I want to thank Allison Gill for this report. I got it from her daily beans podcast that I listen to while I brush my teeth, shower, and if she goes long while I dress. Her podcasts are very informative with three different segments of news and what is happening. Often I write down what I can remember to talk about. Then I realized she gives a transcript of each show, and that transcripts with links is bringing you this post. She has a substack which I also follow where she reports the news giving tips on how to get involved. https://www.muellershewrote.com. What follows is horrifying and triggered me because the abuse these people went through was some of what I did. But remember most of the people on these flights are not gang members. This all comes from a slum lord not wanting to deal with a protest on his apartment complex that was getting really dangerous for the people living there. He went to the news claiming a gang called … had taken over and was shaking down him and residents. Yes they did go to a few residences and demand the money, the money promised to help fund their fight against the landlord. Many right wing outlets selectively edited the videos to make the protesting people seem very sinister. TYT also pushed the scenario hard. As you will read the people in this foreign prison for at least a year held in commutation black out are not gang members, many came to the US in legal ways, some had green cards. They can not access lawyers, can’t call friends or family, they are held for a year in horrific conditions like in a Russian gulag because tRump and crew don’t care about the constitution or the people. All they want is all non-white people removed from the US. Some of those deported by the way, luckily not to this place are US citizens that are fighting for their rights. Hence the sending them to El Salvador that has no laws of rights and agreed for a huge price per detainee to keep them from accessing any outside person. They could kill them tomorrow and no one would know. The tRump people are grabbing anyone they can and sending them there knowing they can not get any help. Sadly I just watched a clip on Tim Pool a low info moron who clearly thinks this is great no matter how many innocent people get caught up in it. It doesn’t matter they broke no laws, and entering the US illegally to ask for asylum is not a criminal offense despite what the white supremacist say it is a protected right under US laws and the treaties, That makes it legal. Again not that tRump and crew care. By any definition that torture is against the US Constitution. An impeachable offense. Hugs
Holsinger is an American photojournalist based out of Nashville, Tenn.
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On the night of Saturday, March 15, three planes touched down in El Salvador, carrying 261 men deported from the United States. A few dozen were Salvadoran, but most of the men were Venezuelans the Trump Administration had designated as gang members and deported, with little or no due process. I was there to document their arrival.
For more than a year, I have been embedded throughout El Salvador’s society, working on a book chronicling the country’s transformation. From the huts of remote island fishermen to the desk of the President, from elite homicide detective units to elementary school classrooms, I have interviewed government officials and everyday people, collecting stories that would shock Stephen King. I’ve stood in classrooms full of happy students which not long ago were empty, because children here once learned early that schools were places to be raped or recruited. I’ve interviewed killers in prison and sat with them face-to-face.
As I stood on the tarmac, an agent with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s ICE Special Response Team told me that some of the Venezuelans had weakly attempted to take over their plane upon landing. It wasn’t unusual for detainees to try to make a last stand, the agent said, guarding the doorway to the plane at the top of the gangway stairs. “They began to try to organize to overthrow the plane by screaming for everyone to stand up and fight. But not everyone was on board,” the agent said, cautioning me to be careful because some of the Venezuelans would fight once they were offloaded
Philip Holsinger
PHILIP HOLSINGER
Philip Holsinger
Even if not fighting, almost all the detainees came to the door of the plane with angry, defiant faces. It was their faces that grabbed me, because within a few hours those faces would completely transform.
The Venezuelans emerging from their plane were not in prison clothes, but in designer jeans and branded tracksuits. Their faces were the faces of guys who in no way expected what they first saw—an ocean of soldiers and police, an entire army assembled to apprehend them.
Philip Holsinger
Philip Holsinger
One of the alleged organizers of the attempted overthrow fought the U.S. agents on the plane, cursing the Americans, the Salvadorans, President Nayib Bukele himself. El Salvador’s Minister of Defense, René Merino, who had been standing on the tarmac at the bottom of the gangway, rushed aboard, dragged the guy to the gangway himself, and flung him into the waiting hands of black-masked guards.
Philip Holsinger
The transfer from the plane to the buses that would carry them to prison was rapid, yet it might as well have been the crossing of an ancient continent. I felt the detainees’ fear as they marched through a gauntlet of black-clad guards, guns raised like the spears of some terrible tribe. I walked the line of buses waiting to depart, photographing faces. A guard noticed one of the detainees turned toward the window and wrenched his head back down into his chest.
Philip Holsinger
Around 2 a.m., the convoy of 22 buses, flanked by armored vehicles and police, moved out of the airport. Soldiers and police lined the 25-mile route to the prison, with thick patrols at every bridge and intersection. For the few Salvadorans, it was a familiar landscape. But for a Venezuelan plucked from America, it must have appeared dystopian—police and soldiers for miles and miles in woodland darkness.
The Terrorism Confinement Center, a notorious maximum-security prison known as CECOT, sits in an old farm field at the foot of an ancient volcano, brightly lit against the night sky. I’ve spent considerable time there and know the place intimately. As we entered the intake yard, the head of prisons was giving orders to an assembly of hundreds of guards. He told them the Venezuelans had tried to overthrow their plane, so the guards must be extremely vigilant. He told them plainly: Show them they are not in control.
Philip Holsinger
The intake began with slaps. One young man sobbed when a guard pushed him to the floor. He said, “I’m not a gang member. I’m gay. I’m a barber.” I believed him. But maybe it’s only because he didn’t look like what I had expected—he wasn’t a tattooed monster.
The men were pulled from the buses so fast the guards couldn’t keep pace. Chained at their ankles and wrists, they stumbled and fell, some guards falling to the ground with them. With each fall came a kick, a slap, a shove. The guards grabbed necks and pushed bodies into the sides of the buses as they forced the detainees forward. There was no blood, but the violence had rhythm, like a theater of fear.
Inside the intake room, a sea of trustees descended on the men with electric shavers, stripping heads of hair with haste. The guy who claimed to be a barber began to whimper, folding his hands in prayer as his hair fell. He was slapped. The man asked for his mother, then buried his face in his chained hands and cried as he was slapped again.
Philip Holsinger
After being shaved, the detainees were stripped naked. More of them began to whimper; the hard faces I saw on the plane had evaporated. It was like looking at men who passed through a time machine. In two hours, they aged 10 years. Their nice clothes were not gathered or catalogued but simply thrust into black garbage bags to be thrown out with their hair.
They entered their cold cells, 80 men per cell, with steel planks for bunks, no mats, no sheets, no pillow. No television. No books. No talking. No phone calls and no visitors. For these Venezuelans, it was not just a prison they had arrived at. It was exile to another world, a place so cold and far from home they may as well have been sent into space, nameless and forgotten. Holding my camera, it was as if I watched them become ghosts.
Sam and Emma in the fun half. Normally there is only two ways to watch the fun half. You can be a member which they admit that some people can not afford which they have a way to get free membership if you need it. Or you can catch the first half while it is playing live and in the description box will be a link to the free fun half. If you click on that you can watch the entire thing. If you save it like I do for later you can go back and watch it at any time because if you don’t the link will disappear so you can’t see it. They make the second half private. Hugs
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March 24, 1616 William Leddra was executed by the Charter government of Massachusetts for being a Quaker. He was the fourth and last of his religion to be hanged with the approval of Governor John Endicott. Though the court did not find him “evil,” he had sympathized with the Quakers who were executed before him; he had refused to remove his hat, and he used the words “thee” and “thou,” which, to Quakers, implied the equality of all people. (Check out the way the link works for this. Much better than the terrible transcription I read the other day.-Newsletter author) Contemporaneous letter describing Leddra’s and other Quakers’ persecution (starts p.58) =========================================== March 24, 1918 Native-born Canadian women over 21 (except native, or First Nations, women) won the right to vote in federal elections, but not to run for office for yet another year. Suffrage was not granted to women in Quebec provincial elections until 1940. Read about Thérèse Casgrain =========================================== March 24, 1964 In a sit-down against nuclear weapons at Parliament Square in London, England, 1,172 were arrested. ============================================ March 24, 1965 The first Teach-In on the Vietnam War was held at the University of Michigan a month after President Lyndon Johnson ordered bombing of North Vietnam. The U-M teach-in was among the first of a new form of campus protest that was to spread nationwide, as a means of mobilizing students to examine policies of their government that they previously had taken for granted. About the 1st Teach-In view original leaflets Very few Americans had ever heard of the country in southeast Asia, and the event was intended to educate the participants in the history of Vietnam and foreign aggression there. Young protester in Chicago march, photo Jo Freeman ============================================= March 24, 1967 Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. led an anti-war march for the first time in Chicago, opposing the Vietnam War by saying: “Our arrogance can be our doom. It can bring the curtains down on our national drama . . . Ultimately, a great nation is a compassionate nation The bombs in Vietnam explode at home—they destroy the dream and possibility for a decent America . . . .” Reverend King addresses rally at the end of the Chicago march, photo: Jo Freeman ============================================== March 24, 1980 The Coalition of Labor Union Women (CLUW) was founded, electing as their first president Olga Madar, a vice president of the United Auto Workers. The convention adopted four goals: organize the unorganized; promote affirmative action; increase women’s participation in their unions; and increase women’s participation in political and legislative activities. CLUW history CLUW today ============================================= March 24, 1980 The archbishop of San Salvador, Óscar Arnulfo Romero y Galdámez was assassinated while consecrating the Eucharist during mass. Monseñor Romero had become a well-known critic of violence and injustice and, as such, was perceived in the right-wing civilian and military circles of El Salvador as an enemy, and criticized by the Roman Catholic church. Romero had exhorted the police and soldiers to disobey orders to kill innocent people, refusing to be silenced. Worshippers had interrupted, with ovations, his homilies condemning the terrorism of the state. The ongoing legacy of Monsignor Romero (The Fransiscans have scrubbed him away. Here’s another place to read about him) ============================================== March 24, 1989 The most environmentally damaging oil spill to date began when the supertanker Exxon Valdez, owned and operated by the Exxon Corporation, ran aground on Bligh Reef in southern Alaska’s Prince William Sound. An estimated 11 million gallons of oil (257,000 barrels or 38,800 metric tons) eventually leaked into the water.Attempts to contain the massive spill were unsuccessful, and wind and currents spread the oil nearly 500 miles from its source, eventually polluting more than 1300 miles of coastline. Hundreds of thousands of birds and thousands of sea mammals were lost in the disaster. A dead murrelet, one of the hardest-hit sea birds in the Valdez spill. 25 years after the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill, read more
Mother Jones, c. 1910, marching in Trinidad, Colo. Photo courtesy of The Newberry Library, Chicago. Call # MMS Kerr Archives.
On March 22, 1914, Mary “Mother” Jones was arrested on a train in southern Colorado for her work in fighting for the coal miners on strike that area. This was her second arrest in this conflict, as she had previously been detained by the state militia in Trinidad and then sent to Denver. Upon release in Denver, she immediately went back to the coal fields, daring the mine owners and their bought police forces to arrest her again. Her work here was typical of the sacrifices this iconic organizer made in the second half of her life as she fought for the miners so badly exploited in late nineteenth and early twentieth century America.
Mother Jones is one of the most fascinating characters in American history. An Irish housewife who had little connection to political activism for much of her adult life, she emerged in middle age as a fiery agitator after her husband and all four of her children died of yellow fever in Memphis and her dress shop burned in the Chicago fire of 1871. She quickly became the voice of the mineworkers, especially in the coal country of Pennsylvania and West Virginia. She bridged generations of activism, being extremely close friends with Terence Powderly while also hailing the rise of the United Mine Workers and radical activists that Powderly could barely understand at his peak in the 1880s. She said she was much older than she actually was, which had both rhetorical powers and helped cement her in our historical memory, as she claimed to be 100 years old the year she died when in fact she was probably 93.
By 1897, she was known as Mother Jones, wearing out of style Victorian black dresses and using the mantle of motherhood as central to her organizing prowess. Calling her “mother” both established her as a maternal figure among the miners but also centered her emphasis on childhood and motherhood in organizing. For instance, she opposed women’s suffrage and ultimately believed that women should be taking care of their children rather than getting involved in politics. Her own life story made this stance not hypocritical. She also used children in her organizing, including the 1903 Children’s Crusade, a march of miners’ children from Pennsylvania to Theodore Roosevelt’s home in Oyster Bay, New York, where the children carried signs reading, “We want to go to School and not the mines.” Roosevelt refused to meet with them. She worked for the UMWA but attended the founding convention of the Industrial Workers of the World in 1905 and worked as an organizer for the Socialist Party in the late 1900s, returning to the UMWA as a paid organizer in 1911.
Though all of these actions, Mother Jones became known as “the most dangerous woman in America,” a title given to her by a district attorney in West Virginia named Reese Blizzard. During a 1902 trial where she was charged with ignoring injunctions against miners holding union meetings (First Amendment in the coal fields indeed!), Blizzard pointed at her, saying, “There sits the most dangerous woman in America. She comes into a state where peace and prosperity reign … crooks her finger [and] twenty thousand contented men lay down their tools and walk out.” That wasn’t true and served the interests of the owners to say that their employees were actually good people but stupid and easily led astray by outside agitators, instead of admitting their employees had a bloody good reason to go on strike. Anyway, the nickname stuck and this attitude from employers was something Jones reveled in.
In the fall of 1913, Mother Jones traveled to Colorado to participate in mineworkers’ organizing in the coal fields in the southern part of that state. Conditions in the coal fields were all too typical of the time: complete industry control over a workforce that was polyglot and desperate. Working conditions were horribly dangerous. Between 1884 and 1912, 1,708 workers died in Colorado coal mines (over 42,000 nationwide). Companies controlled not only the mines but housing, stores, and education. Union organizing was met with brutality and murder. Effectively, the coal companies controlled workers’ lives in Colorado as they did in West Virginia and Pennsylvania. These were Mother Jones’s people.
The companies did not welcome Jones’s presence. She was thrown off company property several times. She was arrested twice. After the first arrest, she was placed in a comfortable hospital for a month. After all, she was an elderly woman and a bit harder to crack the whip on than the miners themselves. But on March 22, 1914, she was arrested again. This time, the companies were less kind. They threw her into the Huerfano County jail in Walsenburg. This was no nice hospital. She spent 23 days in the jail.
The United Mine Workers tried to capitalize on Jones’s arrest. They issued a pamphlet describing (and perhaps exaggerating a bit) the conditions this old woman had to suffer through as she lived her faith of defending the miners. The pamphlet discussed the filth, the rats in the cell, the snow pouring in a broken window, a guard jabbing her with a bayonet. On the other hand, the mine owners and their friends accused Mother Jones of having been a prostitute in a Denver brothel in 1904 and said her support for Coxey’s Army had consisted of procuring women for sex. On both sides, Mother Jones elicited strong opinions.
After her second release, Mother Jones went to Washington DC to testify on the conditions in the coal country. A few days later, the Colorado coal wars would see their most violent incident, with the Ludlow Massacre. Between Ludlow and the aftermath when enraged miners went on a rampage against anyone associated with the coal companies, up to 200 people died in this strike, possibly the most deadly in American history. John D. Rockefeller Jr. agreed to meet with her about the conditions of the miners as part of his public relations effort when he was savagely attacked for his role at Ludlow.
Mary Jones died in 1930. Earlier that year, on the day she supposedly turned 100, Mother Jones was filmed with sound about workers’ rights.
FURTHER READING:
Elliott Gorn’s The Most Dangerous Woman in America.
Thomas Andrews, Killing for Coal: America’s Deadliest Labor War.
BEHOLD! Gay Republicans are finding out they cannot wear the red hat of hatred in LGBTQ+ nightclubs.
1. Gay Bar Bans Bigots
Last week, Badlands, a beloved LGBTQ+ nightclub in Sacramento, posted this heavenly announcement:
“Moving forward, MAGA-related attire will not be allowed in the venue. This decision is not about banning political beliefs — it is about ensuring that Badlands remains a space where our community feels comfortable and supported.”
That’s not censorship. That’s community care. And this is not the first bar to make the news for banning MAGA, either. Last week a bar in Indianapolis went viral for kicking out one of these bigots.
2. “What the Heck? Let’s See What Happens”
Steven Bourassa, the idiotic Trump supporter whose actions inspired the bar to make the change, told local news station KCRA:
“I’ve never worn a red [Make America Great Again] hat to the gay bars before. I said, ‘What the heck? Let’s see what happens.’ We were having drinks and hanging out, and it was a pleasant time. So I was really impressed. And I complimented security on the good job they did.”
What didst this imbecile think wouldst happen?!?
This is not a prank show. This is real life. And you’re not the main character.
Steven Bourassa.
3. “It’s About Bullying”
“This decision is not based upon protecting our community,” said Preston Romero, president of the Log Cabin Republicans of Sacramento. “It’s about bullying and singling out one particular political ideology. And we believe that that’s unfair.”
WHAT HEINOUS HYPOCRISY!!! Because when trans kids are banned from sports, queer teachers are forced back into the closet, and drag queens are treated like criminals—they don’t say ONE DAMN WORD.
But when a gay bar sets a boundary to protect its patrons from symbols of literal hatred? Suddenly it’s bullying? Give God a damn break!
Preston Romero, president of the Log Cabin Republicans of Sacramento.
4. God’s Final Word
And after all the hypocritical outrage, Bourassa says he’ll still go to Badlands but he’ll just leave the hat at home.
“I didn’t have any problems,” he said. “I’ll still go back… but I’ll leave the hat at home now.”
This man got banned, agreed with the ban, and is going right back.
REJOICE, everyone! We finally found the thing that can break the MAGA cult…and apparently it’s gay sex.
5. We’re Fighting Back And It’s Working
This isn’t just a moment, it’s momentum.
And it’s building everywhere you look.
People are fighting back everywhere.
Here’s how we fight:
Keep people engaged & informed with truth, hope and laughter.
Rally thousands of voices to push back against fascism.
Build an independent platform where truth can’t be silenced.
And it’s working.
📈 LOOK AT THIS: (snip-go look. The clicks help God [the Substack.])
March 23, 1918 The trial of 101 Wobblies (members of the Industrial Workers of the World or IWW) began in Chicago, for opposition to World War I. In September 1917, 165 IWW members were arrested for conspiring to hinder the draft, encourage desertion, and intimidate others in connection with labor disputes. The trial lasted five months, the longest criminal trial in American history at the time.The jury found them all guilty. The judge sentenced IWW leader “Big Bill” Haywood and 14 others to 20 years in prison; 33 were given 10 years, the rest shorter sentences. They were fined a total of $2,500,000 and the IWW was shattered as a result. Haywood jumped bail and fled to the Soviet Union, where he remained until his death 10 years later. “Big Bill” Haywood Read more
March 23, 1942 The U.S. government began moving all those of Japanese ancestry, including some native-born U.S. citizens (known as nisei), from their west coast homes to indefinite imprisonment in detention centers, beginning with Manzanar in California which eventually held more than 10,000 Americans. Located on 60,000 acres west of Los Angeles, it is now a national historic site; only 3 of the original 800 buildings remain. Gallery of photos and other materials about Manzanar
March 23, 1961 Army Major Lawrence Robert Bailey was the first recorded American to be held as a prisoner of war in Southeast Asia. One of eight crew members of a C-47 surveillance aircraft shot down over Laos, Bailey was held by the Pathet Lao for 17 months, losing one-third of his body weight (down to 53 kg, or 117 lbs) during that time. The other occupants of the plane are presumed to have died in the crash; Bailey always wore a parachute.
March 23, 1984 USS Queenfish nuclear submarine student die-in outside the U.S. Consulate. One thousand boats, known informally as the Auckland Harbour Peace Squadron, demonstrated against arrival of the nuclear submarine, U.S.S. Queenfish in New Zealand.
Hello Everyone. Before I turn you over to Ethel to watch her informative video on the same group attacking trans people making up lies about furry’s to try to attack trans people through them. Of course according to the hate group anything not cis straight that they don’t understand is attacking children somehow. But my good news I won’t have to dump my main computer. I figured out what was causing two of my programs that I need to refuse to work. I combed through the setting of both programs. I then dumped the video computer. I later realized I did not have to. There was a setting that said make this program work with the VPN (paraphrased) Then the other side of that said make programs not work with VPN. So I had placed the switched it to work with VPN. For two days I couldn’t get the two program. This morning at 3 am I dumped the computer, resetting it, then loaded up the two programs and kept changing settings and things until suddenly everything works. Then I check to make sure the VPN was not leaking my location with the settings that way. The switch should have said this way bypasses the VPN, this way makes the program use the VPN. Why do I need the VPN? I live in Florida, a republican nanny state that thinks adults in the state need permission to visit sites labeled NSFW if you get my meaning. Anyway. Now I have to reload all my programs on the video computer. Now to the video. Hugs
March 22, 1933 The Nazi German concentration camp at Dachau was opened, the first of many such camps built for the incarceration and extermination of those considered unfit: Jews, Polish Catholics, Communists, the Roma (frequently referred to as Gypsies), the “work-shy,” homosexuals, the “hereditary asocial,” and those with mental and/or physical handicaps. The gate to Dachau “Work will make you free” Over 200,000 prisoners were registered at Dachau, nearly all of whom died there. The early days of Dachau
March 22, 1956 Civil rights leader Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., was convicted of organizing an allegedly illegal boycott by black passengers of buses in Montgomery, Alabama. He was fined $500 but when his lawyers indicated his intent to appeal, the sentence was changed to 386 days of imprisonment. Story of the Montgomery Bus Boycott
March 22, 1965 3,200 civil rights demonstrators, led by the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., and under protection of a federalized National Guard, began a third attempt at a week-long march from Selma, Alabama, to the state capitol at Montgomery in support of voting rights for black Americans. Marchers on their way to Montgomery A week before, the march had been violently stopped before leaving Selma. People from all over the country arrived to support the effort for enfranchisement of African Americans in the South whose right to vote had been systematically denied. From Selma to Montgomery: An Introduction to the 1965 Marches – Lesson Plan
March 22, 1974 The Equal Rights Amendment to the U.S. Constitution (ERA) was passed by both houses of Congress with two-thirds majorities. The amendment, to give women full equality under law, was ratified by the legislatures of only 35 states, short of the required three-quarters of the 50 states, and thus never became law. Detailed history of the Equal Rights Amendment
March 22, 1980 30,000 marched in Washington, DC against re-introduction of draft registration. Denise Levertov’s lines from her poem, “A Speech for Antidraft Rally, D.C., March 22, 1980″”…Let our different dream, and more than dream, our acts of constructive refusal generate struggle. And love. We must dare to win not wars, but a future in which to live.” The entire poem(pdf)
Scottie's Playtime 