The Society for Human Rights, the first gay rights organization in the U.S., was founded in Chicago by Henry Gerber, a German immigrant. He had been inspired by Germany’s Scientific Humanitarian Committee, formed to oppose the oppression of men and women considered “sexual intermediates.”
Henry Gerber–founder of the Society for Human Rights
This short clip is great. The point she makes is the same one I made about the Democratic Party sliding right to get dissatisfied republican voters. Her point, we should have paid more attention to the people who left the Democratic Party than those who were never tRumpers or left the republican party due to tRump. Again it is the party of the working person not the party of republican lite. Hugs
While I find it easier to follow Sam’s reasoning on some issues, while he is out on funeral leave after his mother died, I am glad it is Emma explaining this. Listen to what tRump was saying about women. He wanted to see Harris in a ring getting beaten by Mike Tyson. He said he would protect women if they liked it or not. So she says two themes, I say three. She says fear stoking by bashing immigrants and misogyny. I say it was them plus racism. The first thing he said about her was she changed to being black for advantage, then started calling a black woman retarded. But if you remember the things he said about women in the 2016 election about Clinton and the grab them by the pussy tape. Sad that so many of our fellow people have these feelings in 2024. Hugs.
in this video both Matts are upset with the culture of democrats in office refusing to do what is needed instead patting each other on the back as infallible. Trump attacked both democrats and republicans who did not follow the ideas he pushed. Ideas that he felt people wanted, and it became true the more he said it. Even when they failed to actually help the lower incomes and did increase greatly the incomes of the upper incomes / very wealthy. They mention that again in 2023 the mean average income was lower than in 2019. Lower incomes are still losing and have been since the 1980s. While harder to listen too it is all about the conditions on the ground vs words used by democrat candidates. Brandon talks about the influencers on podcasts / social media. Matt Bender continues that conservation. Hugs
This video is about Joe Biden and him staying in until the last minute. How there was no primary and no time for Harris to introduce herself to the public. How Biden did not promote her publicly until he dropped out. How Biden kept her sidelines because her age made him look older by comparison. How the democrats need to do more to run to their extremer base like the republicans do. Hugs
In video Emma points out that the covid recovery plan of massive help for the lower incomes made the Biden administration very popular, but when that changed in 2022 for a more austerity program pushed by bipartisan republicans and Manchin / Sinema … or should I say by the republicans and Biden’s need for the feeling of bipartisanship. Once people realized again they wouldn’t be getting the help promised them by the democrats they again felt the democrats left them behind. The lower incomes feel betrayed by the democratic party and they feel used. Paid attention to only every four years and promised table scraps so the democratic candidate can keep the corporate dollars flowing. Hugs
November 9-10, 1938 Nazis looted and burned synagogues and Jewish-owned stores and homes, and beat and murdered Jewish men, women, and children across Germany and Austria. Known as Kristallnacht, it was a night of organized violence against Jews marking the beginning of the Holocaust with the killing of 91 and the deportation of 30,000 to concentration camps. The German word translates to “the Night of Broken Glass,” so called because of the vast number of broken windows in Jewish shops, 5 million marks worth ($1,250,000). Read more
November 9, 1965 At the first draft-card burning [see November 6, 1965], a heckler shouted that they should burn themselves, not their draft cards. Three days later Roger LaPorte, a student of religion and a Catholic Worker volunteer, poured gasoline on himself and struck a match to it in front of the United Nations headquarters in New York. Police managed to douse the flames. Roger LaPorte On his way to the hospital he said, “I’m a Catholic Worker. I’m against war, all wars. I did this as a religious action.” He died 33 hours later. Dorothy Day, founder of the Catholic Worker movement and a speaker on the 15th, wrote that she believed that LaPorte knew it was wrong to take his own life. But she explained his desire to end the Vietnam War; in the previous few days, six massive air strikes had made it the deadliest week since the war began. Read more
November 9, 1984 U.S. peace activists sailed a shrimp boat into the Port of Corinto to confront U.S. warships threatening Nicaragua. The U.S. had mined the harbor in violation of international law, and had invaded Nicaragua through this port in 1896 and 1910.
November 9, 1989 For the first time since World War II, free travel between East and West Germany was allowed. The Berlin Wall, built to stop the exodus from the Communist-controlled East in 1961, was opened in response to nonviolent popular action.
November 9, 2002 Somewhere between 450,000 and a million Europeans in Florence, Italy, peacefully protested the threatened U.S. invasion of Iraq. Florence, Italy 11.9.2002 The inaugural meeting of the European Social Forum had just concluded there.It was a regional part of the framework established at the World Social Forum which had met in Porto Alegre, Brazil, first in 2001. Read more about this protest The Forum is a citizens’ movement exploring alternatives to globalization and the inhumane consequences of the changing world order. They focus on sustainable development, social and economic justice. Those who were part of the Forum come from a broad range of civil society, including: pacifists; environmentalists; those in nonprofit, volunteer and non-governmental organizations; representatives of religious and lay groups; those in the anti-globalization and anti-capitalist movements; and, for the first time in Florence (Firenze), significant involvement of the labor movement, notably the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC), and trade unions or national confederations from nine European countries, including Russia.
“Most of the power of authoritarianism is freely given. In times like these, individuals think ahead about what a more repressive government will want, and then offer themselves without being asked. A citizen who adapts in this way is teaching power what it can do.”
obeying in advance is how fascism wins.
just last month, we saw Dick-Rocket Czar Jeff Bezos — owner of the Washington Post — preemptively kowtow to Donny Convict.
‘please sir, don’t hit me. look, look, I’ve told my editor at the Post not to endorse Kamala. they had one all written, and I told them to shitcan it. see, sir? can we be friends now?’
today, lets check in on some leaders who are already saying no to the coming reign of King Fuckface the First.
Donny Convict hates the shit out of California — and, by extension, he hates its Governor, Gavin Newsom. look at this handsome fucker, with his square jaw and his thick head of hair. he makes Donny seem like a misshapen garden gnome by comparison — and Donny knows it.
inside Donny’s childish, ignorant brain, California is entirely populated by chardonnay-sipping hippie elites who hate his guts — and so when disaster strikes, he’s inclined to deny them federal aid.
Donny somehow believes that all of California’s water comes from a massive faucet in Canada. this faucet is so ungodly ginormous that it takes an entire day to turn it. I wish I were making this up — but no, our incoming 47th president actually imagines that the reason California experiences droughts is because Gavin Newsom keeps that big-ass faucet under lock and key and won’t let anyone open it.
oh god oh god oh god he’s so fucking stupid. it hurt my brain just to type that last paragraph.
can we just pause to reflect for a moment on just how insane it is for a country to have a chief executive who believes in such a fever-swamp hallucination? this is a man who will once again be in charge of a nuclear arsenal — and he’s wandering about, babbling incoherently about giant spigots. holy shit.
Donny’s already threatening to inflict preemptive retribution on California as part of his Day One Dictatoring — and Governor Newsom has a message for Donny:
California’s Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, a fierce critic of former President Donald Trump, on Thursday called for lawmakers to convene a special session ahead of another Trump presidency to safeguard the state’s progressive policies. Meanwhile, attorneys general in blue states across the country announced they were also gearing up for a legal fight.
Newsom’s office told The Associated Press that the governor and lawmakers are ready to “Trump-proof” California’s state laws.
no word from Newsom on if he’s ever going to open that big fucking faucet.
In Illinois, Gov. JB Pritzker said on Thursday he would ask his state’s legislators, possibly as soon as next week, to address potential threats from a second Trump term. “You come for my people,” Mr. Pritzker said at a news conference, “you come through me.”
here’s New York’s Governor Kathy Hochul:
The announcements echoed a vow on Wednesday by Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York to “honor” the election results and to try to work with Mr. Trump, but also to fight any efforts to curtail reproductive freedoms, expand gun rights or curb environmental regulations.
At a news conference, Ms. Hochul addressed Mr. Trump directly: “If you try to harm New Yorkers or roll back their rights, I will fight you every step of the way.”
“If possible, we will work with his administration, but we will not compromise our values or our integrity, our principles,” she said. “We did not expect this result, but we are prepared to respond to this result, and my office has been preparing for several months, because we’ve been here before, we’ve faced this challenge before, and we use the rule of law to fight back.”
Donny’s plan to round up million of immigrants and disappear them into detention camps hinges on using each state’s local law enforcement to do the rounding-up. Massachusetts Governor Maura Healy say that Donny can stick that plan where the sun don’t shine.
However, plans for using local law enforcement and the National Guard could face roadblocks in states led by Democrats.
Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey told MSNBC that she would “absolutely not” allow state police to assist in mass deportations if the Trump administration requested it.
Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell has a message for Donny, who has threatened to fire him: go ahead, make my day. (Snip-go see it)
Protesters and political prisoners are being drugged, tortured and beaten in state-run institutions, say rights groups
Human rights organisations say they are gravely concerned that a young Iranian woman arrested for stripping down to her underwear could be subjected to torture after she was transferred to a psychiatric hospital by the authorities.
Amnesty International said it had found evidence that the Iranian regime used electric shocks, torture, beatings and chemical substances on protesters and political prisoners taken to state-run psychiatric institutions after being called mentally unstable. It said the situation facing the young woman was “alarming”.
Video of the young woman, who has not been formally identified, walking around a university campus in Tehran in her underwear was widely circulated on social media last week before she was seen being arrested by police officers. She is believed to have been protesting at being physically assaulted by campus security guards at the Islamic Azad University in Tehran for failing to comply with the strict dress code imposed on all Iranian women.
The Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI) called the student’s transfer to an undisclosed psychiatric facility a “kidnapping”, saying the use of forced transfer of anti-regime protesters to mental health facilities was being increasingly used to silence dissent.
The woman is believed to have been protesting at being physically assaulted by campus security guards. Photograph: X/Amnesty
“Iranian authorities systematically use involuntary psychiatric hospitalisation as a tool to suppress dissent, branding protesters as mentally unstable to undermine their credibility,” said Hadi Ghaemi, executive director of CHRI.
“Transferring individuals who participate in peaceful protests to psychiatric hospitals represents not only an act of arbitrary detention but also constitutes a form of kidnapping. This practice is a blatantly unlawful move to discredit activists by labelling them mentally unstable.”
There have been a number of other high-profile cases of protesters arrested during the Woman, Life, Freedom demonstrations who were also committed to psychiatric hospitals after their arrest.
Saman Yasin, a well-known Kurdish rapper, was taken by the authorities to Tehran’s Aminabad psychiatric hospital after his arrest at a protest in 2022, where he was allegedly tortured and coerced into a confession. He spent two years in prison before being released on medical furlough last month.
A source close to Yasin told the Guardian: “Saman was tied to the bed in the psychiatric centre in a cruciform position for a long time. They administered high-dose sedatives and despite his unconscious state, the restraints on his hands and feet were not removed.”
In October 2023, Roya Zakeri, a young Iranian woman who was filmed chanting anti-regime slogans, was called mentally unwell by state media and taken to the women’s ward of Razi psychiatric hospital. The Guardian has been told by people close to her family that she was injected with sleeping agents, physically assaulted and had her arms and feet chained.
Rights activist Azam Jangravi protesting in Tehran in 2018. Photograph: supplied
Azam Jangravi, a human rights activist, said she was pressed by Iranian authorities to sign a statement saying she had mental health issues after photographs of her waving her hijab over her head on a Tehran street were widely circulated in 2018.
“When they interrogated me, they accused me of being a spy,” she said. “They wanted me to write a confession stating that I regretted my protest and that I did it because I was mentally unwell. I didn’t sign it … They keep taunting us during interrogations by citing the examples of former political prisoners who were sent to these psychiatric hospitals, [telling us] ‘If you don’t regret your act of protest, you’ll face the same fate.’ I fear the university student is under horrific conditions right now and we must demand her release,” she said.
The Guardian spoke to young women in Iran who said they been inspired by the video of the university student, who was rapidly hailed as a new icon of Iran’s Woman, Life, Freedom movement after the video was posted online.
“Nobody I know who protested and has called for freedom from the Islamic Republic does not support her act of protest,” said Farah*, a university student in Tehran. “This is what we are fighting for, to have the freedom to choose. We are in awe of her bravery. If it were up to the regime, all of us who protested would be branded as mentally unwell.”
Images of the young woman have also been posted by pro-regime social media accounts, which have circulated messages about her mental health and personal life.
Short one today, very bad one tomorrow but also some light.
November 8, 1892 Thirty thousand Black and White factory and dock workers staged a general strike in New Orleans, demanding union recognition, closed shops (where all co-workers join the union), and hour and wage gains. They were joined by non-industrial laborers, such as musicians, clothing workers, clerks, utility workers, streetcar drivers, and printers.
November 8, 1935 United Mine Workers president John L. Lewis and other labor leaders formed the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO). They had split with the existing labor union umbrella organization, the American Federation of Labor (AFL), which was not interested in organizing unskilled workers, such as those in the steel, rubber, textile and auto industries. John L. Lewis CIO history
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga. speaks during the first day of the Republican National Convention.
Fresh off of her Election Night victory, anti-LGBTQ+ Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) has expressed excitement that she, President-elect Donald Trump, and their MAGA cohorts will no longer tolerate “turning our kids trans.”
“I am so excited!” Greene said from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Election Night party to convicted former Trump advisor Steve Bannon on the Real Americas Voice network. “America will no longer tolerate this communist regime, ripping our border wide open, turning our kids trans, and promoting abortion as reproductive rights. The American people are fed up with a weaponized government. President Trump is going back to the White House!”
She said that “Big Pharma” is lying to people about gender-affirming care.
She also claimed that Republicans will have to “continue to fight for election integrity…. because the Democrats will steal elections if they’re given the opportunity.” She and Trump have baselessly claimed that Trump only lost the 2020 election due to an unprecedented nationwide conspiracy of voter fraud that only occurred in the states that Trump lost.
She also said that Trump will pardon the insurrectionists who were jailed for the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol, “end the climate change scam,” and “go after the people” who persecuted Trump and his supporters, including former U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY), U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Matthew Graves, U.S. Rep. Bennie Gordon Thompson (D-MS), and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA). Trump has referred to Pelosi as a “sick, crazy b**ch” and “an enemy from within.”
In July, Greene spoke at a press conference heralding the start of Bannon’s four-month sentence in the Danbury Federal Correctional Institution today for defying a congressional subpoena investigating his assistance in inciting the January 6, 2021 Capitol riots.
Greene has previously said that an airplane never hit the Pentagon during the September 11 terrorist attacks, claimed that all school shootings are fake, said that California wildfires were started by a Jewish-owned space laser, and accused former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton of slicing off a child’s face and wearing it.
Trump has promised to ban gender-affirming care for minors nationwide and prohibit federal agencies from “promot[ing] the concept of sex and gender transition at any age.” He has pledged to deny federal funding to schools that push “radical gender ideology, and other inappropriate … sexual or political content on our children.” He has also promised to repeal Biden-era protections for LGBTQ+ students “on Day One.”
Trump insulted Bannon when he was convicted of a crime
On the last day of Trump’s presidency, he pardoned Bannon who served as chief executive officer of Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. Bannon also served as White House chief strategist and senior counselor to Trump from January 2017 until August 18, 2017, when Trump fired him.
In August 2020, Bannon was indicted by a federal grand jury for allegedly spending $1 million of a $25 million GoFundMe campaign to help Trump construct a U.S.-Mexico border wall. Bannon pleaded not guilty and was set to face trial in May 2021 before Trump pardoned him.
Trump initially said the Mexican government would pay for the wall — they never did, and Trump only built 458 total miles of barriers, PolitiFact reported.
In January 2018, Trump and Bannon’s relationship soured after Bannon was quoted in Michael Wolff’s book Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House as calling the president’s daughter Ivanka Trump “dumb as a brick” and calling Trump “a crooked business guy” and a “scumbag.”
In response, Trump said in a statement, “Steve Bannon has nothing to do with me or my Presidency. When he was fired, he not only lost his job, he lost his mind,” adding, “Steve had very little to do with our historic victory.” Trump later referred to Bannon as “Sloppy Steve” on Twitter (now X) and claimed that Bannon “cried when he got fired and begged for his job.”
This is the growing anti-LGBTQ+ that the right has been working on creating since the first tRump term. The person who helped craft the don’t say gay bill in Florida was a fundamentalist Christian who said he did it because it horrified him that fellow students, other kids welcomed the LGBTQ+ kids that came out. He felt they should be attacked, beaten, ostracized, made friendless, scared, and stay in hiding. That is what these people want. We must find a messaging to fight back. Blue states have it but it must find a way to reach into red states. My husband is terrified to even let me fly a progressive pride flag in one of our front facing windows. That is what these people want, they want us afraid. I don’t want to live that life, I stopped living like that when I was 23. I took the hits for it. I am almost 62. I don’t want to live the rest of my life in a closet I never fitted in. Hugs
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“No one in the restaurant intervened. No one screamed ‘stop.’”
Sebastian Thomas Robles Lascarro before and after the attack
A group of 10 to 15 individuals allegedly attacked Sebastian Thomas Robles Lascarro, a 22-year-old Colombian model, inside a Washington, D.C., McDonald’s fast food restaurant after a member of the group uttered homophobic slurs. The attack left Lascarro hospitalized, and he criticized both emergency personnel and local police for their responses to the violence.
The attack allegedly occurred in the early morning hours of Sunday, October 27, after Lascarro and his husband left two nearby LGBTQ+ nightclubs: Crush Bar and Bunker. While Lascarro was in line to use a McDonald’s self-service kiosk to place his order, Lascarro’s spouse, Stuart West, said a woman then screamed at his husband to “watch where the f**k he was going,” he told WTTG.
Lascarro reportedly tried to leave in order to avoid a conflict, when a group of 10 to 15 individuals — who were reportedly the woman’s friends — blocked Lascarro from leaving and allegedly called him homophobic slurs like “fa**ot” and demanded he apologize to the woman. Lascarro refused, and the assault allegedly began.
“Five to 10 individuals started just punching him all over his face, all over his body,” West said. “No one in the restaurant intervened; no one screamed ‘stop.’”
The attack reportedly left Lascarro injured and bleeding on the sidewalk outside the restaurant while the mob threw food, trash, and drinks at him. Two passers-by eventually contacted emergency medical services to assist Lascarro.
At Howard University Hospital, Lascarro was treated for a busted lip, scrapes, and bruises. He was placed in a neck brace and photos show him with bruises and blood on his face. Lascarro is reportedly recovering from his injuries.
“I fear for his mental health,” West said. “We’ve had conversations about whether D.C. is safe for us and whether the United States was the right choice.” Lascarro is originally from Colombia, moved to Washington, D.C., last year, and became a permanent resident of the U.S. this year, NBC News reported.
West and Lascarro said that they felt dismissed by both the emergency medical technicians (EMTs) who arrived at the scene and police who took a report of their incident later on. Lascarro said the EMTs failed to “acknowledge the severity of the assault and his experience as a gay man,” and West said police initially refused to acknowledge the attack as a possible hate crime until he contacted the police department’s LGBTQ+ liaison.
West launched a GoFundMe crowdfunding campaign to help pay for Lascarro’s medical bills, as the attack has made it difficult for him to keep modeling. The campaign had raised $7,037 of its $20,000 goal by Monday morning.
“Thomas is a loving, compassionate person who did not deserve this, and no one in our community should face this kind of hatred,” West wrote for the campaign website. “Any help to ensure he gets the care he needs to regain his health and peace of mind will be a blessing.”
Remember all we have to do is tie his every policy change up in courts for two years just like the republicans did with Biden. Then work like hell to flip the Senate. Once we do that all of his minions plans for a white straight cis Christian paradise will mostly end. Hugs
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The ACLU already have an anti-Trump ‘battle plan’ drawn up to fight his policies (Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) already has plans in place to “take action” against president-elect Donald Trump’s policies.
The not-for-profit organization took to social media as soon as news outlets called the US presidential election in favor of Trump, saying it was fed up with “waiting anxiously”, and was ready to “ensure that erosion of civil rights or civil liberties will be hotly contested”.
A spokesperson on X/Twitter said: “We are ready to take action the minute Trump takes the oath of office [on 20 January].
“We’re clear-eyed about the chaos and destruction a second Trump administration will cause to our nation. That’s why we’re done with hand-wringing, admiring the problem, or waiting anxiously to see which unlawful action Trump will take on day one.”
The ACLU claimed it was the “first organization to challenge [Trump’s] Muslim ban” when the Republican was elected eight years ago, adding that its legal battles “stopped the inhumane practice of separating immigrant families” and won the fight to prevent “a citizenship question on the 2020 census”.
It filed “434 legal actions against the first Trump administration” including to support the LGBTQ+ community, which were won in front of “Trump-appointed judges”, the spokesperson went on to claim.
“At the ACLU, we play the long game. We’ve been here for 105 years, through 19 presidents.”
In recent years, the ACLU has been in the forefront of the battle against discriminatory legislation in the US, keeping track of every anti-LGBTQ+ law that has been introduced across the country.
“The ACLU will not stop speaking out against these cruel attacks nationwide, LGBTQ people have a right to live in safety, to thrive and to be treated with dignity,” the spokesperson continued.
Experts have warned that a second Trump term, with JD Vance as his vice-president, could be catastrophic for queer rights in the US, with the pair having pushed anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric during the long campaign.
Among other measures, Trump claimed that he would cut federal funding to school districts that adopt trans-friendly policies, exclude transgender women from women’s sports, and restore his ban on trans people serving in the military.
And, in the wake of the overturning of abortion rights case Roe v Wade in 2022, campaigners have expressed fears that the conservative-controlled Supreme Court could next turn its attention to Obergefell vs Hodges, which gave the fundamental right to marry to same-sex couples in 2015.
Florence, Italy 11.9.2002
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga. speaks during the first day of the Republican National Convention.
Sebastian Thomas Robles Lascarro before and after the attack
