Category Archives: Uncategorized

About that Juneteenth ice cream

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In case y’all forgot, Juneteenth’s official federal name is “Juneteenth National Independence Day”, not “Juneteenth Memorial Day”.

The addition of “independence” as an act of celebration is inviting commercialization in a vulgar-capitalist country like this. The marking of “Independence” is not a time for any type of Memorial Day-style reflection.

In another universe, Juneteenth’s official name would be “Juneteenth Labor Memorial Day”, rightfully marking how chattel slavery was brutal, multigenerational abuse of human labor. We would be visiting slave cemeteries. We would be treating it as a day of mourning and labor activism. Who would capitalize on a day of mourning?

But instead we got Juneteenth with the parades and the “independence”. And now some are confused and frustrated that companies and establishments would capitalize on a new holiday with a Juneteenth-branded ice cream flavor, or that companies would afford time off to *everyone* for a federal holiday.

I don’t know why we’re supposed to be upset with a corny ice cream flavor from some big, dumb, anti-union corp. I don’t know what we expected. This is a package deal for an “independence day” in the United States.

On Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson’s confirmation

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Congrats to Ketanji Brown Jackson on being confirmed as the 116th Justice of the Supreme Court.

The victory of Jackson’s confirmation today was delivered by over 2mil Georgia voters in January 2021, partly because Democrats in some other states failed to pull their own weight (or stupidly donated rage money to obvious honey-pots like Kentucky and South Carolina) in November 2020 for U.S. Senate candidates, partly because Dems failed to pull their weight in several other states throughout the 2010s.

The vote for Jackson’s confirmation would not have been this close (53-47) in a better timeline, it should not have taken this long to nominate a Black woman (let alone a public defender), and it will not change the ideological composition of the court. Hell, it would have been even better if KBJ had graduated from a public university, but the only remotely-credible candidate who had that credential is pretty bad in her judicial record.

For those who watched Jackson’s confirmation through the lens of breaking glass ceilings of representation for both women and African Americans, or a victory for the public defender community, they should celebrate.

But I can’t celebrate, because few liberals (or even progressives) in this country are willing to do the existential work of protecting ourselves and starving the stomach of the reactionary beast.

We are still living in the Reagan era’s wildest dreams, and we are about to get our human rights savaged by wild reactionary autocrats this summer and for the foreseeable future. And we have no strategy for how to protect ourselves from being sitting ducks under reactionary state legislatures.

How do we celebrate in a burning building?

Cycling is a Patriotic, Humanist Act

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This post by David Hembrow in the Netherlands captures my feelings on the geopolitical, moral and environmentalist importance of cycling at this moment:

When driving a car means funding a country which is attacking Europe, riding a bicycle should be seen as a patriotic act. Insulating homes and other projects to reduce energy consumption should be viewed similarly, as should projects to generate sustainable energy in our own countries.

General Assembly Passes Pro-Republican Gerrymanders for Legislature and Congress, Columbus and West Georgia Set for Status Quo

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Despite party-line opposition from Democrats, the Republican majority in the General Assembly passed all three of their proposed maps for U.S. House, State Senate and State House with very little dissenters. Notable controversies:

  • the de-facto ousting of Lucy McBath from GA-06 (she has since announced a primary challenge in GA-07, currently held by Carolyn Bordeaux who has also announced her own re-election bid)
  • the cracking of Cobb County into four congressional districts, with a largely-Democratic area in West Cobb being placed into Marjorie Taylor Green’s GA-14 (to her objection)
  • the packing of Democratic voters in Gwinnett et al into GA-07
  • the postponing of a Republican attempt to shoehorn electoral reforms for Gwinnett’s County Commission and Board of Education into the next session, for which outgoing Lt. Governor Greg Duncan has helped organize a bid to make all county boards of education nonpartisan
  • The redrawing of Democratic State Senator Michelle Au’s Gwinnett-based SD48 into a Republican-leaning district, which is notable because Au is Georgia’s first and only Asian American woman state senator
  • The splitting of Coweta County into five State House districts, combining a northern portion with Democratic districts extending into South Fulton County.

State House

In Columbus, the current legislative partisan makeup of the county will likely be retained, with Reps. Carolyn Hugley’s HD136 (now renamed HD141) and the retiring Calvin Smyre’s HD134 (renamed HD140).

Rep. Hugley’s district will undergo one key change: the entirety of Gentian/Elizabeth Bradley Turner precinct will move into her district from Richard Smith’s HD134 (renamed HD139), including the main campus of Columbus State University. Under the outgoing map, this precinct was split between the two districts.

Rep. Debbie Buckner’s HD136 will undergo the biggest map change: her district, currently stretching from east Columbus-Muscogee into eastern Harris, southern Meriwether, and all of Talbot, will now consist of eastern Columbus-Muscogee, all of Talbot County, a smaller portion of Meriwether County (cutting out Greenville, Gay and Woodbury), and southeastern Troup County stretching into African-American majority parts of southern LaGrange, completely excluding Harris County. This results in an odd hook shape for the district.

Under this rewrite, Harris County loses a House district while Troup County gains a district. Buckner’s former portion of Harris (Waverly Hall precinct) goes to Richard Smith’s district. Vance Smith’s HD133 (renamed to HD138) as well as David Jenkins’ HD132 (renamed to HD136) both lose chunks of southern Troup to Buckner’s district.

State Senate

Sen. Ed Harbison’s SD15 has undergone minor changes, with the Salvation Army precinct (formerly Blackmon precinct), Gentian/Elizabeth Bradley Turner precinct (formerly Gentian/Reese precinct) and Epworth precinct all being shifted to SD15 from Randy Robertson’s SD29.

Congress

With those maps passed, the General Assembly Republicans introduced on Wednesday Nov 18 a congressional map which, besides notably nuking Lucy McBath’s re-election chances in GA06 and making the GA07 much more Democratic, also shifts Sanford Bishop’s GA02 into a more interesting position: moving a bit more of northern Columbus-Muscogee into GA02 from Drew Ferguson’s GA03, but also shifting Warner Robins, northern Houston County and Thomas County into GA02 from Austin Scott’s GA08. While the addition of Thomas County would shift the African-American share of the population to under 50% and increase the Republican presence in the district, the addition of the strongly-blue precincts of Warner Robins would likely help keep Bishop in office and the district blue.

As far as Columbus is concerned, the new GA02 would pick up Moon/Morningside precinct as well as most of Cornerstone precinct north of J.R. Allen Freeway, while splitting a northern bit of the Columbus Tech precinct into GA03, cutting through the streets of the Crescent Ride neighborhood.

Aftermath

The entire process of redistricting by Republicans in the General Assembly was centered around protecting incumbents through anti-competitive measures such as packing and cracking while taking out a few Democratic casualties. New York Magazine notes that the Republicans’ treatment of voters in GA-06, among other plans, may invite a new round of litigation under the Voting Rights Act to combat instances of racial gerrymandering, although any of the challenges under the VRA face a high threshold to succeed in federal court, with nearly 2/3s of 11th circuit district judges being appointed by the last three Republican presidents (the largest share being appointed by Trump).

On the “bright side” for Democrats, this year’s redistricting process was not as brutal as in the 2011 cycle, which further sunk Democrats to such a historic nadir from 2013 to 2017 that Republicans enjoyed a supermajority of 38 seats in the State Senate, was one seat shy of a 120-seat supermajority in the State House, and held 10 congressional seats. Under the General Assembly-approved map for next year, Republicans are clearly favored for 9 seats in Congress, 33 Senate seats (with Au’s SD48 being the most competitive) and 85-97 House seats. Even though historic levels of public scrutiny and partisan intrigue were ignored by the legislative majority, they could not ignore the massive growth in population by over a million new Georgians, largely moving to the Atlanta region.

Meanwhile, redistricting for Columbus City Council and Muscogee County School District may continue into next year, as will other local redistricting processes across the state, due to the delays of the 2020 Census by the COVID-19 pandemic. This will either 1) push primaries and nonpartisan local elections later by a month or 2) force local elections across the state to be held under the current map and delay implementation of the new maps into the 2023 and 2024 elections.

On the Brnovich and AFP decisions, and why federalism is terrible for voting rights

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Part 1

After these voting rights and campaign finance decisions by SCOTUS today, state governments which purport to be the leaders on voting rights should be having a long, serious think about how to work together and strengthen each other against a SCOTUS which wants to devolve everything about elections to the state level, feed their most craven aristocrats and gut the social safety net.

This fight should not entirely rest on non-profit orgs working together, nor on attorneys-general mounting multi-state fights in the federal judiciary, nor on mere voting rights expansion at the state level. How are these state legislatures working together? Enacting interstate compacts between each other? Blurring the bureaucratic lines between each other?

How are these pro-voting rights states counteracting the Federalist Society’s obsession with states’ rights when it comes to elections? How are these pro-voting rights states maximizing their own impact beyond state lines? Or are any and all of these voting rights expansions simply for those residents who are “lucky” to still live in these pro-voting rights states?

The VRA is dying by 1,000 papercuts. Be a bit more creative.

Part 2

How many other countries have these legal fights over voting rights? I NEVER hear about fights over redistricting in other countries.
In other countries, I never hear about “color-blind” opportunistic attacks by random regional poobahs on the ability and confidence of urban residents, car-less people, people on reservations, people who have been released from prison and finished their sentence, disabled residents, illiterate residents, introverted people, working-class people, elderly people, college students, and homeless people to register to vote, cast a vote, have that vote counted, and have proportionate legislative representation based on that vote.

What do I hear about in other countries’ elections? Citizenship being stripped. Ballot stuffing. Candidates being removed from the ballot over specious reasons. Mis- and dis-info trafficking. Violent voter intimidation at the polls. The John Howard government in Australia ending the week-long grace period for federal voter registration in 2006, which was then reversed by their Supreme Court.

But here? It’s bureaucratic and systemic. And so many people strongly believe that all of these opportunistic attacks are worth it for the sake of maintaining a majority which protects their “way of life” against some random bunch of out-groups which may undermine it.

And yet, we continue to fight these state governments because we live in these states, we have higher, broader expectations about our basic rights than the limitations of the privileged in-group, we can’t up and relocate ourselves as the monied and able-bodied can, and people don’t really factor voting rights into their reasons for relocating to any state.
But so much of how our elections are ran, and how our voting rights are put through the meatgrinder, results from the fact that we use single-winner districts and first-past-the-post elections for our legislative bodies and assume that this winner-take-all system can be improved in any way.

If our legislative elections, from local to federal, are opportunistic winner-take-all exercises, then why the hell do we expect our legislative districts or operations of legislative sessions or appointments to judicial and bureaucratic bodies to be any different? How could we possibly think that nonpartisan redistricting would make for fairer boundaries in a winner-take-all system? How could we possibly think that the Federalist Society, Heritage Foundation, Manhattan Institute, and other chronically-aristocratic actors would have any interest in inserting nonpartisan mechanisms when the winner can literally win EVERYTHING and nonpartisanship does not exist in a two-way fight? How could we think that Democrats who hold office by virtue of winner-take-all in captive jurisdictions like VRA districts would want to give that up by virtue of their own magnanimity?

We sleptwalked right into this over the last 50-60 years, and our “nonpartisan”, “bipartisan” solutions for fixing this two-player, winner-take-all system aren’t worth shit.

These decisions from SCOTUS today should be your wake-up call. Your winner-take-all elections are the utter rot that is sinking your community. Stop with the “nonpartisan” narrative. Use a better election system than winner-take-all, or suffer the consequences as you already were.

Nickie Tillery wins special election for School Board District 2

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Nickie Tillery has won the special election in Muscogee County School Board District 2, defeating John “Bart” Steed 67.4% to 32.6%. Tillery will fill the remaining term of the late Mike Edmondson, who died on February 10, 2021 at the age of 66 from a brief fight with cancer.

This was Steed’s second attempt at the seat, last running in 2014 and ending up in third place behind John F. Thomas and then-incumbent John Wells, with Thomas ending up defeating Wells in a runoff. Steed owns and operates Kar Tunes Car Stereo and Lube Plus.

The seat will be on the ballot in circa June 2022.

weekend whiplash, five years ago

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I still remember five years ago, when I had driven up to what is now South Fulton to the State of Black Sci-Fi Convention. I got to meet Milton Davis, Darrell Johnson, Balogun Ojetade and several others, and was especially glad that we had someone (Darrell) writing LGBT-inclusive Black-oriented speculative fiction, for youth and YA even! And that Milton is from Columbus! Quite an experience, was wishing I could come back for Sunday but that was out of the question.

Got back home, got to sleep, woke up and saw the news of a mass shooting at an LGBT nightclub in Orlando the night before.

One of the worst mornings I’ve had in my life. Whiplash.

An End to American Exceptionalism

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So….

That happened.

I hope this is an end to American exceptionalism. I hope it’s an end to the idea that we could never have a(n auto)coup attempt against the U.S. government take place, that we’re not built like that.

Numerous people around the world can tell first-hand about how things went when a coup or coup attempt took place, when the constitutional order was seized and abrogated, when the reset button was pressed, when the machine was unplugged because someone felt it was acting too buggy.

This is the first time that someone tried to abrogate the constitutional order of the United States, and it unfortunately was the fascist side which made this attempt. And it is pretty damn symbolic that only 24 hours earlier, Georgia voters played by the same damn rules which had been decried for giving Biden the win in November and gave a giant L to two Republican Senators. Yet, such an event as happened on Tuesday was not on the front pages of the struggling newspaper industry on Wednesday.

And now we see how buggy and limited in functionality the constitutional order is when it comes to responding to such an incident as what happened Wednesday, as well as our current chronic inability to fix the limitations of the 25th Amendment. We’re likely not going to see it invoked before January 20th.

But yet, we’re forced to live with the garbage structure of the 1787 Constitution, because we’re scared of how people who decided to flex their perceived privilege and assault police inside the Capitol building and are now in various levels of dispersion from scrutiny are more than willing to kill people and avoid consequences in the attempt to seize power.

I fear impunity. They may get away with it, Congress may do nothing, and we’ll be effectively living under a different set of rules than what applies to Trump and his shitty supporters, even after he leaves office.

And we also won’t be exceptional in that regard. After all, despite her family’s crimes in office (including her husband, “our man in Manila” who we effectively rescued from the consequences of his actions), Imelda Marcos was allowed to come back and serve in the Philippine Congress twice.

(Fun fact: Mom was living in Clark AFB, and still remembers the curfew enforced on the base the night that the Marcos family fled Malacañang Palace 83 km north to Clark AFB, where they spent two days and then flew to Guam, then to Hawaii. I was born in California almost a year after the People Power Revolution.)