Tag: Human Rights

Ya Think So?

Abigail Disney: ‘Every billionaire who can’t live on $999m is kind of a sociopath’

John Harris Mon 7 Apr 2025 00.00 EDTS

She is one of the heirs to the Walt Disney fortune – and has long argued for rich people like her to pay more tax. Now she is working out how best to meet the challenge of Trump, Musk and the politics of chaos

My conversation with Abigail Disney opens with the kind of bog-standard line that starts most chats. But because she is a left-leaning American, with a record of righteous criticism of the man now once again in charge of her country, I suspect it might invite a very long answer indeed.

Still, out it comes: “How are you?”

“It’s a good question,” she says, “because we’re all struggling with it.”

A deep breath. “I spend a lot of time trying to think of reasons to be optimistic, because I don’t know how to function without that. And I want to find the energy and the grit for a really long fight. This isn’t just four years … you know, there’s a whole civilisation-level reset to be done. I mean, I heard the other night when Trump spoke, he mentioned that we would get Greenland one way or another. And then there was laughter. Laughter! I just thought, ‘Oh, we have sunk so low.’”

The film-maker (and the grand-niece of Walt Disney) is speaking to me on video call from her home in Manhattan. She talks with a mixture of speed, eloquence and certainty – partly because her view of Donald Trump and his allies is all about something with which she is well acquainted: wealth, and what it does to people.

“Trump is an inheritor,” Disney tells me. “He never acknowledges it, but he wouldn’t have been able to do any of the things he did without an inheritance. He absorbed the lessons of inheriting money almost unfiltered: ‘You have this money because you’re special.’ If you read about his childhood, it’s like the textbook worst way to raise a person – you know, he was violent, he was a bully and he was rewarded for that, even as a very small child. And the more money he had, the more he exhibited these bad qualities, and the more people told him he was wonderful.”

I then mention something she well knows: that Trump’s sidekick Elon Musk is also from a very wealthy background, having started his first business ventures with money provided by his father, and then becoming rich beyond the dreams of avarice. This, she tells me, partly explains the frazzled morals of someone who has just imposed all those cuts to overseas aid, with apparently no regard for the consequences.

Among the schemes Musk has frozen, Disney points out, was the Pepfar programme, AKA the President’s Emergency Plan for Aids Relief, which is estimated to have saved 25 million lives by supplying medicine to people with HIV and Aids around the world. “There are people suffering and dying today because of that cut,” she says. “There are children who have HIV who shouldn’t because of Elon Musk. Now. As we sit here and talk.”

She exhales. “That natural human proclivity to say, ‘Hmm, that doesn’t feel right’ – he doesn’t have it. Trump doesn’t have it. They’re spending no time in shame, and shame is a righteous emotion. It’s not an emotion you want to live in, but it’s an emotion you want as a motivator sometimes. And where is it? Where’s the shame?” (snip-MORE)

Hungry, Indeed

Hungry Hungry Trumpo by Clay Jones

Trump cuts food banks Read on Substack

This was drawn for the FXBG Advance.

My editor proposed two stories for me to cover last week, and I chose both. The first was on cuts to Friends of the Rappahannock. The other was on cuts to the Fredericksburg Food Bank. Both stories are important to this area, and as it turns out, one of them is important nationwide.

After reading the story about cuts to our local food bank, I did a little search and discovered this is going on nationwide.

For example, it’s happening in Central New York, Stockton, California, York County, New York, in Missoula, Montana, Nevada, Evansville, Indiana, Bozeman, Pittsburgh, Boise, Idaho, Alabama, North Carolina, and many, many more places. Notice that this is happening in a lot of red states.

Think of all the government workers Elon has laid off who can’t afford groceries because of Trump’s recession and inflation, and now they can’t get any assistance from the food banks.

It’s not all bad news. There’s still enough money in the budget for Donald Trump’s golf trips, asshole billionaires and trust-fund babies will still get another huge tax cut, Elon will continue scoring government contracts to add to the $38 billion he’s already got from the government.

I’m so glad I got to experience the Hands-Off protest yesterday. A blog for that is coming later today.

Creative note: I drew this at Starbucks on Friday night. I wanted to complete this week’s cartoon for the Advance so I could focus on covering the DOGE protest in Washington, DC.

Now, I’m writing this blog on the train home.

Music note: I listened to Pete Yorn while coloring.

Drawn in 30 seconds: (snip-go see)

Peace & Justice History for 4/7

April 7, 1979
Thousands protested against the nuclear industry in Sydney, Australia. The country is by far the world’s largest exporter of uranium (and thorium ores and concentrates), the radioactive heavy metal necessary for the power generation and weapons industries.
The marchers were from groups concerned about many related issues: the link between the uranium industry and weapons proliferation; the environmental destructiveness of nuclear power; the impact of uranium mining on Aborigines and workers in the industry; weapons testing in the Pacific, and the secret history of the British nuclear weapons tests in the region; and the Cold War nuclear arms spiral and Australia’s contribution to it through the hosting of U.S. military bases, allowing nuclear warships to use Australian ports through the ANZUS alliance (among Australia, New Zealand and the U.S.); weapons testing in the Pacific, and the secret history of the British nuclear weapons tests in the region.

Sydney anti-uranium protest, Photo: Paul Keig
Today’s Australian Nuclear Free Alliance 
April 7, 1994
Genocide in Rwanda began. Over the following 90 days at least a half million people were killed by their countrymen, principally Hutus killing Tutsis.
This day is commemorated annually with prayer vigils in Rwanda.
Canadian General Romeo Dallaire, head of the U.N. Peacekeeping Force in Rwanda, a tiny African nation formerly a Belgian colony, had warned of impending slaughter, but was ordered not to attempt to intervene.

PBS interview with General Dallaire, what he knew and what he watched happen
  

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryapril.htm#april7

The Benefits of Community

April 06, 2025   |   Read Online
Try that in a small town
Marisa from The Handbasket
ICE disappeared a mother and 3 children. Neighbors of Trump’s Border Czar said hell no.

Principal Jaime Cook describes one of the third graders in her northern New York school as particularly rambunctious. In a phone call with me Saturday evening, she says this particular student loves to sing and loves to dance. But last week this child was handcuffed and taken by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), along with other family members—two of whom are high school-aged kids. While they all remain jailed in Texas, classmates leave cards on the student’s desk and hang a welcome home banner they hope will be seen.
As people across the country assembled Saturday to tell the Trump regime to keep their “Hands off!”, a protest in the tiny town of Sackets Harbor, NY caught my eye. While this one was certainly related to the larger theme of the day, the impetus was much more specific: A worker on a local dairy farm who had no criminal record and was awaiting legal immigration proceedings was disappeared late last month by ICE along with her three children. Agents were executing a search warrant for an unrelated suspected criminal who lived on the same block, and somehow the family was swept up and whisked away to Texas. And around 1,000 people came together this weekend to rally for their safe return and to send a message that this won’t be tolerated there—or anywhere.
“There was the concern in our little small town that if we speak out too loudly, there might be hateful voices from far away,” Cook tells The Handbasket. She wonders: “Are we gonna become the center of something that becomes really ugly?”
But ultimately she and her staff decided anything less than loud and unwavering support was unacceptable. And as a result, the rest of the country has taken notice.


Photos courtesy of Ginger Storey-Welch
The town of 1,300 people has just one school for all children K-12 where they graduate approximately 40 students each year. It’s an affluent and idyllic-looking town on the shores of Lake Ontario in a county that voted 61% for Trump in 2024. And when protesters marched down the streets in solidarity with their stolen neighbors, they made sure to pass by the home of one community member in particular: Tom Homan, Trump’s Border Czar. Homan grew up nearby and still has his primary residence in Sackets Harbor, presumably splitting time in DC to spearhead Trump’s campaign of terrorizing immigrants. 
“This isn’t like a situation where a politician has multiple houses,” Cook told me. “Tom Homan lives in Sackets Harbor. I believe that in the hours when this was unfolding, he was receiving a lot of calls on his personal cell phone.”
In anticipation of Saturday’s march, the Mayor of Sackets Harbor declared a state of emergency. Law enforcement officials from the village police department, the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office, state police, and state park police were all called to the gathering to remind protesters of what they would face if they put a toe out of line.
Cook has spent the past 10 days worried sick about her students in the 3rd, 10th and 11th grades at her school. Saturday morning she posted a statement on Facebook addressing the situation head on:
Homan has been decidedly less concerned about his neighbors, vocally supporting the actions of immigration officials. He claimed in a local TV news interview on Wednesday that the children and their mother were potential witnesses to the alleged crime and that they had to be detained for questions. And he was sure to make one thing clear: “First of all, the family is not in a jail. They’re in a family residential center, it’s an open air campus.” 
These types of arrests—known as “collateral detention”—are becoming more common. “What we have been seeing is ICE at random detaining people who are not the people they’re looking for,” Murad Awawdeh, president and CEO of the New York Immigration Coalition, told The Intercept. “They go in allegedly looking for someone else and then they’ll take whoever they can find just so they can meet their quota numbers that Donald Trump has put in place.”
As protesters marched by Homan’s waterfront home on Saturday, a sign on a neighbor’s lawn—a photo of which was shared with me by rally attendee Ginger Storey-Welch—read: “WE NO LONGER HAVE A DIFFERENCE IN POLITICAL OPINION. WE HAVE A DIFFERENCE IN MORALITY.”

Photos courtesy of Ginger Storey-Welch
The contrast between Homan and Cook couldn’t be more stark. Cook says she grew up on welfare and food stamps and says that being “disempowered” and “discarded by the system” has always helped her empathize with people in peril. I tell her that her Facebook statement and comments to a reporter at the protest have people online hailing her as a hero. Then I ask her how she feels about that characterization. 
“I think that’s silly,” she says. “I think anybody who’s been a public school teacher knows that people are doing this stuff all day long. And I think that the only reason that people might think that this is out of the ordinary is because educators are so frequently underestimated and their contribution is not seen for what it is.”
Cook is tackling the situation boldly, despite having only been principal in Sackets Harbor for less than one school year. The California native has lived in the area for 15 years and says the community has welcomed her with open arms—which has made it easier to feel empowered to speak up.
“You just gotta put your money where your mouth is and you gotta live by your conscience,” she says, “and you gotta know that your livelihood cannot overpower your conscience.”
The school has been in touch with ICE since the family’s arrest, and Cook says she feels hopeful about the chances of them being home soon. She says one of her teachers who has been the immigration agency’s main point of contact has been waiting for “the call” letting them know the family is free to go, and believes that call is imminent. But even once they’re freed, ICE will do nothing to transport them back to the home from which they were snatched. Fortunately the town has come together to make sure there are people on the ground in Texas waiting to accompany the family when the time hopefully comes. 
“They can rally and protest all they want, but I’m not gonna be bullied. I’m not gonna be intimidated,” Homan told the local news prior to Saturday’s rally. Meanwhile, Sackets Harbor 10th graders leave flowers on their jailed classmate’s desk in hopes of a safe return.

“Normie Tariff Explainer”

I subscribe to a newsletter by author Courtney Milan. In it, she writes of one of my reasons for living, tea, but also, to put it briefly, coping and some activism. It’s a good newsletter, and I’ve often wanted to share parts of it, but never got it done. This one, that I’ve only read today (so 1 day late for Hands Off! but there are plenty of times and places for us to rock on,) has good information, and activism we can take while in grocery lines or waiting rooms or wherever we are. Here’s the tea (without actual tea, but if you want to see her tea entry, let me know in comments and I’ll bring it here):

NORMIE TARIFF EXPLAINER

I had started writing something yesterday about Cory Booker, and was interrupted by Donald Trump announcing massive, sweeping tariffs that will send the global economy into a tailspin.

One of the problems with things like this is that a lot of people simply don’t know what tariffs are, or don’t know that Trump is lying about the tariffs other countries are imposing. They certainly don’t understand what the impact will be, and so I decided to make an extremely basic Trump Tariff Explainer to pass out to friends/family/at protests, etc, because if there’s one thing that extremely normie and/or not online people may pay attention to, it might be something like “everything is about to cost a lot more money.”

Even if they don’t believe that this will happen, I think it’s important to put it in their brains that if it does happen, the people to blame are Donald Trump and his cabinet.

So I have made a website and downloadable PDF sheet for the normal person in your life.
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The website version (with links to sources) is: TrumpsTariffsExplained.com

You can download the PDF here.
I’m printing several hundred of these and bringing them to distribute at the protest this Saturday–the more people who see this information, the faster we can try to turn the tide.

These tariffs are going to be terrible for everyone, but they’ll be especially horrific for the poor, the disabled, and the marginalized both in the US and around the world world. The faster we can turn things around, the more lives we will save, and hopefully more people knowing what is happening will help us turn things around faster.
See you next week, (signature) Courtney Milan
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In Today’s GoComics,

Doonesbury

By Garry Trudeau

Peace & Justice History for 4/6

April 6, 1712
The first major slave rebellion in the North American British colonies took place in New York City. One out of every five New Yorkers was enslaved at the time. Twenty-three black slaves set fire to buildings, killed six white British subjects and wounded six others.
More on the rebellion and its aftermath 
Slavery in New York 
April 6, 1909
Robert Peary, his negro servant, Matthew Henson, and four Eskimos reached the geographic North Pole for the first time.

Matthew Peary at the White House, 1954
 
Stamp issued 2005
Though Henson was alongside Peary, widely hailed as a courageous explorer, during that and subsequent Arctic expeditions, Henson achieved little notice until much later in life.
Article about the unsung hero of the polar expedition 
April 6, 1968
Dozens of major cities in the United States experienced an escalation of rioting in reaction to the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. two days before. At least 19 people had already died in the arson, looting and shootings. Several hundred had also been injured and about 3,000 arrested—most of those in Washington, D.C.
April 6, 1968
Bobby Hutton, the 17-year-old first member of the Black Panther Party was gunned down by officers of the Oakland Police Department. Police opened fire on a car of Black Panthers returning from a meeting. The Panthers escaped their vehicle and ran into a house. Police attacked the house with tear gas and gunfire. After the building was on fire, the Panthers tried to surrender. Hutton came out of the house with his hands in the air.

Bobby Hutton
But a police officer shouted, “He’s got a gun.” This prompted further police gunfire that left Hutton dead and Panthers co-founder Eldridge Cleaver wounded. Police later admitted that Hutton was unarmed.
More about Bobby Hutton 
April 6, 1983
President Ronald Reagan’s interior secretary, James Watt, banned all rock ‘n’ roll groups from the Fourth of July celebration on the Washington Mall.The bands scheduled to play included the Beach Boys, generally considered very wholesome. But Watt said such acts attracted the “wrong element.” ”We’re not going to encourage drug abuse and alcoholism as was done in the past.” The president’s wife, a fan, complained directly to Secretary Watt, but he claimed never to have heard of the band.
April 6, 1996
Eleven were arrested at the main post office near Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., for attempting to mail medical supplies to Iraq in defiance of the U.S.-led embargo. Between 1990 and 1995 with the first Gulf War and the sanctions regime imposed by the U.S., its coalition and the U.N., infant and under-5 mortality rates in Iraq had more than doubled.
More about Voices in the Wilderness 

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryapril.htm#april6

Women Getting Things Done

Kickass Women in History: Tamara Lempicka

From “Them”-

USA Fencing Disqualified a Cis Athlete Who Refused to Compete Against a Trans Woman

The cis fencer knelt in front of her trans opponent, removed her protective mask, and refused to begin the match.

By Samantha Riedel April 3, 2025

USA Fencing says it is standing by its decision to disqualify a cisgender fencer who forfeited a tournament match against a transgender opponent last week, an act the organization says violated international competition rules.

On March 30, USA Fencing (the country’s governing body for youth and adult competitive fencing) oversaw the annual Cherry Blossom tournament at the University of Maryland. During the Division 1 Women’s Foil event, cis fencer Stephanie Turner knelt in front of her opponent Redmond Sullivan, removed her protective mask, and refused to begin the match. A referee then showed Turner a black card to disqualify her.

A black card is the harshest penalty in fencing, one that is usually deployed in cases of egregious unsportsmanlike conduct. In a statement to the Irish Star this week, USA Fencing said that Turner’s conduct violated rules for competition set by the International Fencing Federation (FIE).

“[Turner’s] disqualification was not related to any personal statement but was merely the direct result of her decision to decline to fence an eligible opponent, which the FIE rules clearly prohibit,” USA Fencing’s statement read in part. FIE’s Technical Rules bar athletes from competing if they “refuse to fence against any other fencer whatsoever […] correctly entered in the event.”

“USA Fencing is obligated to follow the letter of those rules and ensure that participants respect the standards set at the international level,” the organization’s statement continued. “We remain committed to inclusivity within our sport while also upholding every requirement dictated by our governing body.”

USA Fencing also told the Star that it will “always err on the side of inclusion,” but that its leaders “respect the viewpoints on all sides” and would consider changing their trans and nonbinary athlete policy should Olympic policies change or new “relevant evidence-based research” be conducted. The organization’s current policy allows adult trans and nonbinary people to compete in men’s or women’s divisions depending on their stated gender identity, with restrictions based on an athlete’s testosterone levels; trans women must complete a year of testosterone suppression to be eligible for women’s competition, while trans men who take testosterone are automatically disqualified from women’s events.

Sullivan went on to finish 24th overall in the field of 39 competitors (including Turner), with seasoned competitor Shuang Li picking up the fifth gold medal of her career. Of course, Li received no accolades from right-wing media outlets, much less self-proclaimed defender of women’s sports J.K. Rowling, who focused on denigrating Sullivan and uplifting Turner on Elon Musk’s X social media platform. Rowling wrote in one post that Turner is “what a heroine looks like,” after sharing another post from former tennis star turned anti-trans campaigner Martina Navratilova, who said she was “fuming” and shamed USA Fencing for “throw[ing] women under the gender bullshit bus.”

Current scientific research has not shown that trans women hold significant biological advantages over cis women in competitive sports. In fact, a study backed by the International Olympic Committee last year found that trans women who suppress their testosterone may face significant disadvantages in some athletic metrics like vertical leap. But conservatives in the U.S. have insisted that it is “common sense” to ban trans women and girls from women’s sports, which has now become a rallying cry for the second Trump administration, as officials use trans athletes as a cudgel to withhold funding from states like Maine by claiming they are violating federal civil rights law.

In 2022, the NCAA tightened restrictions on trans athletes’ eligibility following the success of then-college swimmer Lia Thomas. NCAA president Charlie Baker said in February that the organization would voluntarily shift its policies to align with Trump’s executive order calling for sports to be separated based on the president’s definition of “biological sex.” The new participation policy specifically states that a “student-athlete assigned male at birth may not compete for an NCAA women’s team.” It’s not clear based on USA Fencing’s statement this week whether the organization will alter its own policy to match the NCAA updates.

Peace & Justice History for 4/5

Hands Off Day!

April 5, 1910
Emil Seidel was elected mayor of Milwaukee and became the first socialist mayor of a major city in the United States. During his administration the first public works department was established, the first fire and police commissions were organized, and a city park system came into being.
In 1912, the Socialist Party nominated Emil Seidel as their vice presidential candidate to run with Eugene Debs.

Emil Seidel
Read more about Emil Seidel 
Milwaukee’s Socialist Era 
April 5, 1930
Mohandas Gandhi and his followers reached the end of their 400 km (240 mile) march to the Indian Ocean coast at Dandi. He had left his ashram with 78 satyagrahis (“soldiers” of peaceful resistance), but the procession grew over the 23 days of traveling on foot until it stretched more than 3 km (2 miles).
When they arrived at the seaside, Gandhi made salt by allowing seawater to evaporate. This simple task was an act of civil disobedience because the British Raj, the governing colonial authority, had made salt-making a monopoly and a crime for others; additionally, there was a tax on salt, a necessary element of the Indian diet.

Gandhi picking up salt.
Gandhi had chosen this issue to demonstrate how British control affected all Indians, regardless of ethnicity, religion or caste. The nature of this “crime” allowed him to resist that power without violence. And the British were faced with potentially arresting millions who might now be willing to flout the Salt Laws.
He had written to Lord Irwin, the Viceroy of India, a month earlier:
“Dear Friend, I cannot intentionally hurt anything that lives, much less fellow human beings, even though they may do the greatest wrong to me and mine. Whilst, therefore, I hold the British rule to be a curse, I do not intend to harm to a single Englishman or to any legitimate interest he may have in India . . . .”
Read Gandhi’s letter 
April 5, 1972
The Harrisburg Seven case ended in mistrial after 11 weeks.The Seven were charged with plotting to kidnap Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, among other alleged crimes. The defense attorney, recent former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark, asked by the presiding judge to call his first witness said, “Your Honor, the defendants shall always seek peace. They continue to proclaim their innocence.

Elizabeth McAllister and Philip Berrigan, two of the Harrisburg Seven
The defense rests.” Only Philip Berrigan and Sister Elizabeth McAllister were declared guilty—of smuggling letters in and out of prison. They later married, co-founding Baltimore’s Jonah House.
Visit Jonah House 
April 5, 1977
Demonstrations and sit-ins began at regional offices of the U.S. Department of Health, Education & Welfare (HEW, now Department of Health & Human Services) urging HEW Secretary Joseph Califano to implement an extension of civil rights that included the disabled. Since non-discrimination protection had been part of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, the department had failed to agree to regulations (under Section 504) that would give the law practical effect in the lives of those it intended to protect. Discrimination on the basis of disability was to be illegal in any program which received federal funds.
At all the offices the demonstrators left at the end of the working day, except two: Washington, DC and the San Francisco regional headquarters.
Though negotiations were continuing between the Carter administration and the American Coalition of Citizens with Disabilities, those in San Francisco, led by Judith Heumann, held their ground until Califano signed the Sec. 504 regulations on April 28. It had been the longest sit-in of a federal office in history.
Judith Heumann, Advisor for Disability and Development.

sign from the campaign
Short film about the sit-in (“Recalling an invigorating act of civil disobedience”)
How Section 504 became law and how its supporters prevailed
April 5, 1982
Dublin, Ireland, declared itself a nuclear-free zone by vote of its City Council.
April 5, 1985
Columbia University students occupied Hamilton Hall to demand divestment by the university of its assets invested in companies doing business with South Africa. The selling off was intended to pressure the racially separatist government to eliminate its racially separatist policy of apartheid.
April 5, 1989
Solidarity (Solidarnosc in Polish) became the first independent labor union given legal status in Poland.

It started out as a strike committee among shipyard workers advocating democratic reforms during the summer of 1980 in Gdansk (FKA Danzig). A very high percentage of the Polish workers, a broad representation of the political and social opposition to the communist military regime, became members despite the union’s having been declared illegal in October of 1982.
Solidarity’s legacy 
April 5, 1992
The March for Women’s Lives, in support of women’s reproductive rights and equality, drew several hundred thousand people to Washington, D.C. There were students representing 600 college campuses.

Part of the huge turnout taking part in the March for Women’s Lives

One of the largest protests ever in the nation’s capital, the pro-choice rally occurred as the U.S. Supreme Court was about to consider the constitutionality of a Pennsylvania law that limited access to abortions. Many abortion-rights advocates feared that the high court, with its conservative majority, might find the Pennsylvania law constitutional,
or even overturn the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling that made abortion legal. 
Read more about this march 
April 5, 1996
54 were arrested in a Good Friday protest at Livermore Nuclear Weapons Laboratory in California.

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryapril.htm#april5