Teaching Tolerance Issue 53, Summer 2016 - Feature (fair use)

"Why Talk About Whiteness?

We can't talk about racism without it."

By Emily Chiariello:

Editor’s note: The author of “Why Talk About Whiteness?” is a white anti-bias educator. While the material in this story is relevant to all readers, many of the challenges the author poses are directed at white readers, hence the use of “we” and “us” in certain places.

“I don’t think I’ve ever come across anything that has made me aware of my race. I don’t believe there is any benefit of anybody’s particular race or color. I feel like I’ve accomplished what I’ve accomplished in life because of the person I am, not because of the color of my skin.”

These are the observations of a white female participant in The Whiteness Project, Part I, an interactive web-based collection of voices and reflections of Americans from diverse walks of life who identify as white. Her statement illustrates why educators, activists and allies doing racial justice work are increasingly focused on the importance of examining whiteness: It’s impossible to see the privilege and dominance associated with white racial identity without acknowledging that whiteness is a racial identity.

This fundamental disconnect between the racial self-perceptions of many white people and the realities of racism was part of what motivated documentary filmmaker, director and producer Whitney Dow to create The Whiteness Project. “Until you can recognize that you are living a racialized life and you’re having racialized experiences every moment of every day, you can’t actually engage people of other races around the idea of justice,” Dow explains. “Until you get to the thing that’s primary, you can’t really attack racism.”

Dow’s work, among other activism and scholarship focused on whiteness, has the potential to stimulate meaningful conversations about whiteness and move white folks past emotions like defensiveness, denial, guilt and shame (emotions that do nothing to improve conditions for people of color) and toward a place of self-empowerment and social responsibility.

Whiteness, History and Culture

Why does whiteness fly beneath the race radar? The normalization of whiteness and the impenetrable ways it protects itself are cornerstones of the way institutions function in the United States. In a 2015 interview, Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Junot Díaz said of the United States, “We live in a society where default whiteness goes unremarked—no one ever asks it for its passport.”

This poses a challenge for educators committed to racial justice. We know it’s important to make space in our classrooms to explore students’ cultures and identities, but when it comes to white students, many are left with questions about how to talk about group membership and cultural belonging. These questions stem in part from the fact that, while it’s true whiteness is seen as a social default, it is not true that whiteness is the absence of race or culture. As one male participant in The Whiteness Project puts it, “As a white person, I wish I had that feeling of being a part of something for being white, but I don’t.”

One place to start is by acknowledging that generations of European immigration to the United States means that our country is home to the most diverse white population anywhere in the world. Differences between Jewish, Irish, Italian, Greek, Polish or German culture matter—a lot—to those who identify as ethnic whites. Part of “seeing” whiteness includes caring about these rich histories and complicating our discussions of race by asking questions about the intersection of ethnicity and race.

In her work on white racial identity development, diversity expert Rita Hardiman explains that, as white people become more conscious of whiteness and its meaning, we may simultaneously struggle with two aspects of identity: internalized dominance and the search for cultural belonging. The search for culture draws some white people to multiculturalism and appreciation of other cultures and heritages. Others find roots outside the container of race, woven into proud family histories. A small minority cling violently to their white cultural identity, sometimes with tragic consequences. (In any case, it is important to note that the ability to trace one’s genealogy is an inherited privilege not enjoyed by most African Americans, the majority of whom are descendants of enslaved people.)

Reconciling the meaning of white culture can be complicated by the fact that being white has not always meant what it means now. Whiteness—like all racial categories—is a social construct: Its meaning is culturally and historically contextual. The physical characteristics we now associate with whiteness have been artificially linked to power and privilege for the purpose of maintaining an unjust social hierarchy.

Attorney, scholar and anti-racist educator Jacqueline Battalora of Saint Xavier University studies the legal and historical construction of whiteness in the United States, what she calls the “invention of white people.” In her book Birth of a White Nation, she shows that white people didn’t exist—even as a label, much less as a race—until the end of the 17th century when the elite class enacted anti-miscegenation laws and other laws designed to keep black and white workers separate, both efforts to, in part, divide and control an increasingly ethnically diverse labor force. As students enter middle and high school, teaching about this history and about the concept of racial construction is another way educators can bring discussion about whiteness—and its relationship to racial justice—into the classroom.

Scholars Michelle Alexander (The New Jim Crow) and Jacqueline Battalora (Birth of a White Nation) both name Bacon’s Rebellion as a pivotal event in the historical construction of whiteness in the United States. During the rebellion, disgruntled white settlers, indentured servants and enslaved Africans joined forces to resist the ruling class and local Indian tribes. Their actions worried elites and led them to enact a more rigid racial class system. Read more about Bacon’s Rebellion here.

Got Privilege? Now What?

In 1988, anti-bias educator Peggy McIntosh published her now-classic essay “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack.” In it, she describes the phenomenon of white privilege as a collection of “unearned assets that I can count on cashing in each day, but about which I was meant to remain oblivious.”

McIntosh’s essay launched the term white privilege into wider academic and activist circles (where the essay is still widely read), but recently the term has gained a mainstream audience. Examples include #OscarsSoWhite, Latina college student Thalia Anguiano asking Hillary Clinton for examples of her white privilege and Jon Stewart challenging Bill O’Reilly to defend why he believes white privilege doesn’t exist. White rapper Macklemore mused about Black Lives Matter in his nine-minute song “White Privilege II,” in which he asks, “Is it my place to give my two cents?
Or should I stand on the side and shut my mouth?”

While these examples are positive in that they make whiteness and white privilege more visible, popular discussions of white privilege can also prompt backlash.

“I think it’s very hard in a culture that’s built around this myth of the individual American who makes their own way, to say, ‘Well, you actually have a built-in inherited advantage,’” Dow points out. “We view ourselves as just people, but that this country was founded on racist white supremacist principles is undeniable. I think people feel implicated because there’s a cognitive dissonance built into how Americans view themselves.”

But even if white students are able to overcome this dissonance and acknowledge their privilege, is that enough? Recognizing white privilege is a necessary but insufficient means for confronting racism and increasing opportunities for people of color. In fact, acknowledging white privilege but taking no initiative to own it or address it can be harmful and counterproductive. Molly Tansey, a member of the Young Teachers Collective and co-author of “Teaching While White,” says, “Early on in doing this work, I was definitely driven by the self-satisfaction.” She talks about the need white people sometimes have to make their non-racism visible, giving the example of someone who takes a “selfie” at a protest to post on Facebook.

We haven’t acknowledged our white privilege if we’re only talking about it with people of color—who are already well aware of white privilege. White allies need to talk to other white people who may not see their privilege. Though it’s less comfortable, Tansey says, naming whiteness and its privileges among white friends, family and colleagues is where the real work needs to be done.

We’re also not adequately engaging the concept of white privilege if we leave intersectionality out of the conversation; doing so has the potential to render other identities invisible and obscures how multiple systems of oppression work. Blogger Gina Crosley-Corcoran made this point in her blog “Explaining White Privilege to a Broke White Person,” in which she describes the difficult process of identifying with her white privilege because of her low-income upbringing. The same could be true for any white person who has a disability, doesn’t speak English, is undocumented or LGBT—or any combination of the above. Intersectionality does not erase white privilege, but may affect a person’s experience of privilege.

Acknowledging white privilege must be followed with anti-racist action. As scholar Fredrik deBoer argued in a January 2016 article for The Washington Post, “Disclaiming white privilege doesn’t lower African Americans’ inordinately high unemployment rate or increase educational opportunities for children of first-generation immigrants. The alternative is simpler, but harder: to define racism in terms of actions, and to resolve to act in a way that is contrary to racism.”

Affirming a Positive White Identity

Making whiteness visible, understanding the diversity and history of whiteness, and going beyond white privilege can help educators and students alike find positive answers to the question: What does it mean to be white? For Melissa Katz, who authored “Teaching While White” with Tansey and is also part of the Young Teachers Collective, the answer is central to her self-realization as a white woman and as a teacher committed to social justice.

“The positive sense of whiteness is knowing that you’re working towards something bigger,” she says. “By examining your whiteness and by working to dismantle [racist] institutions, you’re working towards equity.”

For Dow, exploring whiteness—and inviting others to do the same—was transformative. “I could impact the paradigm because I actually was an active component. I didn’t have to do something outside,” he says. “I could do something inside and that would change things. It kind of eliminated guilt for me. It made me feel incredibly empowered and really enriched my world.”

Anti-racist Understandings for Educators

Get fired up about racial injustice! Recognizing that “a threat to justice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere” is the foundation of white allyship. Use these understandings to help you and your students face what can be highly emotional and, at times, uncomfortable work.

Colorblindness denies students’ full identities.

By saying “I don’t see race” to indicate we don’t hold racial biases about our students, we’re essentially saying to people of color, “I don’t see you.” Colorblindness upholds the dominant framework of whiteness and invalidates the racial identities and lived experiences of people of color.

Speak out, but also look in.

It’s critical that white allies respond to racial prejudice, bias and stereotypes in our everyday lives. It takes practice and sometimes comes with risk. But pointing to other people’s white privilege, without (or instead of) looking at our own, is a distraction from true anti-racist action.

Avoid white noise and white silence.

It’s important to listen when people of color talk about their experiences with oppression and not to dominate conversations about race. But opting out altogether can be just as harmful. “The racial status quo is not neutral; it is racist,” DiAngelo says. “Remaining silent when given the opportunity to discuss race supports the status quo.”

Take responsibility for educating yourself about racism.

It makes sense to assume that someone who has experienced racism will have a better understanding of it than someone who has not. But when white educators expect students or colleagues of color to teach them about racism, it raises a number of problems, not least of which is people of color doing white people’s work for them.

Be down, but stay white.

75 percent of white Americans say they come in contact with “a few” or “no” black people on a regular basis—a startling fact about race relations. Living an integrated life builds cross-cultural connection and fosters empathy. Over-familiarizing with people of color—“I hang out with people of color, so I’m not racist”—reduces race to a lifestyle choice and can offer an easy way out of difficult anti-racism work. Appreciating a diverse group of friends or colleagues does not take the place of confronting white privilege, addressing internalized white guilt or responding to the biases of other white people.

Don’t take it personally—it’s not about you!

White people have come to expect a level of racial comfort. When that expectation is met with racial stress, DiAngelo explains the result can be White Fragility: “White Fragility is a state in which even a minimum amount of racial stress becomes intolerable, triggering a range of defensive moves. These moves include the outward display of emotions such as anger, fear and guilt, and behaviors such as argumentation, silence and leaving the stress-inducing situation. These behaviors, in turn, function to reinstate white racial equilibrium.”

These understandings were drawn from the work of Robin DiAngelo (What Does It Mean to Be White? Developing White Racial Literacy), Heather Hackman (Everyday White People Confront Racial and Social Injustice: 15 Stories) and Jennifer Seibel Trainor (“My Ancestors Didn’t Own Slaves: Understanding White Talk about Race”).

Bring The Whiteness Project to your classroom with this activity.

Toolkit

https://www.tolerance.org/magazine/summer-2016/why-talk-about-whiteness

Parts 1 & 2)

10/22/18 from Truthdig / Axis of Logic (under Fair Use; Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107)

"American History for Truthdiggers: Original Sin"

By Maj. Danny Sjursen:

(Truthdig editor’s note: The past is prologue. The stories we tell about ourselves and our forebears inform the sort of country we think we are and help determine public policy. As our current president promises to “Make America great again,” this moment is an appropriate time to reconsider our past, look back at various eras of United States history and re-evaluate America’s origins. When, exactly, were we “great”?

The “American History for Truthdiggers” series, which begins with the installment below, is a pull-no-punches appraisal of our shared, if flawed, past. The author of the series, Danny Sjursen, an active-duty major in the U.S. Army, served military tours in Iraq and Afghanistan and taught the nation’s checkered, often inspiring past when he was an assistant professor of history at West Point. His wartime experiences, his scholarship, his skill as a writer and his patriotism illuminate these Truthdig posts.)

PART ONE

American Slavery, American Freedom (Colonial Virginia 1607-1676)

Origins matter. Every nation-state has an origin myth, a comforting tale of trials, tribulations and triumphs that form the foundation of “imagined communities.” The United States of America—a self-proclaimed “indispensable nation”—is as prone to exaggerated origin myths as any society in human history. Most of us are familiar with the popular American origin story: Our forefathers, a collection of hardy, pious pioneers, escaped religious persecution in England and founded a “new world”—a shining beacon in a virgin land. Of course, that story, however flawed, refers to the Pilgrims, and Massachusetts, circa 1620. But that’s not the true starting point for English-speaking society in North America.

The first permanent colony was in Virginia, at Jamestown, beginning in 1607. Why, then, do our young students dress in black buckle-top hats and re-create Thanksgiving each year? Where is the commemoration of Jamestown and our earliest American forebears? The omission itself tells a story, that of a chosen, comforting narrative (the legend of the Pilgrims), and the whitewashing of a murkier past along the James River.

The truth is, the United States descends from both origins—Massachusetts and Virginia—and carries the legacy of each into the 21st century. So why do we focus on the Pilgrims and sideline Virginia? A fresh look may help explain.

The Age of ‘Discovery’

When it comes to history—like any story—the starting point is itself informative. I taught freshman history at West Point, a far more progressive and thoughtful school than many readers probably imagine. Nonetheless, with cadets required to take only one semester of U.S. history, we had just 40 lessons to illuminate the American past. So where to start? The official answer—as in so many standard history courses—was Jamestown, Virginia, 1607.

That, of course, is a fascinating, perhaps absurd, choice. Such a starting point omits several thousand years of Native American history, of varied, complex civilizations from modern Canada to Chile. Time being short and all, 1607 remains a common pedagogical starting point. As a result, from the beginning, our understanding of U.S. history is Eurocentric and narrow (covering only the last 400 or so years). Consider that Problem No. 1.

Next, contemplate the language we use to describe the “founding” of new European colonies. This is, say it with me, the “Age of Discovery.” In 1492, Columbus discovered (even though he wasn't first) America. Now, that’s a loaded term. Isn't it just as accurate to say that Native Americans discovered Columbus—a lost and confused soul—when he landed upon their shores?

When we say Europeans discovered the “New World,” we’re—not inadvertently—implying that there was nothing substantial going on in the Americas until the Caucasians showed up. Europe has a dated, chronological history, reaching back at least to the Greeks, which most students learn in elementary school and later on in Western Civilization classes. Not so for the Native Americans. Their public history starts in 1492, or, for Americans, in 1607. What came before, then, hardly matters.

Inauspicious Beginnings

Englishmen came neither to escape religious persecution nor to found a New Jerusalem. Not to Virginia, at least. No, the corporate-backed expedition—by the Virginia Joint Stock Company—sought treasure (think gold), to find a northwest passage to India, and balance the rival Catholic Spaniards. But, first and foremost, they pursued profit.

The expedition barely survived. That should come as little surprise. They chose a malarial swamp for a home. The first ships carried mostly aristocrats—“gentlemen,” as they were then labeled—with a few laborers and carpenters for good measure. Gentlemen didn't work or deal with the dirty business of farming and settling. But they did like to argue—and there were too many “chiefs” on this voyage. The first party did not include any farmers or women. Only 30 percent survived the first winter. Two years later, only 60 out of 500 colonists survived the “Starving Time.” Over the first 17 years, 6,000 people arrived, but only 1,200 were alive in 1624. One guy ate his wife.

So why the disaster? Why the poor site selection and early starvation? First off, the colonists chose a site inland on the James River because they feared detection by the more powerful Spanish. But mainly the disaster came down to colonial motivations. Jamestown was initially about profit, not settlement. Corporate dividends, not community. This was the private sector, not a permanent national venture. In that sense, matters in early Virginia were not unlike modern American economics.

Saved by Tobacco, the First Drug Economy

They never did find much gold, or, for that matter, a northwest passage. Then again, they didn't all starve to death. Rather, the venture was saved by a different sort of “gold”—the cash crop of tobacco. Tobacco changed the entire dynamic of colonization and control in North America. Finally, there was money to be made. The Englishmen shipped the newest vice eastward and pulled a handsome profit in return. Our beloved forefathers were early drug dealers. More migrants now crossed the Atlantic to get in on the tobacco windfall.

The plentiful “gentlemen” of Virginia sought to re-create their landed estates in England. Despite significant early conflict with the native Powhatan Confederacy, large tobacco plantations eventually developed along the coast. Who, though, would work these fields? Certainly not the landowners. The burgeoning aristocracy had two choices: lower-class English or Scots-Irish indentured servants (who worked for a fixed period in the promise of future acres) and African slaves. Whom to choose? Unsurprisingly, ethics played little role, and cost was the defining factor.

When mortality was high in the colony’s early years, plantation owners favored the cheaper indentured (mainly white) servants. But as more families planted corn, kept cattle and improved nutrition, death rates fell and slaves became more appealing. After all, though expensive in upfront costs, slaves worked for life, and the slave owners got to keep their offspring. Nevertheless, for the first several decades, an interracial mix of slaves and servants worked the land in Virginia.

Bacon’s Rebellion and the American Future

The problem with the tobacco economy was one of space. To be profitable, cash crops require expansive acreage, and in Virginia this meant movement inland. This expansion set the Englishmen on a collision course with local Native Americans. Furthermore, what was plantation society to do about those indentured servants who survived and matriculated? Land would have to be found somewhere. (Though not near the coasts and early settlements. The “gentlemen” weren't about to divide up their own large estates.) In order to maintain their chosen societal model—landed aristocracy—in which the wealthiest 10 percent possessed half the wealth and the bottom 60 percent held less than 10 percent of accumulated wealth, new land would have to be found further west—in “Indian territory.”

Thing is, after some bloody, early wars with the Powhatan, most “gentlemen” preferred a stable, secure status quo. (Not another war. That’d be bad for business.) However, falling tobacco prices, increased competition from nearby colonies and the relentless search by the former indentured class for more land brought frontier Virginians into conflict with an easy scapegoat: nearby Native Americans. Frustrated lower-class men—both white and black—rallied behind a young, discontented aristocrat, a firebrand named Nathaniel Bacon. Bacon led his interracial poor-people’s army in attacks on local Natives and, eventually, on Gov. William Berkeley and the establishment “gentlemen.” In 1675 and 1676, Bacon’s throng destroyed plantations and even burned Jamestown before Bacon died of disease (the “bloody fluxe”) and the rebellion petered out.

Bacon’s Rebellion was one of the foundational—and most misunderstood—events in American history. Here, a populist army savagely assaulted hated Native Americans and aristocrats alike. A mix of black and white former indentured servants demonstrated the fragility of Virginian society. The planter class was terrified. In order to avoid a repeat at all costs, the landed gentry made a devil’s bargain. To ensure stability, they realized they must co-opt some of the poor without ceding their own privileged status.

Enter America’s original sins: racism and white privilege. Plantation owners simply hired fewer indentured servants and became more reliant on (black) African chattel slaves for their labor force. The planters also threw a bone to the middling whites, lowering some taxes and allowing more political representation for white male Virginians.

The implications were as disturbing as they were enduring. White unity became the organizing principle of life in colonial Virginia. To be fair, poor whites lived difficult lives and always outnumbered their aristocratic betters. Nonetheless, these lower-class Caucasians benefited from the new, racialized social system. Pale skin became a badge of honor—life may not be optimal, but “at least we are white.” Black freemen became a thing of the past, and soon “blackness” became inseparably associated with slavery and the lowest of social classes. Black skin became a brand of slavery, and runaways could no longer blend into colonial society. Slaves were easily spotted by virtue of their color.

Bacon’s Rebellion linked land, labor and race together in nefarious ways. Land (ownership) remained the path to freedom. Labor remained essential to profiting from the land, and race came to define the relationship between land and labor. After 1676, a class-based system morphed into a race-based system of labor and social structure. The demand for African slaves rose and a triangular trade developed among North America, Africa and Europe. It seemed everyone benefited from slave labor—it became an Atlantic system. The American South had transformed from a society with slaves to a slave society. It would remain so for nearly two centuries. Race became a prevalent fact of life in the Americas—and still is, 342 years later.

There’s nothing simple about America’s origins, and it is well that this is so. In that way, the United States is like most other modern nation-states. Leaving behind exceptionalist rhetoric and exploring uncomfortable truths signify intellectual maturity. Should this country wish to move forward, be its best self and fulfill the dream of its finest rhetoric, then the citizenry must dispense with reassuring myths and grapple with inconvenient truths.

What, then, do Jamestown and early Virginia have to tell us in 2018? Perhaps this: American slavery arose alongside and intertwined with American freedom. Our society descends from a sinister original sin: the development of a race-based caste system along the banks of the James River. Race, class, labor and slavery were inextricably linked in our colonial past. They remain so today.

PART TWO

It is the image Americans are comfortable with. The first Thanksgiving. Struggling Pilgrims—our blessed forebears—saved by the generosity of kindly Native Americans. Two societies coexisting in harmony. If Colonial Virginia was a mess, well, certainly matters were better in Massachusetts. Here are origins all can be proud of.

Our children re-create the scene every November, and we watch them with pride through the lenses of our smartphones. But is this representation of life in Colonial New England an accurate portrait of Anglo-Native relations at Plymouth, or, for that matter, in the larger Massachusetts Bay Colony? Of course it isn't, but nonetheless the impression—the myth—persists. That’s a story unto itself.

Consider this: How many Americans even know there was a difference between Pilgrims and Puritans? The distinctions matter. The Pilgrims, of course, arrived first. Calvinists of humble origins, the Pilgrims were Protestant separatists who believed the mainstream Church of England was beyond saving. They fled England for the Netherlands in the early 17th century, and then, in 1620, about a hundred boarded the Mayflower to go to North America. It was they who landed on Plymouth Rock.

The far more numerous Puritans were also pious, dissenting Protestants, but they initially believed the Church of England could be reformed from within. They were generally wealthier, more prominent citizens. In about 1630, about 1,000 Puritans formed the first wave to settle the area claimed by the Massachusetts Bay Colony. They were, indeed, fleeing the persecution of King Charles I, but—unlike the Pilgrims—they received a royal charter for their colony. They hoped to found a “New Jerusalem” in the New World.

Stark Contrasts: Virginia vs. New England

These weren't the gold-hungry aristocrats of Colonial Virginia. The Puritans (and Pilgrims) came as families—they included women. The Massachusetts climate and natural population growth made for far lower mortality than that experienced at early Jamestown in Virginia. Everyone was willing to work, and the productive family units made, eventually, for bountiful harvests. This was not a land of “gentlemen” and cash crops, as in Virginia, but of dutiful families tilling the land.

The motivations and origins of the two English colonies affected the social structure of each. Differing goals set the tone from the first. Virginians sought to exploit the land, mine its resources, compete with the Spanish and turn a quick profit. Not so the Puritans. They strove to settle, to put down roots and thrive in an idealized community. Their middling origins combined with communal goals and resulted in familial plots with widespread land ownership—another contrast with the tobacco plantations of Jamestown. All this translated into a rough economic equality, at least in the early years. There was also a near total absence of chattel slavery: The climate didn't support the most common cash crops, and so there was little incentive to import Africans to New England.

God Wills It: The Motivations of the Puritans

It all sounds harmonious, idyllic even. Yet something lurked below the surface, something dark and unpleasant to modern eyes. These were fundamentalist zealots! These insufferable, millenarian Calvinists held themselves in shockingly high esteem. They were chosen, they would transform the world by their example. If the Pilgrims sought separation from a world of sin, the Puritans meant to create a New World, an example for all to emulate. It briefs well, and makes for an agreeable origin narrative, but isn't there something disturbing about such a people, about such overbearing confidence?

Ponder the words of John Winthrop, an early governor of the Bay Colony:

"… wee shall find that the God of Israel is among us, when ten of us shall be able to resist a thousand of our enemies, when he shall make us a praise and glory, that men shall say of succeeding plantations: the Lord make it like that of New England: for we must Consider that we shall be as a City upon a Hill, the eyes of all people are upon us. …"

These were people on a mission, the Lord’s mission, come what may. Such people would seem to be on a collision course with the region’s natives and Anglo nonconformists. And this would soon come to pass.

The Puritans’ motivations and goals raise some salient questions. What does it say about, and what are the implications for, a society founded on such colossal self-regard? Is it, ultimately, a good thing? That’s certainly a matter of opinion, but the questions themselves are instructive. Americans must make such queries to get an honest sense of themselves and their origins. This much is hard to argue with: Here, in Massachusetts, we find the geneses of American exceptionalism—the blessing and curse that has shadowed the United States for more than three centuries, driving domestic and especially foreign policy. Divergent modern political figures, from Ronald Reagan to Barack Obama, stuck carefully to an American exceptionalist script, in rhetoric if not in deed. One wonders whether this “City on a Hill” milieu, on the whole, has been a positive attribute. This author, at least, tends to doubt it. Perhaps we should mistrust such pride, and conceit, in even its most American forms.

Stifling Dissent: Life in Colonial New England

Could you imagine living with these people, comporting with their way of life? It sounds like a nightmare. Yet we Americans hold these antecedents in high esteem. Perhaps it’s natural, but this much is certain: Such veneration requires a certain degree of willful forgetting, a whitewashing of inconvenient truths about Puritan society.

Sure, Massachusetts avoided the worst famines of Jamestown’s early years, but life in Colonial New England was far from serene. It rarely is in repressive religious societies. Remember, the Puritans constructed exactly what they said they would, a theocracy on the bay. The Massachusetts Bay Colony may indeed have more in common with modern Saudi Arabia—executing “witches” and “sorcerers”—than it does with contemporary Boston. Our ancestors were far more religious than most Americans can fathom. But there’s also a problem of framing; we’ve omitted the uncomfortable bits to fashion an uplifting origin narrative.

There were many subgroups that certainly didn’t enjoy life in early Colonial Massachusetts: religious dissidents, agnostics, free thinkers and, well, assertive women. We’ve all heard of the infamous Salem Witch Trials, but nearly four decades earlier the widow Ann Higgins was executed, hung for witchcraft, after having the audacity to complain that hired carpenters had overcharged her for a remodeling job on her house.

All told, 344 citizens were accused of witchcraft in 17th-century Massachusetts. Twenty were executed. The accused had commonalities that are indicative of the nature of gender relations in the Bay Colony. Seventy-five percent were women. Most of those women were middle-aged or older and demonstrated some degree of independence. Many were suspected of some sort of sexual impropriety. The point is that Colonial New England was inhabited by zealots—conformist and oppressive fundamentalists who strictly policed the boundaries of their exalted theocracy. Forget the Thanksgiving feast: This was Islamic State on the Atlantic!

If life was as idyllic as the settlers intended in hail-the-Protestant-work-ethic Massachusetts Bay, then why were so many colonial “heroes” kicked out? Roger Williams, for example, founder of Rhode Island, promoted religious toleration and some separation of church and state, and asserted (gasp) that settlers ought to buy land from the native inhabitants. His thanks? A ticket straight out of Massachusetts. Slightly less well known was Anne Hutchinson. She had the gall to organize weekly women’s meetings to discuss theology and even contemplated the concept of individual intuition as a path to salvation. She too was banished. There was simply no room for dissent in Puritan society.

‘We Must Burn Them’: Puritan and Native Relations

This, naturally, brings us to the native peoples of New England. If nonconformist Englishmen fared so poorly in Massachusetts, then what of the Indians? You can probably guess.

Once again, as in Virginia, the Native Americans did not, or could not, wipe out the nascent colonial community, even though, initially at least, there were fewer soldiers among the settlers in Massachusetts. The explanation for the settlers surviving among the native Americans is far more complex than the simple myth of the noble, benevolent savage. The Puritans were the “beneficiaries of catastrophe,” for New England native communities had recently been ravaged by infectious European diseases that spread up and down the coastline. The thinned-out native populations thus posed less of a demographic threat to Massachusetts.

Far from the serene images of Thanksgiving amity, Anglo-Indian relations quickly turned from bad to worse. Land was a factor, but not the only one. A permanent settler community such as the Puritans’ would require inevitable expansion and rapidly grow, to be sure. As in Virginia, land ownership cohered with “freedom”—Anglo land and Anglo freedom, that is. Still, in New England, ideology was as much of a stimulus for war as land, wealth or further economic motives. The native tribes, swarthy and “unbelieving” Pequot, Wampanoag, Naggaransetts and others, simply did not fit into the Puritan’s messianic worldview. Conquered or converted were the only acceptable states for local Indians.

Early colonial wars in Massachusetts were as brutal and bloody as wars anywhere else on the North American continent. Here there was a direct connection between the Puritan religion and the cruelty seen in the Pequot War and King Philip’s War. In the Pequot War, Massachusetts militiamen attacked a native fort at Mystic, Connecticut, and through fire and fury burned alive 400 to 700 Indians, mostly women and children. The survivors were sold as slaves.

The militia relied on allied native scouts. Observing the ruthlessness of the Puritan fighting men, one native auxiliary asked Capt. John Underhill, “Why should you be so furious? Should not Christians have more mercy and compassion?” Underhill’s reply was as instructive as it is disturbing:

"I would refer you to David where, when a people is grown to such a height of blood, and sin against God and man … sometimes the Scripture declareth women and children must perish with their parents; some-time the case alters: but we will not dispute it now. We had sufficient light from the word of God for our proceeding."

Should, from time to time, a tinge of doubt betray the Puritans’ devout certainty, faithful zeal quickly assuaged the guilty conscience. Consider the words of another participant in the “Mystic Massacre,” William Bradford: “It was a fearful sight to see them thus frying in the fire … and horrible was the stink … but the victory seemed a sweet sacrifice, and they gave the praise thereof to God.”

Nearly simultaneous to the Virginian Bacon’s Rebellion, the Puritans fought King Philip’s—or Metacom’s—War in Massachusetts. Mercilessly executed on both sides, this was a war of survival that forever broke native power and independence in New England. Nearly one in 50 colonists were killed in what was by far the bloodiest war in American history, with 11 times the death rate of World War II. The native leader Metacom, known to the settlers as King Philip, was betrayed by an informer and killed, and his head was displayed on a pole in Plymouth, Mass., for decades. Such was the savagery of colonial war that the tactics and symbolism bring to mind Islamic State in today’s Syrian civil war.

When it came to Native American affairs, the Puritans hardly set the “City on a Hill” example. Or did they? After all, John Winthrop believed the “God of Israel”—a jealous, smiting deity if ever there was one—was among the Puritans, guiding their every move. As noted here earlier, Winthrop claimed this God provided the colonists such strength that 10 of their number could “resist a thousand enemies.” Viciousness and intolerance toward racially distinct, heathen natives were actually at the heart of “City on a Hill” teleology from the start. What Americans now decry in the Greater Middle East is but an echo of their colonial past. That much is worth remembering.

Not So Different: What Virginians and New Englanders Shared

When considering the two origin-societies of Virginia and Massachusetts, the differences are stark and effortlessly leap forth. More difficult, but just as relevant, are their significant commonalities. For it is in the overlap that we find our shared heritage, that which is universal in the American past, and, perhaps, the past of all settler-colonial societies.

Anglo dominance—and arrogance—acutely pervaded both colonial civilizations. In Massachusetts, as in Virginia, conflict and brutality toward the native peoples were regular features of settler life. In each setting, though to differing extents, a fever for land combined with exceptionalist ideology to conquer slave and native alike. For Englishmen, property ownership corresponded with liberty, but all along the Eastern Seaboard, Anglo liberty portended native death and displacement.

If Colonial Virginian society was fundamentally based on white unity at the expense of African slaves, then perhaps Puritan Massachusetts was founded upon Anglo zealotry at the expense of a “savage” Indian “other.” As proud descendants—some of us literally, most figuratively—of these twin settler-colonial enterprises, Americans must grapple with their inconvenient past. Here there’s much work left to be done.

The exceptionalism and chauvinistic Protestantism of the Massachusetts Puritans long influenced the American experiment. From the “City on a Hill” it is but a short journey to Manifest Destiny and the conquest of a continent—native inhabitants be damned!

Again, origins, and origin stories, matter. They inform who we were, and who we are, in stark contrast to who we’d like to think we were and are. America is its best self when it searches its soul and reforms from within. When, that is, it confronts its demons and seeks a better, more inclusive and empathetic future.

ttp://axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/Article_81676.shtml

https://www.truthdig.com/articles/jacobin-fueling-lies-syria/

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The Thom Hartmann Program 11/9/18 - first hour

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Thanks for sharing. The wheel meeting of an electrical scooter consists of the axle, hub, spokes, and rim. SmartElectricScooters The wheels can be found in metal, aluminum, or bolstered plastic. Anybody searching for long run use of a scooter ought to keep away from buying one that features the plastic wheel choice since these are extra vulnerable to cracking or breakage.

And here come the Thom Hartmann trolls:

31 logical fallacies in 8 minutes...

DianeR,

The creepy porn laywer is desperate....He owes everyone he ever had anything to do with money and now he tries to set up Tucker for a financial fall. Scum.

So many posts today that gasbag Hillary wants to run again in 2020. More bullets over Bosnia....I so hope we don't have to listen to that cackle for two more years.

I also heard that there are more Salvadorians in the USA than in El Salvador. WoW.

Today on the Border......http://www.borderlandbeat.com/2018/11/tijuana-war-of-narcomenudistas.html

Back later!

Live feed of CA fires... police & fire feeds....a pay site except during emergencies.

https://www.broadcastify.com/listen/ctid/186

Go to the home page for your State & County.

Book mark for emergencies.

Gov. Jerry Brown Vetoed Bipartisan Wildfire Management Bill in 2016

This might have helped had it been passed.

Make no mistake, the recent fires in California are made much worse because they've happened at the end of the classic hot dry summers we have, and very windy conditions, but knowing how this is the situation every year, it would only be prudent to prepare properly. Governor Brown did his part to prevent that, and now he has the gall to blame the politicized "science" of anthropogenic global warming instead.

Naturally, that imaginary problem requires expensive government intervention in all aspects of our lives, and the confiscation of even more of our wealth.

It's like it's a political game, or something.

At the request of the City Council of Laguna Beach, Sen. John Moorlach (R-Costa Mesa), authored SB 1463 in 2016, a bipartisan bill which would have given local governments more say in fire-prevention efforts through the Public Utilities Commission proceeding making maps of fire hazard areas around utility lines.Laguna Beach went through four fires sparked by utility lines in the last ten years, and has done as much in the way of prevention as they could afford. The bill would have allowed cities to work with utilities to underground utility lines, and work with the Public Utilities Commission to develop updated fire maps by requiring the PUC to take into consideration areas in which communities are at risk from the consequences of wildfire — not just those areas where certain environmental hazards are present.Gov. Brown vetoed SB 1463, despite being passed by the Legislature, 75-0 in the Assembly and 39-0 in the Senate.After SB 1463 was killed by Gov. Brown, Sen. Moorlach and his brilliant staff had an epiphany: Redirect the state’s accumulated cap-and-trade funds into wildfire prevention.Authored in 2018, the new Senate Bill 1463, aptly named “Cap and Trees,” would continuously appropriate 25 percent of state cap-and-trade funds to counties to harden the state’s utility infrastructure and better manage wildlands and our overgrown and drought-weakened forests.“In an effort to reduce the state’s highest source of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, curb the impacts of future wildfires and prevent unnecessary damage to life and property, Senate Bill 1463 will continuously appropriate 25 percent of cap and trade funds to counties to harden the state’s utility infrastructure and better manage wildlands and forests,” the new SB 1463 fact sheet reported.However, SB 1463 was killed in the radical Senate Environmental Quality Committee by Democrats, even though there was no opposition to it. It is estimated that “for every 2 to 3 days these wildfires burn, GHG emissions are roughly equal to the annual emissions from every car in the entire state of California,” USA Today/Reno Gazette reported in 2017. Last year, there were more than 9,000 major wildfires which burned over 1.2 million acres. Several of the large fires were caused or exacerbated by sparking utility lines.

http://dailytimewaster.blogspot.com/2018/11/gov-jerry-brown-vetoed-bipartisan.html

Bullitin of the Atomic Scientists (fair use)

"What are the climate change consequences of the midterm elections?"

By Dana Nuccitelli, November 9, 2018:

(Dana Nuccitelli is an environmental scientist, and author of Climatology versus Pseudoscience. He has published ten papers related to climate change in peer-reviewe...)

Over the past two years, the Trump administration, aided by the Republican-controlled Congress, has eroded the Obama administration’s policy efforts to curb global warming. Climate activists had hoped to reverse some of those losses in this year’s midterm elections, but the results were a mixed bag. Here is the rundown of where we stand.

What can House Democrats do with the majority? The Democrats won control of the House of Representatives and will hold about 229 seats (53 percent) starting in 2019. This gives them control over legislation in that chamber of Congress. Democrats will become House committee chairs, who choose the bills that receive a hearing and a vote in a given committee. Democrats will also be able to choose the Speaker of the House – likely to be Nancy Pelosi – who decides what bills come to the floor for a vote after they’ve passed out of committees.

We’re thus in a similar scenario as in 2009, when House Democrats led by Nancy Pelosi passed the American Clean Energy and Security Act carbon cap and trade bill. At that time, Democrats had a majority in the Senate, but not a 60-vote supermajority. Because the bill lacked the votes to defeat a Republican filibuster, it was never brought to the Senate floor for a vote. Republicans now hold the Senate and White House, so climate legislation has no chance of passing until either Democrats take control of those branches (and overcome a Senate filibuster), or a significant number of Republican lawmakers stop denying the need to address the existential threat posed by climate change.

In the meantime, Democrats can now play a major role in setting the federal budget, which means they can protect funding for climate science research and for federal agencies like the EPA. So, we can at least keep learning about the dangers posed by climate change as the Trump administration tries to increase the carbon pollution that’s creating those threats. The House Science Committee will now be controlled by Democrats rather than some of Congress’ worst science-denying Republicans like Lamar Smith (retired) and Dana Rohrabacher (defeated), and thus will thankfully no longer hold theatrical hearings to deny basic climate science.

Democratic governors can play a big climate role. Democratic candidates gained seven governorships and will now lead 23 states representing 173 million Americans (53.5 percent of the population). Given the federal government’s inability to pass climate legislation, states are playing an increasingly important role. Governor Jerry Brown has made California a world leader in implementing policies to meet the Paris climate targets.

Consider North Carolina, whose Republican governor in 2012 signed a bill blocking state agencies from considering climate science research in coastal sea level rise projections. He was replaced by Democratic governor Roy Cooper in 2017, who signed an executive order calling on the state to meet the Paris climate targets. Or New Jersey Democratic Governor Phil Murphy, who reversed Chris Christie’s decision to withdraw from the regional carbon cap and trade system. Or consider Virginia Democratic Governor Ralph Northam, who has pledged to join the cap and trade system.

In the midterm elections, Michigan, Maine, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, and Illinois elected governors who have endorsed 50 percent renewable energy standards or higher. We can now expect to see more states take up the climate leadership role abandoned by the Trump administration.

Oil industry spending killed several green ballot initiatives. Washington voters rejected the state’s second carbon tax proposition in the past two elections, after the oil industry spent $30 million on ads to defeat it. However, Democratic Governor Jay Inslee is determined to implement climate legislation in Washington.

In Colorado, the oil and gas industry spent nearly $40 million to defeat an anti-fracking amendment, and was successful. In Arizona, the state’s biggest utility spent $30 million to defeat a proposition to require the state to obtain 50 percent of its electricity from renewable sources.

But there was also some good news for climate advocates in the ballot initiatives. Californians voted to keep the state’s gas tax. Floridians passed a measure to ban offshore drilling. And Nevadans approved an amendment requiring electric utilities to acquire 50 percent of their electricity from renewable resources by 2030.

Climate Solutions Caucus shrinks. The Climate Solutions Caucus was a bipartisan group of 45 Republicans and 45 Democrats whose goal was to explore climate policy solutions. However, the Caucus was heavily criticized for its lack of action, and its members were labeled ‘Climate Peacocks.’ For example, in a purely symbolic vote, only four of the Republican Caucus members voted against condemning carbon taxes. Republican leader Carlos Curbelo introduced a carbon tax bill of his own, but only two fellow Republican Caucus members were willing to co-sponsor it.

It was a rough night for Republican Climate Solutions Caucus members. Curbelo lost his election, along with a dozen of his cohorts. Eight more Republican members retired from Congress. That leaves about 24 of the 45 Caucus conservatives in office starting in 2019, having lost their leader.

This was an expected outcome – the moderate Republicans who are more likely to be relatively realistic about climate change also tended to be the most vulnerable in a wave election. Democrats can now control the legislative agenda in the House, but there are fewer moderate Republicans left in office who might work with them on climate bills. On the one hand, that means climate legislation won’t be watered down by compromise; on the other hand, even fewer Republicans will sign on.

Climate change will regrettably remain a politically polarized issue in America until at least 2021. But Democrats gained the critically important control of the House and its committees, and even more importantly, of a number of state governorships. Over the next two years, it will be up to the individual states to advance the climate agenda by accelerating the transition away from fossil fuels.

https://thebulletin.org/2018/11/what-are-the-climate-change-consequences-of-the-midterm-elections/?utm_source=Twitter&utm_medium=Twitter%20Post&utm_campaign=Midterms_Nov9

Thanks Diane,

The fires are not close to me this time. The Southern 1/2 of CA is desert...The North would get 100 inches a year, 20 years ago. Now we are lucky to get 1/2 that. Here in the North every drop is counted and cared for. Yet I recall Gov Brown saying CA could allow 10 million more people in and be fine...(from Mexico I suspect) using what water I don't know.

PG&E our electric co.( no gas here just propane) made many people mad using herbacides on the trees they cut. They cuut the trees directly under the lines. A job they sub out.

The fire dept. does do burns but they are minimal. Highway crews cut the brush from the road sides.

I really wonder how much effect the chemtrails have on the trees, bees, and wildlife.

https://www.geoengineeringwatch.org/geoengineering-watch-global-alert-news-november-10-2018-170/

Also much of the public land is suposed to be maintained by the Feds.

Might be some good news though...

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/imageo/2018/07/13/el-nino-likely-will-develop-this-year/is-year/

:)

CNN: WASHINGTON — Both nature and humans share blame for California's devastating wildfires, but forest management did not play a major role, despite President Donald Trump's claims, fire scientists say.

Nature provides the dangerous winds that have whipped the fires, and human-caused climate change over the long haul is killing and drying the shrubs and trees that provide the fuel, experts say.

"Natural factors and human-caused global warming effects fatally collude" in these fires, said wildfire expert Kristen Thornicke of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/scientists-wind-drought-worsen-fires-not-bad-management/ar-BBPCUx2

HotCoffee, good morning.

The pictures and videos of the fires is terrifing. Heavy rains this winter could prove to be very damaging.

We had a lot of bee's and other insects this year. Maybe things are turning back to where they were.

Interesting article on Sunspots which has a major effect on our climate.

Lack of sunspots to bring record cold, warns NASA scientist

By Justin Caruso

Celebrity Chef and TV star Guy Fieri served meals to California wildfire first responders this weekend.

“Fieri made a surprise visit to the law enforcement staging area at Butte College over the weekend, to feed tired and hungry first responders at the deadly Camp Fire in Butte County,” FOX 10 reports.

The Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives star has a history of helping those in need–he volunteered to help those affected from another wildfire in California last year.

“‪In today’s tumultuous world, it’s amazing to see our fire fighters, military, law enforcement and first responders come together to rescue our communities devestated by fire. So many great people stepping up to take care of one another #ProudAmerican #CampFire‬,” the 50-year-old chef wrote in a social media post Monday.

In today’s tumultuous world, it’s amazing to see our fire fighters, military, law enforcement and first responders come together to rescue our communities devestated by fire. So many great people stepping up to take care of one another #ProudAmerican #CampFire pic.twitter.com/VgXgBJuPT0

— Guy Fieri (@GuyFieri) November 12, 2018

Big thanks to our team at @camp_chef The gear is awesome help cookin for folks at the #CampFire pic.twitter.com/EFJ3l6S1V4

— Guy Fieri (@GuyFieri) November 11, 2018

The wildfires currently affecting multiple areas around California have resulted in 42 deaths, making it the deadliest wildfire in recorded state history. The number is almost certain to continue to rise. With tens of thousands of acres already scorched and nearly a quarter million people displaced, the deadly fire’s origin is still unknown. While California Governor Jerry Brown and some celebrities are blaming climate change, the fire may have been sparked by a malfunctioning circuit.

Read More

coalage3,

Hard to believe Jerry Brown when I saw with my own eyes the power pole with a 10 inch flame coming out the top surronded by trees on my own property last winter...thankfully it was raining when it happened. The fire dept stayed with it until the power co. showed up.

Jerry doesn't want you to know how bad the rural infrastructure is...think back to Oriville Dam. Why blame himself when he can charge us for cap and trade instead? Power company is known for its corruption, as well as paying themselves and shareholders monies that should have been invested in hardening the grid, and charging customers for their failures.

Chico...next door to Paradise is a college town. Paradise is mostly retired elderly. Others are decendents of the gold miners of days gone by.

Where I am is, mostly decendents of the loggers that cut the trees that built San Francisco. There are stumps on my land 10 ft. wide. Many here have become ranchers of organic grass fed beef with a few sheep , no pigs that I have seen. We also have hippies from the 60's that came to grow MMJ.

Put the dang power lines under ground.

So, now with at least 250,000 people homeless from fire added to the homeless from last years fires, and the povery stricken and drug addicted homeless. we have 11,000 or so from South of the Border headed to San Deigo....just great! To top it off it's the people from South of the border Jerry Bown will take care of. You won't see Jerry in Paradise helping the elderly get food stamps free housing and legal assistance.

All that being said it's awesome in the country...:)

Ignorance is contagious on the far-right fringe.

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Vox - "First Person" - Updated Nov 12, 2018, 11:10am EST - (fair use)

"I'm a woman who fought wildfires for 7 years. Climate change is absolutely making them worse.

Warmer climate is creating the perfect conditions for long wildfire seasons in the West."

By Anastasia Selby:

2018’s wildfires are already proving to be more destructive than last year’s. The Camp Fire near Chico, California has already claimed at least 29 lives, destroyed more than 6,400 structures, and burned more than 111,000 acres since it began last Thursday. It is now the deadliest and most destructive fire in California’s history. Meanwhile, the Woolsey Fire continues to ravage Los Angeles County, burning 85,500 acres. This essay, published during last year’s brutal fire season, tackles many of the same issues as this year’s season.

The mundane days all run together. But those days when I was genuinely unsure if I would make it to the end of my shift intact are the ones that stand out.

I remember fighting a fire on the Angeles National Forest in 2002. Our crew flew onto a ridge in a helicopter. The rotor wash, or wind created by the helicopter blades, flung orange embers into the unburned vegetation — the “green.” Immediately, it started burning.

We jumped out of the helicopter, ran underneath the fire, and started digging. The goal was to quickly create a line free of any vegetation that could burn, called a fireline, which we used to stop fires from growing. Digging fireline is grueling; I often lost myself in the sound of chainsaws and rhythm of my tool hitting the dirt and ignored my physical pain.

Some of us had to run deep into the green and find embers or put out new small fires before they began burning out of control. There were full minutes when I thought, This may be it. We may not make it.

I worked as a wildland firefighter for seven years in the 2000s. And so I’ve been watching the smoky footage on my computer of the fires burning across the West this last month with great unease. Take the La Tuna Fire, which ignited on September 1. It was one of the largest fires Los Angeles has ever seen and burned more than 7,000 acres before it was contained. And it’s the kind of fire that is increasingly common in the age of climate change.

Wildland firefighters are especially attuned to how climate change puts us all at greater risk for destructive fires. We understand how higher temperatures and long-term drought are the perfect conditions for ignition. To us, there’s little controversy that it’s happening, although not everyone believes it’s human caused. I do, and, along with others in the field, I wonder when those in power will take the steps needed to address climate change.

Climate change and wildfires are a vicious cycle of worsening conditions

Wildfires currently burning in Northern California have destroyed thousands of acres and homes and resulted in the deaths of 11 people. Counties including Napa and Sonoma have been declared a state of emergency.

It’s been a brutal wildfire season. Last month’s La Tuna Fire in Los Angeles was, I’m sure, one of those fires that seemed uncontainable. In a speech, Ralph Terrazas, the LAFD fire chief, said, “We can handle everything. We have to. We don’t have an option.” He sounded exhausted and less hopeful than his words.

Southern California’s fire season usually lasts into late September and October when hot, strong winds called the Santa Ana blow through the region. I witnessed this. Fires often started on roadsides, ignited by discarded cigarette butts or even a spark from a motorcycle. The La Tuna Fire didn't’t bode well for this year’s California fire season, and we’re seeing those effects.

Last month, I spoke with my friend Jesse Moreng, an ex-hotshot — or wildland firefighter — who now works as a multi-mission aircraft manager, mapping fires for the firefighters on the ground. When I asked Jesse if he thought this fire season was more severe than most, he said yes, “just in terms of how many places are burning at once.”

The US Fire Service and the Department of the Interior in September reportedspending more than $2.1 billion on fires this year so far, which is what they spent for the entire fire season in 2015, one of the most devastating fire seasons since 1960. What strikes me most about the report is the predicted length the 2017 fire season. Some predicted containment dates are well into late autumn. Many of these large fires are under 5 percent contained, with no rain or helpful weather in sight. That’s going to take a lot of resources to stop or contain.

As some fires continue to get worse, air quality will suffer, and more often, there may be loss of property and loss of life due to the increasing number of people who live in wooded areas. Most importantly, large fires emit greenhouse gases, which have been proven to accelerate climate change and burn trees, which are crucial for oxygenating the air. This will inevitably affect the quality of life of most people living in the United States. This isn't just happening here, but around the world.

As Puerto Rico, Texas, the Caribbean, and Florida continue to recover from hurricanes Maria, Harvey, and Irma, there seems to be an Armageddon-esque dread floating around on the internet. The Tubbs and Atlas fires are carving a path of destruction through Northern California, and 33 active fires burn throughout the state. It will only get worse as the effects of climate change continue.

Climate change will continue to affect fire behavior. According to an article published in PNAS, data from western North America confirms that human-caused climate change will lead to widespread and more frequent fires. This is because the continual warming trend sets up conditions for a longer burning season — climate change means higher temperatures and more erratic precipitation, which leads to drier fuels ripe for burning.

It’s not hopeless. Although the wildfire news makes it feel as if the end of the world is upon us, it isn't. Not yet. The USFS motto is “Caring for the land and serving people.” But how can we enforce that when the current administration denies climate change altogether? To keep our forests and air healthy, we must be actively educating ourselves and voting for people who will be stewards of the land.

The grueling work of fighting fires

When I was 19, I dropped out of college, and a friend suggested I apply at a nearby fire contracting agency in Eugene, Oregon. We were on a fire within two weeks, and I loved the job. It was intense and exhausting, but I loved the camaraderie I had with my fellow crew members.

For four years, I worked on three different hotshot crews. Hotshots are on the front lines — a crew consists of 18 to 22 members, the bulk of whom are seasonal federal employees and the rest permanent government employees.

It’s intensely physical work. The fire season typically lasts May through October, and in a busy season, a crew will log more than 1,000 hours of overtime. On “rolls,” a crew leaves home base for two to three weeks at a time, depending on the fire situation nationally, and will only come home for a couple of days before being called out again. Every few years, some crews have a slow season, resulting in less pay. Each hotshot gets paid differently due to experience, but most are paid $13 to $17 an hour, plus overtime and hazard pay.

Wildland firefighters are also often looked down upon by city fire departments. We aren’t considered “real” firefighters, and seasonals don’t get benefits such as health insurance or retirement that structural firefighters enjoy. A permanent position is not guaranteed and can be hard to find.

In 2002, my crew was called to the Biscuit Fire, historically one of the largest fires in Oregon. It clocked in at more than 500,000 acres, or 781 square miles. We spent most of our time fighting the Biscuit Fire using a method called “burning,” using drip torches to burn fuels along old logging roads and new dozer lines. We hoped that when the larger fire reached the burned fuels, it would stop, because there was no more fuel to burn. We spent three weeks fighting the Biscuit Fire. Eventually, it crossed the border into California. The fire would not be contained fully for another five months.

Burning, which also can be done using flares or dropping napalm balls from helicopters, is just one method of fighting fire. Another method is fireline, which is when a fire crew or dozer creates a fuel break by removing all vegetation along the edge of the fire so it can burn no further. There’s also the “slurry line” method, where planes and/or helicopters drop fire retardant in a line across the vegetation to slow the burn.

For any of these methods to work, the elements have to be cooperative. Often they aren’t, and firefighters spend weeks implementing these tactics repeatedly, starting over each time they fail. We could only do so much.

Big fires are often unwilling to be contained. One day, while on the Bitterroot Complex, which burned more than 350,000 acres, we were feeling around for embers hiding in roots and stumps when it began to snow. My boss told me stories about how, when the snowy season came, embers would hide for the entire winter underground, only to pop up in the spring and reignite.

Even if we thought we’d have a hard time getting hold of the fire, we worked hard. After the initial frenzy of a new fire, our shifts were pretty regular: 16 hours on the fireline every day. We woke around 5 am and refilled our water, ate, and sharpened our tools in the dark, using the yellow circle of our headlamps. Throughout the day we’d lag and then become reenergized; we’d pour Emergen-C into our mouths, eat crystallized coffee, make tea with the water in our water bottles, which was almost always hot.

Sometimes I hated the job; I’d dream of going to a restaurant and eating a steak, taking a shower — something we rarely did while in the field — sleeping in my bed. I wished, sometimes, that I could go swimming in a lake or do other summer activities I often missed out on during fire season. But firefighting was what I knew how to do, so I stayed. I loved working in the woods, where I didn't’t have to be part of what I called “real civilization.”

There’s a part of me that misses my days of firefighting. But when I see the ongoing fires in California, Oregon, and Montana, I think about just how intense it was, and how much worse it’s getting every year. There will always be men and women at the forefront of these fires, doing whatever they can to contain the devastating impacts of nature. The politicians in charge of climate change policies need to make these hotshots’ jobs a little easier.

Anastasia Selby grew up in Washington state and spent most of her 20s fighting forest fires. She is now an MFA candidate in fiction at Syracuse University and looks forward to graduation in 2018, when she can head out West again. Find her on Twitter @AnastasiaSelby.

https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2017/9/14/16301876/camp-fire-woolsey-fire-california-wildfires-2018

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Union of Concerned Scientists

"Is Global Warming Fueling Increased Wildfire Risks?

The effects of global warming on temperature, precipitation levels, and soil moisture are turning many of our forests into kindling during wildfire season."

As the climate warms, moisture and precipitation levels are changing, with wet areas becoming wetter and dry areas becoming drier.

Higher spring and summer temperatures and earlier spring snowmelt typicallycause soils to be drier for longer, increasing the likelihood of drought and a longer wildfire season, particularly in the western United States.

These hot, dry conditions also increase the likelihood that wildfires will be more intense and long-burning once they are started by lightning strikes or human error.

The costs of wildfires, in terms of risks to human life and health, property damage, and state and federal dollars, are devastating, and they are only likely to increase unless we better address the risks of wildfires and reduce our activities that lead to further climate change.

Wildfires are already on the rise

Wildfires in the western United States have been increasing in frequency and duration since the mid-1980s. Between 1986 and 2003, wildfires occurred nearly four times as often, burned more than six times the land area, and lasted almost five times as long when compared to the period between 1970 and 1986.

Natural cycles, human activities like land-use change and fire exclusion, and human-caused climate change can all influence the likelihood of wildfires. Many of the areas that have seen increased wildfire activity, like Yosemite National Park and the Northern Rockies, are protected from or relatively unaffected by human land-use change, suggesting that climate change is a major factor driving the increase in wildfires in these places.

Precipitation patterns, global warming, and wildfires

Though the current trend of increasing severe wildfire frequency in parts of the US is projected to continue as the climate warms, droughts and wildfires are not equally likely to occur every year.

Natural, cyclical weather occurrences such as El Niño events also affect the likelihood of wildfires by affecting levels of precipitation and moisture and lead to year-by-year variability in the potential for drought and wildfires regionally.

Nonetheless, because temperatures and precipitation levels are projected to alter further over the course of the 21st century, the overall potential for wildfires in the western United States is projected to increase.

As the world warms, we can expect more wildfires

US wildfire seasons—especially those in years with higher wildfire potential—are projected to lengthen, with the Southwest’s season of fire potential lengthening from seven months to all year long. Additionally, the likelihood that individual wildfires become severe is expected to increase.

Researchers project that moist, forested areas are the most likely to face greater threats from wildfires as conditions in those areas become drier and hotter.

Surprisingly, some dry grasslands may be less at risk of catching fire because the intense aridity is likely to prevent these grasses from growing at all, leaving these areas so barren that they are likely to lack the fodder for wildfires to start and spread.

A conflagration of costs

The economic costs of wildfires can be crippling. Data on total US property damage from wildfires are hard to come by, but the costs are estimated to be on the level of hundreds of millions of dollars per year.

In addition to property damage, wildfires cost states and the federal government millions in fire-suppression management. The US Forest Service’s yearly fire-suppression costs have exceeded $1 billion for 13 of the 18 years between 2000 and 2017. In 2015, these costs exceeded $2 billion, and in 2017 they totaled almost $3 billion. The risk to property owners is particularly acute in areas at the “wildland-urban interface.” In California alone, this area includes more than 5 million homes in coastal southern California, the Bay Area, and northeast of Sacramento.

The environmental and health costs of wildfires are also considerable. Not only do wildfires threaten lives directly, but they have the potential to increase local air pollution, exacerbating lung diseases and causing breathing difficulties even in healthy individuals.

Additionally, a counterintuitive aspect of mountain forest wildfires is their ability to increase flash flood risk. The loss of vegetation from wildfires and the inability of burned soil to absorb moisture can cause flash floods in lower-lying areas when rains do come in the days and months following fires, especially to the semi-arid Southwest.

Wildfire safety and prevention

Greenhouse-gas emissions from human activities are raising global temperatures and changing the climate, leading to a likely rise in wildfire severity and frequency.

But it is not too late to act. What we do now has the power to influence the frequency and severity of these fires and their effects on us.

By engaging in fire safety efforts—creating buffer zones between human habitation and susceptible forests, and meeting home and city fire-safety standards—we can help reduce our current risks, and by taking steps to reduce our impact on the climate, we can help to keep our forests, our homes, and our health safe.

Learn more

• Global Warming FAQ
• Climate Change and Your Health
• The Health Effects of Hotter Days and Nights

https://www.ucsusa.org/global-warming/science-and-impacts/impacts/global-warming-and-wildfire.html

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"Global Warming and California Wildfires"

California Climate Choices - A Fact Sheet of the Union of Concerned Scientists:

Wildfires are a major environmental hazard that have historically cost California more than $800 million each year and contribute to “bad air days” throughout the state. The more global warming pollution that is emitted into the atmosphere, the more wildfires we can expect to see in California.

More Wildfires Expected

If average statewide temperatures rise to the medium warming range (5.5 to 8°F), the risk of large wildfires in California is expected to increase about 20 percent by mid-century and 50 percent by the end of the century. This is almost twice the wildfire increase expected if temperatures are kept within the lower warming range.

Along with temperature, wildfires are determined by a variety of factors, including precipitation. Because of this, future wildfire risk throughout the state will not be uniform. For example, a hotter, drier climate could increase the flammability of vegetation in northern California and promote up to a 90 percent increase in large wildfires by the end of the century. A hotter, wetter climate would also lead to an increase in wildfires in northern California, but to a S O U R C E S California Department of Finance. 2004. Population Projections by Race/Ethnicity for California and Its Counties 2000–2050, Sacramento, California. May. Westerling, A., and B. Bryant. 2006. Change and wildfires around California: Fire modeling and loss modeling. California Climate Change Center report. Online at www.energy.ca.gov/2005publications/ CEC-500-2005-190/CEC-500-2005-190-SF.pdf. Wu, J., A. Winer, and R. Delfino. “Exposure Assessment of Particulate Matter Air Pollution Before, During, and After the 2003 Southern California Wildfires.” Accepted for publication in Atmospheric Environment, January 2006. Global Warming and California Wildfires lesser extent—about a 40 percent increase by century’s end.

More “Bad Air Days” Wildfire smoke produces small soot particles, which can cause or aggravate cardiovascular and respiratory illness and lead to premature death. For example, the wildfires that burned nearly three-quarters of a million acres in southern California in 2003 caused particulate matter (soot) to increase four to five times above normal levels throughout the southern part of the state. Five million people were exposed to dangerous levels of air pollution for at least two days during the fires, and nearly two million were exposed for five days in a row.

Wildfire Costs Expected to Increase If global warming emissions continue unabated and temperatures rise into the higher warming range, property damage costs from California wildfires could increase as much as 30 percent toward the end of the century. This estimate is conservative because it assumes population and land-use patterns are held constant at 2000 levels, even though the state’s population is expected to grow from 36 million today to more than 55 million by 2050. Furthermore, other fire-related costs such as fire prevention and suppression, health effects of fire-related pollution, flooding, mudslides, altered recreation opportunities, and loss of timber were not included.

Because most global warming emissions remain in the atmosphere for decades or centuries, the choices we make today greatly influence the climate our children and grandchildren inherit. We have the technology to increase energy efficiency and significantly reduce emissions from energy and land use. We must act now to avoid the dangerous consequences of global warming and help ensure a high quality of life for future generations.

S O U R C E S

California Department of Finance. 2004. Population Projections by Race/Ethnicity for California and Its Counties 2000–2050, Sacramento, California. May. Westerling, A., and B. Bryant. 2006. Change and wildfires around California: Fire modeling and loss modeling. California Climate Change Center report. Online at www.energy.ca.gov/2005publications/ CEC-500-2005-190/CEC-500-2005-190-SF.pdf.

Wu, J., A. Winer, and R. Delfino. “Exposure Assessment of Particulate Matter Air Pollution Before, During, and After the 2003 Southern California Wildfires.” Accepted for publication in Atmospheric Environment, January 2006

https://www.ucsusa.org/sites/default/files/legacy/assets/documents/global_warming/ucs-ca-wildfires-1.pdf

This Shows The HUGE Difference Between Barack Obama's DHS, Which Targeted Survivalists As Potential Terrorists, And President Trump's DHS, Which Is Urging Americans To BECOME Preppers!- November Declared National Critical Infrastructure Security And Resilience Month

http://allnewspipeline.com/DHS_National_Critical_Infrastructure_November.php

While Dems tear down the country and hate on their brothers and sisters...everyone else should prepare for what that could bring. I don't think Thom is going to help you.

DianeR,

Glad to share the Dogs! Such loyal, loving critters!!

What a crock of BS. Democrats/liberals/progressives don't believe in science. And that includes the science of alleged climate change. I find it very strange that dems don't believe in science/biology/mother nature when it comes to transgender issues. They don't believe in GMO foods even though science has overwhelmingly shown them to be safe and nutritious. Dems only profess to believe in "science" when it suits a political agenda...otherwise not so much. If you want the public to accept climate change, then you should also want the public to accept the gender and sex you are born with since science and biology decided that for you. Right?

Coalage3 which brings to mind a question, why did everyone call Barack Obama a black man?

meanwhile....

https://home.solari.com/geoengineering-the-space-fence-and-the-advent-of-transhumanism/

There truly is no point in debating intellectually dishonest trolls who have been so conditioned by right-wing disinformation that they willingly and stubbornly refuse to research actual, widely accepted, extensively peered-reviewed hard evidence (as in the case of human-caused climate change, for instance), a small fraction of which has been humbly (?) provided and archived by yours truly on this long, long thread, like it or lump it. Valuable information is now all in one place -- some of the more important stuff posted a few times on different pages to match ongoing news events -- for easy access through the various scientific articles and, especially, the links contained therein to facilitate a deeper dive, for which we are individually responsible for performing to avoid spouting off gross, easily verifiable ignorance ... if only one were to do the homework.

Absolutely, the science is nonpartisan! Although I'm certainly not, and neither is anyone else around here, needless to say....};--))

[Full disclosure: Of late, I confess ("...forgive me Father for I have sinned...") that I'm only using Thom's dead blog, yet wonderful scrolling archive, to consolidate a little of his more timely work in one place online (a miniscule amount compared to the 30 books or so he has written and to the decades of interviews across the media spectrum he has conducted with top scholars -- on BOTH sides of the political divide -- on many, many important subjects. Certain other seemingly relevant research sources as well are included, as a convenient means for easy and fast retrieval of vital information in other online conversations and study groups.

Plus, a more expanded research is had by following the pertinent links and varied sources scattered throughout the articles and videos. Besides, multiple sourcing from reliable, sincere, and concerned people, teachers, scientists, and recognized scholars is not a bad thing for the advancement of society. Time and energy-consuming sidetracks down wackadoodle​, dead-end paths are.

Trolling the trolls, the last vestige of sad dead-enders narrowingly "clinging to guns and religion" and whiteness and conspiracy theories -- and to the carcass of this once lively blog (why?) -- sharpens the fangs, so to speak, while providing a wee bit of comic relief, no offense, to an otherwise ominous and sobering chapter unfolding rather quickly (in evolutionary timeframes anyway) in this long and remarkable story of humankind and the evolution of life on Mother/Father Earth. A frightening yet endlessly compelling "future-history" is looming on the horizon for this pale blue dot in the vastness of space. But that future can be altered hugely more positively by the consequential actions humans could take today to stave off the worst. Now especially is not the time for the dominate species on this heated-up planet to sit on its lazy laurels, wishing and hoping for the best while ensuring the worst.

BTW, Óinseach, beyond all else, that IS a very cool video of the black and white dogs working together, which all on this "side" of the space/time continuum have enjoyed greatly. Thank you, ma'am.]

Unintended ignorance is just a lazy mind, not necessarily a stupid mind. So one must be very dedicated and energetically proactive to get at the truth of things -- and constantly vigilant to the massive propaganda campaign waged by vested billionaires in the fossil fuel-fuel and so-called "defense" industries, in cahoots with Wall Street's other greedy complement of one-precenters, who all buy, or become, politicians to maintain their ungodly power (the original definition of fascism), and who bait the Republican hardcore base with extremist political ideology: ruthless Ayn Rand-esque objectivism, euphemistically coined a deregulated "free" market (neither free nor fair for workers nor customers); unwarranted negativism; ridiculous *denialism; endlessly repeating lies; hate; racism; false religion; phony patriotism; and a new wave of extreme ethnonationalism, which is threatening to tear societies apart across the planet. These are the standard tools of autocrats from before recorded history.

Trump knows his base well and plays them for the fools they are.

The real problem for humanity and Earth's "tree of life" is not fools like the authoritarian-minded Trumps of the world so much as it is the fools who enable them. After all, the primary cause of global warming, racism, and hatred is not the outward but the inward -- the mind of Homo sapiens and how it thinks, not necessarily what it thinks. The Trump trolls on this blog are a classic example of this ultimate groupthink, and actually a rather fascinating study as a microcosm of this weird (and deadly) phenomenon gripping the world -- kinda like studying bugs through a magnifying glass but of course with far-reaching implications for succeeding generations.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

*Denialism

(For denialism of historical events, see Historical negationism.)

In the psychology of human behavior, denialism is a person's choice [emphasis mine] to deny reality, as a way to avoid a psychologically uncomfortable truth.[1] Denialism is an essentially irrational action that withholds the validation of a historical experience or event, when a person refuses to accept an empirically verifiable reality.[2] In the sciences, denialism is the rejection of basic facts and concepts that are undisputed, well-supported parts of the scientific consensus on a subject, in favor of radical and controversial ideas.[3] The terms Holocaust denialism and AIDS denialism describe the denial of the facts and the reality of the subject matters,[4] and the term climate change denial describes denial of the scientific consensus that the climate change of planet Earth is a real and occurring event primarily caused by human activity.[5] The forms of denialism present the common feature of the person rejecting overwhelming evidence and the generation of political controversy with attempts to deny the existence of consensus.[6][7] The motivations and causes of denialism include religion and self-interest (economic, political, financial) and defence mechanisms meant to protect the psyche of the denialist against mentally disturbing facts and ideas.[8][9]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denialism

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Vox - Nov 13, 2018, 3:00pm EST (fair use)

"In the midterm elections, the GOP strategy was racism. In key races, it worked.

Republicans stoked racist fears in Florida and Georgia elections."

By Samuel Sinyangwe:

Two weeks before this year’s midterm elections, in front of a crowded auditorium at Broward College, Florida gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum called out his Republican opponent, Ron DeSantis, for taking donations from and speaking at conferences hosted bywhite supremacists. “I’m not calling Mr. DeSantis a racist. I’m simply saying the racists believe he’s a racist,” said Gillum.

Gillum was right. DeSantis ran on racism — and so did many other Republicans. And racism appears to have won, at least in Florida and Georgia, where Democrats had hoped the historic campaigns of black candidates Andrew Gillum and Stacey Abrams would be decisive in winning control of these pivotal states.

To be clear, Republicans did not do well in the 2018 elections. They lost nearly 40 House seats, lost control of at least seven governorships and over 300 state legislative seats, and lost a sizeable proportion of suburban white voters in key states they’ll need to win in 2020. But despite running brilliant high-profile candidates for governor in Florida and Georgia, Democrats appear to have fallen short of decisive wins. Why?

In the 2018 elections, racism was foundational to the Republican political strategy, a strategy that involved using their institutional power to prevent people of color from voting while using racist political rhetoric to drive turnout among rural white voters. And though we won’t know the final outcome of the election until all remaining ballots are counted (and recounted), election returns so far suggest this Republican strategy likely prevented Democrats from winning the governorship in Florida and Georgia.

Voter suppression by voter ID laws, long lines, and broken voting machines disproportionately affects Democratic candidates

The most glaring part of Republicans’ strategy was voter suppression. Republicans used a variety of methods during the elections to make it more difficult for Democrats to be able to vote. These efforts disproportionately targeted communities of color, who are more likely to vote Democratic.

For example, in Georgia, Republican gubernatorial candidate Brian Kemp used his position as secretary of state to purge an estimated 107,000 people from the voter registration rolls just because they had not voted recently — with the majority of counties purging black voters at higher rates than whites. He put another 53,000 voter registration applications “on hold” — 70 percent of which were from black Georgians. And when people showed up to vote in predominantly black counties, they faced impossibly long lines produced by the closure of 214 polling places since 2012, as well as faulty voting machines. Later, we would learn that 700 voting machines were left wrapped and unused in a nearby warehouse in Atlanta.

All of this happened on top of Georgia’s existing strict voter ID law, which imposed an additional barrier to voting that disproportionately disadvantaged black voters. Nationwide, 25 percent of black Americans lack government-issued photo ID, compared to only 8 percent of whites. A variety of systemic barriers make it harder for people of color to obtain a photo ID. For example, many older black residents lack birth certificates or other required documentation to get an ID. As a consequence, strict voter ID laws like Georgia’s have been shown to significantly and disproportionately reduce turnout among black and brown voters.

Similar issues were reported in Florida, where in addition to purges and polling place closures, there were widespread reports suggesting thousands of voters never received the absentee ballots they requested, and absentee ballots that were submitted by black and Latinx voters were rejected at higher rates due to “signature mismatch.” Taken together, these forms of institutional racism — political institutions imposing discriminatory barriers to voting — could have cost Stacey Abrams and Andrew Gillum the votes needed to defeat their opponents.

The GOP used racism to turn out its base

Institutional racism only tells part of the story: Throughout the midterm campaigns, Trump and the Republican candidates repeatedly used coded racist appeals to appeal to white voters. In the final weeks of the election, President Trump used his “bully pulpit” — the largest platform in the world — to spread racist and misleading narratives about immigrants.

In October, as a caravan of asylum seekers began walking from Central America towards the southern US border, Trump made claims that the caravan was made up of criminals and “unknown Middle Easterners” and was “invading” America. Then, a week before the election, the president released an anti-immigrant ad depicting an undocumented immigrant who murdered two police officers and implying that other “dangerous illegal criminals” were in the caravan. The ad was considered so racist that even Fox News stopped airing it.

These anti-immigrant narratives dominated the news cycle before the election. Exit polls showed that the strategy worked: Immigration was the single most important issue for Republican voters. In Florida and Georgia, exit polls show both DeSantis and Kemp voters considered immigration to be the most important issue in the election, while health care was the most important issue for those who voted for Gillum and Abrams.

Immigrants weren't’t the only targets of this racism. Gillum and Abrams themselves were targeted with racist rhetoric. Trump called Andrew Gillum a “thief” while referring to his Republican opponent as “Harvard educated.” Gillum’s Republican opponent also evoked racist stereotypes by telling voters not to “monkey this up”by voting for Gillum.

In both Georgia and Florida, white supremacist groups organized racist robocallsto voters. These recorded messages called Gillum a “negro” and “monkey” and Stacey Abrams a “negress.” Research shows that priming white voters to think about race can significantly impact their support for black candidates. For example, studies show the darker a candidate’s skin, the less likely white voters are to support them, and that political appeals that make a black candidate’s race more salient to white voters significantly reduce their share of the white vote.

The GOP’s stoking of racist fears might have also driven people to vote against them

As Republican politicians made anti-immigrant and anti-black appeals to their base, rural white voters turned out at high rates to offset Democratic gains in the suburbs. Many of these voters are based in Southern states, where the legacy of racism lives on. White people living in counties where slavery was more prevalent in 1860 are significantly more likely to identify as Republicans, a party that today is working to dismantle civil rights protections and end programs that remedy racial inequities.

Moreover, these voters were more likely to harbor racist attitudes and political beliefs, such as reporting feeling warmer towards whites than blacks and opposing affirmative action. And nearly 2 million people in Florida and Georgia were prohibited from voting in the election because of felony disenfranchisement laws enacted during the Jim Crow era to suppress the black vote (fortunately, Florida voters repealed one of these laws this election by passing Amendment 4).

It’s possible that all of these factors didn't’t matter enough to change the results by the one percent (or even half of one percent) needed to change the outcome. It’s possible that these blatantly racist appeals had the opposite effect for some voters: motivating people of color and some white voters to show up and vote Democrat.

But it’s hard to believe all of these tactics used in combination — each already proven to have significant and measurable impacts on their own in past elections — would not have some effect on these key elections. Now, as these candidates work to make sure all the votes that were able to be cast are all counted, it’s critical that we acknowledge and address the role that racism played in preventing many more people from participating. Racism, in the end, appears to have proven decisive.

Samuel Sinyangwe is an activist and data scientist focused on addressing racism and police violence in the United States through local, state, and federal advocacy. He is a co-founder of Campaign Zero, a national platform of data-driven policy solutions and advocacy tools to end police violence.

https://www.vox.com/first-person/2018/11/13/18092460/florida-georgia-abrams-gillum-elections-2018-counting-votes

Good Morning DianeR,

Al Gore turned out to be a total fraud.

I won't be home today....I'll try to check in tonight.

Enjoy another beautiful day!

Hi DianeR,

Just got home ...a good day!

Don't get me started on Moonbeam and the train to nowhere.

About the fires

https://www.sacbee.com/news/state/california/fires/article221594715.html

Came home to the Avanatti news..Ha Ha! I bet he even wants due process.

I still have stuff to do..so have a great evening ....till tomorrow!

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The Thom Hartmann Program 11/14/18 First Hour

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