April 13, 2023

Thursday, April 13, 2023. Annette’s News Roundup.

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Joe is always busy.

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The Justins are back in Tennessee.

Justin Pearson came back yesterday.

Second Expelled Democrat Is Sent Back to Tennessee House.

The vote to reinstate Justin J. Pearson to the Tennessee House of Representatives came less than a week after he and another Black Democratic representative were expelled from the legislature

NASHVILLE — Local officials unanimously voted on Wednesday to send Justin J. Pearson, one of two Black Democratic representatives ousted from the Tennessee House of Representatives after a gun control protest on the House floor, back to his seat in the state legislature.

The vote came less than a week after Mr. Pearson of Memphis and State Representative Justin Jones of Nashville were abruptly expelled from the legislature, just the third time such a punishment has been used in the state House since the Civil War era.

The expulsions of two of the chamber’s youngest Black lawmakers infuriated Democrats, who were already frustrated with their inability to counter the Republican supermajority, and further galvanized the hundreds of demonstrators who repeatedly marched to the State Capitol to call for tougher gun laws after the Covenant School shooting that left three students and three staff members dead.

Officials on the Shelby County Board of Commissioners said they had received thousands of emails and calls from around the county, the country and the world, pleading with them to reappoint Mr. Pearson. (New York Times)

Watch Mr. Pearson speak after he was reinstated.👇

Here 👇is Justin Pearson’s New York Times guest essay before he returned to the Tennessee legislature.

Defiant and Determined, I’m Ready to Keep Fighting for Tennessee by Justin Pearson.

MEMPHIS — In January, my former high school classmate Larry Thorn was shot dead. Larry was sweet and beloved and a coach and secretary at a Shelby County, Tenn., middle school when he was killed on Jan. 10, just a month before I took my seat in the State House. In February, in only 10 days, 20 people were shot in mass shootings in Memphis, the community I represented. And on Monday, five people were shot dead at the Old National Bank in Louisville, Ky.

In the wake of the March 27 Covenant School mass shooting in Nashville that took six precious lives, including that of the 9-year-olds Hallie Scruggs, Evelyn Dieckhaus and William Kinney, our people are traumatized. They want action.

Following the school massacre, I walked into work in the State House each day seeing hundreds of young protesters, many with signs that asked, “Am I next?”

We were traumatized, too. We wanted action, too. And the difference was — it was literally our job to act.

Yet, Republican legislators refuse to take meaningful action.

Instead, some have averted their eyes and hurried into the chamber, walking through hundreds of mourning protesters to discuss a bill to further expand gun rights by allowing teachers to carry weapons on campus. But many of us did not. We stopped and embraced traumatized children, parents and elders. We prayed. We protested.

In this season of rebirth and renewal, I stood beside my people with hope. For God said, “Let light shine out of darkness.”

Last week, the people of Tennessee and the nation witnessed an assault against democracy when my colleague Justin Jones and I, both young Black Democratic men, were expelled from office for allegedly breaching decorum on the House floor. My former colleague, a 60-year-old white female Democratic representative, Gloria Johnson, had also joined our peaceful protest against gun violence but narrowly survived expulsion. Mr. Jones has since returned to the House after a vote by the Nashville Metropolitan Council. I’m hoping the Shelby County Board of Commissioners similarly puts me back in the House on Wednesday.

There is something amiss in the decorum of the State House when G.O.P. leaders like Representative Paul Sherrell, who proposed death from “hanging by a tree” as an acceptable form of state execution (Mr. Sherrell later apologized for his comment), feel comfortable berating Mr. Jones and me for our peaceful act of civil disobedience. This, in Tennessee, the birthplace of the Klan, a land stained with the blood of lynchings of my people.

I wasn’t elected to be pushed to the back of the room and silenced. We who were elected to represent all Tennesseans — Black, white, brown, immigrant, female, male, poor, young, transgender and queer — are routinely silenced when we try to speak on their behalf. Last week, the world was allowed to see it in broad daylight.

In such a hostile environment for democracy, I’m inspired by the late civil rights fighter and congressman John Lewis, who in 1965, when demonstrating for voting rights in Selma, Ala., endured a police beatingthat almost took his life. In 2016, after the tragic Pulse nightclub massacre that killed 49 people, he led a sit-in on the U.S. House floor for 25 hours to protest the inaction of lawmakers in the pockets of the National Rifle Association.

My mother, a schoolteacher, and my father, a pastor, instilled in me the hope that justice is possible for all. When I was 15, I attended a Memphis City School Board meeting with my parents to give a speech demanding access to quality textbooks and classes that white peers in their school districts had. These were resources that increased their opportunities for a good college education — chances that Black students, too, deserved.

A few years ago, I helped lead a coalition of community activists in the fight against the construction of the Byhalia Connection crude oil pipeline project in my late grandmothers’ community in southwest Memphis, where, according to a 2013 study, the risk of cancer is four times the national average. Both of my grandmothers died from cancer. Our coalition killed the project before it killed more of us. We fought, and we won.

Unchecked gun violence, environmental racism and denial of basic health and human services should enrage us all and compel us to action.

It’s not just our individual voices that were sanctioned and silenced last Thursday. It was the voices of the nearly 135,000 Tennesseans we represented — many desperate for protection from the absence of many common-sense gun safety laws in our state. Since the Covenant School shooting, the Republican supermajority in the State House has done little but advance a bill that would allow teachers to carry guns in school and propose a $140 million budget increase to pay for the presence of armed guards in public schools, further militarizing them without adequate evidencethat this makes schools safer.

Besides expanding already expansive gun rights, Republican-led statehouses across the country are proposing and passing staggering numbers of bills that serve a fringe, white evangelical agenda that abrogates the rights and freedoms of the rest of us. They’re passing legislation to control the intellectual freedom of writers and educators, proposing laws that would restrict the bodily autonomy of transgender children and people who can become pregnant, and curtailing even our right to vote. Combined with a shrinking social safety net as people lose access to resources to meet basic health, housing and food needs, we have a nation in pain and peril.

In a small victory for our people clamoring for change, Gov. Bill Lee announced Tuesday that he would sign an executive order strengthening background checks for buying firearms and called for Republican lawmakers to support a red flag law.

I was elected early this year by the people of Memphis and Millington to stand up for all of us against encroachments on our freedoms.

I will continue to fight with and for our people, whether in or out of office. We and the young protesters are the future of a new Tennessee. Those who seek to silence us will not have the final say.

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The Return of Justin Jones and the White Suit.

Once again the white suit rears its powerfully symbolic head. There are few garments in the political wardrobe that have been worn so deliberately and become as imbued with meaning. This time it has stepped front and center thanks to the saga of State Representative Justin Jones of Tennessee, a Democrat and, at 27, one of the youngest Black lawmakers in the state government.

See, on the day of his expulsion, Mr. Jones was wearing what The Tennessean called his “trademark white suit” with a white shirt and light brown tie, his hair pulled back in a ponytail. The image of him walking out of the woody chamber with a fist held high, glowing from every angle, made for an indelible picture.

“The world is watching,” he said, and it was. Since then, photographs of him in the suit have not just appeared again and again online and in news reports (even in stories about his return, rather than the sage green he wore at the time), but have also been used as a clarion call in emails by political action committees. (New York Times).

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Another expulsion of a lawmaker - this in Arizona, this bi-partisan, this for spreading conspiracy theories.

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Fox News Sanctioned by Judge for Withholding Evidence in Dominion Case.

Fox’s lawyers had only recently disclosed that Rupert Murdoch, the executive chairman of Fox Corp., was also the executive chair of Fox News, a role that pointed to more responsibility for its broadcasts

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Judge Eric Davis also said an investigation was likely into Fox’s handling of documents and whether it had withheld details about Rupert Murdoch’s corporate role.

WILMINGTON, Del. — The judge overseeing Dominion Voting Systems’ lawsuit against Fox News said on Wednesday that he was imposing a sanction on the network and would very likely start an investigation into whether Fox’s legal team had deliberately withheld evidence, scolding the lawyers for not being “straightforward” with him.

The rebuke came after lawyers for Dominion, which is suing for defamation, revealed a number of instances in which Fox’s lawyers had not turned over evidence in a timely manner. That evidence included recordings of the Fox News host Maria Bartiromo talking with former President Donald J. Trump’s lawyers, Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani, which Dominion said had been turned over only a week ago.

In imposing the sanction on Fox, Judge Eric M. Davis of the Delaware Superior Court ruled that if Dominion had to do additional depositions, or redo any, then Fox would have to “do everything they can to make the person available, and it will be at a cost to Fox.”

He also said he would very likely appoint a special master — an outside lawyer — to investigate Fox’s handling of discovery of documents and the question of whether Fox had inappropriately withheld details about the scope of Rupert Murdoch’s role.

Since Dominion filed its suit in early 2021, Fox had argued that Mr. Murdoch and Fox Corporation, the parent company, should not be part of the case because Mr. Murdoch, the chair, and other senior executives had nothing to do with running Fox News. But in the past few days, Fox disclosed to Dominion that Mr. Murdoch was a corporate officer at Fox News.

Jury selection starts on Thursday, and the trial is scheduled to begin on Monday. It wasn’t immediately clear whether Dominion would avail itself of the judge’s ruling allowing its lawyers to conduct additional depositions. But it was clear from Judge Davis’s stern reprimand of Fox’s lawyers on Wednesday — and similarly piqued remarks from him during another hearing on Tuesday — that he was losing patience. (New York Times).

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How do we allow this to go on!

More than half of Americans have dealt with gun violence in their personal lives.

Women pause at a memorial at a vigil honoring the victims of a shooting at the Star Ballroom Dance Studio on Monday, Jan. 23, 2023, in Monterey Park, Calif.

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A majority of Americans have felt the long reach of the nation's gun violence epidemic in one way or another.

That's one of the takeaways from a national poll released on Tuesday by KFF, a nonprofit that focuses on health care research.

Specifically, the poll found about one in five people report having a family member who was fatally shot. The same share say they have been threatened with a gun. One in six said they have personally witnessed a shooting.

The findings give a sense how gun violence pervades the daily lives of millions in the U.S. and shapes everyday decisions. The majority of respondents said they take at least one precaution to stay safe from the possibility of gun violence. About a third said they avoid crowded venues like music festivals and bars. More than 40% said they had sought out weapons to protect themselves or had tried to learn how to handle a gun or shoot a gun. (NPR).

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Making change for unhoused people also makes change for businesses and residents in Seattle.

Ending homelessness, yes, has the capacity to end poverty as we know it in America. But it also improves life for residents and businesses in areas overwhelmed by camps and communities of unhoused people.

One camp at a time, a Seattle group is transforming its approach to homelessness.

JustCARE outreach worker Kendra Tate (left) helps Starr Draper complete paperwork necessary for her to move from a homeless encampment into a temporary home.

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The breakup is swift.

"Don't be sad," Starr Draper calls over her shoulder to her boyfriend. She's walking out of the homeless camp where they've been living together. "He wanted to have housing together, and I just don't know if we're gonna last," she says.

It's been raining. Draper is tiptoeing her way through the mud. She carries two trash bags, one filled with clothes and the other with food. It's all she owns in her life now, so she takes the bags and leaves the boyfriend. The unhoused travel light.

Draper has been in this camp in Seattle for over a year. In that time, people from the outside world have come around now and then: the cops, the public health officer, the social workers. They've made various offers of assistance. But lately there have been new people from a nonprofit, a team called JustCARE, who've offered her something far better: a way out of this place for good.

Program staff spend weeks getting to know people in homeless encampments like this one. In addition to housing, they find out what the people need. Medical care? Food assistance? Methadone? Then they give residents a choice: Work with them and move into the provided housing or find somewhere else to go. Staying is not an option. The camp is going away.

Most take offers of help.

Draper, 42, is going on this day to a short-term housing unit. The plan is to eventually graduate her to permanent housing.

Other municipalities across the country have tried to create housing solutions for unhoused people, often at taxpayer expense. Many of those programs have failed. JustCARE has evidence that the program works.

Initial results weren't promising. The first evaluations, which were conducted by an outside research group from the University of Washington, showed only 20 percent of participants were still housed six months after being housed through the program.

But a more recent evaluation, completed after the team made some course corrections, told a different story.

Seventy percent of participants remained housed six months after they'd been moved from a camp.

If JustCARE creates a successful program, it will come at a time when homelessness is overwhelming larger cities across the West. Unhoused people are colonizing streets and whole neighborhoods, driven there by unrelenting housing costs, exacerbated by an ongoing opioid crisis and lack of mental health care.

The issue fosters a widespread sense of betrayal in cities like Seattle.

Seattle is battling one of the more intractable homeless crises in the country. There are at least 40,000 unhoused people in King County.

Homeless people feel betrayed by municipalities and social service systems they think leave them no choice but to live in the dangerous dark and cold.

Businesses and residents feel betrayed when human feces and needles are a regular feature of their sidewalks; they watch as longtime customers turn away rather than try to shoulder their way past tents.

Taxpayers feel betrayed when they vote for leaders promising solutions that never materialize.

"What JustCARE has really done is centered on the interest of all the people who are affected," says Seattle City Council member Andrew Lewis. He describes two highly visible, problematic camps in downtown Seattle that JustCARE removed. This success earned them allies, including from the business community.

"Poll after poll shows that people are concerned about public safety," says Lewis. "When you drill down, it is pretty evident that when they say public safety, a big part of what they mean is the massive proliferation of visible encampments."

. . . "I think the public is willing to pay what it takes," Lewis says. "The public is ahead of the politicians." (NPR).

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Confederate names are coming down, coming down, coming down.

This Confederate name was first put up on an American warship in 1989! 1989! Shame! Shame!

A Navy ship named for a Confederate victory now honors a Black Union hero.

The USS Chancellorsville has been renamed the USS Robert Smalls, to honor the enslaved man who stole a Confederate battleship in the Civil War and delivered to the Union forces, loaded with weapons.

Robert Smalls.

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The U.S. Navy has finally shed the last two ship names that honored the Confederacy — and renamed one of them in honor of a man whose life story reads like an action movie hero.

The USS Chancellorsville is now called the USS Robert Smalls, the man who stole a Confederate steamer loaded with guns and delivered it to the Union Navy, delivering himself and 16 other crew and their families from slavery.

"It is a move much more consistent with the Navy's values," said Capt. Edward Angelinas, who commands the ship. "Going from a Confederate victory to this incredible story of a former slave, who commandeered a Confederate ship and turned it over to the Union Navy."

Rebel generals Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson won a decisive victory over the U.S. military at Chancellorsville, Va., in 1863. As recently as 1989 the U.S. Navy saw fit to name a warship for that battle.

Just seven years ago there was still a portrait of Lee and Jackson displayed in the ship's wardroom.

The U.S. military is in the process of renaming all the bases and warships that honor the Confederacy, including civil war generals who enslaved people and fought against the U.S. military. The newly christened USS Robert Smalls may be the most direct repudiation of that legacy.

The USS Chancellorsville has been renamed the USS Robert Smalls, to honor the enslaved man who stole a Confederate battleship in the Civil War and delivered to the Union forces, loaded with weapons.

To read more about how Smalls and his crew of enslaved persons stole the Confederate ship, sailed it through Confederate ports and handed it to the Union navy, click here. (NPR).

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