Tag: Bigotry

Amazon cuts mentions of DEI and LGBTQ rights from public policies

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2025/01/10/amazon-removes-black-trans-rights/

Another large company has fallen to right wing pressure and the fear of being on tRump’s bad side.  This right wing media pressure campaign we had better find a way to stop and combat.  Hugs.  

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A commitment to helping Black people live “free from fear,” and all occurrences of the term “transgender” disappeared from a page listing the online retailer’s policies late last month.

 
An Amazon logo hangs on a wall at Amazon’s HQ2 in Crystal City, Virginia in 2023. (Eric Lee for the Washington Post)
 
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As Donald Trump prepares to return to the White House, Amazon has cut commitments to protecting the rights of Black and LGBTQ+ people from a public listing of its corporate policies.

Statements that said Amazon supported the rights of transgender people and would protect the safety of Black employees and customers disappeared from a webpage stating the company’s positions late in December, archived versions show.

Sections titled “Equity for Black people” and “LGBTQ+ rights” were removed from the page, along with all mentions of the term transgender. The “Diversity, equity, and inclusion” section was updated to say that “inequitable treatment of anyone — including Black people, LGBTQ+ people, Asians, women, and others — is unacceptable.”
 

The changes come as other corporations have also adjusted their policies in ways apparently calculated to fit the change of political weather in Washington.

 

McDonald’s this month scaled back its diversity goals and Meta confirmed Friday that it would dismantle its employee diversity and equity, or DEI, programs. A growing number of Fortune 500 companies have abandoned or reduced DEI initiatives in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn affirmative action in college admissions in 2023.

Some Amazon employees who noticed the changes to its policy page this week were dismayed by the apparent changes in the company’s positions, screenshots of internal conversations seen by The Washington Post showed. The Information earlier reported the changes.
 

Amazon spokesperson Kelly Nantel said in an email statement, “We update this page from time to time to ensure that it reflects updates we’ve made to various programs and positions.” The company also pointed to an internal memo from December in which vice president Candi Castleberry said it was rolling back some DEI initiatives. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.

 

Before late December, Amazon’s webpage listing its policy positions said the company stood “in solidarity” with Black employees and customers, and supported “legislation to combat misconduct and racial bias in policing, efforts to protect and expand voting rights, and initiatives that provide better health and educational outcomes for Black people.”

The paragraph containing those statements is no longer on the webpage.

 

Amazon also previously said on that page it was “working at the U.S. federal and state level on legislation” on protections for transgender people. It said that the company provided “gender transition benefits based on the Standards of Care published by the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH).” The section with those claims has also been deleted.

Hayes: The trans population is far smaller than the right would have you believe

“Here is what is true: There are far, far fewer transgender Americans than the far right wants you to think there are,” says Chris Hayes

She got 12 years for $31 of pot. Years after her parole, she was jailed for the unpaid court fees.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/09/12/patricia-spottedcrow-marijuana-year-sentence/

This article is from September 12, 2019.  However it is a reminder of several factors of our justice system.  First the hysteria around cannabis needs to be addressed at the federal level.  I don’t know if it is older people not able to process that reefer madness was a complete lie made up to scare people / kids off using the devil’s weed.  The other thing I noticed was that the sentence was way over the top.  Why?   Racism clearly.  She is Native American in a state known for being very racist against the first people.  The third thing I noticed was the lack of rehabilitation the state had just looking for her to be returned to prison.  The lack of support for a former inmate, the stigma of the conviction in the population, and the crazy need for the state to keep applying more pressure to get money / harass a former inmate until they break and are returned to prison. Please notice the difference in treatment a poor woman got in the legal system vs what wealthy tRump got.  Hugs

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Sitting in her jail cell this week, Patricia Spottedcrow couldn’t imagine where she was going to get the money she needed for her release.

In 2010, the young Oklahoma mother, who had been caught selling $31 worth of marijuana to a police informant after financial troubles caused her to lose her home, was sentenced to 12 years in prison. It was her first-ever offense, and the lengthy sentence drew national attention, sparking a movement that led to her early release.

 
 

But once she was home free, Spottedcrow still owed thousands in court fees that she struggled to pay, since her felony conviction made it difficult to find a job. Notices about overdue payments piled up, with late fees accumulating on top of the original fines. On Monday, the 34-year-old was arrested on a bench warrant that required her to stay in jail until she could come up with $1,139.90 in overdue fees, which she didn’t have. Nearly a decade after her initial arrest, she was still ensnarled in the criminal justice system, and had no idea when she would see her kids again.

 
 

“I had no idea how I was going to pay this off,” Spottedcrow told KFOR on Wednesday, after strangers raised the money for her release. “I knew I was going to be sitting here for a while.”

In 2011, Spottedcrow became an unwitting poster child for criminal justice reform when the Tulsa World featured her in a series about women incarcerated in Oklahoma. Then 25, she had just entered prison for the first time, and didn’t expect to be reunited with her young children until they were teenagers.

At the time of her arrest, Spottedcrow was unemployed and without a permanent home, the paper reported. She was staying at her mother’s house in the small town of Kingfisher, Okla., when a police informant showed up and bought an $11 bag of marijuana. Two weeks later, he returned to buy another $20 worth of the drug from Spottedcrow. Both mother and daughter were charged with distribution of a controlled substance, and, because Spottedcrow’s children were at home when the transaction took place, possession of a dangerous substance in the presence of a minor.

 
 

“I was home on vacation and it was just there, and I thought we could get some extra money,” Spottedcrow told the paper. “I’ve lost everything because of it.”

The two women both were offered plea deals that would have netted them only two years in prison, the World reported, but Spottedcrow didn’t want her 50-year-old mother, who has health issues, incarcerated. Because neither had a prior criminal record and they had sold only a small amount of pot, they took their chances and pleaded guilty without negotiating a sentencing agreement, assuming they would be granted probation.

Instead, the judge sentenced Spottedcrow to 10 years in prison for the distribution charge, plus another two years for possession. Her mother received a 30-year suspended sentence so that she could take care of the children. Kingfisher County Associate District Judge Susie Pritchett, who retired not long afterward, told the World she thought the sentence was lenient. The mother-daughter pair had been behind “an extensive operation,” she claimed, adding, “It was a way of life for them.”

 
 

Spottedcrow said that wasn’t true. “I’ve never been in trouble, and this is a real eye-opener,” she told the paper at the start of her prison stint. “My lifestyle is not like this. I’m not coming back. I’m going to get out of here, be with my kids and live my life.”

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After the World’s story published in 2011, supporters rallied around Spottedcrow’s cause, urging officials to reconsider her punishment. At the time, Oklahoma had the highest per capita rate of female incarceration in the country, a title it continues to hold today. Advocates contended that lengthy sentences like hers were part of the problem, and questioned whether racial bias could have played a role — Spottedcrow is part Native American and part African American.

That same year, a different judge reviewed Spottedcrow’s sentence and agreed to shave off four years. Then, in 2012, then-Gov. Mary Fallin (R) approved her parole. Spottedcrow got home in time to surprise her kids when they stepped off the school bus. The American Civil Liberties Union described her release as a “bittersweet victory,” noting that serving only two years of a 12-year sentence was highly unusual, but the penalty that she received for a first-time, nonviolent drug offense wasn’t out of the ordinary for Oklahoma.

 
 

It also wasn’t the end of her troubles. In 2017, five years after Spottedcrow was released from prison, Ginnie Graham, a columnist for the World, checked in to see how she was doing. The picture that she painted was dispiriting: Spottedcrow’s growing family was living in a motel off the interstate because having a felony drug conviction on her record made it virtually impossible for her to find housing, and she hadn’t been able to find work, either.

“I’ve never had Section 8 or HUD, but I need it now,” she said. “I even called my (Cheyenne and Arapahoe) tribe to help, and they didn’t. I called the shelters, and they don’t take large families.”

That same year, at a forum on criminal justice reform, Spottedcrow explained that she couldn’t go back to working in nursing homes like she had done before her arrest because of her felony conviction. And in a small town like Kingfisher, every other potential employer already knew about her legal woes.

 
 

“I can’t even go in and act like I feel good about getting this job, because they already know who I am,” she said. “So it’s been really hard.”

While Spottedcrow struggled to care for her six children, the Kingfisher County Court Clerk’s Office mailed out more than a dozen notices saying she had fallen behind on her payments. Each letter meant that the court had tacked on another $10 fine, and that another $80 would be added on top of that if the office didn’t get the money within 10 days. When Spottedcrow first reported to prison, she owed $2,740 in fines. After her release, she made payments at least every other month, according to the World. But it barely made an impact on her ballooning debt: When she was arrested this week, she owed $3,569.76.

“We ask folks for years and years to continue to not have any interaction with law enforcement, to pay these fines and fees, and to pay for this supervision,” Nicole McAfee, director of policy and advocacy for the ACLU of Oklahoma, told KFOR. “In a way, we just oftentimes set folks up for failure.”

 
 

Spottedcrow’s arrest on Monday brought renewed attention to her nearly decade-old court case. KFOR morning news anchor Ali Meyer, who detailed the saga in a widely shared Twitter thread, noted that cannabis has been a booming industry in Oklahoma ever since the state legalized medical marijuana in 2018, and left it up to doctors to determine who qualified.

On Tuesday afternoon, Meyer posted the number for the Kingfisher County Court Clerk’s Office, which would allow anyone to make payments on Spottedcrow’s behalf. By Wednesday, seven anonymous supporters had covered not just the $1,139.90 that she needed to get out of jail, but her entire $3,569.76 outstanding balance, the station reported.

Smiling broadly as she left the Oklahoma County Jail, Spottedcrow thanked the strangers whose donations meant she was finally free.

“It’s amazing,” she said. “It feels wonderful. I don’t even know what to say. It just feels really good. I feel like I hit the lotto.”

Trump’s sweeping deportation threat is unworkable and aimed at ‘rabid’ Republicans, says Newt Gingrich

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jan/13/trump-immigration-newt-gingrich

Well well well.  Now that he got his party / his guy elected, he admits it was all just a game that was not possible.  He is trying to shove some of the years of slime off himself and crawl to the side of good.   Too late Newt.  You choose your path, stay in your pen or your own fellows will turn on you and destroy you themselves.  Hugs

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Former US House speaker says documented people, Dreamers, mothers and children must not be deported

 

Man in suit speaks into microphone

Newt Gingrich during the Republican national convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on 17 July 2024. Photograph: Patrick T Fallon/AFP/Getty Images

Newt Gingrich, the former US House speaker and presidential hopeful, said a section of his own Republican party was “rabid” over immigration and predicted Donald Trump’s suggestion that he could deport documented people as well as millions of undocumented people will not come to pass.

“I’d be very surprised if you see any significant effort to change the game for people who are here legally,” Gingrich said, weeks before Trump’s return to the White House. “I just think there’s a very small faction of the party that’s rabid about this.”

 

He also warned that public support for mass deportations would “collapse” if stories began to come out “about mothers or babies or children being deported”.

The president-elect may not welcome Gingrich’s intervention. After all, Trump won last year’s election promising mass deportations involving the armed forces and detention camps. He has chosen ultra-hardliners including Tom Homan and Stephen Miller and has suggested his administration will attempt to remove children and documented people, telling NBC: “I don’t want to be breaking up families, so the only way you don’t break up the family is you keep them together and you have to send them all back.”

Also at issue is the fate of millions of so-called Dreamers, undocumented people who were children when they were brought to the US, and Trump’s vow to remove birthright citizenship, a right protected by the 14th amendment but which Trump says he will strike down by executive order.

Amid widespread predictions of chaos and protest, Gingrich said he was “passionately in favor of trying to help find a path to create legality for the Dreamers”, a position that may put him less at odds with Trump, given Trump’s suggestion he might accept a deal on the matter.

Gingrich continued: “It’s nonsense to say somebody who came here when they were two, only speaks English, graduated as a high school valedictorian and is currently a nurse or a doctor should be deported. We’re going to deport them and they don’t speak the language of whatever country their parents came from, and they’ve earned the right to be Americans?

“ … I think [the Trump administration has to] to realize that there are gradations here that we’re dealing with, and try to think through, how do you both meet the long-term identity and national security interests of the country and meet the human concerns. And I think it’s a real challenge.”

Now 81, Gingrich was a Georgia representative from 1979 to 1999, the last four years as House speaker. In 2012, he ran for the Republican presidential nomination. A prolific author, he remains close to Trump, to whom he offered advice during the attempt to overturn the 2020 election.

Gingrich spoke to the Guardian to mark the release of Journey to America with Newt and Callista Gingrich, a PBS documentary made with his wife about immigrants who have made major contributions to US public life.

“We are a nation of law despite some of the things that have been said [by Trump and his allies],” he said. “And I think that if you have legal standing in the American system, it’s very difficult to deport you. On the other hand, if you have no legal standing, it’s pretty easy to deport you, right? And I’m for doing the easy first. That’s why we should give [Dreamers] legal status, as a practical matter.”

Along those lines, Gingrich has put out a seven-step immigration plan, perhaps for Trump to consider.

Gingrich offered another warning: “Lincoln once said that with popular sentiment, anything is possible; without popular sentiment, nothing is possible. Well, you get very many human stories about mothers or babies or children being deported, then support for the deportation program will collapse.”

“Orange Ya Glad She’s Not In Heaven? by Clay Jones”

Bigots burn in Hell Read on Substack

Anita Bryant was famous for being a singer and had several hits way back in the day. Then she was known for orange juice as she became a spokesperson for the Florida Citrus Commission. Finally, she was known for being a bigot.

Bryant conducted herself as a wholesome Christian years before she campaigned against gay rights. Among her endorsements and products was a cookbook with a Jesus theme. It’s just not breakfast without orange juice and Jesus. Bless this bacon.

In 1979, she tarnished her image and her endorsements started to evaporate. What happened?

Dade County, Florida passed an ordinance that prohibited discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. This upset many bigots, one of them being Anita Bryant. Her fear was that LGBTQ people would be treated like human beings and the nation would stop discriminating and spitting on them. Bigots gotta spit. She led a highly publicized campaign against gay rights and gay people as part of a homophobic organization called Save Our Children. The organization later had to change its name as there was another group that had the name first, and who really wanted to save children and not just use them to push a homophobic agenda.

Bryant and her fellow homophobes feared gay meant pedophilia and LGBTQ people having equal rights would teach children to grow up and treat them like equal human beings. Bryant was against LGBTQ people working in schools and becoming role models. She believed gays were recruiting, which was true. Men all over the country were given free toasters in exchange for sleeping with other men, attending Broadway musicals, and being all-around fabulous.

Bryant said at the time, “What these people really want, hidden behind obscure legal phrases, is the legal right to propose to our children that theirs is an acceptable alternate way of life. I will lead such a crusade to stop it as this country has not seen before.”

During her anti-LGBTQ campaign, she said, “The recruitment of our children is absolutely necessary for the survival and growth of homosexuality… for since homosexuals cannot reproduce, they must recruit, must freshen their ranks.”

Here’s a fun fact: LGBTQ people are mostly born from straight parents.

She also said, probably while Jerry Falwell was standing beside her, “As a mother, I know that homosexuals cannot biologically reproduce children; therefore, they must recruit our children” and “If gays are granted rights, next we’ll have to give rights to prostitutes and to people who sleep with St. Bernards and to nail biters.” Nail biting is a sin? Was that the rejected 11th Commandment?

Also, the government needs to take my rights away because I used to sleep with a Beagle, and I’m not gonna lie. I miss sleeping with a Beagle.

Bryant was able to overturn the ordinance and continued her hate campaign throughout the nation. She galvanized America’s bigots but the LGBTQ community along with hetero friends conducted a campaign against Bryant and orange juice. Eventually, Bryant got pied. A civil rights supporter threw a banana cream pie right into Bryant’s face. Bryant responded with a homophobic slur, saying, “At least it was a fruit pie.”

I don’t know if I can condone or condemn the pieing as I’ve never had a banana cream pie.

Bryant said she loved homosexuals but hated their sins, which is bullshit.

Bryant eventually lost all her endorsements as she became toxic. Even other fundamentalist Christian organizations shunned her and stopped inviting her to their events. she stopped getting invites to singing events and even had a planned variety show canceled. Bryant eventually had to declare bankruptcy.

During the campaign against Bryant, bars stopped serving screwdrivers because of the orange juice and instead served Anita Bryant specials, which were made from vodka and apple juice which were hopefully served with a side of banana cream pie. Drag queens started impersonating Anita Bryant.

One of Bryant’s granddaughters came out and wasn’t sure about inviting her grandmother to her marriage to another woman. She should have invited her and not told her beforehand what was happening. That would have been fun.

Today, there are still bigots in government targeting the LGBTQ community and trying to suppress their rights. There are laws in places like Tennessee and Florida discriminating against drag shows. The should all be pied with banana cream pies.

I hope Anita Bryant, Ron DeSantis, that Duck Dynasty asshole, and every bigoted Republican likes pulp in their orange juice.

Thank you: To everyone who’s a subscriber, especially those who are PAID subscribers. You’re keeping me alive and free to focus on drawing cartoons, writing blogs, making videos, and creating my usual chaos for MAGAts. You rock! If you’re not a paid subscriber yet, please consider becoming one at $8 a month.

Music note: I listened to The Beatles’s Sgt. Pepper while coloring.

Drawn in 30 seconds: (snip-go see)

Bill Maher Admits Trans Rights Are Civil Rights

The Beginning Of The End For Gay Marriage

Jill Bearup’s Transphobia is Even Worse in 2025 (Just Stab Me Now)

Again Ethel is a woman I have been following since she was a teenager.  She has gone through all the stages of transitioning, from doubt, trying to make it something else to finally admitting to herself and the world she is a woman and now living her life as one.   The grand thing is she still fights so very hard for trans people despite the costs to her for taking on one of the growing popular atheist anti-trans people and others. She lost 2/3rd her income but never backed down, always telling the truth.  She makes every video well researched and documents it, also she provides a transcript for those who would rather read than listen.  I admit I admire her and her strength in her life struggles.  But if you wish to learn more about those attacking trans stuff or the false idea that trans women are destroying female sports,  I would watch her videos.   Hugs

Well, hell’s bells. I wasn’t going to add more of this sort of thing, but it’s important, so here it is.

Read in full here: https://www.platformer.news/meta-new-trans-guidelines-hate-speech/

Snippet:

Earlier this week, Meta announced a sweeping set of changes intended to reduce the amount of content it moderates and align its speech policies more closely with the incoming Trump administration. On Thursday, employees and contractors working on trust and safety began to learn what this would mean in practice.

One change Meta made this week was to eliminate restrictions on some attacks on immigrants, women, and transgender people. Specifically, its hateful conduct policy now allows “allegations of mental illness or abnormality when based on gender or sexual orientation, given political and religious discourse about transgenderism and homosexuality and common non-serious usage of words like ‘weird.’”

Meta has long supplemented its public community standards with nonpublic guidelines that it shares with employees and contractors charged with enforcing its policies. The guidelines give moderators examples of what is and is not allowed.

Today, Platformer is sharing some of those guidelines.

In an answer to the question “Do insults about mental illness and abnormality violate when targeting people on the basis of gender or sexual orientation?” Meta now answers “no.” It gave the following examples of posts that do not violate its policies:

Non-violating: “Boys are weird.”
Non-violating: “Trans people aren’t real. They’re mentally ill.”
Non-violating: “Gays are not normal.”
Non-violating: “Women are crazy.”
Non-violating: “Trans people are freaks.”

And in a follow-up questions about whether denying that a protected class violates the hateful content policy, Meta also answers no. It gave these as examples of posts that are now allowed on Facebook and Instagram: (snip-MORE. This is from the guy who left Substack a while back. I don’t want to steal from him. It’s free to read.)

‘Trans Panic’ Was ALWAYS A Right-Wing Culture War Distraction