Anchorage Rallies In Protest of Supreme Court Election Decision

This afternoon, people gathered at the Parkstrip and marched to the Anchorage Town Square to protest Friday's Supreme Court decision on abortion.  My rough estimate of the crowd is 400-600.  

Observations:  The crowd was younger than the demonstration on May 8, 2022 when the decision was leaked.  The organizers also talked a lot about voting this time, which was missing at the previous demonstration.  Including voting no on whether Alaska should have a constitutional convention.  (The constitution requires such a vote every ten years.)  Conservatives want such a convention to do (at least) two things:

1. Remove the right to privacy in the constitution 
2. Change how judges are selected in Alaska (by a non-partisan commission which evaluates people applying for judgeships by reviewing surveys of judges, attorneys, juries, court employees, and court watchers.  Top candidates are passed on to the Governor to choose from.

During the 1960's the protesting against the Vietnam war was invigorated by the fact that all 18 year old men had to register for the draft and stood a decent chance of being sent to Vietnam to fight.  All their friends and family had a very personal interest in the war ending.  

Today's young folks have been give an equally important stake in fighting Dobbs v. Jackson's Women's Health Organization.  This time it's all women of child bearing age who are on the line, but since women don't need an abortion unless a man has been involved, men too have a vital stake.  And if the Vietnam War protests are any predictor, the people fighting to make abortions legal again aren't going away. 

Here are some photos from today's protest.

1927 Buck v. Bell

Facts of the case

Carrie Buck was a "feeble minded woman" who was committed to a state mental institution. Her condition had been present in her family for the last three generations. A Virginia law allowed for the sexual sterilization of inmates of institutions to promote the "health of the patient and the welfare of society." Before the procedure could be performed, however, a hearing was required to determine whether or not the operation was a wise thing to do.

Question

Did the Virginia statute which authorized sterilization deny Buck the right to due process of the law and the equal protection of the laws as protected by the Fourteenth Amendment?

Conclusion

The Court found that the statute did not violate the Constitution. Justice Holmes made clear that Buck's challenge was not upon the medical procedure involved but on the process of the substantive law. Since sterilization could not occur until a proper hearing had occurred (at which the patient and a guardian could be present) and after the Circuit Court of the County and the Supreme Court of Appeals had reviewed the case, if so requested by the patient. Only after "months of observation" could the operation take place. That was enough to satisfy the Court that there was no Constitutional violation. Citing the best interests of the state, Justice Holmes affirmed the value of a law like Virginia's in order to prevent the nation from "being swamped with incompetence . . . Three generations of imbeciles are enough."

Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479 (1965)

Argued March 29-30, 1965

Decided June 7, 1965

Syllabus

Appellants, the Executive Director of the Planned Parenthood League of Connecticut, and its medical director, a licensed physician, were convicted as accessories for giving married persons information and medical advice on how to prevent conception and, following examination, prescribing a contraceptive device or material for the wife's use. A Connecticut statute makes it a crime for any person to use any drug or article to prevent conception. Appellants claimed that the accessory statute, as applied, violated the Fourteenth Amendment. An intermediate appellate court and the State's highest court affirmed the judgment.

Held:

1. Appellants have standing to assert the constitutional rights of the married people. Tileston v. Ullman, 318 U. S. 44, distinguished. P. 381 U. S. 481.

2. The Connecticut statute forbidding use of contraceptives violates the right of marital privacy which is within the penumbra of specific guarantees of the Bill of Rights. Pp. 381 U. S. 481-486.

Eisenstadt v. Baird

DECIDED  Mar 22, 1972

Facts of the case

William Baird gave away Emko Vaginal Foam to a woman following his Boston University lecture on birth control and over-population. Massachusetts charged Baird with a felony, to distribute contraceptives to unmarried men or women. Under the law, only married couples could obtain contraceptives; only registered doctors or pharmacists could provide them. Baird was not an authorized distributor of contraceptives.

Question

Did the Massachusetts law violate the right to privacy acknowledged in Griswold v. Connecticut and protected from state intrusion by the Fourteenth Amendment?

Conclusion

6–1 DECISION 

MAJORITY OPINION BY WILLIAM J. BRENNAN, JR.

In a 6-to-1 decision, the Court struck down the Massachusetts law but not on privacy grounds. The Court held that the law's distinction between single and married individuals failed to satisfy the "rational basis test" of the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause. Married couples were entitled to contraception under the Court's Griswold decision. Withholding that right to single persons without a rational basis proved the fatal flaw. Thus, the Court did not have to rely on Griswold to invalidate the Massachusetts statute. "If the right of privacy means anything, wrote Justice William J. Brennan, Jr. for the majority, "it is the right of the individual, married or single, to be free from unwarranted governmental intrusion into matters so fundamentally affecting a person as the decision whether to bear or beget a child."

New Season Of Sopranos Debuts At House Jan 6 Insurrection Hearings

 The new season stars DJT as Tony Soprano and his head honchos trying to persuade elections officials to change elections results.  With visits to Arizona and Georgia, threatening phone calls.  It's all there including thugs sent out to intimidate election officials and their grandmothers.  

Here's the full hour long audio recording of the then president's phone call to Brad Raffensperger, Georgia Secretary of State pressuring him to find enough votes to swing Georgia over to Trump.  (They only played a snippet at the hearing.)

Later in the episode we heard from two election workers - mother and daughter - who had been named by Trump and accused of counting fraudulent Biden votes.  These women had T thugs at their homes harassing them.  Even going into the grandmother's house looking to make a citizens arrest of the two women Trump had accused.  Imagine how an older black woman in Georgia might react to a crowd of angry white men breaking into her house.  She lived when lynchings were still happening on a regular basis.  

Here's Faye Moss' testimony:

What the hearing left out - or I just missed - was that these two women have filed two lawsuits over this.

"Protect Democracy, through its Law for Truth project, represents Georgia election workers Ruby Freeman and Wandrea Moss in two landmark defamation lawsuits. Ms. Freeman and Ms. Moss served as election workers in Fulton County, Georgia during the 2020 election. False claims that they engaged in ballot fraud in that capacity have caused them to suffer extensive harassment and threats of physical violence.

The first suit names The Gateway Pundit, a website which the complaint calls “among the leading purveyors of false information in the United States.” Law for Truth has undertaken this representation in partnership with the law firms DuBose Miller LLC, Dowd Bennett LLP, and Kastorf Law, LLC and the Yale Law School’s Media Freedom and Information Access Clinic. The Gateway Pundit, along with its founding editor Jim Hoft, and contributor Joe Hoft, knowingly disseminated blatantly false stories claiming that Ms. Freeman and Ms. Moss were involved in a conspiracy to commit election fraud, and continued to publish these untruths long after they were proven to be false. 

The second suit names Herring Networks, Inc., which owns and operates One America News Network (OAN), OAN CEO Robert Herring, OAN President Charles Herring, OAN staffer Chanel Rion, and frequent OAN guest Rudolph Giuliani. The suit alleges that the defendants have knowingly and repeatedly disseminated false information about Ms. Freeman and Ms. Moss and their work for the County on election night. In this suit, Law for Truth represents Ms. Freeman and Ms. Moss, in partnership with the law firms Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP, DuBose Miller LLC, and Kastorf Law, LLC."

Sitting behind Ms Moss in the opening of the video is Mike Gottlieb, Ms. Moss and her mom's attorney. who has been filing suits for other election workers defamed and attacked.  

Here's a link to the actual suit against OAN.  It was filed Dec. 21, 2021.  

Did the committee not mention these lawsuits to gain greater pity for Ms. Moss?  I don't know.  But I personally feel much better knowing that steps are being taken to punish those who knowingly spread lies like this that cause great harm to people doing their jobs.  Jobs that are fundamental to democracy.  (It was amended in May when OAN OAN retracted its claims about Georgia, Moss, and Freeman.  That's good, but were there no consequences other than the expenses of hiring a lawyer for the harm they've done these women?  And what about the people who harassed them and entered the grandmother's home?  If there are no consequences they become emboldened to do it again.  Our system is failing.)

We need as many strong, upstanding citizens as possible to work and volunteer at voting places in every election to make sure elections are not stolen by the likes of Don Soprano.  

Best Book In Many Years: Apeirogon Part 1 - Hoopoe

 

Been reading marathon like to finish this by book club Monday night.  

It's fantastic!!  Yesterday I'd read the 500th section and at the Juneteenth Festival I was telling everyone I met about the book.  

You're going to hear more about this book in coming days here.  But for now, this its sort of a diversion.  

The cover is full of birds. And birds fly in and out  throughout.  This is not a book about birds, it's just that the author brings in all sorts of topics that are relevant to the key tale, which is about an Israeli Jew whose daughter was blown up in a suicide bombing in Jerusalem and a Palestinian Muslim whose daughter was shot in the head by Israeli police.  Both meet at a group called the Parents Circle - an organization that gets parents who have lost children in the battles between Israelis and Palestinians.  They connect and then start making presentations to groups all over the the world, But mostly in Israel and Occupied Palestine.  

It's a fictionalized account of real events.  Perhaps telling us more truths than a non-fiction account could.  It's divided into 1001 sections. Each of different lengths.  Some span half a dozen pages or more.  Others are just one line.  They number 1 -500. The next one is 1000,  The next one is 500 again and the rest go back to 1.  It's almost like a book of many, many short stories.  Sections 500 are perhaps the crux of the book,  all the bits and pieces we've already heard about in previous sections, but knitted together.  The first section 500 is the talk given by Rami, the Israeli, at the Cremisan Monastery at Beit Jala in the Occupied Territories.  The second section 500 is the talk given by Bassam, the Palestinian, the same night and in the same place.  

But I want to save 500 for later.  In this post I want to mention birds.  Particularly hoopoes.  

Section 3, on page 4 (Section 1 starts on page 3) begins 

"Five hundred million birds arc the sky over the hills of Beit Jala every year.  They move by ancient ancestry:  hoopoes, thrushes, flycatchers, warblers, cuckoos, starlings, shrikes, ruffs, northern wheatears, plovers, sunbirds, swift's, sparrows, nightjars, owls, gulls, hawks, eagles, kites, cranes, buzzards, sandpipers, pelicans, flamingos, storks, pied bush chats, griffon vultures, European rollers, Arabian babblers, bee-eaters, turtledoves, whitethroats, yellow wagtails, blackcaps, red-throated pipits, little bitterns.  

It is the world's second busiest migratory superhighway:  at least four hundred different species of birds torrent through, riding different levels in the sky.  Long fees of honking intent.  Sole travelers skimming low over the grass."

Already in this section, though I didn't realize it at the time, it prepares us for that talk at the Cremisan Monastery in Beit Jala.  And sections like this put the present day events into perspective. The birds have been flying by here for thousands of years.  Many, many young girls have died during that time span in this place.  While the book focuses on two particular girls, Smadar and Abir, all the other girls' lives were important too and at the same time all those birds flew by totally unaware.  

And the book is like that.   Fragments of life spiral in and out of center stage, all adding rich links, illustrating the interconnection of everything.  

But this post is about hoopoes.  (Did you catch that hoopoes are the first bird mentioned in Section 3?)

We hear about them again in Sections 469 - 471.  469 is about a group of actors (including Helen Mirren) who travel through rural Algeria.

"The troupe journeyed through the desert, stopping in the evenings in the smallest and most isolated villages they could find.  They unfurled a large carpet and set up a series of corrugated boxes while one of the actors sounded out a drum call.  An audience formed, and the troupe began their performance of an adaption of The Conference of the Birds, based on an allegorical poem by Farid ud-Din Attar, using hand puppets to illustrate the story of a gathering of the world's birds trying to decide who should be their king.

In the play, each bird represents a human fault which prevents man from attaining enlightenment.  The wisest bird among the, the hoopoe, suggest that together they try to find the legendary Persian Simorgh to gain enlightenment for themselves. . . 

The village crowds reacted variously - some cheered, others laughed, while a few stayed silent . . "

[As I think of my two years in a rural Thai town, itinerant troops of actors would come through, set up their stage, and perform for folks in the evening - Thai dramas and Chinese opera perhaps the most popular.] 

470

"The Conference of the Birds was written in Persia, at the end of the twelfth century.

When the last birds - thirty of them - finally get to the home of the Simorgh, exhausted, they gaze into a lake and instead of meeting the mythical creature they've been searching for, they find only their own reflections."

471

"On the sixtieth anniversary of the founding of Israel, the hoopoe -the loquacious, dappled, with a long beak and slicked-back tuft of hair - was chosen as the national bird.

During the vote, Shimon Peres, the Israeli president, said he was only sorry that the most Zionist of birds, the dove, had not made the final cut.  

It was, said Nurit [wife of Rami, the Israeli father] one of the most perverse lines she had heard in her life, although it was, she added, apt that the name Peres in Hebrew meant bearded vulture."

In a sense, this is a book of 1001 short stories that all intertwine.  

The hoopoe references are among the least intertwined into the story itself.  

But the hoopoe is a bird that has fascinated me since I first saw it in the Hong Kong Bird Guide I bought in 1989 when I was teaching there.  The picture from that book should help you see why I was so taken.

Those are all cool looking birds, but the hoopoe is in a class all by itself.  I never saw a hoopoe in Hong Kong.  But in 2006, after giving a paper at a conference in New Delhi, we went to see the Taj Mahal.  I couldn't imagine that after seeing pictures of the Taj all my life, that the real thing would live up to my expectations.  I was wrong.  It was amazing.  

We were sitting on a bench in front of this exquisite love letter in the form of enchanting white curves, when a strange bird caught my attention.  As I looked closer, I suddenly realized, whoa, that's a real live hoopoe.  

There were a bunch of them on the lawn.  The history of the Taj would have to wait a bit. 

So, there you have an appetizer for Apeirogon.  There will be at least one more post on this book.  But I still have about 40 pages to go.  I'll let you know if the hoopoe makes another surprise appearance at the end.  

 NOTE July 5, 2022:  I've put up a second, meatier post about Apeirogon here.

History's Verdict, SCOTUS & Presidential Elections, Right Has Good Reason To Hate Pelosi, Judging Others

There's guns, abortion, Ginni Thomas, Jan 6, COVID, Louis DeJoy still running the post office, the high rejection rates in Alaska's recent all mail in election, climate change related fires and storms yet no serious action to curb carbon emissions, Ukraine, attacks on LGBTQ,  . . . 

There are just too many fronts for anyone to meaningfully comment about much.  

So I'm limiting this to a couple of very narrowly focused thoughts.  

1.  How Will History Report All This?  People have been talking about how history will judge things that are coming to light at the Jan 6 hearings.  But I've been concerned that if gerrymandering and misinformation and voter suppression work, those in control will be the people who will write history in T's favor.

But then I realized that historians around the world will also be writing this history and if we're lucky, they'll preserve the real story.  And if we're even luckier, the hearings - like the Watergate hearings did eventually - will shock enough people into realizing how close we were to a coup.  And we'll have a repeat of the post-Watergate cleaning up.  

2.  The Supreme Court And Presidential Elections.  As I watched Twitter today there was a lot of attention on Ginni Thomas, Tom Eastman, Clarence Thomas, and Alito.  Now people may think this is all just wild speculation, but I've been fairly careful with who I follow on Twitter, and I've found Twitter gives me a one to three day heads up on what gets covered in the mainstream media.  But as I was listening to the chatter that suggests Eastman thought that if the ratification of the election got delayed a week or so, then Thomas and Alito would support the T position.  Far fetched?  

Then I thought about how the Court intervened to interrupt the Florida recounts to declare Bush president.  They've done this before.  John Roberts was on the Bush side of that verdict. And I began to think about how that too was probably planned out in advance.  Scary stuff.  Maybe some researchers will get some of those involved to offer more on how that was pulled off.  

3.  Nancy Pelosi, an American Hero.  Several people gave Pelosi a lot of credit today.  First, for calling Congress back after the insurrection so they could finish ratifying the election.  Not giving the Court any time to intervene.  Second for going ahead with the Jan 6 hearings.  That she'd even pulled a fast one of McConnell who refused to participate in a joint Senate and House hearing that would have give T Republicans much more power. (As someone said, they would have subpoenaed Hunter Biden and interrogated him for three months to block everything else.)  But McConnell said no, and now the Democrats can do what they want and they're doing it well.  With the considerable assistance of Liz Cheney.  

4.  Lessons in Making Judgments About People - Exhibit 1:  Liz Cheney.  I totally disagree with most of her policy beliefs.  Never expected to be saying positive things about her. But I do share her belief in the rule of law.  And the various T insiders who have been testifying remind us that despite the many morally questionable decisions they had to make to serve Trump, they did have some red lines they wouldn't cross.

Labor Shortage, Law Enforcement And Teaching In Alaska

 This has been flashing at the State Troopers Headquarters at Tudor and MLK

Now Hiring State Troopers

$20,000 Hiring Bonus

Starting Salary $74,693-100,630

Apply Online Today

Here are the qualifications listed online:

The minimum qualifications for the position of State Trooper Recruit/Lateral are outlined below.

General Qualifications

• Must be a citizen (including US Nationals) of the United States of America.
• Must be 21 years of age or older* at the start of the academy .
• Must be conversant in both spoken and written English.
• Most possess a high school diploma or have passed a General Education Development (GED) test.

* There is no upper age limit; if you can pass the physical fitness test and medical screening,  you could be hired.

Driving

• Must possess a valid driver’s license issued within the United States or its Territories.
• Must be free of excessive moving violations and recent license actions (canceled, revoked, suspended, limited, or SR-22 requirement).

Drugs

Drug use/abuse is closely scrutinized and recent drug use may be cause for elimination from the hiring process, including:

• Marijuana use within the last year
• Use of illegal narcotics within the last ten years
• Manufacture/sale of illegal narcotics as an adult
• Illegal drug use while employed in a law enforcement position
• Prescription drug use without a prescription unless there was an immediate, pressing, or emergency medical circumstance to justify the use

Criminal History

• Adult criminal history is closely scrutinized and the following may be cause for elimination from the hiring process:
• Felony conduct as an adult
• Misdemeanor convictions within the last ten years
• Any conviction related to domestic violence

So a high school diploma or GED is all you need to get a starting salary of

In comparison, here's the salary schedule from the Anchorage Education Association  Contract - teachers.  This is for the 202-1022 school year.  There is a bump up each year, but the highest starting salary is $55,158 and the highest top salary is $97,238.  

100 SERIES – SALARIES AND BENEFITS 105 SALARY SCHEDULE

2021-2022 Salary Schedule

Step	B00	B18	B36	B54	B72
0	53,287	55,872	58,455	61,039	65,882
1	54,698	57,282	59,865	62,448	67,283
2	56,106	58,690	61,273	63,857	68,685
3	57,516	60,099	62,682	65,266	70,087
4	58,925	61,508	64,091	66,674	71,488
5	60,333	62,917	65,501	68,085	72,892
6	61,745	64,326	66,910	69,494	74,294
7	63,153	65,737	68,320	70,901	75,697
8	64,562	67,145	69,729	72,311	77,101
9	65,970	68,554	71,137	73,722	78,501
10	67,378	69,963	72,548	75,129	79,904
11	-	71,371	73,955	76,540	81,306
12	-	72,780	75,364	77,947	82,708
13	-	-	76,773	79,357	84,109
14	-	-	78,182	80,768	85,514
15	-	-	79,591	82,175	86,915
16	-	-	-	83,584	88,318
17	-	-	-	84,993	89,718
18	-	-	-	-	91,119
19	-	-	-	-	92,520
20	-	-	-	-	93,922

 

Here are the qualification requirements for an elementary school teacher:

Job Requirements
The following are required:

1. A valid Alaska initial, professional, or master teaching certificate.
2. Evidence of content knowledge shown by:
1. a posted degree in the content area of this position; or
2. a posted minor in the content area of this position; or
3. passing Praxis Subject Assessments scores (formerly Praxis II) in the content area of this position; or
4. a certificate endorsement in the content area of this position

What's required for a teaching certificate?  There's a lot of different ones listed, but here's for someone who has never taught in Alaska:

INITIAL/PROGRAM ENROLLMENT TEACHER CERTIFICATE

To qualify for an Initial/Program Enrollment teacher certificate, an applicant must meet the following requirements:

• Has never held an Alaska teacher certificate

• Completion of a bachelor’s degree from a regionally or nationally accredited university;

• Current enrollment in an approved teacher preparation program as verified by a Program Enrollment form (docx) and official transcripts (Program must be completed within two (2) years of the issuance of the Initial certificate).
• Passing scores on an approved basic competency exam 
• Has passing scores on an approved content area exam
• Five years of experience in the subject matter that you will be teaching;

• Offered a certified teaching position by an Alaska public school district.

I've had comments in the past that argued that having a Bachelor's degree is no guarantee that someone can do the job better than someone without one.  That requiring such a degree is elitist.   I would say that depends on the kind of job you're hiring for.  And the quality of the degree one has.  

But I would argue that a good Bachelor's degree forces one to challenge one's world view, to be exposed to alternative ways of thinking about things, to develop thinking and logic skills, and to spend time working through ethical problems.

I suspect that if qualified teachers applied for and got State Trooper positions, the quality of our state law enforcement would improve greatly.  I also think that if our teacher pay scale were to be more like the trooper pay scale, we'd have better teacher applicants.  But I would also acknowledge that there are both troopers and teachers who would apply for those positions regardless of the pay, because that's what they really want to do.  In both cases, I would hope the hiring authorities make sure that the want to pursue those careers for the right reasons.  

As Someone Who Closely Followed The Live Watergate Hearings, This Is Really Different

 I started this post while I was watching what I thought were the live Jan 6 hearings Thursday.  I was watching on YouTube, but I also followed the Twitter feed on the hearings and people were commenting on things I wasn't seeing.  In the long run, that's good, because what I was watching was not what I would expect after the committee hired a consultant to help them make the hearings more compelling.  

Turns out what I was watching was live in July 2021.  For anyone objecting to the committee getting professional help, just watch the old hearing.  You'll be thankful.  Same sort of thing - four law enforcement officers telling their stories, comments by committee members - but dragged on too long and was repetitive.

Then I found rerun of Thursday's hearing and things made sense.  It was significantly tighter and more compelling that the first one.  

But, it still was a very different experience than the Watergate hearings.  Those hearings had both Democrats and Republicans (a lot more even numbers) who took turns questioning witnesses.  Yes, like most committee hearings, they had already questioned the witnesses in private and pretty much knew what they were going to say.  But Republicans were able to do a sort of cross examination of the witnesses, softening the edges of those testifying against Nixon and bringing out more context in general.  

Also, revelations came out over time.  While the committee knew what was coming each day, often they only learned things a day or two before.  Like when Alexander Butterfield revealed that Nixon had a secret recording system in his office.  That was a blockbuster discovery.  It meant everything that people testified had been said could actually be checked on tapes.  Nixon went to the Supreme Court to prevent the release of the tapes claiming executive privilege.  No one knew what the Court would say.  But when they said the tapes weren't protected, it was pretty much over for Nixon once they started comparing the testimony against the tapes.  Lots of lying about what people knew and when they knew it.   Here's the part where Butterfield reveals the existence of the tapes.

This looks more like Trump impeachment hearings than the Jan 6 hearings, except the Republicans weren't stonewalling the whole event.  The interrogator in the clip is Fred Thompson, on the Republican staff, and later a GOP Senator from Tennessee.  In those days GOP staffers and members of Congress who helped investigate the GOP president weren't shunned by their party. And I don't recall any women or people of color involved.  Lots of Southerners, who were mostly Democrats in those days.  

The event Thursday night seemed more like the prosecution making their opening or closing argument before the jury.  Lots of gushing over the witnesses.  It was a strong, logical, evidence backed argument, but I can understand why GOP viewers might think it was partisan.  The tone of the Watergate hearings was much more formal.  While witnesses were thanked, they weren't fawned over.  

I'd also note the timing of  the events.   

• The break-in occurred May 28, 1972 (50 years ago last month).  
• Nixon was reelected in November 1972
• Alexander Butterfield testified before the Watergate Committee on July 16, 1973.
• Nixon resigned August 9, 1974.

These events just plodded along.  Here's a detailed timeline.  

The break-in didn't happen on national television like the insurrection did, but it took over two years before Nixon left office.  He resigned rather than be impeached.  Had he not resigned, it would have taken much longer. 

Two years for our current scandal will be January 2023.  And while Nixon supporters stayed loyal until the end, when it became clear he had lied to the American public, House and Senate Republicans did NOT rally to support him. (A few did, but most let him know he was going to be impeached if he didn't resign.)  

 [I realize as I write this there could be readers who don't know details beyond the word "Watergate." The Watergate housed a then new luxury hotel and office space and apartments.  The Democratic National Committee had an office there and Nixon operatives broke into those offices to spy on the Democratic campaign headquarters.  Sort of like breaking into the Democratic National Committee's computers in 2016] 

Letters To The Editor, Book Reference Sweeney And Termination

 I generally don't write letters to the editor of the Anchorage Daily News (ADN).  I have a blog where I can say what I need to say.  But we're in the middle of a special election to replace our member of Congress who died recently and an opinion piece the other day disturbed me.  

I wasn't planning on making this into a post, until a reference to Tara Sweeny showed up this morning.  So, first, here's my letter (The ADN picked the title, not me.)

No to Sweeney

"Hugh Ashlock (ADN, June 3) would have us vote for Sweeney for Congress because she will support business. Ashlock, a real estate developer, says he knows what qualities entrepreneurs need for success. He points out she’s been a leader of Arctic Slope Regional Corp., “Alaska’s largest privately owned company.” He also cites her “bipartisan cooperation” using her unanimous confirmation by the U.S. Senate as an example. But that was when the GOP controlled the Senate and Democrats voted for qualified nominees, unlike Republicans, who wouldn’t even let Merrick Garland have a hearing, let alone a vote.

Alaska has never been short of elected officials who support business. We’ve had oil company employees as elected officials. Ashlock says government needs to stand aside and let business do what it does best. The common goal of all businesses is to make a profit. Clean environment? Climate change? Worker health and safety? They see all these as obstacles to profit.

Bipartisanship? Arctic Slope Regional Corporation couldn’t even cooperate with the Alaska Federation of Natives and pulled out of that organization. GOP members of Congress are like the Uvalde police — they fled the insurrectionists and then refused to do their job and hold them accountable.

The age of oil is waning. Even big banks and oil companies are pulling back from Alaska oil. We need realists who see that the future is in a strong Permanent Fund, not in climate-destroying fossil fuels. We don’t need another oil executive (ASRC lives off oil) representing us in any governmental body. We need a candidate who believes health care is a human right and that women should have as much autonomy over their bodies as men, that voting rights and campaign spending limits are critical to democracy; who fights for workers’ rights, not for greater corporate power. Not someone who will join with her party to oppose all of these things in favor of higher profits."

When the letter was published I got a couple of emails from my book club.  One added this note:  

"Yes. Good letter Steve. Louise Erdrich also  lambasts Tara Sweeney in the Epilogue of her latest book “The Night Watchman.”

I got to that part this morning.  The book is a fictional account of how Erdrich's grandfather, in the 1950s learned that their tribal lands were going to be terminated.  Against all odds, he mounts a campaign to lobby Congress to prevent the termination, and succeeds.  I posted about the book recently because, while the fight against termination is the basic story, it's wrapped in the context of reservation life and Turtle Mountain Chippewa culture of the 1950s in North Dakota.  The termination villain in the story is real life Senator Arthur V. Watkins of Utah who believes 'government handouts' kills the initiative of Indians.  

Here's what the Epilogue says: 

"Indeed, the Trump administration and Assistant Secretary of the Interior Tara Sweeney have recently brought back the termination era by seeking to terminate the Wampanoag, the tribe who first welcomed Pilgrims to these shores and invented Thanksgiving."

Mind you, Tara Sweeny is an Alaska Native woman.  

*The ADN added the title.  While I am opposed to Tara Sweeny, my point was more about the fact that we have enough pro-business representatives.   

" . . . his father remembered a time when the dead person was carefully wrapped in birchbark and then fixed high in a tree."

 

I'm going to offer you the chapter "Cradle to Grave" from Louise Erdich's The Night Watchman. As I read it my body absorbed, in a new way, the meaning of the Anglo rulers rooting out the traditions, language, and knowledge of indigenous peoples.  And I realized that the GOP and evangelical Christian advocates of rooting out any mention of LGBTQ realities, women's rights, or the true history of the United States, of slavery, or even scientific truths,  rises from the same need to maintain one's own 'truths' by eliminating any competing 'truths.'

Stamping out other knowledge leads to ignorance which leads to total obedience.  Or so these would be tyrants believe. but the human mind has always  been resistant to these attempts.  Though the technology of modern marketing chips away and there are humans who would like to possess technology that controls what others know and think.  

Not only does such annihilation of ideas create obedience to "the one Truth" it delegitimizes the knowledge of the other culture.  This passage also shows us what we lose when we wipe out other cultural knowledge.  

My apologies to Louise Erdrich for quoting such a long passage.  This blog takes no ads and raises no money.  My hope is to share your wisdom and possibly get more people to read your book.  

"Thomas worked on the grave house while Wood Mountain finished up the cradle board.  They were working in Louie's barn because he had all of the tools - the saws, planes, rasps, the splitter, vise, hammer, and the sanding rocks.  Neither of them spoke.  Thomas was using a sharp chisel to dovetail the ends of the boards.  He didn't like using nails in a grave house.  He made a few rafters for the roof and then planed out the necessary shingles.  He'd seen them made with tar paper or bought shingles, but he felt close to Zhaanat as he worked - she had asked him to make the grave house because she knew he did it the old way.  Except, Thomas wondered, was this the really old way?  Biboon said that his father remembered a time when the dead person was carefully wrapped in birchbark and then fixed high in a tree.  It seemed better.  You were eaten by crows and vultures instead of worms.  Your body went flying over the earth instead of being distributed to the tiny creatures living under the earth. This grave house probably came about after they had been forced to live in one place, on reservations.  Mostly, they had Catholic burials.  He wanted to ask Wood Mountain which he thought was better, tree or dirt.  However, Wood Mountain was finishing the cradle board. 

"I suppose we shouldn't tell Zhaanat we were making the grave house and cradle board at the same time," he said to Wood Mountain.  

"You think it could be bad for the baby?"

"I'm not superstitious," said Thomas, although he certainly was.  Just not as bad as LaBatte with his fear of owls and his reading of random omens in everything.  Wood Mountain said that he'd light some sage and bathe the cradle board in the smoke to take the whammy off.

"That'll work," said Thomas. 

From the top of the cradle board, Wood Mountain was using Zhaanat's finest sanding tool - horsetail plant split and glued onto a piece of wood.  It was bringing out the narrow lines in the white cedar.  He had a jar of tea and a jar of vinegar in which he'd left some pennies for a week.  After he'd sanded the wood smooth, he painted the bottom of the cradle board with the tea, which gave it a soft brown color.  He painted the top of the wood with the penny vinegar, which tinged the wood with pale blue including the head guard.  He tied several pieces of sinew to the head guard.  sometimes he found small ocean shells while working in the fields.  Some were whorled;  others were tiny grooved scallops.  He drilled holes in them and hung them from the lengths of sinew. 

"Barnes was saying there used to be an ocean here," he said to Thomas.

"From the endless way-back times."

"Think of it.  Vera's baby will be playing with these little things from the bottom of the sea that was here.  Who could have known?"

"We are connected to the way-back people, here, in so many ways.  Maybe a way-back person touched these shells.  Maybe the little creatures in them disintegrated into the dirt.  Maybe some tiny piece from that creature is inside us now.  We can't know these things."

"Us being connected here so far back gives me a peaceful feeling," said Wood Mountain.

"That's what it's all about," said Thomas.  "And now we're putting another man in the earth.  Maybe a drunk, but he wasn't always a drunk."

"Sometimes when I'm out and around," said Wood Mountain, "I feel like they're with me, those way-back people.  I never talk about it.  But they're all around us.  I could never leave this place."

The United States would be a much healthier and spiritually  richer society today had it not been for the arrogance of white, Christian conquerors who believed they had the right to dispossess the indigenous people of their land and languages and customs.  Or the right to dispossess African slaves of their freedom and their labor.  

But that need for unquestioned power and obedience still lives among many in this nation and in this world.  I have no issue with spirituality and religions that try to guide people to experience their spirituality.  The Bible or Koran and other religious texts as allegory, as fables, that bring people comfort in times of sorrow and decency in times of opportunity, are fine.  But as literal truth to be thoughtlessly obeyed, a religion becomes the tool of authoritarian tyrants and demagogues.  

Trump, among others, gave permission to many to act on these selfish, evil impulses.  We'll get past this, but at great cost.  For those whose lives have been untouched by gun violence or climate change, or racial hatred, your escape is only temporary. Actually we've all been at least indirectly impacted even if we don't realize it.  If we don't overcome the dominance of oil wealth and drastically cut back our use of carbon based products, life will be unbearable for the vast majority of human beings.  And I worry for my grandchildren.

As the passage from The Night Watchman shows, the indigenous peoples of North America had spiritual beliefs and physical skills that kept connected to each other and to the earth for thousands of years.  Knowledge the immigrants from Europe could have benefited from if they hadn't tried to wipe it out.