s been an issue all my professional life, as an extremely generous cup size and an overabundance of natural blond hair has led to sexual harassment, improper suggestions, and emotions from dismissal to condesecion at almost every job I have ever had. I have been told to dress more conservatively than everyone else in my office, because when I put on something that other women wear, I really fill it out. I have asked to bed by bosses, and I have been treated like a child or an incompetant by older more experienced men.

Since having children it’s gotten worse, this assumption that my value is somehow lessened by their demands on my time and mind. A suggestion, by the way, that I find equally insulting to men, as it basically infers that they think nothing of their issue as they go about their day, caring only for their work. One of the reasons I began my own practice was because I was tired of being treated to the “mommy track” behaviors of potential employers. When I mentioned this at lunch, I was given a woman’s answer.

Of course it’s inconvenient when an employee goes on maternity leave, but it’s an inconvenience we, as a society, need to undertake.

I can’t wait to work for this woman.