Tag: Human Rights
Agenda 47
Thank you, Ten Bears! I keep pointing out that Project 2024, Agenda 47, and the Republican National Party Platform are all cut from the same whole cloth. It’s important to be aware, even though one need not read each document separately.
Peace & Justice History for 10/19:
| October 19, 1923 The War Resisters League was founded in New York City.  WRL history  Above: One of the founders, Jessie Wallace Hughan (r), 1942 photo: WRL/Swarthmore Peace Collection The War Resisters League home |
October 19, 1960 Martin Luther King, Jr., and 36 others were jailed after being arrested during a sit-in at the snack bar of Atlanta’s Rich’s department store where they requested service and were refused on account of their race. More about this arrest |
| October 19, 1980 J.P. Stevens & Co. was forced to sign its first contract with a union after a 17-year struggle in North Carolina and other southern states. The workers, organized by the Amalgamated Clothing & Textile Workers Union, were supported by a widespread boycott of Stevens products by labor, progressive and religious organizations.  Read more about the struggle and the movie “Norma Rae” |
https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryoctober.htm#october19
More From Janet, with links
A Worthy Cause as well as a Resource-
He’s been flying people to access reproductive care. Here’s how he’s preparing for the election.
Regardless of the outcome of the election, this organization flying people to access abortion and gender-affirming care will have plenty of work. (Emphasis mine, but important-A)
Originally published by The 19th
This article was co-published with The Advocate as part of The 19th News Network’s Abortion on the Ballot series.
Just two months before the Supreme Court would overturn Roe v. Wade, eliminating the federal right to an abortion, Mike Bonanza launched Elevated Access.
The nonprofit dedicated to helping patients receive reproductive health care would soon find its services more crucial than ever. Since its beginnings in April 2022, Republican-run legislatures have passed near-total abortion bans in 13 states. Conservatives also began pushing bans on gender-affirming care for minors alongside other anti-transgender laws, culminating in 26 states that now prohibit this widely-supported medical treatment, according to the Movement Advancement Project.
As the need has grown, so has Elevated Access. The organization has continued to enlist volunteer pilots and offer free flights to patients who need reproductive health care, such as abortions and gender-affirming care, but who don’t have access to it where they live, whether due to bans or lack of resources. Elevated Access completed 400 flights in its first 18 months, according to Bonanza. In the past 12 months, it’s completed 1,200.
Now, Bonanza and his few staff members are preparing for the results of the November elections, which could have an impact on their work. For Bonanza, there is a “best-case” scenario that sees Vice President Kamala Harris ascend to the presidency, and a “worst-case” that sees former President Donald Trump return to office. But no matter the outcome, there will still be plenty of work for Elevated Access.
“Trump winning alone doesn’t necessarily do all the bad things that could happen. Harris winning doesn’t mean all the good things will happen,” Bonanza said. “So, a likely scenario really is some form of what we see today, where it’s going to vary wildly between states no matter who wins, at least for probably the first year to 18 months [of the next administration].”
While Trump’s campaign has attempted to distance itself from the unpopular idea of a national ban — even claiming recently that he would veto one if it made it to his desk — his running mate, JD Vance, previously expressed the desire to restrict abortion federally, and a road map to implement such a policy is outlined in Project 2025, the blueprint for a second Trump presidency crafted by conservative organization the Heritage Foundation.
Bonanza isn’t quite sure what will happen to Elevated Access in the longshot event of a national ban. While the organization currently enlists its volunteer pilots and other allies through aviation conferences and media coverage, their efforts have remained domestic. He insists that if abortion is somehow outlawed nationally or otherwise restricted, his group will continue to do what they’ve done in the face of increasing state bans, which is “get creative.”
“When I think about what the worst case scenarios are of the future — short of having to shut down because there’s just no legal space for us to operate in — we’ll find a way to help people, whatever that looks like,” Bonanza asserted. “We’re really creative and really nimble, and always ready to find solutions to new challenges.”
While Harris is “certainly” the “better” option, according to Bonanza, the rollback of rights seen at the state level over the past two years has happened under a Democratic president and can continue to happen under another one. There are unlikely pathways a Harris administration could take to solidify access to reproductive health care, such as by expanding the Supreme Court or championing legislation through a Democrat-controlled Congress — which is currently not in place.
Even under Harris, Bonanza explained that “there’s always going to be people that don’t have transportation, don’t have the funds they need to pay for the care they need, don’t have housing and other things they might need in order to get care from the right provider.” Part of this is due to “the state of the American health care system” and lack of universal health care, but “that’s not something we’re gonna fix in the next two to four or even eight years — it’s going to be a long process.”
“The problems that people are facing today are not new. Some of our partners have existed for a decade helping people travel to get access to abortion in particular. That’s because you can’t just walk to any medical provider and get that care, because some providers don’t do it,” Bonanza said. “So, even if President Harris is able to [legally protect] abortion, gender-affirming care, and all the possible scenarios that we would support, legalization does not equal access.”
Ten states will be voting on abortion directly: Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Maryland, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New York and South Dakota each have a referendum on the ballot that would enshrine abortion access in their state constitutions. So far, every abortion protection referendum that’s previously been brought to vote has passed.
But regardless of whether the ballot measures pass, Bonanza predicts that legal challenges to abortion laws will continue. In Georgia, a six-week ban was recently overturned before the state Supreme Court almost immediately reinstated it. Bonanza said that while providers were “ready to start providing abortions again” in the state, it’s the constant back-and-forth that leaves health care suspended in legal limbo.
“The providers that have been under a state ban the shortest amount of time are going to have the most capability to get up and running again. But there are certainly providers out there that relocated from one state to another after their bans were passed,” Bonanza explained. “I know a provider that relocated both his practice and himself from Ohio to Illinois. I don’t see a scenario where he moves back to Ohio and starts a new clinic again.”
Beyond the election, Elevated Access is preparing for the U.S. Supreme Court’s impending ruling on gender-affirming care and the constitutionality of state restrictions for youth. Bonanza, who is not just the executive director but also a pilot, has personally flown both transgender adults and youth to receive treatment.
He emphasized that there’s “a very broad spectrum of what gender-affirming care looks like,” from altering one’s hair and wardrobe to puberty blocker and hormones. For the transgender youth Bonanza has served, the gender-affirming care they receive is often “as simple as just going to see a talk therapist.” For the adults he serves, many “are traveling just to get access to care because they don’t have a provider locally.”
Surgeries on minors are incredibly rare — a recent study published in JAMA found that there were only 151 breast reductions performed on American minors in 2019, and 146 (97 percent) were performed on cisgender males.
The American Medical Association, the American Psychiatric Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, the World Medical Association, and the World Health Organization all agree that gender-affirming care is evidence-based and medically necessary not just for adults but minors as well.
The American Medical Association, American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, National Library of Medicine, and World Health Organization, all agree that abortion is an essential component of reproductive health care which requires legal and safe access. A large majority of the U.S. — 63 percent — also believe that abortion should be legal in most or all cases, according to the most recent data from Pew Research.
But, Bonanza said, facts and data are no match for “dehumanizing language” from politicians and public figures, which is why he has issued a call to voters ahead of November: “Let’s rehumanize people that have been attacked from certain parts of the spectrum, especially immigrants, trans people, and others that have been targeted by people in politics today.”
“If you listen to the rhetoric of people that are running — and whether they’re in the same party or from one person — you hear the people that use dehumanizing language,” Bonanza continued. “What it comes down to is: If that person in your family, that neighbor that you have, might be experiencing some of these things, do you want them to suffer under these oppressive policies? Or do you want them to be able to live their lives and get access to health care that they need?”
Things to Remind People in the Grocery Line
or wherever mentions of prices, and whatever else has improved since Pres. Biden took office. I post this because my own US Rep is campaigning about how bad everything is, with facts from the Don’s admin when they’re facts at all. I’m certain he’s not the only “safe” (I voted for the Dem-we actually have a Dem running!) Republican running for the US House, as they’re all up for election every two years. Anyway, he makes the claims that things are bad under Biden-Harris, and how he’s just focusing on improving those very things that have improved thanks to Biden-Harris and the legislators who managed to get things passed (most Republicans are not among those legislators, btw.) Anyway, here’s Heather Cox Richardson:
October 17, 2024
Oct 18, 2024
In a new rule released yesterday, the Federal Trade Commission requires sellers to make it as easy to cancel a subscription to a gym or a service as it is to sign up for one. In a statement, FTC chair Lina Khan explained the reasoning behind the “click-to-cancel” rule: “Too often, businesses make people jump through endless hoops just to cancel a subscription,” she said. “Nobody should be stuck paying for a service they no longer want.” Although most of the new requirements won’t take effect for about six months, David Dayen of The American Prospect noted that the stock price of Planet Fitness fell 8% after the announcement.
When he took office in January 2021, with democracy under siege from autocratic governments abroad and an authoritarian movement at home, President Joe Biden set out to prove that democracy could deliver for the ordinary people who had lost faith in it. The click-to-cancel rule is an illustration of an obvious and long-overdue protection, but it is only one of many ways—$35 insulin, new bridges, loan forgiveness, higher wages, good jobs—in which policies designed to benefit ordinary people have demonstrated that a democratic government can improve lives.
When Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen spoke to the Council on Foreign Relations yesterday, she noted that the administration “has driven a historic economic recovery” with strong growth, very low unemployment rates, and inflation returning to normal. Now it is focused on lowering costs for families and expanding the economy while reducing inequality. That strong economy at home is helping to power the global economy, Yellen noted, and the U.S. has been working to strengthen that economy by reinforcing global policies, investments, and institutions that reinforce economic stability.
“Over the past four years, the world has been through a lot,” Yellen said, “from a once-in-a-century pandemic, to the largest land war in Europe since World War II, to increasingly frequent and severe climate disasters. This has only underlined that we are all in it together. America’s economic well-being depends on the world’s, and America’s economic leadership is key to global prosperity and security.” She warned against isolationism that would undermine such prosperity both at home and abroad.
The numbers behind the proven experience that government protection of ordinary people is good for economic growth got the blessing of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences on Monday, when it awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences to Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson, both of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and to James Robinson of the University of Chicago. Their research explains why “[s]ocieties with a poor rule of law and institutions that exploit the population do not generate growth or change for the better,” while democracies do.
Although democracy has been delivering for Americans, Donald Trump and MAGAs rose to power by convincing those left behind by 40 years of supply-side economics that their problem was not the people in charge of the government, but rather the government itself.
Trump wants to get rid of the current government so that he can enrich himself, do whatever he wants to his enemies, and avoid answering to the law. The Christian nationalists who wrote Project 2025 want to destroy the federal government so they can put in place an authoritarian who will force Americans to live under religious rule. Tech elites like Elon Musk and Peter Thiel want to get rid of the federal government so they can control the future without having to worry about regulations.
In place of what they insist is a democratic system that has failed, they are offering a strongman who, they claim, will take care of people more efficiently than a democratic government can. The focus on masculinity and portrayals of Trump as a muscled hero‚ much as Russian president Vladimir Putin portrays himself, fit the mold of an authoritarian leader.
But the argument that Americans need a strongman depends on the argument that democracy does not work. In the last three-and-a-half years, Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, and the Democrats have proved that it can, so long as it operates with the best interests of ordinary people in mind. Trump and Vance’s outlandish lies about the federal response to Hurricane Helene are designed to override the reality of a competent administration addressing a crisis with all the tools it has. In its place, the lies provide a false narrative of federal officials ignoring people and trying to steal their property.
Their attack on democracy has another problem, as well. In addition to the reality that democracy has been delivering for Americans for more than three years now—and pretty dramatically—Trump is no longer a strongman. Vice President Kamala Harris is outperforming him in the theater of political dominance. And as she does so, his image is crumbling.
In an article in US News and World Report yesterday, NBC’s former chief marketer John D. Miller apologized to America for helping to “create a monster.” Miller led the team that marketed The Apprentice, the reality TV show that made Trump a household name. “To sell the show,” Miller wrote, “we created the narrative that Trump was a super-successful businessman who lived like royalty.” But the truth was that he declared bankruptcy six times, and “[t]he imposing board room where he famously fired contestants was a set, because his real boardroom was too old and shabby for TV,” Miller wrote. While Trump loved the attention the show provided, “more successful CEOs were too busy to get involved in reality TV.”
Miller says they “promoted the show relentlessly,” blanketing the country with a “highly exaggerated” image of Trump as a successful businessman “like a heavy snowstorm.” “[W]e…did irreparable harm by creating the false image of Trump as a successful leader,” Miller wrote. “I deeply regret that. And I regret that it has taken me so long to go public.”
Speaking as a “born-and-bred Republican,” Miller warned: “If you believe that Trump will be better for you or better for the country, that is an illusion, much like The Apprentice was.” He strongly urged people to vote for Kamala Harris. “The country will be better off and so will you.”
A new video shown last night on Jimmy Kimmel Live even more powerfully illustrated the collapse of Trump’s tough guy image. Written by Jesse Joyce of Comedy Central, the two-minute video featured actor and retired professional wrestler Dave Bautista dominating his sparring partner in a boxing ring and then telling those who think Trump is “some sort of tough guy” that “he’s not.”
Working out in a gym, Bautista insults Trump’s heavy makeup, out-of-shape body, draft dodging, and physical weakness, and notes that “he sells imaginary baseball cards pretending to be a cowboy fireman” when “he’s barely strong enough to hold an umbrella.” Bautista says Trump’s two-handed method of drinking water looks “like a little pink chickadee,” and goes on to make a raunchy observation about Trump’s stage dancing. “He’s moody, he pouts, he throws tantrums,” Bautista goes on. “He’s cattier on social media than a middle-school mean girl.”
Bautista ends by listing Trump’s fears of rain, dogs, windmills…and being laughed at.” “And mostly,” Bautista concludes, “he’s terrified that real, red-blooded American men will find out that he’s a weak, tubby toddler.” Calling Trump a “whiny b*tch,” Bautista walks away from the camera.
The sketch was billed as comedy, but it was deadly serious in its takedown of the key element of Trump’s political power.
And he seems vulnerable. Forbes and Newsweek have recently questioned his mental health; yesterday the Boston Globe ran an op-ed saying, “Trump’s decline is too dangerous to ignore. We can see the decline in the former president’s ability to hold a train of thought, speak coherently, or demonstrate a command of the English language, to say nothing of policy.”
Trump’s Fox News Channel town hall yesterday got 2.9 million viewers; Harris’s interview got 7.1 million. Today, Trump canceled yet another appearance, this one with the National Rifle Association in Savannah, Georgia, scheduled for October 22, where he was supposed to be the keynote speaker.
Meanwhile, Vice President Harris today held rallies in Milwaukee, Green Bay, and La Crosse, Wisconsin. In La Crosse, MAGA hecklers tried to interrupt her while she was speaking about the centrality of the three Trump-appointed Supreme Court justices to the overturning of the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that recognized the constitutional right to abortion.
“Oh, you guys are at the wrong rally,” Harris called to them with a smile and a wave. As the crowd roared with approval, she added: “No, I think you meant to go to the smaller one down the street.”
—
Notes:
https://www.npr.org/2024/10/16/nx-s1-5154814/click-to-cancel-subscriptions-memberships-ftc-rule
https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/jy2654
https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/economic-sciences/2024/press-release/
https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/economic-sciences/2024/popular-information/
https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-ditches-nra-event-latest-cancellation-1970902
https://www.newsweek.com/kamala-harris-fox-news-interview-ratings-donald-trump-1970906
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2024/10/16/opinion/trump-cognitive-decline-press-republicans/
https://www.newsweek.com/dancing-donald-trump-clearly-steep-decline-opinion-1969551
X:
ddayen/status/1846991070309101761
ddayen/status/1847011806587634007
carlquintanilla/status/1847051458618736920
KamalaHQ/status/1847026957407449361
YouTube:
watch?v=rn-Dw2JUVmo&t=910s (video starts at 15.23)
Not many this week, but a few good ones. Hugs
Peace & Justice History for 10/18:
Woot! The first labor union is born in Boston!
October 18, 1648 I. Marc Carlson The Shoemakers Guild of Boston became the first labor union in the American colonies. Labor organization in colonial times |
| October 18, 1929 The Persons Case, a legal milestone in Canada, was decided. Five women from Alberta, later known as the Famous Five, asked the Supreme Court of Canada to rule on the legal status of women. Some decisions of Magistrate Emily Murphy had been challenged on the basis that she was not a legal person, and she was a candidate for appointment to the Canadian Senate. After the Supreme Court ruled against them, they appealed to the British Privy Council.The Privy Council found for the women on this day (eight years after the case began and eleven years after women received the federal vote), declaring that women were persons under the law. October 18 has since been celebrated as Persons Day in Canada, and October as Women’s History Month.  Sculpture by Barbara Paterson of the Famous Five in Ottawa, first on Parliament Hill to honor womenThe other women activists in the Famous Five: Henrietta Muir Edwards, Nellie McClung, Louise McKinney, and Irene Parlby. The Persons Case |
https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryoctober.htm#october18
Reblog from Janet
I think Janet makes important points about directness.
Texas AG sues doctor who allegedly provided transgender care to 21 minors
(I guess I’m confused as to why he’s suing, and not charging this doctor. Is it a hunt for evidence to use in charges? This is not normally how that is done, but TX is TX. -A)
The suit is the first by an attorney general against an individual doctor for allegedly violating a restriction on gender-affirming care for minors.
By Matt Lavietes and Jo Yurcaba
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued a Dallas doctor Thursday accusing her of providing transition-related care to nearly two dozen minors in violation of state law.
Paxton alleged that Dr. May Chi Lau, who specializes in adolescent medicine, provided hormone replacement therapy to 21 minors between October 2023 and August for the purpose of transitioning genders. In 2023, Texas enacted a law, Senate Bill 14, banning hormone replacement therapy and other forms of gender-affirming care for minors.
“Texas passed a law to protect children from these dangerous unscientific medical interventions that have irreversible and damaging effects,” Paxton said in a statement Thursday. “Doctors who continue to provide these harmful ‘gender transition’ drugs and treatments will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.”
The statement issued by Paxton’s office alleged that Lau used “false diagnoses and billing codes” in order to mask “unlawful prescriptions.”
Neither Lau nor her employer, the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, immediately returned requests for comment.
If found to be in violation of the law, Lau could have her medical license revoked and face a financial penalty of hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Paxton’s suit is the first in the nation by an attorney general against an individual doctor for allegedly violating a restriction on transition-related care for minors.
Texas’ law includes a provision that allows physicians to continue to prescribe puberty blockers and hormone therapy to patients who began treatment prior to June 1, 2023, in order to wean them off of the medications “over a period of time and in a manner that is safe and medically appropriate and that minimizes the risk of complications,” according to Paxton’s suit. Minors are required to have attended at least 12 mental health counseling or psychotherapy sessions for at least six months prior to starting treatment. It’s unclear whether Lau’s treatment of the minors could fall under that provision.
Scottie's Playtime 