Bill Ayers

In 1492 a Genoan adventurer in the pay of Castilian royalty stumbled upon the Bahamas—-or invaded, conquered, and took the initial steps toward what would become in time the Columbian Holocaust. Hundreds of years later that fateful act was made into a narrative— “the discovery of America”—and that naming created a powerful and abiding myth.

RESIST the MYTH!

Celebrate Indigenous People’s Day!

Acknowledgment, inquiry, support, gratitude, respect, and reparations.

https://level.medium.com/funneling-our-children-from-classrooms-to-cages-ends-now-1b22669c9dd7

The Dear Leader ascends to the balcony and performs the illusion of strength, vowing to dominate—the rot and the disease roiling and rising just behind the mask.

Our lawyer son just speculated that Ruth Bader Ginsburg just won her first argument before God.

Health Care is a human right! In the US health care has been constructed as a product to be sold at the marketplace, and a trail of tears has accompanied that dismal metaphor—the twisted and insane logic of capitalist health care kills, wounds, maims, destroys, and disrupts. “Company-sponsored health insurance” is wasteful, fragile (Got laid-off? Sorry!), and expensive (adding in effect a 50% tax on a 15-dollar-an-hour job).Let’s not be greedy: I want the exact health insurance plan that members of congress can access, and if I get badly ill, I want the identical level of care offered to the Criminal-in-Chief.

It’s difficult, but I’m resisting the impulse to say, “We told you so, stupid!” I’m also not joining the chorus pretending that “We’re praying for you.” Please! Talking to friends this morning—some too happy, some too sad—I took this message: The White House is a crime scene. The criminal-in-chief—the Godfather—has been like a mass shooter at the mall, and now he’s wounded himself. Not a tragedy, a crime.

Yes, it is election season and on some days it feels that democracy is holding on by a thread….. Yet you have an opportunity to make a difference by voting NO to retaining Judge Michael Toomin, the presiding judge of Cook County Juvenile Court, Juvenile Justice Division. To date, the Democratic Party, the Judicial Accountability PAC and IVI-IPO (Independent Voters of Illinois Independent Precinct Organization) have all evaluated Judge Toomin and determined that he should not be retained. During his 10 years in Cook County’s Juvenile Division, Presiding Judge Michael P. Toomin has NOT exhibited leadership ability, has NOT adequately distinguished or protected youth as youth, and has NOT prioritized rehabilitation and reform. As a result, Judge Toomin’s policies, practices, and abdication of responsibility have damaged youth, made our communities less safe, and are the foundation of the case against retaining him in office for another six-year term. Be sure to Punch #206 Vote NO — all we need is 40% + 1 and spread the word to ten or twenty friends, colleagues or fellow justice seekers.THE CASE AGAINST RETENTION OF JUDGE MICHAEL P. TOOMIN A century ago, Cook County was the birthplace of the juvenile court – a recognition that there are developmental differences between children and adults and that juveniles charged with crimes should go before judges who understand those differences and emphasize responsibility and rehabilitation. Respected national research confirms that teenagers should be treated differently than adults. Teens often have poor impulse control, are vulnerable to peer pressure and don’t think through the risks they take. In short, they act like teenagers.The presiding judge of the Cook County Circuit Court, Juvenile Division must be a leader advocating fair treatment of children as children, not adults and insisting all judges in juvenile courtrooms considering the need to restore victims AND what is best to rehabilitate youth and help them find success in life.Judge Michael P. Toomin, presiding judge of Cook County’s juvenile division, has NOT exhibited that leadership ability, has NOT prioritized rehabilitation and – now in his 40th year as a judge – Toomin will NOT demand the courts treat kids as kids.FACT: Unlike court officials in more than 40 other counties in Illinois, Toomin has not been willing to submit a funding proposal that meets the requirements of Redeploy Illinois, the state’s grant program to divert some youth from state prisons. Toomin refused to follow the program’s guidelines and resisted state efforts to help him craft a plan that could be approved. His opposition has prevented Cook County from receiving up to $1 million annually – money that could have provided care to youth in need and improved public safety by offering necessary services to youth and their families.FACT: The coronavirus spreads fast through prison settings, but Michael P. Toomin moved slowly or not at all. When lawyers for youth held in the JTDC filed emergency motions for hearings to get them out of harm’s way and back home, Toomin sat on his hands. He didn’t consider a global pandemic to be an emergency.FACT: Toomin is a true believer in the widely discredited “scared straight” approach to changing juvenile behaviors. In 2016, he created a phony courtroom in a Chicago police station where judges – without lawyers present – were to “scare kids straight.” The sham hearings were stopped, but this is an example of the culture he has allowed to fester in juvenile courtrooms.FACT: During his years on the bench in criminal court, Toomin was reversed on appeal many times, including his rulings favoring police in trials relying on coerced confessions of men interrogated by detectives working under Jon Burge, the notorious and disgraced CPD commander.

Another note on fascism (generally) and the rise of US fascism: powerful and continuing nationalism; identification of enemies and scapegoats to unify a base; rampant corruption; election fraud and voter suppression; the rise of paramilitary forces to support the leader…Trump to the Proud Boys: Stand by; Trump to his right wing and white supremacist supporters: Go to the polls and keep an eye on them; Trump to African Americans: shut up and stay in your place; Trump to women: The government has a right to control your bodies. The right to life in Trump’s America is the right to grow up in a world scarred by fire and storm as catastrophic capitalist climate collapse marches on.

History Matters

The  conquerors and the occupiers—the victors—are always the ones who write the history, and so we’re left with stories of the glorious conquest of the American west against “savage Indians,” the “Lost Cause” of the “valiant” Confederacy, or the acclaimed creation of “a fragile democracy” in the backward Middle East—“a chosen land for a chosen people.” Each of these accounts is sharply contested, and in that narrative battle we see a protest and hear an appeal: look more deeply, uncover the silenced voices—flawed and partial, contingent and fragmentary—discover a larger and more honest understanding of events. We’re joined today by Aaron Dixon, a former Black Panther Party leader whose journey winds forward from the Civil Rights struggles of the 1960s to the Black Lives Matter movement of today, and whose decades of experience and accumulated wisdom can help us answer that appeal.