finger demons

Posted on January 18, 2013 by greg

“There is evil prowling in the world…”

Evil, you guys! Evil, right out there in the world, just a-prowling along, according to Rick Perry, the Republican Governor of Texas. You can be assured, Gov. Perry knows evil when he sees it, and he knows where it comes from: it comes from demons.

“Guns require a finger to pull the trigger. The sad young man who did that in Newtown was clearly haunted by demons.”

Demons, you guys! Demons in that kid’s trigger finger! Can you eradicate demons with laws? Why no, you cannot. But so long as demons inhabit the trigger fingers of weak and wicked people who have access to innocent firearms, something must be done. We cannot stand idly by and allow these horrific finger-related tragedies to continue. Gov. Rick Perry, Texas Republican, knows how to fight demons:

“Let us all return to our places of worship and pray for help. Above all, let us pray for our children.”

I know. I know you were expecting Gov. Rick Perry of Texas to take a more active stance against demonic-possessed trigger fingers. You were maybe expecting him to advocate amputation of the offending digit. So was I — I totally thought R. Perry, the elected Republican Governor of Texas, was going to be all “Off with their fingers!” But no. Texas Gov. Perry is taking a more modest, non-confrontational approach. We can pray the demons right out of those fingers. You know…to protect the children.

Gov. Rick Perry of Texas and his demon-free Republican finger protecting children

In related news, tomorrow is the First Annual Gun Appreciation Day. Oh, we’re happy to show how much we care about the victims of finger-demon violence, but Americans have been reluctant to demonstrate just how much we esteem and cherish guns. That ends tomorrow, you guys.

Some of you may feel it’s inappropriate to hold Gun Appreciation Day 48 hours before Martin Luther King Day. But Larry Ward, the singular genius behind Gun Appreciation Day, is convinced Dr. King would be totally honored by having his birthday associated with Gun Appreciation Day. In an interview on CNN, Ward (and I don’t know his political affiliation, but I’m willing to guess he’s a Republican — though he may not be from Texas) said this:

“I think Martin Luther King, Jr. would agree with me if he were alive today that if African Americans had been given the right to keep and bear arms from day one of the country’s founding, perhaps slavery might not have been a chapter in our history.”

You guys, if he hadn’t been shot down in cold blood is there any doubt that Martin Luther King would agree that had slave-owners issued firearms to their slaves, then maybe slavery wouldn’t exist and lawdy I think I got stupider just writing that.

Larry Ward is one of the most passionate, if inarticulate, spokesmen for responsible gun ownership. In the following interview with a citizen-journalist, Ward argues:

“[W]e can’t stop them from grabbing a weapon and walking into a school or a private place or a post office or a mall.”

By ‘them’ Ward means felons and the mentally ill (and presumably people possessed by finger demons, though he failed to address that particular issue). And because we can’t stop them, there’s no point in passing legislation that might stop them. Obviously. Here’s the interview:

He’s pretty charismatic, that Larry Ward, isn’t he. You’re probably thinking tomorrow’s Gun Appreciation Day will be massively popular with everybody. But no! You guys, there are people out there who apparently don’t appreciate guns. Seriously, I’m not making that up. In fact, a group called United for Change USA has offered a petition to prevent Gun Appreciation Day from taking place. In their petition, they say:

This is an outrage and a slap in the face to Americans who value life and freedom!

Clearly, the best way to respond to a slap in the face to Americans who value life and freedom is to prevent people you disagree with from expressing their point of view.

I may attend the local Gun Appreciation Day event tomorrow. Not because I appreciate guns all that much, but because I appreciate free speech a lot. But first I’ll need to wrap my fingers in tin-foil dipped in holy water. I don’t want any pesky finger demons to disrupt my appreciation of guns.

by any means necessary

Posted on January 15, 2013 by greg

Tomorrow President Obama is supposed to announce his new gun policy proposals. Yesterday, Steve Stockman (why yes, he IS a Republican from Texas) objected to those new proposals — whatever they are.

Yes, you read that correctly. Texas Republican Steve Stockman is objecting to the proposals President Obama hasn’t yet made. I guess he doesn’t want to wait until the last minute to start his objecting. Texas Republican Steve Stockman is so incensed by the proposals the president hasn’t yet made that he’s threatening to defund the White House and to file articles of impeachment.

In his press release, Stockman says “The President’s actions are an existential threat to this nation.” He warns that he “will seek to thwart this action by any means necessary.”

Texas Republican Steve Stockman (No, wait…that’s Jean Paul Sartre…sorry)

By any means necessary. That’s an interesting phrase, isn’t it. Sartre said it first, though I’m not sure if Sartre and Stockman would agree on gun control.

“I was not the one to invent lies: they were created in a society divided by class and each of us inherited lies when we were born. It is not by refusing to lie that we will abolish lies: it is by eradicating class by any means necessary.” — Jean Paul Sartre

Texas Republican Steve Stockman — probably not really into eradicating class. Just a guess on my part.

The phrase was repeated by Malcolm X, who oddly enough probably would agree with Stockman on gun control, though I doubt Stockman would be comfortable living next door to Malcolm X.

Texas Republican Steve Stockman (No, wait…that’s Malcolm X…sorry)

“We declare our right on this earth to be a man, to be a human being, to be respected as a human being, to be given the rights of a human being in this society, on this earth, in this day, which we intend to bring into existence by any means necessary.” — Malcolm X

Texas Republican Steve Stockman — probably not really interested in Malcolm X’s rights as a human being. Just a guess.

Malcolm wanted black folks to be armed. Probably to protect themselves from people like Texas Republican Steve Stockman. It was in response to the Black Panther Party acquiring military-style weapons and brandishing them in public that some of the most stringent gun control measures in modern U.S. history were passed. Don Mulford, a conservative Republican state assemblyman in California, proposed legislation prohibiting the carrying of a loaded weapon in any California city. Republican Governor Ronald Reagan happily signed the law. Imagine a law like that being proposed today (or tomorrow, by President Obama).

Texas Republican Steve Stockman probably thinks Don Mulford and Ronald Reagan were socialists from Kenya. And maybe gay. Just a guess on my part.

Texas Republican Steve Stockman

Texas Republican Steve Stockman wants to be very clear about the seriousness of the danger posed by President Obama’s yet-to-be-announced proposals:

“The President’s actions are not just an attack on the Constitution and a violation of his sworn oath of office – they are a direct attack on Americans that place all of us in danger.” — Texas Republican Steve Stockman

Sartre, Malcolm X, Texas Republican Steve Stockman. By any means necessary. Great minds think alike.

Phenomenally stupid minds also think alike. Did I mention that Steve Stockman is a Republican from Texas?

a trick of fog and mist

Posted on January 12, 2013 by greg

Fog. The weather forecast said — promised — there would be fog in the morning. So I arranged my schedule (okay, I don’t actually have anything even remotely resembling a schedule — but if I did, I’d have arranged it) so I could be downtown early in the morning. Because fog, right?

Here’s a meteorologically true thing: the only difference between fog and mist is their density as measured by the degree of visibility. They’re both just localized collections of water droplets suspended in the air. They’re essentially stratus clouds — flat, lazy, featureless clouds — hanging on at or just above ground level. Here’s the difference between fog and mist: if you can see for more than a kilometer, you’re in mist; if you can see less than a kilometer, you’re in fog.

waiting for the bus

I had both. Fog and mist. Most of the time there was a layer of fog about 10 to 20 meters above the ground, beneath which was mist. Sometimes the cloud would dip down and I was in fog; sometimes it lifted a wee bit and I was in mist.

It was very odd and strange, and even if it made photography confusing as hell, it made for an interesting walk. One moment visibility would be only a few hundred feet, the next you could see for a couple of block; one moment it was chilly and damp, and the next moment if was…well, it stayed chilly and damp, but the degree of chilliness and dampness shifted radically.

chill breeze by the river

I was on the street by around 6:30 in the morning. At that hour, there weren’t a lot of people about. It’s been a long, long time since I’ve held a straight job, and I’d forgotten the simple fact that most folks go to work by themselves. Aside from car-poolers and folks who take public transportation, people don’t generally go to work in groups. Almost everybody I saw that morning was alone. One solitary person, moving purposefully through the fog/mist. It made them all seem isolated.

heading for the diner

Isolated, but not unfriendly. I photographed several people as they walked toward me, and as they reached me I usually smiled and showed them their photo. Most of them paused long enough to admire themselves, make a joke, ask a question. The guy in the photograph below looked at his picture and said “That’s pretty good. But why did you take my picture?” I guess it was a good question because a very attractive young woman had been walking in front of him, and I didn’t shoot her photo. I said “Because you’re so purty.” He laughed, punched me gently in the arm, said “Fuck you,” and wandered off still laughing.

because you’re so purty

I know that right now you’re almost certainly wondering about the etymology of fog and mist, because that’s just the sort of person you are. And aren’t you in luck, because I can tell you there’s some uncertainty about the etymology of ‘fog’ but not about ‘mist.’ Most linguists suggest fog is related to the Dutch vocht and German feucht (which, if there is any justice in the world, has to be pronounced fucked). The origins of ‘mist,’ on the other hand, are pretty clear. It comes from the Old English term mist (what a shock), which apparently referred to a ‘dimness of eyesight.’ That Old English term is believed to derive from the Proto-Indo-European meigh which meant ‘to urinate’ (and no, I’m not making this up).

In photographic terms, this means if you’re shooting in fog or mist your autofocus is fucked, which could leave you pissed.

on court street

Here’s a photographically true thing: as atmospheric conditions, both fog and mist can be dense enough to bitch-slap most autofocus systems. One of the things I’ve come to rely on with my little Fujifilm X10 is its quick and accurate autofocus, and even though it tried valiantly, the X10 wasn’t always successful.

At first it was a tad frustrating when I chimped a photo and saw it wasn’t in focus. Then I reminded myself that sharpness is a bourgeois concept. It’s also a relative notion. If the photo shows what you want it to show, that’s all that counts. Besides, black-and-white photography is more about form and line and shape and geometry than about clarity. Fog and mist are made for b&w work.

old woman

At one point I saw this stooped figure approach, moving in a slow rolling sort of gait that was oddly gorilla-like. I shot the photo above and another, and waited for the person to walk into the patch of light at the corner. It turned out to be an old Slavic-looking woman, which left me in sort of a moral quandary. Not in regard to shooting her photo; that seemed immediately inappropriate. The quandary was whether or not I should offer to carry her bag. It didn’t look particularly heavy, but that wasn’t the issue. However, it seemed a rather impertinent offer; I know how my own mother would have reacted to that offer. “What…do I look too old to carry my own bags?”

So I lowered my camera and stood there, waiting and trying to decide what to do. She shuffled on by without even looking up. And I continued on my way.

outside the bail bond office

The fog started to lift pretty quickly after that. The X10’s autofocus breathed a sigh of relief and went back to work. There were more people on the street — some still making their way to work, some already working, some making deliveries, some just hanging out, some taking their dogs for their morning ‘walkies.’

The people with dogs were always willing to stop a moment and allow their dogs to be praised and admired. Here’s an odd thing: all of the dog-walkers I met that morning were happy to have their dogs photographed, but every single one of the people were reluctant to be photographed themselves.

in a hurry

Near the end of my walk I saw this woman in the photograph below standing along the promenade overlooking the riverwalk. I shot a couple frames of her standing there. She looked so sad and forlorn I felt I should speak to her. So I said “Excuse me?” and when she turned I told her I’d just taken her photograph and asked if she’d like to see it.

She smiled and said yes. When she saw it she laughed and said, “Oh good, you got the old lights on the bridge. I was just standing here admiring them.”

on the promenade

We chatted for maybe five minutes. She was just out taking a walk in the fog, and was as happy and cheerful as anybody I saw all morning. There was nothing the least bit sad or forlorn about her.

It was just another trick of the fog and mist.

in which i take another pointless walk

Posted on January 9, 2013 by greg

So I took a walk last Friday evening. Like most of my walks, there wasn’t any real plan or itinerary. I just start in a direction and wander. Sometimes I see interesting things; sometimes I don’t. I try not to expect too much, but I generally assume I’ll notice something intriguing along the way. And if I don’t, pffft. I had a nice walk anyway.

This walk led me first to the Pappajohn sculpture garden. This used to be a scruffy neighborhood filled with tire warehouses and muffler dealers and small sewing machine repair shops. Now it’s a four and a half acre park — not quite in the heart of downtown Des Moines, but close. Call it the left subclavian artery of downtown Des Moines.

At the bottom of the frame in the photograph above you can see Spider by Louise Bourgeois, which I’m told is a portrait of her mother. Go figure sculptors.

Butterfield bronze horses

I like modern art. Usually when you hear somebody say ‘I like modern art’ you can count on those four words being followed with a fifth: but. And that’s true this time. I like modern art, but I’m not always impressed by collections of modern art unless there’s some coherence to the collection. And that’s my problem with the Pappajohn sculpture park.

There’s a lot of wonderful work here. There’s an interesting De Kooning, a wonderfully weird pair of malformed heads by Ugo Rondinone, a couple of elegant and graceful bronze horses by Deborah Butterfield, and a cheerfully goofy latticework humanoind form by Jaume Plensa. A lot of good work. But there doesn’t seem to be anything to connect the sculptures thematically except that they’re modern.

It feels random, tossed together, aimless. Don’t get me wrong; I like the sculpture park. It just feels like a tax dodge.

Auto body service

A block or so away from the Pappajohn sculpture garden you can find the sort of businesses that used to inhabit that area. Small businesses surrounded by chain link fences topped with barbed wire, maybe patrolled by a beefy dog. Places like this auto-body shop. It’s not as pretty as the sculpture park, to be sure, but it’s a lot more consistent and internally coherent. Everything here feels like it belongs; the sculpture garden feels like it was placed there.

Give it another thirty or forty years and the Pappajohn garden will probably feel more organic. Probably. Maybe.

The walk ended near St. Ambrose Cathedral, where they were holding evening services. The only thing the cathedral has in common with the body shop is that they both feel natural and authentic where they are. St. Ambrose has been around for more than a century and a half. It began as a log hut, dedicated to St. Ambrose because of his tireless work against the Arian heresy (and our boy Ambrose must have been pretty effective because I doubt if many people have ever heard of the Arian heresy these days).

St. Ambrose cathedral

It was a pleasant way to spend a couple of hours. I was determined to learn what I could about the Arian heresy when I got home. But after about fifteen minutes of reading about the internecine squabbles of 4th century Christians over whether or not Jesus had an existence before he was born, I decided to have a beer and watch television.

responsible and irresponsible

Posted on January 8, 2013 by greg

Two years ago today Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was meeting her constituents in a grocery store parking lot in a suburb of Tucson, Arizona. A young man named Jared Loughner arrived at the event with a concealed Glock 19 9mm pistol, which he’d legally purchased a few months earlier.

Loughner used that weapon to shoot Giffords through the head at point blank range. He then began firing randomly at others at the event. When he paused to reload, he was tackled and subdued by bystanders. Loughner had fired 31 rounds (although he had a 30 round magazine, he’d arrived at the event with a round already in the chamber). He had a second fully loaded 30 round magazine in his pocket, along with two 15 round magazines. That’s a total of 91 rounds.

The shooting only lasted about 15 seconds, during which Loughner managed to shoot 18 people, killing six of them. Had he been limited to the standard 15 round magazine sold with the weapon, the carnage would have been reduced.

Today, on the Facebook page of the National Rifle Association, you can find this graphic:

The numbers may be accurate, but not surprisingly, they’re deliberately misleading. The NRA is right — rifles and shotguns are NOT the weapons of choice for murder. Handguns are. The majority of murders are fairly spontaneous events, often fueled by alcohol or drugs. Folks get drunk, get in an argument, a fight starts, a gun is pulled, and there you are. It’s fairly rare for somebody to have a shotgun or rifle on them in most murder scenarios; usually in the time it takes for a person to leave the area and go fetch a rifle or shotgun, either the intended shooter calms down enough to re-think the situation or the intended victim hauls ass and leaves.

So no, there aren’t a lot of murders by rifle or shotgun. However, when it comes to mass shooting, rifles are one of the weapons of choice. The irresponsible NRA fails to mention that in their graphic. There were also some other numbers missing from the NRA’s graphic, so I’ve added them.

Blunt Instrument Murders: 496 (1.36 deaths per day)
Hands/Feet Murders: 726 (1.98 deaths per day)
Knife Murders: 1,694 (4.64 deaths per day)
Firearm Murders: 8,583 (23.51 deaths per day)
All Firearm Deaths: 31,347 (85.88 deaths per day)

Firearms make it easier to kill, it’s that simple. Easier to kill yourself, easier to kill other people — accidentally or intentionally. Large capacity magazines make it easier to kill more people; it’s also that simple. Those are facts the NRA doesn’t want you to know.

I’m not an advocate for disarming the U.S. As I’ve said before, I rather like guns. But it’s possible to like guns and still want to see the annual body count reduced.

Today, on the second anniversary of the shooting she somehow managed to survive, Gabby Giffords and her husband, Mark Kelly, have launched Americans for Responsible Solutions — an organization dedicated to sensible firearm policy. In their opinion piece, Giffords and Kelly write:

We have experienced too much death and hurt to remain idle. Our response to the Newtown massacre must consist of more than regret, sorrow and condolence.

They’re right. Regret doesn’t change anything. Sorrow and condolence don’t change anything. People can change things. And it’s way past time we did.

ice ice baby

Posted on January 7, 2013 by greg

I like people. I really do. But sometimes I despair of their lack of interest in the world around them. A few days ago I was downtown, crossing a bridge over the river, and I was overtaken by a couple of guys walking in the same direction. I heard one of them say “River’s iced over.” The other guy glanced over the side of the bridge and said “Yep.” And that was it.

One of the most intriguing winter phenomena was taking place below them, and they didn’t see it. Rivers and streams freeze every year, yes. It’s nothing new. But it’s a fascinating process. It’s a radically different process than what takes place on a lake or pond because…well, river water moves, and that makes the freezing process significantly more complex.

On a moving body of fresh water, ice almost always begins to form along the banks. There are a couple reasons for that. First, the temperature in the shallow water along the shore drops faster on a cold night. Second, there are quiescent areas along the banks where the water is more still. Ice that forms along the bank is appropriately known as border ice. If the river or stream or brook is narrow enough — or if the weather stays cold enough — border ice will gradually expand toward the center of the stream until the entire surface freezes over.

Border ice

But that’s not so very different from what happens on lakes and ponds — or in your birdbath, for that matter. The really interesting stuff takes place away from the banks, where the water is more turbulent. That’s when the freezing process gets weird and wonderful.

As the temperature drops, the surface of the water begins to lose heat rapidly. The turbulence of the river flow sort of roils that super-cooled surface water with a less cold layer of water just below the surface. This causes tiny crystals of ice to form. Those crystals gather in loose, randomly-oriented discoid or needle-shapes. This is called frazil ice.

Frazil often looks like slush in the water. There are a couple of things that make frazil interesting. First, like most ice, frazil floats — so it travels downstream. Second it has an extreme capacity to adhere to any object it comes in contact with. In other words, frazil clumps easily.

Frazil ice

As it floats downstream, frazil bumps into stuff and sticks. In the photograph above, you can see frazil in its slushy form at the top of the frame. You can also see the line where frazil is clumping to more frazil, which will form the border of an ice pan. That raised line of ice is actually caused by the repeated collision of frazil against frazil.

A later stage of freezing occurs when frazil crystals coagulate to form a sort of soupy layer on the surface of the water. This is called grease ice because it looks slick. It doesn’t reflect light very well, which gives the water surface a matte appearance.

Grease ice

As the ice crystals become more compacted and solid they release more heat, creating surface slabs of ice known as ice pans. This is more like the ice we’re most familiar with. Ice pans often break free and float away downstream, banging and colliding with other ice pans, given them a softly rounded edges.

When these surface slabs of ice form in the bend of a river, they sometimes get caught in the rotational shear of the current and the ice pan spins around and around. As it rotates, the outer edge is gradually ground away until if forms an almost perfect circle. I’ve only seen this phenomenon once; sadly, I don’t have a photograph of it.

The photograph below, however, shows several different facets of the river freezing process. You can see the border ice; you can see where frazil has formed and clumped together causing a slushy barrier; you can see where that barrier has coalesced into grease ice; and you can see where ice pans have broken away and been refrozen in mid-stream.

Ice pans

This astonishing collection of various freezing processes is precisely what those guys were looking at when they said “River’s iced over.”

Now, I understand that other folks might not find these details as intriguing as I do. I understand that for a lot of folks — most folks, probably — the only ice that matters is the ice in their drinks. I understand that, I really do. But I can’t help feeling that those two guys who hurried by me on the bridge have missed out on something. I can’t help thinking that if they stopped for just a moment and really looked at the river, if they’d asked themselves what was happening — even if they never bothered to seek out the answers — that their lives would be somewhat richer.

justice, poetic

Posted on January 4, 2013 by greg

Six hundred and ninety-one days ago, Elizabeth Warren was testifying before the Senate Oversite Committee. She was then acting as an adviser to the Obama administration, helping establish the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Warren was the logical and obvious choice to head that agency, but the Wall Street lobby adamantly opposed her. That, of course, meant Republicans in Congress also opposed her. In fact, something like four dozen Republican Senators wrote a letter to President Obama vowing to oppose any candidate of any political party nominated to head the agency.

Before the hearing, Ms. Warren had notified the committee that she’d only be available for an hour because of a previously scheduled appointment. When she reminded committee members of that conflict during her testimony, Senator Patrick McHenry (Republican Asshole, North Carolina) accused her of lying. “You’re making that up,” he said.

Elizabeth Warren, 24 May, 2011

You can see the shock of the accusation registered on her face. This morning, though, she had a completely different look on her face. Here is freshman Senator Elizabeth Warren being sworn in today as the first woman Senator from Massachusetts.

Senator Elizabeth Warren, 4 January, 2013

Sen. Warren has been assigned to the Senate Banking Committee. That’s right, she’s going to be monitoring the activities of Wall Street. She’ll be seated at the same panel with Richard Shelby (Republican Asshole, Alabama), one of the group of Republican Senators who wrote the letter to the president swearing to oppose her and any other nominee to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

The irony is delicious.

a suggestion for eric cantor

Posted on January 3, 2013 by greg

Today is the third day since 1994 that the United States doesn’t have a Violence Against Women Act in place. That’s right, after nearly two decades of bipartisan support, Congress has allowed VAWA to expire. (Here’s a .pdf of the bill, if you can stand to read it.)

When I say Congress, what I really mean is the House of Representatives. And when I say the House of Representatives, I really mean a small group of batshit crazy conservative Republicans — and specifically House Majority Leader, Republican Eric Cantor. I’m talking about this guy:

Eric Cantor (Republican asshole)

Don’t get me wrong. VAWA isn’t a perfect law. No law is without flaws. And, to be fair, one of Cantor’s complaints about VAWA has some merit. Not much, but some. Cantor and his fellow Republicans complain about a provision of the law that allows immigrant women married to abusive US citizens to gain a temporary (up to four years) residency status while their case is resolved.

Right now you’re probably saying to yourself, Dude, giving abused immigrant women temporary US residency sounds like a good thing. And you’re right, it is — under most circumstances. The physical, emotional, and sexual violence committed against mail-order brides and other immigrant spouses often goes unreported in part because the victims are also threatened with being sent back to their native countries. This provision of the law protects them. However, there have been a small number of immigrant women who have falsely claimed abuse in order to gain a green card. Indeed, this seems to have become a tactic used by some Russian organized crime gangs. There are maybe two or three dozen known or suspected cases of Russian brides making such a claim.

So there are a few legitimate problems with the law. But Eric Cantor and other conservative Republicans aren’t opposed to the law simply because a minor loophole has benefited twenty or thirty Russian immigrants. No, they also oppose it because it offers protections for lesbians and Native American women.

Seriously. I know that sounds completely fucking insane, but I swear I’m not making that up. The guys are actually opposed to extending the law to protect certain groups of women.

Cantor claims his problem with the provisions protecting Native women is that it extends the jurisdiction of tribal justice to include non-Native American men. Right now, if a white guy commits a crime of violence against a Native woman on a reservation — if he beats her, or rapes her, or murders her — tribal police and tribal courts can’t act. The crime has to be reported to Federal authorities, who generally don’t reside on the reservation or have offices on the reservation. So it may take hours for them to respond. Failure to respond quickly means evidence is lost or tainted. Without evidence, prosecutions either fail or, more often, prosecutors simply decline to prosecute.

A report by the General Accounting Office noted that prosecutors declined to bring charges against 52% of the violent crimes reported on reservations. Why? Lack of evidence. What makes this even more serious is the data reported in the Tribal Law and Order Act of 2010:

34 percent of American Indian and Alaska Native women will be raped in their lifetimes

39 percent of American Indian and Alaska Native women will be subject to domestic violence

A third of Native American women will report being raped and/or beaten by domestic partners. Let me repeat that, because it boggles the mind. A third of Native American women will report being raped and/or beaten. Some of those rapists and abusers will be white men. Most of their crimes won’t be reported. Of those that are reported, about half won’t even be prosecuted, primarily because of inadequate evidence collection.

Lisa Marie Iyotte at signing of the Tribal Law and Order Act of 2010

Lisa Marie Iyotte, domestic violence victim/advocate, at signing of the Tribal Law and Order Act of 2010

The new provisions in VAWA gives tribal police and courts some limited authority to investigate and prosecute non-Native Americans accused of domestic violence, sexual assault and other crimes against Native American women on Indian reservations. That’s it. That’s all it does. For some reason, Eric Cantor and his Republican friends think it’s inappropriate for tribal police to investigate white suspects or prosecute white defendants.

As for their opposition to including lesbians in VAWA, the only conclusion I can draw is this: they just don’t care if lesbians get raped or have the shit beat out of them. What other explanation is there?

But I have a suggestion for Eric Cantor. This is my suggestion:

Eric, don’t think of victims of violence in terms of their immigrant status, or their ethnicity, or their sexual preference. Just think of them as victims of violence. Then grow the fuck up and do the right thing. In a few days a new session of Congress will begin. Pass VAWA.

Oh, and really, stop being such a dick.

gregfallis.com

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Monthly Archives: January 2013