Or if you really want to be scared, visit 3 Quarks Daily to read Abbas’s story of being arrested at JFK airport for beating himself up several years before. It should give pause to people who think that legal representation for suspected criminals is a sign of bleeding-heart weakness. Not, apparently, that being represented by a public defender is any better than simply throwing yourself on the mercy of the court.

A tribute* to Rosa Parks by Jim Leftwich:

-cvj

(*spotted on Boing Boing.)

Rosa Parks died today (24th October), at age 92. By her actions, she helped accelerate the modern civil rights movement in America, and her protests directly made the world a better place in which to live. We are all the richer because of her courage.

Here is a BBC article on the news, and here is an interesting Wikipedia entry for her.

Thank you so very very much, Rosa Parks. You will live forever in our hearts and minds – and in our actions every time we fight against the odds for what is right.

-cvj

AMERICAblog has a good post about Target‘s email response to a complaint that one of their pharmacists has refused to fill a prescription for emergency contraception (EC). Here’s the email from Target

From: Target.Response Target.Response@target.com
Date: Oct 20, 2005 7:18 AM
Subject: Filling Prescriptions at Target

Dear Target Guest,

Target places a high priority on our role as a community pharmacy and our obligation to meet the needs of the patients we serve. We expect all our team members, including our pharmacists, to provide respectful service to our guests, particularly when it comes to their health care needs.

Like many other retailers, Target has a policy that ensures a guest’s prescription for emergency contraception is filled, whether at Target or at a different pharmacy, in a timely and respectful manner. This policy meets the health care needs of our guests while respecting the diversity of our team members.

Your thoughts help us learn more about what our guests expect, so I’ll be sure to share your feedback with our pharmacy executives.

Thanks for taking the time to share your questions, thoughts and comments. I hope we’ll see you again soon at Target.

Sincerely,

Jennifer Hanson
Target Executive Offices

I’ve written before about this kind of nonsense. My Orange Quark post began

A pharmacist in California refuses to fill the prescriptions of AIDS sufferers, because that would be interfering with God’s plans for gays. Another pharmacist, in Michigan, won’t provide arthritis medication, because gnarled hands are God’s way of stopping masturbation. A third pharmacist, in Florida, refuses to fill Viagra prescriptions, because, after their child-bearing years are over, God does not intend women to have to put up with the advances of their wrinkly old husbands.

whereas AMERICAblog has their own examples of equally ridiculous possibilities that would seem to be consistent with paying pharmacists not to do their jobs.

It’s just a gut feeling, but I would guess that there are many more readers of this blog who might occasionally shop at Target than at, say, Walmart (Don’t ask me why – maybe it’s the Michael Graves collection – I don’t know). If so, then this is a real opportunity to make a difference. If you get a chance, follow the advice at AMERICAblog, and call Target‘s press office at one of these numbers

Susan Kahn, 1-612-761-6735
Cathy Wright, 1-612-761-6627 or 1-847-615-1538
Paula Thornton-Greear, 612-696-3400
Carolyn Brookter, 1-612-696-6557

Instead, or in addition, you could call or write to your local Target and tell them how you feel about this. We really need to stand up against this insanity. I’m going to make my calls tomorrow. Perhaps I’ll do it instead of teaching. After all, just because I’m paid to teach doesn’t mean I should be forced to do it!

Recall that I mentioned listening out for the show “This American Life”, in a post last week, and pointing to where you can get archived audio of it.

Well, this week’s show will do a second part of that set of recollections of people afflicted by Katrina, its aftermath, and the officials charged with their protection. The focus is to be more on the happenings inside the Superdome. (I’ve not heard it yet, so can’t comment…..I welcome your own comments here once you’ve heard it.)

Find your local station by going to NPR’s site, or go to the show’s website later in the week for the audio stream.

-cvj

Can’t say it much better than Jay Ackroyd at TPMCafe, so I’ll just quote in full:

All Hail Barney Frank

Last year, Barney said (I don’t have a link) that he was perfectly okay with the MA legislature passing an amendment banning gay marriage. He said that by the time the process was complete, (two consecutive legislative passages and a statewide vote) nothing bad would have come from anybody getting married. And so the amendment would die of its own weight.

NYTimes quotes lawmakers saying that he was right.

Like I’ve said all along, love and commitment will always, eventually, win out over bigotry and hate. It’s gratifying that it took so little time for the people of Massachusetts to realize that.

Congratulations to everyone in Massachusetts, this is a great step forward. Now if we could win approval for Plan B contraception, preserve the right to get an abortion, and convince everyone to leave the Catholic Church, we’d really have anti-sex conservatism on the run.

Whatever you do, try to make some time to catch this week’s “This American Life”. Your local NPR station will have it on at least once sometime this weekend. The website is here, but there won’t be an audio to stream until later next week.

What’s in it? For example, there are several first hand stories from people stuck in New Orleans during the Katrina crisis, trying to survive, trying to get out, and being lied to (and other things, such as not being allowed to leave on foot on pain of being shot at) by the officials on the ground. It’s essential listening. Check your local schedules. Find your local station through the NPR parent site.

Arun already mentioned on another thread one such story, transcribed at this site. Extract:

As we approached the bridge, armed Gretna sheriffs formed a line across the foot of the bridge. Before we were close enough to speak, they began firing their weapons over our heads. This sent the crowd fleeing in various directions. As the crowd scattered and dissipated, a few of us inched forward and managed to engage some of the sheriffs in conversation. We told them of our conversation with the police commander and of the commander’s assurances. The sheriffs informed us there were no buses waiting. The commander had lied to us to get us to move.

We questioned why we couldn’t cross the bridge anyway, especially as there was little traffic on the 6-lane highway. They responded that the West Bank was not going to become New Orleans and there would be no Superdomes in their City. These were code words for if you are poor and black, you are not crossing the Mississippi River and you were not getting out of New Orleans.

But there’s much much more detail on this story and other stories in this week’s This American Life. For example, there’s an excellent rebuttal by a New Orleans teenager Ashley Nelson of the remarks by certain pundits about the issues concerning those abandoned in New Orleans not “being about race, but about class” (I paraphrase).

The kid’s immediate remark (paraphrase):

I dod not know it was a crime to be poor.

How frighteningly pointed that show’s title seems now.

-cvj

Apparently last night (6 DAYS after the hurricane )there were still ~5000 people still stuck the Superdome, which is up to the hilt in filth, without food or water.
The National Guard is was preventing people (well, at least the poor black ones) from leaving the city, controlling access to the bridge that is the only way out. At the same time, the Red Cross not been allowed into New Orleans to help the people stuck there (!?!?!)

Shepard Smith and Geraldo Rivera went absolutely nuts on FOX last night, both of them almost in tears at the desperation of the situation. Crooks and Liars has the video. This is extremely powerful, watch it.

Update: Apparently they’ve finally got on the ball. Geraldo was on FOX recently reporting that the Navy is now evacuating about 100 people every 10 minutes in Chinook helicopters. Why oh why didn’t this happen 4 days ago?

President announced in his radio adress that he’s finally sending in the 82nd airborne. Again, why didn’t this happen 4 days ago?

Reports are coming in from all over about how help was offered from neighboring states and localities, but the approval from above didn’t get through –
Talking Points Memo reports that Lousiana Gov. Blanco accepted an offer of state National Guard troops from New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson on Sunday, just before the storm hit. But the paperwork from Washington, allowing the troops to deploy, didn’t come until Thursday…

Snippets from CNN, via dailykos

We saw mothers. We talked to mothers holding babies. Some of these babies are 3, 4, 5, months old living in these horrible conditions. Putrid food on the ground. Sewage, their feet sitting in sewage. We saw feces on the ground. These people are being forced to live like animals. When you look at some of these mothers your heart just breaks. We’re not talking about a few families or a few hundred families. Thousands of people are gathered around the convention.

I want to warn you. Some of these images that you will see they’re very very graphic. But people need see this. The people that are down there have been down there for days. People need to see what it is really like here. We saw dead bodies. People are dying at the convention center and there’s no one there to come get them. We saw an older woman, someone’s mother someone’s grandmother, in a wheelchair. Her dead body pushed up against the side of the convention center with a blanket over it. Right on the ground next to her another dead body wrapped in a white sheet.

People are literally dying. Right in front of us as we were watching this a man went into a seizure on the ground. It looked like he was dying. People tried to prop his head up. No one has medical training. No ambulance can come. It is just heartbreaking that people are just sitting there without food or water waiting for the buses to come tak ehtem away. People keep asking us – when are the buses coming. And I just have to say, I don’t know.

Jack Cafferty on CNN:

The thing that’s most glaring in all of this is that the conditions continue to deteriorate for people who are victims and the efforts to do something about it don’t seem to be anywhere in sight. [...]

The questions that we ask in The Situation Room every day are posted on the website two or three hours before we go on the air and people who read the website often begin to respond to the questions before the show actually starts. The question for this hour is whether the government is doing a good job in handling the situation.

I gotta tell you something, we got five or six hundred letters before the show actually went on the air, and no one – no one – is saying the government is doing a good job in handling one of the most atrocious and embarrassing and far-reaching and calamatous things that has come along in this country in my lifetime. I’m 62. I remember the riots in Watts, I remember the earthquake in San Francisco, I remember a lot of things. I have never, ever, seen anything as bungled and as poorly handled as this situation in New Orleans. Where the hell is the water for these people? Why can’t sandwiches be dropped to those people in the Superdome. What is going on? This is Thursday! This storm happened 5 days ago. This is a disgrace. And don’t think the world isn’t watching. This is the government that the taxpayers are paying for, and it’s fallen right flat on its face as far as I can see, in the way it’s handled this thing.

We’re going to talk about something else before the show’s over, too. And that’s the big elephant in the room. The race and economic class of most of the victims, which the media hasn’t discussed much at all, but we will a bit later.

Just in case you were wondering, this
is what your president was doing, while this was happening (via boingboing). Current (very sketchy) estimates are that tens of thousands of people (mostly black and poor) were not able to leave the city. Those that are still alive and stuck there are dying, now.

I’ve been a “card-carrying member” of the ACLU for years now, although I admit that I’ve not always been diligent about paying my dues. But now I have more incentive to get that check in on time: to piss off Bill O’Reilly. Radley Balko explains, via the Poor Man.

It’s easy to join.