Praise then darkness, and creation unfinished

The world is on fire, but after ICE murdered someone else in Minneapolis this morning, I called both my senators and also Chuck Schumer--I called him a coward and said we needed him to do better, giving my old Manhattan zip code. Apparently enough people made enough calls, and Schumer said an hour ago that Senate Democrats won't provide the votes for a funding bill that includes the Department of Homeland Security.

It seems likely that Alex Pritti's murder mattered to people who were prepared to overlook their murder of Renee Good, because it shows that while ICE is profoundly racist, a white man with a gun permit isn't safe either.

I can't do much for my friends in Minneapolis, but if there's something that would be useful, please ask.

ETA: After posting that, I realized I could afford to donate some money. So, I followed the links on Naomi Kritzer's recent post, donated $50 to Minnesota Rapid Response, and bought a bunch of dental floss to a group that was asking for that.

We went to the Boston anti-ICE demonstration today, one of many throughout the United States. Cattitude and I got there slightly after the nominal starting time, and managed about an hour before the cold got to me. Yes, it was above freezing and not windy, but standing still on a large open plaza is chillier than moving around. Adrian came to the demo with some of her comrades from Havurat Shalom, and arrived before we did. The crowd was large enough that we didn't try to find her until we were all preparing to leave.

It was a good-sized crowd, but the acoustics and sound system were abysmal; I could only make out a few scraps of what the speakers were saying.

I wore a winter coat, wool socks, and light-weight long underwear, which was too warm while we were on the trolley.

cattitude and I went to the No Kings rally on Boston Common. It was a large crowd, large enough that we couldn't really hear the speeches, but that's OK, we were there to be part of the crowd. I saw some good signs, including "Of course he hates veritas" and "America runs on dissent", for local flavor, and "No kings [large image of the One Ring with a slash through it] to rule them all." Almost all the signs were homemade, and different.

Happily, it was warm enough for me to unzip my hoodie and show off my Boston Dyke March T-shirt, and for other people to wear t-shirts, some of them more relevant than others. I was amused by the person in a football jersey: the local NFL team is called the New England Patriots.

There were also a bunch of inflatable animal costumes, including at least three chickens, a dinosaur, axolotls, an octopus, and a pink unicorn. The unicorn was blowing bubbles. I bought a T-shirt with a drawing of a frog and the word "resist."

The above paragraph would have made no sense a month ago, but we are living in weird as well as scary times, in which the administration apparently sees the Emergency World Naked Bike Ride as a threat.

Quoted in the Yale alumni magazine: "You know the world is going crazy when Yale alums are making donations to Harvard!"

(This Yale alum donates to the United Negro College Fund, because they need it more than Yale does.)

We went downtown for the Boston part of today's nationwide "hands off" protests. We arrived as people were walking from the Common toward Government Center, so we joined them there.

There were a lot of different signs, most of which looked home-made, a mix of general things like "Nobody elected Elon" and signs talking about a specific thing. Adrian made three signs: a simple "NO," "Peace, Love Freedom and a Hard-boiled egg"and one that said "Which Side Are They On?" [2] Some people were carrying or waving flags, mostly Pride (I saw both rainbow flags and Progress Pride flags) and American and Ukrainian flags.

There was enough organizing energy to do things like arrange for speakers and to use the big plaza near City Hall, and a somewhat chaotic mixture of chants and singing as we marched, including one verse of "We Shall Overcome." We left fairly early, while Sen. Markey was speaking; we were too far back to make out a lot of what he was saying."

I started running low on energy while Markey was speaking, so we left while other people were still arriving, but we were there long enough to be seen and help make the crowd larger. I timed it right, meaning I didn't run out of energy before we got home.

Yesterday I was guessing I wouldn't be able to go, because of either joint or GI issues, but I took pills before we left and crossed my fingers, and it worked.

I did most of this masked. I took my mask off when we got out of the T at Park Street, then put it back on because it ws dense crowd and not much breeze. I was pleasantly surprised to see some other people masking at the rally.

When I said I was tired of almost all my outings being medical, I was thinking about museums or seeing friends, but this is what needs doing.

[1] "Reasonably priced love" wouldn't work in this context.
[2] The union song that's based on asks "Which Side Are You On?"

I just posted to thisfinecrew about Republican efforts to take away funding for gender-affirming care, and the emails I sent senators and congresswoman:

https://thisfinecrew.dreamwidth.org/277983.html

The South Carolina Supreme Court has ruled that the state's six-week abortion ban is unconstitutional, because the state constitution explicitly protects the right to privacy.

The CBC website has an article, from the Associated Press, on a Georgia investigation of Trump's attempts to steal the election.

The Fulton County District Attorney has written to the state's governor, lieutenant governor, secretary of state, and attorney general to preserve all records relation to the election. (The Secretary of State is the person who was recorded telling Trump that no, he wasn't going to "find" him votes or otherwise change the election results.)

The DA's spokesperson doesn't explicitly name Trump, but did say "the matters reported on over the last several weeks are the matters being investigated." Also, the DA's letters say they "have no reason to believe that any Georgia official is a target of this investigation."

Meanwhile, here in Massachusetts, perennial losing candidate Shiva Ayyadurai is suing our secretary of state in federal court, demanding that he order Twitter to reinstate his account. No, that makes no more sense in context. In context, the state's lawyers have asked the judge to throw out that lawsuit, both because he's in the wrong court (the Eleventh Amendment* means he'd have to take this to a state court), and because he isn't suing Twitter and therefore the court couldn't order Twitter to do anything, even if his claims weren't nonsense.

*It's one of the obscure amendments, which sorted out some jurisdictional stuff early in US history. You didn't sleep through something important in history or civics class. The Eleventh Amendment sharply limits lawsuits against state governments (which is why the University of California, can get away with violating people's copyrights), and specifies that if one state sues another, over something like who owns Ellis Island, the case goes directly to the Supreme Court

This wasn't on my 2021 Bingo card: posting on File 770 that "I agree with Dann655. Dann showed up during the Sad Puppies/Hugo slate/etc. events, supporting the puppies, with the kind of politics that would imply. He stayed around and even talks about books once in a while, and today we are in agreement that insurrection is wrong, whether right- or left-wing.

The person in question has clarified that he's doing a both-sides-ism, as if Black Lives Matter protests were even a little like the fascist attempted coup last week.

So, the governor of Massachusetts has announced new limits on gathering sizes and how many people can be inside a place of business, which I think will accomplish little except unite everyone in thinking he got it wrong.

Maybe the lower occupancy limits will help a little, but: anything that was allowed to be open under the current restrictions is still allowed, including casinos and indoor dining in restaurants. Alao employees explicitly don't count toward the limits on occupancy for restaurants, hairdressers, and retail businesses (they do count toward the total if it's a library, driving school, or fitness center).

Oh, and hospitals have to halt "non-essential in-patient visits," but this does not include outpatient procedures, pediatric appointments, preventive screenings for cancer and other maladies, or ambulatory services.

So I'm sitting here thinking this isn't going to do any real good, in terms of saving lives or easing the pressure on hospitals and health care workers, but it is going to be hard on a lot of businesses.

I am honestly not sure whether Charlie Baker thinks this will make a difference, or whether he is trying and failing to find a compromise between public health and capitalism, knowing that a significant number of people will be angry no matter what he does.

The text of the order is here.