Migrant Children Being Kept in Appalling Conditions

[Content Note: Nativism; child abuse.]

The Trump Regime is abusing children. And with every new report we get about the conditions in which migrant children are being detained, it becomes more urgent that we raise relentless hell about the state-sanctioned torture of children being done under the auspices of "protecting" us.

The AP reports:

A legal team that recently interviewed over 60 children at a Border Patrol station in Texas says a traumatic and dangerous situation is unfolding for some 250 infants, children and teens locked up for up to 27 days without adequate food, water and sanitation.

A team of attorneys who recently visited the facility near El Paso told The Associated Press that three girls, ages 10 to 15, said they had been taking turns keeping watch over a sick 2-year-old boy because there was no one else to look after him.

When the lawyers saw the 2-year-old boy, he wasn't wearing a diaper and had wet his pants, and his shirt was smeared in mucus. They said at least 15 children at the facility had the flu, and some were kept in medical quarantine. Children told lawyers that they were fed uncooked frozen food or rice and had gone weeks without bathing or a clean change of clothes at the facility in Clint, in the desert scrubland some 25 miles southeast of El Paso.

"In my 22 years of doing visits with children in detention I have never heard of this level of inhumanity," said Holly Cooper, an attorney who represents detained youth. "Seeing our country at this crucible moment where we have forsaken children and failed to see them as human is hopefully a wake up for this country to move toward change."

The Flores settlement stipulates that children can be held by Border Patrol for no more than 72 hours before being transferred to the custody of Health and Human Services, but "many children interviewed by the lawyers said they were kept inside the facility near El Paso beyond 72 hours."

The Trump Regime justifies this violation of the law by saying that Border Patrol is overwhelmed, but they could simply stop separating and detaining families. Instead: "The Trump administration has been scrambling to find new space to hold immigrants as it faces withering criticism from Democrats that it's violating the human rights of migrant children by keeping so many of them detained."

Just yesterday, Dallas/Fort Worth reporter Jason Whitely reported: "Feds are opening a new camp in Texas for unaccompanied minors who are crossing the U.S./Mexico border. This one, just outside Carrizo Springs, Texas, will house more than 1,000 captured children."

Captured children.

The government cannot provide proper care to the children already in its custody, and they want to add 1,000 more. Because the neglect, the cruelty, the malice is the agenda. Harm is the objective.

MAKE YOUR CALLS. Resist.

Open Wide...

Shut Up!

You Are Not Alone

[Background image via Pixabay.]
If you are overwhelmed by the ruthless onslaught of the Trump Regime's malice that permeates the news every day—

If you are seized by sadness or rage at the ferocious sadism of their cruel agenda—

If you are feeling utterly impotent in trying to effectively counter any of the heinous attacks on vulnerable people that are coming ever more swiftly—

If you are disappointed in the people with power who are meant to take action they are refusing to take—

If you are stuck in a place with few like-minded allies, inundated instead with the hateful disgorgements of Republican cultists—

If you ache with heartbreak and indignation at the public celebrations of harm perpetrated on a mass scale—

If you wonder how the people designing and facilitating and defending that harm can live with themselves, and wonder equally how you can live with their actions being done in your name—

If you are drowning in a whirlpool of emotions so impenetrably oppressive that you can hardly tell where one ends and the next begins, as your anguish bleeds into your fury bleeds into your desperation bleeds into your fear—

If you are more frightened than you have ever been—

If you don't know from where your next bit of energy to stay engaged will come—

If you are battling intrusive thoughts that in turn battle each other for your focus, and your mind skips from election integrity to concentration camps to climate change to police violence to the erosion of abortion access to healthcare to this to that like a record spinning ceaselessly on a turntable you can't reach to quiet—

If you need to cry, or if you're already crying a lot—

If you need help—

If you don't know how you're supposed to keep doing the things that life obliges us to do every day when your country, our world, the entire planet seems to be falling into fascism—

If you are feeling hopeless—

If you are hanging on by your fingernails—

— know this: You are not alone.

We live in an era of official and pervasive gaslighting. There are people who want to tell you that you aren't seeing what you're seeing; that you don't have a legitimate reason to feel what you are feeling.

There are people who will insult you, harass you, threaten you for expressing the pain of the wounds being caused by this relentless trauma, in order to silence you. They will tell you that you are hysterical and weak.

There are people who insist, if you express the reverberating grief and anger bouncing around your insides like an unstoppable pinball, that you are overreacting; that you are oversensitive; that you are crazy.

You are none of these things.

You are empathetic and compassionate and willing to keep looking when others look away, because you care about other humans; because their lives matter to you.

You are strong and you are resisting and you are surviving.

And you are not alone.

[Related Reading: Malice Is His Agenda. Compassion Is Mine.]

Open Wide...

Shut Up!

The White House Attack on Jim Acosta Is Vile

[Content Note: Authoritarianism; misogyny.]

Yesterday, during Donald Trump's post-midterms press conference, CNN's Jim Acosta, who has been a regular target of Trump's ire, was dismissed and scolded by Trump when he asked about Special Counsel Bob Mueller's investigation and questioned Trump's incendiary language about the migrant caravan headed toward the southern border.

Trump sneered at Acosta: "That's enough. That's enough. That's enough. That's enough. That's enough. Put down the mic. CNN should be ashamed of itself having you working for them. You are a rude, terrible person. You shouldn't be working for CNN. You're a very rude person."

Acosta continued to try to ask his questions, as is his job, and a White House aide, a young woman, was sent over to him to try to grab the microphone away from him. He held onto it, persisting as Trump shouted at him that he'd had enough.

Later in the day, the White House announced that it was suspending Acosta's press pass "until further notice." In a statement, White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said he would be stripped of his "hard pass," which grants access to the White House grounds.

Sanders defended the decision by accusing Acosta of "placing his hands on a young woman just trying to do her job as a White House intern," which she added was "absolutely unacceptable."

This was, to be clear, an outright lie. The video clearly shows that Acosta did not "place his hands" on the woman who was trying to rip the microphone away from him, casting furtive glances at Trump the entire time she was doing it.

At one point, Acosta's hand does come in contact with her arm, but only because he was trying to get away from her as she was grabbing at the mic. It is clearly a defensive and accidental contact.

Sanders, however, was determined to make the case that Acosta assaulted the young woman, so she deployed doctored video, slowed down in that section, to make it appear as though Acosta is making a downward "chopping" motion.

1) Took @PressSec Sarah Sanders' video of briefing
2) Tinted red and made transparent over CSPAN video
3) Red motion is when they doctored video speed
4) Sped up to make Jim Acosta's motion look like a chop
5) I've edited video for 15+ years
6) The White House doctored it pic.twitter.com/q6arkYSx0V

— Rafael Shimunov 🔥 (@rafaelshimunov) November 8, 2018

The White House had this accusation and the doctored video ready to go alarmingly quickly — and as Leah McElrath noted on Twitter, "Within moments of Acosta asking his question at the presser this morning, hundreds of accounts began spamming multiple hashtags accusing him of assault."

The White House was quite evidently trying to set up Jim Acosta to accuse him of assault. When he didn't respond as anticipated (by a bunch of abusive men), they resorted to using doctored video to try to make it look like an assault.

Note that part of this plan was using a woman with the hope she'd be assaulted.

And we haven't heard anything from her.

The White House has asserted on multiple occasions (Trump, Corey Lewandowski, Rob Porter, Roy Moore, Brett Kavanaugh) that women who accuse men of assault are liars, being used by Democrats for political purposes. That's rank projection. Here they are, doing precisely what they accuse Democrats of doing.

(Also note that the "assault" the White House is saying Acosta made on their aide is almost exactly what Donald Trump actually did to reporter Alexi McCammond along the campaign trail in 2016.)

This was clearly a set-up. And it should terrify and enrage all of us that the White House is engaging in this sort of manipulation, propaganda, and personal attacks on journalists as the president's war on the free press continues to escalate.

And fuck everyone who is calling this "a distraction." This isn't a distraction. This is what life looks like under an authoritarian regime, and we had better damn well be paying attention.

Open Wide...

Shut Up!

The Trump Regime Is Still Harming Immigrant Children

[Content Note: Nativism; child abuse; reference to Holocaust.]

When Donald Trump signed an executive order on immigration in June, purportedly putting an end to family separations at the border, I wrote: "The truth is that Donald Trump, with the aid of the nativist scum in his administration and the complicit media, created a problem with the explicit intent of provoking protest that he could abuse to make himself look heroic while actually making a historically significant white supremacist move that will be a lasting shame on this nation."

My concern was that the executive order was actually an expansion of the administration's nativist policies, designed to appear as though it was fixing the problem of separating families and incarcerating infants and young children; that the purpose was to evade accountability and give the public an excuse to stop paying attention, as the administration quietly escalated its war on immigrants.

That is exactly what has happened.

At the New Yorker, Sarah Stillman highlights the ongoing atrocity by telling the story of one child: Five-year-old Helen, who fled Honduras with her grandmother, Noehmi, because the family had been threatened by gang violence. The bluntly titled "The Five-Year-Old Who Was Detained at the Border and Persuaded to Sign Away Her Rights" is a must-read in its entirety, but I have included an excerpt below which details how Trump's vile nativist agenda has flourished in and because of public inattention. Emphases are mine.

As the summer progressed with no signs of Helen's return, Noehmi and Jeny [Helen's mother, who had already established herself in the U.S. when her mother and daughter fled to the States] contacted LUPE, a nonprofit community union based in the Rio Grande Valley, to ask for help winning Helen's release. Founded by the famed activists César Chávez and Dolores Huerta in 1989, LUPE fights deportations, provides social services, and organizes civil mobilizations on behalf of more than eight thousand low-income members across south Texas; Jeny, employed as an office cleaner, was one such member. Tania Chavez, a strategy leader for the organization, met with the family to hear their story.

Helen's case didn't fit the typical LUPE mold. "Historically, we have served longtime residents of the Rio Grande Valley," Chavez told me, "but since this new surge of refugees came about, we've been on the front lines of advocacy against family separation." Freeing Helen struck Chavez as a tangible and urgent goal. "Right away, we said, 'How do we help this little girl?'" she said. As Chavez saw it, the girl's seizure by the government showed that the family-separation crisis hadn't been resolved, as many Americans believed — it had simply evolved.

The first stage of the family-separation crisis unfolded largely out of public view, not long after Trump took office. By January, 2018, when I began collecting the stories of parents who had been separated from their children at the border, the government denied that these separations were happening without clear justifications, and insisted that they weren't encouraged by official policy. In the late spring, the Secretary of Homeland Security, Kirstjen Nielsen, was still espousing this line, even as she ramped up "zero tolerance" prosecutions — criminally charging parents with "illegal entry," and seizing their kids in the process.

Stage two of the crisis unfolded in the national spotlight. As the number of separations soared past two thousand, and their wrenching details surfaced, hundreds of thousands of Americans protested in the streets. Laura Bush said that the practice broke her heart. The American Academy of Pediatrics denounced it as "abhorrent," noting that the approach could inflict long-term, irrevocable trauma on children. On June 20th, the President issued an executive order purporting to end the practice.

Now stage three has commenced — one in which separations are done quietly, LUPE's Tania Chavez asserts, and in which reunifications can be mysteriously stymied. According to recent Department of Justice numbers — released because of an ongoing A.C.L.U. lawsuit challenging family separations —a hundred and thirty-six children who fall within the lawsuit's scope are still in government custody. An uncounted number of separated children in shelters and foster care fall outside the lawsuit's current purview — including many like Helen, who arrived with a grandparent or other guardian, rather than with a parent. Many such children have been misclassified, in government paperwork, as "unaccompanied minors," due to a sloppy process that the Department of Homeland Security's Office of the Inspector General recently critiqued. Chavez believes that, through misclassification, many kids have largely disappeared from public view, and from official statistics, with the federal government showing little urgency to hasten reunifications. (O.R.R. and U.S. Customs and Border Protection did not respond to requests for comment.)

...Jess Morales Rocketto, of Families Belong Together, told me that Helen's reunion — the result of the first known public mobilization to free a specific kid from O.R.R. custody — holds lessons for a broader organizing effort. "One of the things Helen's story really showed us is that the Trump Administration never stopped separating children from their families," Morales Rocketto said. "In fact, they've doubled down, but it's even more insidious now, because they are doing it in the cover of night." She added, "We believe that there are more kids like Helen. We have learned we cannot take this Administration at their word."

This is a profound human rights crisis in which children are being systematically abused, and far too many people decided it no longer warranted their attention after a compulsive liar driven by malice put his name on a paper that he claimed solved the problem.

People wonder how it is that average German people could possibly claim they didn't know what was happening in the death camps in their country. Well, surely some of them were liars. And the rest simply weren't paying attention, because they didn't have to.

Talk about this. Amplify Helen's story. Make people uncomfortable. Make noise. RESIST.

Open Wide...

Shut Up!

The Lives of Women

[Content Note: Threat of sexual violence; abuse; misogyny.]

This morning, I read this Twitter moment in which a woman recounts her experience of being tricked and creeped-on and intimidated by a man who came to her house ostensibly to purchase an appliance.

It reminded me of the time a plumber came to my house and was thoroughly menacing, which I recounted in a thread:

This thread reminded me of the time a plumber kept trying to corner me in my bathroom, while I was showing him where the problem sink was. The flash of frustrated anger in his eyes when he realized there was a back door that I could slip through (and did).

Men often accuse women of jumping to the worst conclusions, but I kept trying to convince myself he was just "awkward" not creepy, even as he escalated. He complimented my tattoos, while leering at me. He kept talking about my hair. And then he started trying to corner me.

I honestly don't know what would have happened if there hadn't been another door in that bathroom, around a corner, which he hadn't yet seen. I could only get to it by allowing him to think he was cornering me, and it was terrifying.

After he was done with his work, he lingered in my kitchen, leaning on my counter, "doing paperwork." He kept looking around and finding things on which to comment, like the Hillary flyer on my fridge. (This was during the election.)

He talked shit about her. He liked Trump. He licked his lips. I tried to remain as jolly as fucking possible. By this point, my dog was at my side, just looking at him. He kept glancing at her. When I knew he was intimidated by her, I told him to wrap it up. "It's time to leave."

And when he finally left, I slumped in a heap, while the adrenaline drained from my body. I just sat on the floor in the entryway, with my dog lying across my lap, for a long time.

This, friends, was not the only bad/scary experience I've had with men coming to the house in a professional capacity while I'm home alone. It was just the most recent one.

This is something about which I would love to not have anxiety. But some number of men being inappropriate while in my home on a repair/delivery/maintenance job has made that impossible. Having dogs helps.

I knew I'd mentioned this story at Shakesville soon after it had happened, but that I had concealed the extent of it. I went back to find it: "He also stared at my boobs a lot, and commented on my tattoos. I smiled and I said thank you, and he used the excuse of trying to guess how old they were to stare at them a little longer. I made polite conversation, with my back to a closed door. Holding his gaze, like two people just happily chatting, I reached for the doorknob behind my back and held onto it, just in case."

The "just in case" actually happened, but I ended the story there. Like Hannah Gadsby in Nanette, confessing she had minimized a story of an anti-gay assault to make it a palatable joke.

Perhaps part of me was trying to make the story more palatable, but mostly I was trying to avoid precisely the response I got on Twitter today: "I hope that you reported him."

Because I didn't.

And I felt ashamed about that.

So I made it sound like something less bad had happened to me, so no one would blame me for not reporting him.

But I know that I shouldn't feel bad about that. I've tried reporting abusive men before. It has never gone well.

I reported rape to the police and to school authorities and to adults who were meant to protect me, and nothing happened, except that it made my rapist vengeful. I reported sexual harassment to an employer, only to have the only female veep side with the women and get forced out of the firm. I reported abusive repairmen to their boss, only to have him tell me that I was being a real bitch. I reported online threats to my life to federal authorities and was told to go to local police who told me to go to federal authorities. I report (only extreme) abuse on social media and get told more times than not that it doesn't violate the terms of service.

Et cetera ad infinitum.

Today, I replied: "I did not. Because: 1. He kept talking about coming back to my house, which felt menacing. 2. I have learned from experience that reporting a man for being creepy/inappropriate doesn't result in any real consequences for him. It just pisses off a man who knows where you live. I know some people will get angry at me, reading that. I will advise you to redirect your ire where it actually belongs: The institutions that repeatedly protect men when women do try to report them and expose those women to retributive harm. See: The latest SCOTUS battle."

The truth is, I did have to turn that handle and walk through that door to get away from a plumber who was scaring me. And the truth is, I did not report him, because I was scared he would come back if I did, since I have learned that reporting puts me at more risk and does not diminish the risk for other women.

What I did was tell everyone I know locally not to use that plumbing service, and tell them to pass it on. The whisper network. Because official channels don't save us. So we have to save each other.

Anyway. Here is a thread to talk about the things that have happened to you, and the stories you haven't told, or minimized when you did tell them, because you were afraid. Afraid of being hurt, and then afraid of being shamed.

If you need to.

Open Wide...

Shut Up!

How to Not Forget

[Content Note: Rape culture.]

Over the last weeks and months and years, survivors of sexual trauma have been telling our stories in the hopes of breaking open the silence around sexual violence and revealing the vast scope of the rape culture to those with the luxury of ignorance.

This is not the first time that survivors, predominantly women, have spoken out en masse about sexual harassment and sexual assault. To the contrary, survivors tell our stories publicly in a terrible cycle, recountings of our pain obliged by the denial and apologia around every new allegation against famous men, or a student athlete gang rape making the national news, or another conservative legislator saying something gross about rape, or a judge giving a paltry sentence to a sadist whose defense attorneys assure us he's a good boy who just made a mistake.

Over and over, we tell our stories, hoping this will be the time that sparks a seismic, lasting change.

But eventually, inevitably, we are told to "get over it," by the people who have been made uncomfortable by the sickening ubiquity of our stories and want to get back, as swiftly as possible, to the comfort of never doing a goddamn thing about the unfathomable scope of the harm that other people suffer.

Institutional forgetting is one of the rape culture's most reliable defenses.

Which is why I am heartened to have encountered this message everywhere the past few days, in the wake of Brett Kavanaugh's confirmation to the Supreme Court: We won't forget.

It is filled with meaning, that phrase of only three words. Surely, we shouldn't forget any of it — we should remember with lasting gratitude the heroics shown by Dr. Christine Blasey Ford and the other people who came forward, at steep personal cost, to share what they knew of Kavanaugh's many abuses; and we should forever remember the courage and strength of an overwhelming number of survivors who shared their stories in the futile hope of persuading indecent people to decency.

But it is directed, in this moment, primarily at the justice, the president who nominated him, and the senators who protected and voted for him.

We won't forget what you did.

It is a battle cry. It is the solemn vow of people who want to believe their votes still matter. It is a threat and a promise.

Some of the people saying it actually mean it.

They will remember the names of the senators who cast their votes for Kavanaugh, like Arya Stark remembers the names of the people who must die at her hand. They will remember them with a burning fury that fuels their commitment to the monumental task of removing these purveyors of malice from power, and simultaneously threatens to engulf them and reduce their own selves to ashes in the process.

I know what that feels like. I'm someone who decided not to forget a very long time ago.

There is a cost to not forgetting.

I don't say that as a discouragement, but as a warning. So that anyone new to not forgetting can make the necessary preparations.

So that you never, ever, let a moment pass in which you can do self-care. So that you never let slide by an opportunity to do whatever thing makes you feel incandescent joy. So that you resolve, right now, if you haven't before, to allow other people to care for you, to help carry your burden, to love you.

You're going to need them. Because there is a cost to not forgetting.

My best friend calls me the Lint Trap, because I remember everything. (Except for all the things I don't.) My memory is legendary among my friends, who celebrate like lotto winners when they remember something I don't, which always makes me laugh, because I have no control over and did not earn my strange ability to recall 20-year-old conversations nearly verbatim.

It is a gift. And it is a curse. And it is the thing that keeps me connected to the people about whom I write.

I have, in the fourteen years since I started this space, written a lot about people who have been victimized by sexual violence. There are 1,158 entries filed under the Today in Rape Culture label, and I only started using labels in 2009. I have written about a lot of survivors.

Most of the time, I'm writing about people I don't know. Sometimes, I don't even know their names, depending on whether the nature of the crime, or their age, or their continued peril, compels the press — or just me — to protect their anonymity.

I think of them often. I carry their stories with me, right alongside my own.

Very occasionally, I am contacted by the people about whom I've written, or members of their immediate family. It has, so far, always been to thank me for amplifying their stories; for taking up space, unequivocally, in solidarity with them. Sometimes they give me updates that make me grin and sometimes they give me updates that make me weep.

I cry a lot doing this work. It would be easier to forget.

But I want to remember them. And I do.

Not forgetting is always hard, but I will tell you this: It is easier to sustain not forgetting because you fiercely love survivors than because you hate politicians and judges.

Everyone who decides to not forget comes to that decision for a different reason. For me, doing this work is the only way I can give a reason to the things that happened to me — which I have to do, because I can't bear for them to have happened for no reason at all.

That doesn't mean I don't hate politicians and judges who treat survivors with sneering contempt. I do. I hate them with the fiery passion of ten thousand suns. I just love myself and my fellow survivors even more.

That sustains me. Find something that sustains you, too; that nourishes you in way vengeance alone cannot. You're going to need it.

Not forgetting lasts a very long time.

Open Wide...

Shut Up!

Monday Morning Reading on Trump's Nativist Abuse

[Content Note: Nativism; white supremacy; child abuse; violence.]

He said that “In the immigration context, the government has never taken a stand against the protection of kids in this country. For the first time, it is now formally taking a position that explicitly goes against the best interests of kids.”

— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) June 1, 2018

There is a whole lot of stuff I want to recommend today, so I'm going to link all of it here. Please feel welcome to share additional links in comments and use the thread for discussion of this subject broadly.

Miriam Jordan at the New York Times: 'I Can't Go Without My Son,' a Mother Pleaded as She Was Deported to Guatemala. "The Border Patrol was waiting as they made their way from the border on May 26, and soon mother and son were in a teeming detention center in southern Texas. The next part unfolded so swiftly that, even now, Ms. Ortiz cannot grasp it: Anthony was sent to a shelter for migrant children. And she was put on a plane back to Guatemala. 'I am completely devastated,' Ms. Ortiz, 25, said in one of a series of video interviews last week from her family home in Guatemala. Her eyes swollen from weeping and her voice subdued, she said she had no idea when or how she would see her son again."

Nomaan Merchant at the AP: Hundreds of Children Wait in Border Patrol Facility in Texas. "Inside an old warehouse in South Texas, hundreds of children wait in a series of cages created by metal fencing. One cage had 20 children inside. Scattered about are bottles of water, bags of chips, and large foil sheets intended to serve as blankets. One teenager told an advocate who visited that she was helping care for a young child she didn't know because the child's aunt was somewhere else in the facility. She said she had to show others in her cell how to change the girl's diaper."

I just went into the #Juarez Valley for the @TexasTribune to make photos, behind the border fence, of the #immigrant children who have been placed inside the new #tentcity at the CPB facility in #Tornillo. #BorderStories #OnAssignment pic.twitter.com/JmMevp4FUI

— Ivan Pierre Aguirre (@i_p_a_1) June 16, 2018

Nick Cumming-Bruce at the New York Times: U.N. Rights Chief Tells U.S. to Stop Taking Migrant Children from Parents. "United States immigration authorities have detained almost 2,000 children in the past six weeks, which may cause them irreparable harm with lifelong consequences, said Zeid Ra'ad al-Hussein, the United Nations high commissioner for human rights. He cited an observation by the president of the American Association of Pediatrics that locking the children up separately from their parents constituted 'government-sanctioned child abuse.' 'The thought that any state would seek to deter parents by inflicting such abuse on children is unconscionable,' Mr. al-Hussein said."

Nick Visser at the Huffington Post: DHS Secretary Says There's No Family Separation Policy 'Period'. "Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen defended her agency's role at the U.S. border with Mexico on Sunday, saying there was no family separation policy. 'This misreporting by members, press and advocacy groups must stop,' Nielsen wrote in a series of tweets Sunday evening. 'It is irresponsible and unproductive. As I have said many times before, if you are seeking asylum for your family, there is no reason to break the law and illegally cross between ports of entry. We do not have a policy of separating families at the border,' she continued. 'Period.'" That is just a rank lie.

Nicole Belle at Crooks & Liars: Where Are the Girls Being Detained by the Trump Administration? "ICE made detention centers available for the media to tour... MSNBC's Jacob Soboroff described it as de facto incarceration for minors who did nothing but come with their parents to escape violence and persecution in their home country. But here's the thing: I've poured over these reports. I've scoured the photos. I've looked at every publication and every news outlets reporting. Not. One. Covers. Girls. Being. Detained. Where are the girls?"

Molly Hennessy-Fiske at the L.A. Times: Texas Border Patrol Center Where Immigrant Families Are Separated Draws Lawmakers, Protest. "The 72,000-square-foot facility was clean and spare, with bare concrete floors. Uniformed agents, some wearing masks, observed from guard towers and escorted migrants down corridors. Lopez noted with pride that the 42 portable toilets did not smell, although they were open at the top, due to security concerns. The center's two massive rooms were separated into 22 chain link-fenced spaces, many labeled 'cells' with netting on top to prevent escapes. They're cleaned three times a day. Lopez said they used fencing because it was cheap and see-through."

Shane Harris, David Weigel, and Karoun Demirjian at the Washington Post: Democrats Intensify Fight for Immigrant Children. "Against a notable silence on the part of many Republicans who usually defend [Donald] Trump, Democratic lawmakers fanned out across the country, visiting a detention center outside New York City and heading to Texas to inspect facilities where children have been detained. ...Trump remained silent on the issue for most of the day Sunday before tweeting that Democrats should work with Republicans on an immigration solution before the election 'because you are going to lose!'"

Marlow Stern at the Daily Beast: John Oliver Exposes Trump's Lies About His Border Child Separation Policy.

"That's right: Thousands of children have been forcibly taken from their parents after a policy shift was put into action last month by U.S. attorney general — and least fun thing to find in a Kinder egg — Jeff Sessions," said Oliver. "Sessions basically started a policy of incarcerating people who crossed the border illegally knowing full well that that incarceration would mean they were separated from their children — many of whom are less than 10 years old with no clear plan as to when they might be reunited."

Despite Sessions, chief of staff John Kelly, and immigration "expert" Stephen Miller all defending the Trump administration's policy, with Miller recently telling The New York Times, "It was a simple decision by the administration to have a zero tolerance policy for illegal entry, period. The message is that no one is exempt from immigration law," [Donald] Trump has repeatedly attempted to blame the Democrats for his own policy.

"He's following laws, very simply, that were given to us and forced upon us by the Democrats. The Democrats gave us the laws," Trump told a press scrum Friday morning.

Cue Oliver: "Democrats did not give them these laws, because — and I cannot stress this enough — there is no law that suddenly required separating parents from their children. This is a result of a deliberate policy choice by Jeff Sessions."

Former First Lady Laura Bush at the Washington Post: Separating Children from Their Parents at the Border 'Breaks My Heart'. "I live in a border state. I appreciate the need to enforce and protect our international boundaries, but this zero-tolerance policy is cruel. It is immoral. And it breaks my heart. Our government should not be in the business of warehousing children in converted box stores or making plans to place them in tent cities in the desert outside of El Paso. These images are eerily reminiscent of the Japanese American internment camps of World War II, now considered to have been one of the most shameful episodes in U.S. history."

In response to Laura Bush's op-ed, I have seen some members of the press saying they can't recall a former First Lady criticizing a current administration (example), which is a stunning erasure of Hillary Clinton, and I have a thread on that starting here.

Charles M. Blow at the New York Times: Trump and the Baby Snatchers. "I can't imagine being forcibly separated from my children for any reason. And yet, this has become Trump's policy of persecution. Attorney General Jeff Sessions even had the gall to invoke one of the same Bible verses used to justify slavery to justify the current policy. Trump keeps lying about it, trying to distort reality and claim that the separations are a result of a 'law' made by the Democrats. ...Trump is lying, as he often does. This barbaric policy is an outgrowth of his own personal cruelty. It's absolutely reprehensible and an absolute reflection of him."

Staff at KABB/WOAI: 5 Dead After SUV Being Chased by Border Patrol Crashes. "Authorities said five undocumented immigrants are dead following a chase involving Border Patrol agents Sunday afternoon. Dimmit County Sheriff Marion Boyd said the crash happened off Highway 85 in Big Wells at about noon. Boyd said agents were chasing the SUV when it lost control and overturned. The vehicle was traveling at more than 100 miles per hour when it crashed. Fourteen people were inside, including the driver and passenger. Twelve immigrants were ejected and four died at the scene when the car crashed and rolled over, according to Boyd. A fifth person later died at the hospital. Boyd credited 'good police work' for the reason why deputies started pursuing the vehicle."

Gideon Resnick at the Daily Beast: Poll: Republicans Approve of Trump's Family Separation Policy. "The poll of roughly 1,000 adults aged 18 and over, and conducted June 14-15, asked respondents if they agreed with the following statement: 'It is appropriate to separate undocumented immigrant parents from their children when they cross the border in order to discourage others from crossing the border illegally.' Of those surveyed, 27 percent of the overall respondents agreed with it, while 56% disagreed with the statement. Yet, Republicans leaned slightly more in favor, with 46% agreeing with the statement and 32 percent disagreeing."

I am full of rage and grief.

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Department of Health and Human Services Considering Building a Tent City to Hold Thousands of Children

[Content Note: Nativism; child abuse.]

A month ago, we learned that the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has sent an email to Pentagon staffers, notifying them that the HHS would be making site visits to four military sites in Texas and Arkansas "to evaluate their suitability to shelter children."

It was a week after Attorney General Jeff Sessions had publicly threatened to forcibly separate undocumented families, to detain children separate from their parents, and to designate them "unaccompanied minors," even if they are actually not, as part of the Trump administration's new "zero tolerance" policy at the southern border.

The administration realized that policy would precipitously increase the number of children in HHS custody, and so it did: By the end of May, the number of "unaccompanied minors" in HHS custody surged by 21%, leaving HHS shelters at 95% capacity.

So earlier this month, we again heard that HHS was contemplating housing children they were forcibly separating from their parents at military sites.

Now Franco Ordoñez reports at McClatchy, Trump's Department of Health and Human Services is "looking to build tent cities at military posts around Texas to shelter the increasing number of unaccompanied migrant children being held in detention."

The Department of Health and Human Services will visit Fort Bliss, a sprawling Army base near El Paso in the coming weeks to look at a parcel of land where the administration is considering building a tent city to hold between 1,000 and 5,000 children, according to U.S. officials and other sources familiar with the plans.

...The Office of Refugee Resettlement at HHS is responsible for the care of more than 11,200 migrant children being held without a parent or guardian and must routinely evaluate the needs and capacity of approximately 100 shelters, which are now 95 percent full.

...Advocates accused the Trump administration of using the children as pawns to score political points.

"Detaining children for immigration purposes is never in their best interest and the prospect of detaining kids in tent cities is horrifying," said Clara Long, U.S. researcher at Human Rights Watch. "US authorities should focus on keeping families together, ensuring due process in asylum adjudications, and protecting the rights of children."

Instead, Trump has tasked Sessions and Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen with executing a policy that tears families apart, denies due process, and abuses children.

It is appallingly indecent that the United States government would even consider housing children in "tent cities" in the heat of the El Paso summer, which averages 95 degrees in July. Children are "more susceptible to heat illness than adults for many reasons, including a greater surface area to body mass ratio, lower rate of sweating, and slower rate of acclimatization. The prevention of heat illness is based on recognizing and modifying risk factors," like, presumably, not housing children in concentration camps in the El Paso heat.

Or anywhere else.

Trump's BFF Joe Arpaio, whom he pardoned last year, was the sheriff who ran a "tent city" — which he himself called a concentration camp — to house inmates in the Arizona desert for more than two decades. Here is how one former detainee in Arpaio's concentration camp describes the inhumane conditions:

During the sweltering summer, the temperature could reach 115 or 120 degrees. I was in the tents when we hit 120. It was impossible to stay cool in the oppressive heat. Everyone would strip down to their underwear. There was no cold water, only water from vending machines; and eventually, the machines would run out. People would faint; some had heatstroke. That summer, ambulances came about three times. One man died in his bed.

But the winter was even worse. During the winter, there were no heaters. Most jackets and heavily insulated pants weren't allowed; they don't want you to be comfortable.

When the temperatures dropped, we were forced to come up with makeshift ways to keep ourselves warm. The showers were kept scalding hot during both summer and winter. We hated to shower, but we would fill our empty water bottles up with the nearly boiling water and put the bottles between our blankets when it was freezing outside. We also would save the plastic bags we found when we cleaned up the jail yard and wrap our feet with them, tucking hot water bottles inside to keep our feet warm while we slept.

Still, it was freezing, achingly cold. I was in so much pain that winter that now, when I'm cold, it reminds me of being there.

These are the conditions to which the Trump administration wants to subject children that they have torn away from their parents to make a political point to shame asylum-seeking people who have committed no crime.

And what does the Republican Party, the party of moral values cough, have to offer these children in response to their imminent torture?

Silence.

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This Is What the Threat of Gun Violence in Schools Looks Like

[Content Note: Gun violence; terrorism; child abuse.]

Here are two things I saw this morning, each of them absolutely heartbreaking:

This should not be hanging in my soon-to-be-kindergartener’s classroom. pic.twitter.com/mWiJVdddpH

— Georgy Cohen (@radiofreegeorgy) June 6, 2018

If you're unable to view the image embedded in the tweet, it's a photo of a sign hanging on a chalkboard in an elementary school classroom with carefully printed text reading: "Lockdown, Lockdown / Lock the door / Shut the lights off / Say no more / Go behind the desk and hide / Wait until it's safe inside / Lockdown, Lockdown / It's all done / Now it's time to have some fun."

A song for tiny children to sing to the tune of "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" or the "Alphabet Song," because part of being a kindergarten teacher now is to teach your charges horrifying nightmare ditties that might save their wee lives.

And because part of being a child now is learning those ditties in case a man with a gun comes into your classroom to murder you.

This afternoon, I received text alerts from my kids' school that they were on lockdown. I thought you might like to know what happens, from the perspective of my 12yo. I just picked her up from school and she was rattled and full of adrenalin.

— Sarah Wine-Thyre 🇺🇸🏳️‍🌈 (@SarahThyre) June 6, 2018

was really scared and crying really hard. We thought we were going to die. I said just in case we die, let's remember all our good times. My BF and I sang our favorite song to each other."

— Sarah Wine-Thyre 🇺🇸🏳️‍🌈 (@SarahThyre) June 6, 2018

Sarah asks her daughter about what the song was, then returns to the lockdown, which lasted for 45 minutes. She asks if they were given updates during the ordeal. Her daughter tells her they weren't; it was very quiet while they were all "crammed together," until they heard helicopters overhead, at which point they feared the school might be bombed.

She tells her mother, "We've done drills but we knew this was for real. We were all sure we were going to die, Mom. I'm so glad we didn't die."

One more thing the 12yo said? "There was one spot where the blinds weren't down all the way and we kept staring at it expecting some man's face to look in and see us and come in and kill us. We couldn't stop staring at that window."
Horror in real life.

— Sarah Wine-Thyre 🇺🇸🏳️‍🌈 (@SarahThyre) June 6, 2018

This is the life that a significant portion of the population and virtually the entire governing party, including the sitting president and vice-president, have decided is acceptable for children in this nation.

I cannot begin to fathom the heart and mind of a person who finds any of that okay.

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WE MUST RESIST: Undocumented Immigrants Are the Canaries in Trump's Despotic Coal Mine

[Content Note: Nativism; white supremacy; eliminationism; child abuse; violence.]

Donald Trump did not invent terrible immigration policy. U.S. immigration policy has been broken for a very long time. But he has empowered and institutionalized a nativist, white supremacist, anti-immigrant agenda that I have long been warning will underwrite a targeting of U.S. citizens.

In January, the administration did the previously unthinkable: Revoked a naturalized citizen's citizenship, reverting him to a lawful permanent resident and potentially making him subject to deportation. Last week, a border patrol agent detained two women who are citizens and demanded to see ID because they were speaking Spanish in public. This week, the president suggested that that people who protest state violence (police killings) should be removed from the country.

I have said before and will keep saying: This administration's (mis)treatment of undocumented immigrants is their canary in the coal mine. The targeting of undocumented immigrants is intolerable on its face, but understand that whatever they are doing to undocumented immigrants, they will target others in the same way eventually. We must resist their nativist strategies not only because they are cruel and indecent and unjust, but also because if we fail to resist them, they will proliferate.

We cannot turn our backs on undocumented immigrants.

A month ago, PBS' Frontline did a major piece about how the Department of Health and Human Services lost track of over a thousand children, with some of the "unaccompanied minors" they "released to family or other sponsors" ending up in the hands of human traffickers. EJ Montini, an AZCentral columnist, picked up the story earlier this week, which subsequently resulted in a month-old piece in the New York Times being recirculated and getting lots of attention today.

This heinous story is notable not only for the depth of depravity the United States government is exhibiting toward undocumented children, but for how we must understand what it means in the context of a nativist agenda that is being used for a practice run for the treatment of any and all "undesirables" in the population under authoritarian leadership.

We are meant to not care about undocumented children, lost in a system. And that is why, in addition to the basic decency of protecting children, we must urgently care for them, and what is being done to them.

On Twitter, Yonatan Zunger has written a chilling but necessary thread on this story, detailing the breathtaking scope of the harm and what history tells us may come next. I encourage you to read the entire thread, which begins at the link, but following is an excerpt:

If anyone was wondering why people have been sounding the alarm so hard about the complete lack of legal accountability of police, "they can disappear children by the thousands and nobody can do anything about it" would be why.

— (((Yonatan Zunger))) (@yonatanzunger) May 25, 2018

So the current run rate is probably around 20,000 children per year. Trump, Kelly (who, remember, headed DHS for Trump before being his chief of staff), and Sessions have all been very clear that they intend to grow and expand the program.

— (((Yonatan Zunger))) (@yonatanzunger) May 25, 2018

Hi. We're going to do some serious fucking analysis of this, making real engineering estimates, the way that I promise you ICE is. This is not going to be pleasant, if you were somehow expecting that.

— (((Yonatan Zunger))) (@yonatanzunger) May 25, 2018

[...]

So you would need to set up some kinds of facilities where large numbers of children could be warehoused, under guard, until ultimately… well, that's an interesting question that we'll come to in a moment. But first, if they wanted to scale, they'd need warehousing. So:

— (((Yonatan Zunger))) (@yonatanzunger) May 25, 2018

[...]

If you want to understand how these things have worked in the past, and feel like not sleeping for the next week or more, look up "Volkswagen baby nursery." I'm not going to link it; even thinking about reading that again makes me feel ill.

— (((Yonatan Zunger))) (@yonatanzunger) May 25, 2018

All of this, against a backdrop of the Attorney General of the United States publicly threatening to forcibly separate undocumented families, to detain children separate from their parents. To make them "unaccompanied minors," even if they are actually not.

And such separations are already happening:

A weeping mother has been forced to wear a yellow insignia (bracelet) as she is ripped away from her children indefinitely.

In the United States. By policy.

Read this story.https://t.co/kUdogZ2B6L pic.twitter.com/vQ7XutNDiR

— Adam Klasfeld (@KlasfeldReports) May 25, 2018

Meanwhile, ICE is destroying records of the abuses, even deaths, that happen to people in their custody:

ICE Plans to Start Destroying Records of Immigrant Abuse, Including Sexual Assault and Deaths in Custody https://t.co/pPVzjHXvxD via @aclu

— Garance Franke-Ruta (@thegarance) May 25, 2018

All of this is documented. It is not conjecture. It is not conspiracy theory. It is what's happening. Undocumented families, some of whom have made lives in this country for decades, are being ripped apart. Children are being separated from their parents. Children are being "lost" by the thousands. Records of mistreatment are being destroyed. The government is exploring larger detention facilities.


That is a photo of children "assigned to living areas separated by tall chain-linked fences and segregated by age and gender" — or, more honestly, children being kept in what looks like fucking dog kennels — in a detention center in Nogales, Arizona, where hundreds of children were being kept. And that photo is from 2014 — two years before Donald Trump assumed control of the presidency.

That's what our treatment of undocumented children looked like already under Obama. And now policy is being set by a president whose base doesn't believe this country should accept refugees, who himself calls undocumented immigrants "animals", and who thinks that demonizing Latinx people is a great joke.

During an Oval Office meeting last February, Trump acted as if he was at a rally, making up Hispanic names and noting crimes they might have committed -- saying the crowd would roar for deportations. Jared Kushner and Stephen Miller laughed. https://t.co/3rLF1J73q4 pic.twitter.com/N9SqiJkg1d

— Josh Dawsey (@jdawsey1) May 25, 2018

As Aphra_Behn noted yesterday, those of us "who are pointing out similarities between what's going on here and other authoritarian, racist regimes are trying to jolt people out of the Dream of American Exceptionalism."

It's not even that it could happen here. It is.

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NY AG Schneiderman Accused of Assault; Resigns

[Content Note: Descriptions of assault.]

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, who has doggedly pursued Harvey Weinstein and Donald Trump, among others, was accused last night by four women of assault.

Jane Mayer and Ronan Farrow at the New Yorker report:

As his prominence as a voice against sexual misconduct has risen, so, too, has the distress of four women with whom he has had romantic relationships or encounters. They accuse Schneiderman of having subjected them to nonconsensual physical violence. All have been reluctant to speak out, fearing reprisal.

But two of the women, Michelle Manning Barish and Tanya Selvaratnam, have talked to The New Yorker on the record, because they feel that doing so could protect other women. They allege that he repeatedly hit them, often after drinking, frequently in bed and never with their consent. Manning Barish and Selvaratnam categorize the abuse he inflicted on them as "assault."

They did not report their allegations to the police at the time, but both say that they eventually sought medical attention after having been slapped hard across the ear and face, and also choked. Selvaratnam says that Schneiderman warned her he could have her followed and her phones tapped, and both say that he threatened to kill them if they broke up with him. (Schneiderman's spokesperson said that he "never made any of these threats.")

A third former romantic partner of Schneiderman's told Manning Barish and Selvaratnam that he also repeatedly subjected her to nonconsensual physical violence, but she told them that she is too frightened of him to come forward. (The New Yorker has independently vetted the accounts that they gave of her allegations.)

A fourth woman, an attorney who has held prominent positions in the New York legal community, says that Schneiderman made an advance toward her; when she rebuffed him, he slapped her across the face with such force that it left a mark that lingered the next day. She recalls screaming in surprise and pain, and beginning to cry, and says that she felt frightened. She has asked to remain unidentified, but shared a photograph of the injury with The New Yorker.

In a statement, Schneiderman said, "In the privacy of intimate relationships, I have engaged in role-playing and other consensual sexual activity. I have not assaulted anyone. I have never engaged in nonconsensual sex, which is a line I would not cross."

As Andi Zeisler noted on Twitter: "This shouldn't even need to be said but: Kink is a two-way street. It's not just whatever you decide it is." Exactly so.

Schneiderman resigned after publication of the allegations last night, issuing a brief statement: "While these allegations are unrelated to my professional conduct or the operations of the office, they will effectively prevent me from leading the office's work at this critical time. I therefore resign my office, effective at the close of business on May 8, 2018."

The old "these false allegations have become a distraction" chestnut. Oh.

Schneiderman is the latest in a long line of liberal men who have publicly championed women's rights and safety while privately harming women, including fellow New York public servants Eliot Spitzer and Anthony Weiner.

It is profoundly disappointing that yet another man who invited women to trust him betrayed that trust.

I'm having a lot of thoughts about this. Among them are: GODDAMMIT. And: We can't trust men to fix this. And: The fact that this is coming out at the same time as the Black Cube stuff seems like a message: We've got dirt. We'll release it. https://t.co/WjR3WfGMeK

— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) May 7, 2018

Anyone who positions themselves as a pursuer of Donald Trump and/or his family and/or his associates has to be a better person than Trump. If they can't even manage even that low bar, they need to get the fuck out of the way for people who can.

I take up space in solidarity with Schneiderman's victims.

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The Jobs Automation SHOULD Take

[Content Note: Child abuse and neglect; exploitation; death from addiction.]

This piece about Brad Renfro by Adam B. Vary for BuzzFeed is heartbreaking: "Hollywood Wanted an Edgy Child Actor. When He Spiraled, They Couldn't Help."

Couldn't or wouldn't. Either way: Didn't.

As I was reading the piece, I thought of the many times I've seen child actors doing things in films that made me worry for them; made me wonder who was looking out for them.

And, not for the first time, I thought about how it is now possible, through the magic of advanced CGI, for an adult to play any role in a green suit and be replaced post-production with a conjured digital character and a voiceover.

There is quite literally no need for onscreen child actors anymore. There is no reason to endanger children, or ask them to do work to which they truly cannot fully consent, no matter how much they insist they want to do it. And we have plenty of evidence that child actors who survive the industry to adulthood in one piece are the exception, not the rule.

We don't require child laborers in the film industry anymore. As far as I can see, these are jobs that we should eagerly allow automation to render obsolete.

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Junot Diaz Accused of Sexual Assault

[Content Note: Sexual assault/harassment.]

Last month, writer Junot Diaz wrote a widely-shared piece for the New Yorker about having survived childhood sexual violence. I linked the piece here, without comment, because I thought it was an important piece, but I also struggled with what I thought was suggestion, without acknowledgment, that Diaz had been sexually abusive himself in his adulthood.

And, unfortunately, my suspicions were correct.

As a grad student, I invited Junot Diaz to speak to a workshop on issues of representation in literature. I was an unknown wide-eyed 26 yo, and he used it as an opportunity to corner and forcibly kiss me. I'm far from the only one he's done this 2, I refuse to be silent anymore.

— zinziclemmons (@zinziclemmons) May 4, 2018

Many people will be quick to make the point that survivors of childhood abuse sometimes abuse others, because they have been entrained to regard abuse as normal. This is a true thing. But.

Most survivors of sexual violence don't violate other people. And those who do are still responsible for their own harmful actions, even if their abusers are simultaneously responsible for the reverberating harm they caused.

And Diaz did not own his assault(s) in his piece. That is a critical point. To the contrary, there is now the appearance that he confessed his own abuse as a preemptive deflection of accusations against him he may have rightly suspected were imminent.

Indeed, when Bina Shah asked, "Do you think he was trying to pre-empt this from coming out with the essay he wrote in the New Yorker about being raped as a child? Like Kevin Spacey's 'I'm gay' diversion?", Zinzi Clemmons replied frankly: "Yes. And so do many of my colleagues."

That preemption also, of course, created a context in which his victims now have to face all the regular blowback faced by any person publicly alleging abuse against a prominent figure, and additionally will have to weather the criticism of levying allegations against someone who is himself a victim.

Which brings me to this: I take up space in solidarity with Clemmons, and the others, those who will tell their stories and those who won't, who were victimized by Diaz. I am so desperately sorry he was abused; I am so angry he abused others.

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"It Was This Zoo, This Complete S--tshow."

[Content Note: Sexual harassment. Video may autoplay at link.]

My friend Jessica Luther has been working on this Sports Illustrated piece with Jon Wertheim for months, and I hope you will take the time to read it, because it is terrific, difficult to read, and extremely necessary: "Inside the Corrosive Workplace Culture of the Dallas Mavericks."

It's important for a number of reasons, primarily that the women who, in some cases, spent years being harassed and denied both safety and justice, are being heard and believed by reporters who are amplifying their voices.

Another reason is because the Dallas Mavericks' owner, Mark Cuban, has political aspirations. And he did not handle this situation well, to put it mildly.

It's difficult to believe he had no idea what was going on in the executive offices of a team with which he has routinely bragged about being hands-on, but even if we take his account at face value, there are serious problems:

Reached by SI on Monday, Cuban expressed embarrassment and horror at the accusations—but insisted he had no knowledge of the corrosive culture in his offices. "This is all new to me," he said. "The only awareness I have is because I heard you guys were looking into some things… Based off of what I've read here, we just fired our HR person. I don't have any tolerance for what I've read."

Cuban continued in an emotional response: "It's wrong. It's abhorrent. It's not a situation we condone. I can't tell you how many times, particularly since all this [#MeToo] stuff has been coming out recently I asked our HR director, 'Do we have a problem? Do we have any issues I have to be aware of?' And the answer was no."

Pressed on how it is that a proudly hyperattentive owner could be so oblivious, Cuban said, "I deferred to the CEO, who at the time was Terdema, and to HR… I was involved in basketball operations, but other than getting the financials and reports, I was not involved in the day to day [of the business side] at all. That's why I just deferred. I let people do their jobs. And if there were anything like this at all I was supposed to be made aware, obviously I was not."

So, if we believe that (unbelievable) version of events, here's the problem: The CEO was, by all accounts, the worst offender.

Cuban is trying to pass responsibility onto his CEO and to the HR manager, the former of whom sexually harassed and groped female employees and the latter of whom created a hostile workplace environment by sending out homophobic and anti-choice emails.

He put his trust in untrustworthy men.

And then he relied on their takes when he asked if there were "any issues" he should be aware of, given all of the sexual harassment "stuff" being publicly discussed recently.

First, sexual harassment isn't new. That's something about which the owner of a male-dominated company should have been concerned long before now.

Secondly, and most importantly, a culture of harassment is concealed from the top down. If Cuban was seriously concerned about whether there was a culture of abuse at his company, the people to whom he should have been speaking were the women who worked for him, particularly in the lower levels of the corporate hierarchy.

"I just deferred. I let people do their jobs." Except they weren't doing their jobs, and they were harming women. And it would have been incredibly easy to find that out. But Cuban never bothered speaking to the women who worked for him.

I am very glad that Jessica Luther and Jon Wertheim did. I suspect the women are, too.

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The White House Knew About Rob Porter's Abuse

[Content Note: Domestic violence; images of injuries at link.]

White House Staff Secretary Rob Porter has resigned, following reports that he had emotionally and physically abused two ex-wives. But, before he resigned, the White House was vigorously defending him — and it wasn't because they didn't know about his history; it was because they did, and didn't care.

Lachlan Markay and Asawin Suebsaeng at the Daily Beast report:

The saga began with a Daily Mail piece published on Tuesday evening that reported on allegations of routine domestic abuse by Porter's first wife, Colbie Holderness. "He was verbally, emotionally and physically abusive and that is why I left," she told the Mail... "He was angry because we weren't having sex when he wanted to have sex and he kicked me," Holderness recalled...

In a separate story, the Daily Mail reported that Porter's second wife, Jennifer Willoughby, said she was "walking on eggshells" during their marriage due to Porter's short temper.

High-ranking White House officials and other Republicans lined up to defend Porter in the face of the allegations. The Daily Mail's first story ran on-the-record remarks from chief of staff John Kelly, press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, and Sen. Orrin Hatch praising Porter's character and professional reputation.

John Kelly was particularly effusive: "Rob Porter is a man of true integrity and honor and I can't say enough good things about him. He is a friend, a confidante, and a trusted professional. I am proud to serve alongside him." And then pictures surfaced of Porter's ex-wife, with bruises on her face.

But now we know that only informed the public of what the White House, including Kelly, already knew.

[CN: Video may autoplay at link] Kaitlan Collins, Kevin Liptak, and Dan Merica at CNN: White House Officials Knew About Porter's Abuse Allegations and Scrambled to Protect Him.

Senior aides to [Donald] Trump knew for months about allegations of domestic abuse levied against top White House staffer Rob Porter by his ex-wives, even as Porter's stock in the West Wing continued to rise, multiple sources told CNN on Wednesday.

...Porter's ex-wives detailed the allegations to the FBI over the course of a routine background check, they told CNN's MJ Lee on Wednesday. A year into the administration, Porter does not hold a security clearance.

By early fall, it was widely known among Trump's top aides — including chief of staff John Kelly — both that Porter was facing troubles in obtaining the clearance and that his ex-wives claimed he had abused them. No action was taken to remove him from the staff.

Instead, Kelly and others oversaw an elevation in Porter's standing.

Nonetheless, Kelly claimed last night to have just learned of the allegations: "In a statement released Wednesday evening, Kelly said he was 'shocked' by the 'new allegations' against Porter." And anonymous sources are leaking that "Trump himself first learned of the allegations this week."

And, in typical fashion, Mike Pence is claiming he only just learned of the allegations, but some savvy reporter is finally catchin on to Pence's babe-in-the-woods routine:

Pence in Tokyo said he’d just learned about the allegations of domestic abuse against Rob Porter this morning. He declined to answer a follow up about why he often seems out of the loop when it comes to controversial White House staff news.

— Ashley Parker (@AshleyRParker) February 8, 2018

The facts are these: There was a man who abused at least two women working for the White House. The White House knew. And they promoted and defended him until public awareness of his indecency made it impossible for them to continue to defend him.

This should end John Kelly's tenure at the White House. Just for a start.

And this episode is yet another reminder to women across this nation that their president does not care about us. Not that we could ever forget.

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Quentin Tarantino Is an Abusive, Disgusting Person

[Content Note: Violence; abuse; rape apologia.]

You may recall that in January 10th's We Resist thread, I linked to a piece at Deadline by Mike Fleming Jr, in which he wrote that he was giving space to the actor Michael Douglas, who'd been accused of sexual harassment, to get ahead of the allegations because: "The accusation story will most likely follow elsewhere, but in this moment of 'she said, he said' trial by journalism, it was never specified whose version had to be first. So here, Douglas states his case."

Fleming is carving quite the niche for himself, as he's now given space to Quentin Tarantino to tell "his side" of the story told by Uma Thurman. Explains Fleming this time: "I offered Tarantino the opportunity to clarify because at this moment, stories get written and then picked up across the globe, often getting twisted to suit convenient narratives in this #MeToo moment."

That Fleming believes stories women tell about being harassed and/or assaulted by men are shaped into narratives that are "convenient" for anyone pretty much tells you everything you need to know about the dude's motives, as does the fact that he doesn't believe that it's a legitimately "convenient narrative" for Tarantino to argue, at distressing length, that the reason he needs to personally spit on and choke the women in his movies because otherwise it won't look authentic.

That's exactly what a "convenient narrative" to excuse assault under the auspices of auteurism looks like.

In sum: Quentin Tarantino gave an interview designed to discredit Uma Thurman, to a man with an apparent agenda to discredit all women who are speaking out against men in the film industry. And the interview was published under the headline: "Quentin Tarantino Explains Everything: Uma Thurman, the Kill Bill Crash, & Harvey Weinstein."

Uma Thurman told her story, but now Tarantino "explains everything," the implication being that Thurman's account cannot be trusted.

The thing is, a careful reading of Tarantino's account confirms that he is indeed the abusive manipulator he has been alleged to be.

Tarantino claims, for instance, that he didn't have to bully Thurman into the driving stunt which ultimately resulted in an injurious crash:

I start hearing from the production manager, Bennett Walsh, that Uma is trepidatious about doing the driving shot. None of us ever considered it a stunt. It was just driving. None of us looked at it as a stunt. Maybe we should have, but we didn't. I'm sure when it was brought up to me, that I rolled my eyes and was irritated. But I'm sure I wasn't in a rage and I wasn't livid. I didn't go barging into Uma's trailer, screaming at her to get into the car. I can imagine maybe rolling my eyes and thinking, we spent all this money taking this stick shift Karmann Ghia and changing the transmission, just for this shot.

He pointedly notes that he "wasn't in a rage" and "wasn't livid" and didn't scream at her. Which, of course, is not what Thurman alleged. What she said was: "Quentin came in my trailer and didn't like to hear no, like any director. He was furious because I'd cost them a lot of time. But I was scared. He said: 'I promise you the car is fine. It's a straight piece of road.'" Tarantino, in Thurman's telling, "persuaded her to do it."

Which is exactly what Tarantino admits, after he creates the strawman of his flying into a rage, only to knock that strawman down. In fact, he repeatedly states that he used charm, not anger, to coerce her into driving the car. As Thurman said, he persuaded her — and he did it by exploiting the fact that she trusted him.

He is so delighted with how he convinced her to do something she explicitly said she did not want to do, something that ultimately resulted in her being seriously injured, that he boasts about how he did it, over and over:

Anyone who knows Uma knows that going into her trailer, and screaming at her to do something is not the way to get her to do something. That's a bad tactic and I'd been shooting the movie with her for an entire year by this time. I would never react to her this way.

...Far from me being mad, livid and angry, I was all…smiley. I said, Oh, Uma, it's just fine. You can totally do this. It's just a straight line, that's all it is. You get in the car at [point] number one, and drive to number two and you're all good.

...I came in there all happy telling her she could totally do it, it was a straight line, you will have no problem. Uma's response was…"Okay." Because she believed me. Because she trusted me. I told her it would be okay. I told her the road was a straight line. I told her it would be safe. And it wasn't. I was wrong. I didn't force her into the car. She got into it because she trusted me. And she believed me.

So, it's decided she would get in the car.

He is literally just bragging about being such a savvy manipulator that he didn't even have to "force her."

This is not an apology. It the slavering confession of an abuser who delights in hurting women.

* * *

What we now know about Quentin Tarantino — in addition to the fact that he has made a career out of making films inordinately preoccupied with sexual violence and torture, in which he has himself played a rapist twice — is that he:

1. Has choked two actresses onscreen (Uma Thurman and Diane Kruger), and spit on one of them (Thurman) as well.

2. Convinced Thurman to get into a car against her will, in which she was ultimately hurt, and now says of the horrendous footage he finally gave her after 15 years: "See, all that is old news. I saw the footage when I found it. Seeing it in the article didn't do anything."

3. Is making a film about the Manson murders, in which Roman Polanski will play a central character.

4. Once defended Polanski's rape of a 13-year-old girl, on a 2003 episode of the Howard Stern Show.

Asked by Stern why Hollywood embraces "this mad man, this director who raped a 13-year-old," Tarantino replied:

"He didn't rape a 13-year-old. It was statutory rape...he had sex with a minor. That's not rape. To me, when you use the word rape, you're talking about violent, throwing them down—it's like one of the most violent crimes in the world. You can't throw the word rape around. It's like throwing the word 'racist' around. It doesn't apply to everything people use it for."

Reminded by Robin Quivers that Polanski's victim—who had been plied with quaaludes and alcohol before her assault—did not want to have sex with Polanski, Tarantino became riled up.

Tarantino: No, that was not the case AT ALL. She wanted to have it and dated the guy and—

Quivers: She was 13!

Tarantino: And by the way, we're talking about America's morals, not talking about the morals in Europe and everything.

Stern: Wait a minute. If you have sex with a 13-year-old girl and you're a grown man, you know that that's wrong.

Quivers: ...giving her booze and pills...

Tarantino: Look, she was down with this.

We have now a very clear picture of who Quentin Tarantino is. He is an abusive, disgusting person. A dangerous person.

And to anyone who would argue that we shouldn't cancel Tarantino just for the art he makes or the opinions he holds, because, after all, he hasn't hurt anyone, I would remind them that he sure as fuck has.

I felt this searing pain and thought, 'Oh my god, I'm never going to walk again.'

Open Wide...

Shut Up!

Uma Thurman Speaks Out on Weinstein, Tarantino

[Content Note: Sexual harassment and assault; coercion; injury; strangulation.]

Three months ago, Uma Thurman, who worked closely with both Harvey Weinstein and Quentin Tarantino, was asked her thoughts on women in the film industry speaking out about sexual harassment and assault. She gave a cryptic but compelling answer, with a clenched jaw.

Female reporter, offscreen: In light of recent news, uh — Gwyneth has spoken out; Angelina has spoken out; you're such a powerful woman in film. What are your thoughts about speaking out about inappropriate behavior in the workplace?

Thurman: Umm. I think it's commendable. And, uhhh. [she pauses; looks as though she's choosing her words very carefully] I don't have a tidy soundbite for you. [glances directly into camera] Because, I have learned — I am not a child — and I have learned that, when I've spoken [clenches teeth] in anger, I usually regret the way I express myself. [takes breath] So I've been waiting to feel less angry. And when I'm ready, I'll say what I have to say. [nods firmly]

Reporter: Thank you so much.

Thurman: Thank you.

Uma Thurman is ready. And she said what she has to say to Maureen Dowd at the New York Times: "This Is Why Uma Thurman Is Angry." It is a lot to take in. There is a lot about Harvey Weinstein; there is even more about Quentin Tarantino, whose career is inextricably linked to Weinstein, and who evidently shares his contempt for women's agency and safety, though it manifests in different ways.

At least what we know of it. Which now includes a story of coercing Thurman to get behind the wheel of an unsafe car onset, which resulted in a crash in which she was injured, and video of which Tarantino refused to release to her for 15 years.

Everything about this is difficult to read, and the video is horrible to watch. I can't stop thinking about how we were sold this narrative about Uma Thurman being Tarantino's "muse," and how often "muse" seems to serve as cover for all manner of abuse. https://t.co/DgSaOohLdk

— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) February 3, 2018

Also: I was troubled by Tarantino even before Uma Thurman's interview, but the fact that she's now the second woman (+ Diane Kruger) to say Tarantino choked her on set is scary, as we know that strangulation is the primary indicator that domestic violence will escalate to murder.

— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) February 4, 2018

Women who have worked with Tarantino are sharing major warning signs. I hope studios, and insurers, are listening.

— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) February 4, 2018

There is simply no way this man should be given exorbitant amounts of money and virtually unregulated power over women to continue to make films fetishizing sexual violence and torture.

Instead, he is being given precisely that to make his next film about the Manson murders, in which Roman Polanski will play a central character.

I couldn't make that up if I tried.

I take up space in solidarity with Uma Thurman. I am grateful for her voice, and for her anger.

Open Wide...

Shut Up!

Garrison Keillor Is Also a Liar

[Content Note: Sexual harassment and assault.]

Here is a thing that was true yesterday, is true today, and will be true tomorrow: People who sexually harass and/or assault other people lie about it.

They might lie by denying altogether having done the thing(s) of which they are accused, but, they are equally, if not more, likely to lie about something of which they are accused by minimizing its gravity.

Remember: No one is more intimately familiar with the rape culture, and how to exploit it to their advantage, than someone who wants to commit sexual harassment and/or assault.

And one of the ways they exploit it is avoiding outright denials in favor of conceding that something happened, but that it was either consensual or no big deal, thus framing their accuser as vengeful, oversensitive, mistaken, and/or lying.

All of which the rape culture has already entrained us to believe about accusers. Especially female accusers.

By confessing to something "awkward" or "misunderstood," but by no means criminal, the sexual harasser and/or assaulter positions themself as the honest one — because people inclined to afford them the benefit of the doubt will eagerly believe that a truly guilty person would deny anything happened at all.

Why confess to anything? the people who want to extend good faith to accused abusers will wonder, answering their own question in its very asking.

Which brings me to Garrison Keillor, a textbook case in the dynamic I'm describing.

When Keillor was sacked in November, for unspecified "sexual misconduct," he sent an email to Minneapolis Star Tribune in which he described his offense thus: "I put my hand on a woman's bare back. I meant to pat her back after she told me about her unhappiness and her shirt was open and my hand went up it about six inches. She recoiled. I apologized. I sent her an email of apology later and she replied that she had forgiven me and not to think about it. We were friends. We continued to be friendly right up until her lawyer called."

He was just consoling a friend. It was an accident for which he apologized multiple times. She assured him it was no big deal, until that bitch called an attorney.

That was his version of events. Minnesota Public Radio's investigation has somewhat different findings, ahem.

MPR News has interviewed more than 60 people who worked with or crossed professional paths with Keillor. Most spoke on the condition of anonymity because they still work in the industry or feared repercussions from Keillor or his attorneys.

The revelations create a portrait of Keillor more complicated than that of the folksy, avuncular storyteller whose brand of humor appealed to millions of listeners. They suggest a star who seemed heedless of the power imbalance that gave him an advantage in his relationships with younger women. They also raise questions about whether the company knew enough — or should have known enough — to stop the behavior of the personality who drove much of its success.

...In an interview with MPR News Tuesday afternoon, [Jon McTaggart, president and CEO of MPR and American Public Media Group] said the company's separation of business interests from Keillor came after it received allegations of "dozens" of sexually inappropriate incidents involving Keillor and a woman who worked for him on A Prairie Home Companion. He said the allegations included requests for sexual contact and descriptions of unwanted sexual touching.

The investigation found "a years-long pattern of behavior that left several women who worked for Keillor feeling mistreated, sexualized, or belittled." It did not find that Keillor accidentally put his hand on a woman's bare back and that she is a vindictive hysteric who decided to report him to a company that subsequently fired him for no reason.

Sexual harassers and assaulters lie. That is what they do. And the reason they do it is to recruit their fans or friends or random folks into being their co-conspirators.

Failing to believe victims abets abuse. So does believing abusers when they lie.

Open Wide...

Shut Up!