Tag: Justice

It’s Not Only June, It’s Pride Month

Pride Power! by Adam Parkhomenko

A Pride Month declaration from the cussing newsletter guys Read on Substack

It’s a safe bet this White House won’t be flying the rainbow flag this June.

But you can bet your hot asses we will.

June is Pride Month, a celebration of our LGBTQIA+ friends and a good damn reminder that for a free country to truly be free, people must be allowed to be themselves. It’s also a helluva party.

But this year’s Pride comes as the federal government has declared war on trans folks, banned books dealing with LGBTQIA+ issues and authors and made bigotry great again. Like with all things Trump, there ain’t much to celebrate. And that’s why we’re gonna be louder and prouder than we’ve ever been before.

If the president of the United States won’t stand up for our gay, lesbian and trans friends, then we sure as shit will. We’re proud of you, we’re happy to stand next to you and we love you. And like a lot of people who want to be allies, we can be clumsy as hell about it, so please don’t hesitate to tell us how we can do better.

So many Americans have seen their rights and protections either diminished or destroyed under Trump. It’s why so many people in this country are so scared right now. And sad. And angry.

Trump and the GOP have made trans people their personal punching bags. This week, Trump even threatened California over a 16-year-old trans athlete. That’s the president of the United States bullying a child simply because they are different from other kids. If you want to debate trans folks in sports, fine, but surely we can agree that the president shouldn’t be attacking teenagers who are just trying to be teenagers.

Whether it’s erasing the trans heroes from the memorial plaque at Stonewall or denying them the chance to serve in the military, Trump has made clear he will use our government to bully, harass and demean trans people. It’s cruel. It’s wrong. It’s un-American.

And we know it won’t stop there. Because it never does.

We’re already seeing Trump administration efforts to eliminate suicide hotlines and other resources for LGBTQIA+ youth. They’re salivating at the idea of bringing back cruel conversion therapy. And we’ve all heard the rumblings from people like Clarence Thomas about going after gay marriage.

Even as we write this, a gay barber sits in an El Salvadoran prison, sent there by Trump and abandoned by a country that hypocritically proclaims to the world that all men are created equal.

We should be welcoming Andry Hernandez Romero to our country, a land of freedom and opportunity where he can be himself without threats of anti-gay violence. Alas, we are not that America right now. The truth is we rarely have been.

So this will be a different kind of Pride Month. We might party a little less and march a little more. We will spend this June being tragically reminded that the voices of hate and bigotry are still very much alive and they have a pretty big microphone these days.

And that’s why we will spend this month shouting how much we love and support the LGBTQIA+ community. Because fuck the haters, and fuck their hate.

Let’s show the world how we do Pride Month in this country. And let’s remind the bigots what real freedom looks like.

To our LGBTQIA+ friends, we love you, we’re proud of you and we promise you are not alone. Happy Pride, everybody!

The latest from Adam

(And if you click through to the Substack, you can see the new “apology” video from Sen. Ernst, just after Pete’s Heat. Alt Media is an extremely worthy click. Sen. Ernst’s apology is not. -A.)

No Notes

Happy Pride Month

Many Items in Peace & Justice History for 6/1

Also, I want to mention that I’ve been publishing here at Scottie’s Playtime since 7/10 or 11, and normally, have posted one of these each day. There hasn’t been much change or updating for a while; the newsletter and history website is Carl Bunin’s labor of love, depending upon the sales of buttons, pencils, and other merch. I’ve been reading these since 2001, and have noted it feels as if we here may have seen some of these before, and definitely will have by next month. So: should I continue after July 10th, or has everyone seen these, and enough is enough for a while? I don’t mind either way, but I don’t want to use up space and give people repeats. Just let me know in comments over the next few days, OK? And thanks for visiting Scottie’s Playtime!

June 1, 1845

Sojourner Truth (born Isabella Baumfree, but went by the name she believed God had given her as a symbolic representation of her mission in life) set out from New York City on a journey across America, preaching about the evils of slavery and promoting women’s rights. She had been a slave with several owners but was legally free when slavery was abolished in New York state.
Read more about Sojourner Truth (There’s a very cool yet somewhat incendiary comment there on this page; go see it.)
June 1, 1921
America’s worst race massacre, begun the day before over the threat of a lynching, culminated in the complete destruction of the African-American neighborhood of Greenwood in Tulsa leaving nearly 10,000 homeless.
The ruins of Tulsa Oklahoma’s Greenwood District following the assault by the white community.
Death in a Promised Land: The Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921  
read more 
Meet The Last Surviving Witness To The Tulsa Race Riot Of 1921 
June 1, 1932
Gay rights organizer Henry Gerber published an article in Modern Thinker magazine attacking the view that homosexuality is a neurosis.
In 1924, Henry Gerber, a postal worker in Chicago, started the Society for Human Rights, America’s first known gay rights organization.

“The Society for Human Rights is formed to promote and protect the interests of people who are abused and hindered in the legal pursuit of happiness which is guaranteed them by the Declaration of Independence, and to combat the public prejudices against them.”

After having created and distributed a newsletter called “Friendship and Freedom,” Gerber was arrested and held for 3 days without a warrant or being charged with any infractions. Upon release he lost his job for “conduct unbecoming a postal worker.”
Following the last of his three trials, in which the charges were ultimately dismissed, Gerber moved to new York City and re-enlisted in the U.S. Army, serving another 17 years. He lived until 1972, passing away at the the U.S. Soldiers’ and Airmen’s Home in Washington, D.C., living long enough to see the Stonewall Rebellion [see June 28, 1969], the beginning of the modern gay rights movement. 
More on Henry Gerber 
June 1, 1942

On the advice of Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, German Chancellor Adolf Hitler ordered all Jews in occupied Paris to wear an identifying yellow star on the left side of their coats.
The following month 13,000 French Jews were deported to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camps.
June 1, 1950
Senator Margaret Chase Smith (R-Maine), then the only woman in the Senate, and just the second in U.S. history, denounced Senator Joseph McCarthy (R-Wisconsin) and his “red-baiting” tactics on the floor of the U.S. Senate, in a speech called “A Declaration of Conscience.”

“Those of us who shout the loudest about Americanism in making character assassinations are all too frequently those who, by our own words and acts, ignore some of the basic principles of Americanism—the right to criticize;
the right to hold unpopular beliefs;
the right to protest;
the right of independent thought.”
Text of the Senator Smith’s Declaration 
June 1, 1963
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that recitation of the Lord’s Prayer and readings from the Bible in public schools violated the establishment clause of the first amendment to the U.S. Constitution in School Dist. Of Abington Township v. Schempp. The Court reasoned that the daily practice was unconstitutional because a public institution was conducting a religious exercise and “that public funds, though small in amount, are being used to promote” a particular religion. “It is not the amount of public funds expended; as this case illustrates, it is the use to which public funds are put . . . .”
The decision 
June 1, 1967
The Vietnam Veterans Against War (VVAW) was founded in New York City after six Vietnam vets marched together in a peace demonstration. The group was organized to give voice to the growing opposition to the escalating war in Indochina among returning servicemen and women.


VVAW, through open discussion of soldiers’ first-hand experiences, revealed the truth about the nature of U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia.
VVAW demonstrating against Iraq war 2004
The VVAW today 

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryjune.htm#june1

And Another Young Candidate

Presuming we have elections, we’re gonna be rich in good people to elect. Here’s another one I’ve been watching and donating to for a couple of months. I may have posted about her here before, but I’m not certain.

McMorrow for Michigan

Brown v. BOE, and more, in Peace & Justice History for 5/31

May 31, 1955
The U.S. Supreme Court ordered (in a unanimous decision known as Brown II after the 1954 decision Brown v. Board of Education) that school integration be implemented “with all deliberate speed,” ordering the lower federal courts to require the desegregation of public schools.
Between 1955 and 1960, federal judges held more than 200 school desegregation hearings. The decision reiterated “the fundamental principle that racial discrimination in public education is unconstitutional . . . . All provisions of federal, state or local law requiring or permitting such discrimination must yield to this principle.”

A timeline of school integration 
May 31, 1957

U.S. playwright Arthur Miller was convicted of contempt of Congress for refusing to reveal the names of associates who were alleged to be Communists.
The conviction was ultimately set aside on appeal.
More about Arthur Miller 
May 31, 1966
Nguyen Thi Can, a 17-year-old Buddhist girl, committed suicide by setting herself afire (self-immolation) on a street in the city of Hue, Vietnam. She was protesting against the South Vietnamese regime and the war being waged by the U.S., the separate armies of the north and south, and the insurgent Viet Cong; it was the fifth such death in three days.
May 31, 1973
A bipartisan majority (69-19) of the U.S. Senate voted to cut off funds for the bombing of Cambodia (Vietnam’s neighbor) despite pleas from U.S. President Richard Nixon’s Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger.

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistorymay.htm#may31

Memorial Day actions in Peace & Justice History for 5/30

May 30, 1868
Memorial Day, originally known as Decoration Day, was first observed some say [see May 1, 1865] when two women in Columbus, Mississippi, placed flowers on the graves of Civil War soldiers, both Confederate and Union. War widow Augusta Murdoch Sykes, one of the Columbus planners, pointed out that “after all, they are somebody’s sons.” It is now celebrated to honor all those who have died in America’s wars.

“The 30th day of May, 1868, is designated for the purpose of strewing with flowers, or otherwise decorating the graves of comrades who died in defense of their country….” -from an order from the Grand Army of the Republic
=========================================================
May 30, 1937

1000 striking steel workers (and members of their families), on their way to picket at the Republic Steel plant in south Chicago where they were organizing a union, were stopped by the Chicago Police. In what became known as the “Memorial Day Massacre,” police shot and killed 10 fleeing workers, wounded 30 more, and beat 55 so badly they required hospitalization.
More on the incident 
Watch a video of oral history with historic footage

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistorymay.htm#may30

Barbara Gittings, and More, in Peace & Justice History for 5/29

May 29, 1932
In the depths of the Great Depression, the “Bonus Expeditionary Force,” a group of 1000 World War I veterans seeking to cash in their veterans’ bonus certificates, arrived in Washington, D.C. Though issued to the veterans in 1924, the certificates were not scheduled to be paid until 1945. By mid-June, the vets had set up a massive “Hooverville,” a contemporary term for an encampment of the homeless.

The St. Louis contingent of the Bonus Expeditionary Force is pictured here as it starts for Washington, D.C., in May 1932.
One month later, other veteran groups made their way to the nation’s capital, swelling the Bonus Marchers to nearly 20,000 strong, most of them unemployed veterans in difficult financial straits.
President Herbert Hoover ordered the Army to clear out the veterans when they resisted being evicted by Washington police. Infantry and cavalry supported by six tanks were dispatched with Chief of Staff General Douglas MacArthur in command.
Major Dwight D. Eisenhower served as his liaison with Washington police and Major George Patton led the cavalry. This was a direct violation of the Posse Comitatus Act, which prohibits the armed forces’ being used against U.S. citizens. 
More on the Bonus Army 
May 29, 1965

In one of the first demonstrations promoting equal treatment of homosexuals, Jack Nichols, Barbara Gittings and others picketed in front of the White House.
Her sign read, “Sexual preference is irrelevant to federal employment.” 
More about Barbara Gittings 
May 29, 1986
The Christic Institute filed a lawsuit charging U.S. government complicity in an assassination bombing at La Penca, Nicaragua, and that the CIA had a role in smuggling cocaine into the U.S. to fund the Contras, an insurgent military force working to bring down the government of Nicaragua.
Find out more about the Christic Institute 

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistorymay.htm#may29

Women Fasted, Amnesty Int’l Founded, and Much More in Peace & Justice History for 5/28

May 28, 1892

The Sierra Club, America’s oldest, largest and most influential grassroots environmental organization, was organized in San Francisco with wilderness explorer John Muir as its first president. The organization’s initial effort was to defeat a proposed reduction in the boundaries of Yosemite National Park.
Muir introduced President Theodore Roosevelt to Yosemite the following year, inspiring him during his presidency to establish the U.S. Forest Service, create 5 national parks, and sign the 1906 Antiquities Act, under which he proclaimed 18 national monuments.
“Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul alike.”
– John Muir, The Yosemite (1912)

John Muir
The Sierra Club today
May 28, 1961

Amnesty International (AI) was founded on this date in Great Britain.
It is a worldwide movement of people who campaign for internationally recognized human rights, particularly as laid out in the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Members of AI help maintain a media focus on political prisoners, and organize public pressure to afford them their legal rights and obtain their release.
Visit Amnesty International 
Read the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:
Amnesty International projects 
May 28, 1963
Black and white civil rights advocates were attacked as they sat-in at a Woolworth’s lunch counter in Jackson, Mississippi. They were defying state laws against serving “colored” citizens at “whites-only” public facilities.
According to John Salter, AKA Hunter Bear, one of those who sat in:
“This was the most violently attacked sit-in during the 1960s and is the most publicized. A huge mob gathered, with open police support while the three of us sat there for three hours. I was attacked with fists, brass knuckles and the broken portions of glass sugar containers, and was burned with cigarettes. I’m covered with blood and we were all covered by salt, sugar, mustard, and various other things.”

Attacked for trying to eat at Woolworth’s (L to R): John Salter (Hunter Bear), Joan Trumpauer (now Mulholland), and Anne Moody.
More photos and the story of the struggle against segregation 
Freedom Movement Bibliography 
May 28, 1982
Seven women fasted for 10 days in Springfield, Illinois, in support of ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment by the Illinois state legislature. The amendment had already been ratified by 35 other states of the 38 required.
May 28, 1998
Pakistan exploded five underground nuclear devices in response to India’s most recent nuclear tests.
 
Since the British partitioned the subcontinent in 1947, there have been three wars between the two countries and numerous border clashes over the disputed Kashmir province. Kashmir had a majority (77%) Muslim population at the time of partition, but became part of predominantly Hindu (80%), though constitutionally secular, India.

Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan, widely proclaimed as the ” Father of Pakistan’s atomic bomb,” stands in the access tunnel inside the Chagai Hills nuclear test site before Pakistan’s
28 May 1998 underground nuclear test.
Read more 

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistorymay.htm#may28

My Favorite Sport is Spelling Bees

Leave it to the Republicans to mess up sports. They don’t like anybody, and they don’t want anybody to be happy. The word in question is a word: it’s in the dictionary, is used by people, and it makes sense in a sentence. What a story! Peace and good spelling to all. ☮

How the word ‘womyn’ dragged the National Spelling Bee into the US culture wars

In an age of division where authoritarianism is seeping into every corner of American discourse, the Spelling Bee offers up a reminder of what America should truly be

Scott RemerTue 27 May 2025 05.00 EDTShare

We’re living through turbulent times, to say the least. Authoritarianism and fascism threaten the United States. The conspiracy thinking, paranoia and manufactured outrage so characteristic of QAnon and the big lie about the 2020 election have colonized our political discourse like a fungus. Even the National Spelling Bee, a cultural institution which will be celebrating its centennial this year and which is generally exempted from the far right’s paranoid vitriol, hasn’t been immune. Earlier this year, a foofaraw erupted when right-wing outlets reported on the acceptance of “womyn” as an alternate spelling of “women” in the regional-level wordlist which the National Spelling Bee issues each year.

The reason “womyn” was included in the wordlist wasn’t some shadowy feminist plot by the Bee’s organizers. The competition simply allows any word in the Merriam-Webster Unabridged dictionary, unless it is obsolete. “Womyn” is in the dictionary, along with tens of thousands of other words, such as “pointless”, “culture” and “war”.

With zero self-awareness, an anti-trans podcast host raged that the Bee’s uncontroversial decision to allow “womyn” was a manifestation of “fabricated issues” and “totally manufactured outrage.” On Fox News, she snarled, “How lucky are we to live in the United States of America, where the spelling of women, never mind the definition, has become a national debate.” Samantha Poetter-Parshall, a Kansas state representative, joined in the criticism, calling the inclusion of womyn an instance of “crazy indoctrination of our children.” A parent quoted in reportage on the faux scandal shared Poetter-Parshall’s concern, asserting, “This is supposed to be about spelling and language, not ideology.”

George Orwell, the author of Animal Farm, 1984, and the essay Politics and the English Language, would be startled to hear such a complaint. Orwell deeply understood the intimate relationship between language, thought, and politics. He keenly observed how “in our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible … Political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness. Defenseless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification. Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry: this is called transfer of population or rectification of frontiers. People are imprisoned for years without trial, or shot in the back of the neck or sent to die of scurvy in Arctic lumber camps: this is called elimination of unreliable elements.”

In our time, imprisoning and attempting to deport legal residents of the US for their political views and sending legal residents and gay people fleeing persecution in Venezuela – and potentially US citizens – to prisons in El Salvador where torture is widespread based on flimsy evidence from disgraced police officers is called “securing our homeland”. The announcement of economically ruinous tariffs which have wiped trillions off the stock market is called “liberation day.” Orwell believed that “to think clearly is a necessary first step towards political regeneration.” To combat the creep of Orwellian language, he argued that we should “recognize that the present political chaos is connected with the decay of language, and that one can probably bring about some improvement by starting at the verbal end,” aiming to always use “language as an instrument for expressing and not for concealing or preventing thought”.

In its emphasis on linguistic precision and its heartfelt delight in words, the National Spelling Bee is already political in Orwell’s sense. The Bee also has an implicit politics of appreciation for cultural and linguistic diversity. Though most spellers are American, the competition has an international flavor: it regularly features participants from Ghana, Canada, Jamaica, South Korea, China, and Nigeria, and spelling bees have sprung up in countries like Zimbabwe too. The welcome which the Bee extends to logophiles from all over the world inculcates in kids an appreciation of other cultures and promotes a cosmopolitan worldview. Spellers study words from Latin, French, Greek, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish and German; this cultivates their love of linguistic variety. What’s more, the fact that the South Asian community regularly dominates the upper echelons of the competition reaffirms the importance of immigration to our society.

These days, even if many Americans reject the Trump regime’s ugly attitudes and practices, xenophobia and racism are rampant, hearkening back to the bad old days of the Know-Nothing Party and the Chinese Exclusion Act. The US government has become increasingly hostile to international travelers: there have been a spate of horrific stories of tourists, visitors, and legal residents from Germany, Canada, France, the United Kingdom, Australia, and elsewhere who have done nothing wrong being arrested, detained, and held for weeks by Ice, or being refused entry to the US and deported. In such a context, the National Spelling Bee’s steadfast commitment to multiculturalism is all the more essential.

Despite its unfortunate Covid-induced cancellation in 2020 and some turbulence from rule changes and regional sponsor attrition in 2021 and 2022, the National Spelling Bee has been a relative constant for students in an age of extreme dislocation and upheaval. In these politically polarized times, it offers Americans an opportunity for joy and collective uplift. It celebrates education, attention, focus, dedication, and quiet, patient effort. It teaches students grit, discipline, and linguistics. It reminds us of the importance of the human in an age of AI. It reinforces the importance of good sportsmanship and fair play. It promotes respect and friendship towards humanity at large. It invites us to honor and remember the values that ought to unite us all. The National Spelling Bee is a reminder of what America has been – and what it must continue to be.

Scott Remer is a professional spelling bee tutor, freelance writer, and the author of the textbooks Words of Wisdom: Keys to Success in the Scripps National Spelling Bee, Sesquipedalia!: A Rigorous Vocabulary Study Guide, Regional Bee Ready!, and A Few Final Words of Wisdom.

Beware!

It’s A Trap by Clay Jones

For my fellow Star Wars kids Read on Substack

The entire world has come to know that the Oval Office is now a trap.

When Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky visited the White House, Trump sprang a trap on him that included veep, JD Vance, who definitely doesn’t fuck couches. I’m glad we cleared that up.

Trump used JD as a pitbull to start the attack, and for him to come in from behind. Zelensky can be scary, yo. And it was smart as Zelesnky picked apart JD’s attack of “Why haven’t you tried diplomacy?” Zelesnky calmly gave JD a thorough history lesson.

JD and Trump were raising their voices, shouting at Zelensky as though it was his fault Russia illegally invaded his nation, and Ukraine had failed to use diplomacy to avoid it, just as Poland had failed to use diplomacy against the Nazis. Haven’t we learned anything from history?

At some point, Trump and JD realized they were embarrassing themselves and the nation, and they kicked Zelensky out of the White House. I can’t wait until we kick Trump out of the White House. Again.

In April, Trump was interviewed by Terry Moran of ABC News in the Oval Office, and Trump bullied Moran, trying to get him to accept that a fake photo was real.

“MS13” had been superimposed onto the photo Trump was showing of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a man Trump illegally deported to a Salvadoran prison, with the text clearly typed on top of his knuckles. Oddly enough, Trump had shared the same photo a week before without the text superimposed. Our president (sic) is a moron.

Moran tried to direct the conversation away from the silly photo, probably trying to save Trump some further embarrassment, but Grandpa wouldn’t let it go. He kept insisting that Moran believe the obvious lie.

Trump did it again last week, springing an Oval Office trap on the president of South Africa, Cyril Ramaphosa.

Trump was showing Ramaphosa photos and videos, often of the wrong places and without context, insisting that White genocide was taking place in his nation. It’s not. (snip-MORE)