Sojouner Truth

Growing up, I greatly admired a number of female African-Americans.  I was drawn to the first simply because of the lyrical nature of her name.

Sojourner Truth was born as Isabella Baumfree, it's thought in 1797, in Ulster County New York.  At about the age of nine, she was sold as a slave, along with a flock of sheep.  Throughout her life, she was sold several more times.  Only after being promised her freedom and then having that promise reneged upon in Ju8ly 1826 did Isabella strike out on her own, walking away from her owner and eventually finding haven in another part of New York.

Sojourner Truth

In 1827, the New York Anti-Slavery Law emancipated all slaves residing in that state.  In 1829, Isabella moved to New York City, working for a number of evangelists and preachers.  In 1843, because of the fervent religious atmosphere in which she'd been living, she changed her name to Sojourner Truth, 
and began to speak out against slavery and the oppression of women.

Sojourner Truth has a place in our history not only as an abolitionist but also as a campaigner for women's rights.  In fact, she's best known for her speech in 1851, at the Ohio Women’s Rights Convention, that relied on the rhetorical question, Ain’t I A Woman? 

Me, My Students, and Pushkin

Some of my most pleasant teaching experiences took place at two HBCUs - Lincoln University and Cheyney University.  Those institutions were also the sites of one of my most effective teaching techniques.

At both these schools, I was an instructor in computer science.  But at each, I sometimes used tools that had little to do with that discipline.  For instance, I allowed students simply to submit, as an extra-credit project, a brief research paper on some aspect of black history.  In that context, I occasionally suggested that students use the Russian poet, playwright, and political activist Alexander Pushkin as a specific topic.  Don't scratch your head; let me explain, in the same way I explained the choice of Pushkin to my students.  He represents a dovetailing of their ethnic and cultural backgrounds with mine.

Alexander Sergeivitch Pushkin

Pushkin's maternal great-grandfather was Abram Petrovich Gannibal,  Gannibal was African.  Kidnapped as a child, he was taken to Russia, and presented as a gift to Peter the Great .  Gannibal proved so capable that he was freed, adopted by the Czar, raised in the Emperor's court, and became a military engineer, general, and nobleman.

Most of the students who took me up on the Pushkin topic were young black men.  Several of them remarked to me that they appreciated his politics as much as his poetry.  That appreciation is where the bridge that connects their background and mine begins.

Shades of Abu Ghraib

The force-feeding of detainees being held in ICE detention centers in El Paso, Miami, San Diego and San Francisco may be the real humanitarian crisis at the U. S. - Mexican border.

Those being force-fed are hunger-strikers; possibly as many as 30 overall at the El Paso facility alone.  The strikers are from either India or Cuba; their strikes were initiated in response to verbal abuse and deportation threats from detention facility guards, as well as long detention periods prior to legal proceedings.

Here's what happens.  Medical personnel typically wind a tube tightly around their finger, put lubricant on the tip, and then simply shove it into a patient’s nose. The patient must also swallow sips of water while the tube is pushed further, down into the throat.

Force-feeding can sometimes be done several times a day.  The procedure causes persistent nosebleeds, and vomiting.

Shades of Abu Ghraib ...

Lucy McBath

Lucy McBath personifies the 2018 midterms, and how Democrats' performance then can be repeated.

The HBO documentary 3 1/2 Minutes, Ten Bullets documents the death of Jordan Davis, a seventeen-year-old boy shot in a Florida gas station because he was playing his vehicle's radio too loud.  Lucy McBath is Davis’s mother.

McBath,elected by a narrow margin to represent Georgia's Sixth Congressional District, ran on a platform of growing the economy, funding education, and addressing climate change.  Because of the manner of her son's death, and the HBO documentary about it, she is also inescapably connected to the issue of gun reform.  But whatever her effect on that issue, McBath’s victory this past November bodes well for Democrats, in that it indicates:

• that Democrats are making inroads in suburban Republican districts
• that record numbers of women can be elected to public office despite the misogyny that is a feature of the Trump era
• that gun-rights appeals may not any longer be able to safeguard Republican districts

McBath also personifies another important fact - that of the nine new African-American candidates elected to Congress in 2018, all were Democrats, and five were women

Unprecedented

Today, former CIA Director John Brennan called the public policy disagreements of three Trump Administration security officials with Mr. Trump unprecedented.

That display of what Mr. Trump almost certainly considers disloyalty took place during a hearing of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.  All of Dan Coats, Christopher Wray, and Gina Haspel took positions in clear contrast to Trumpian statements.  Those positions include:

1. Coats warning that the United States should keep our eyes on ISIS, since that group is re-surging
2. Wray pointing out that, because of the risk of cyber-attacks by foreign nationals, the FBI and its counter-terrorism arm now have difficulty identifying and recruiting informants
3. Haspel confirming that, despite Mr. Trump's statements to the contrary, Iran appeared to be in full compliance with the agreement it had reached regarding refraining from developing a nuclear weapons .capability

The first thing that comes to mind is to wonder which of these three will be the first to be the target of a jeering, sneering Trump Tweet ...

Deja Vu All Over Again

It remains to be seen if Donald Trump learned anything from his toe-to-toe with Speaker Pelosi and the House Democrats.  Two days ago, Mr. Trump announced that the Federal government would reopen for three weeks, but that he retained the right, if no agreement on his vanity wall had by then been reached, to declare a national emergency.  Yesterday, Nick Mulvaney, Trump's interim chief of staff, voiced his belief that Mr. Trump might indeed declare such an emergency, should there be no consensus on wall funding.

Here's the deal.  Even in so specialized a context as this, there's a possible workaround.   In order to use the National Emergencies Act in this or any situation, a President must specify the particular  provisions of the Act he or she wishes to invoke, and must notify Congress of the decision.  After that, however, Congress retains some ability to limit this Executive Branch power.

If each house of Congress were to pass a resolution to that effect, any existing state of emergency could be terminated.  Emergencies can even be rescinded, though that's trickier and more demanding.  For Congress to rescind a declared emergency, not only must they pass a joint resolution, but the President must sign it.

Good luck on that last, unless the several Republicans holding Senate seats up for re-election in 2020 see their own approval ratings keeping pace with Mr. Trump's  - that is, spiraling downward.

Elections Do Indeed Have Consequences

... and I'd bet next month's rent that one consequence of 11/06/2018 is voraciously chewing the butts of the (so-called) Freedom Caucus.

Four new members of the House of Representatives, whom one might nickname the Flamethrowers Caucus, have been seated on the House Oversight Committee, now under the chairmanship of Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland.

Brief bios of these four folks are in order.

• Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has already become something of a superstar.  She may be another Speaker of the House in the making.
• Rashida Tlaib, she of the we're going to impeach the ^*$)*&%(&,  was the first woman to serve in the Michigan legislature.
• Ayanna Presley sought to procure relief for workers held hostage by the shutdown
• Ro Khanna tweeted today The Holocaust remains a heartbreaking example of a moment when fear and hatred for a certain group overcame the humanity of those in power. 

It appears we can look forward to a very interesting series of investigations, in Rep. Cummings' committee and others ...