The annual Right to Meddle in Women’s Lives demonstration was held in Washington DC last Friday, sponsored by the Zygote Liberation Front and the Committee to Restrict Women’s Health Care, or something like that. Theme of this year’s pep rally was “Equality Begins in the Womb,” a bid to promote fetal personhood and negate the human rights of the, um, womb-owners. This biology-denying sect is said to have infiltrated the federal judicial branch recently.
More:
“Anti-Abortion Marchers Gather With an Eye on the Supreme Court,” Kate Zernike and Madeleine Ngo, New York Times
“As March for Life returns to D.C., antiabortion activists wonder: Is this the last march under Roe?” Casey Parks, Washington Post
Related:
“Catholic pro-choice activists project messages onto DC basilica in protest,” by Jack Jenkins, RNS, via National Catholic Reporter
“White nationalists are flocking to the US anti-abortion movement,” Moira Donegan, The Guardian
“‘You never forget it’: These are the stories of life before Roe v. Wade transformed America,” Shefali Luthra, The 19th
The Compton Cowboys joined thousands celebrating the life of George Floyd in Compton CA on Sunday, June 7th. The club was formed in 2017 to dispel stereotypes against black people. All riders were welcomed for the trip from Gateway Towne Center to Compton City Hall. A Los Angeles Times video.
Last week President Trump told governors to “call the shots” on reopening their states’ economies, then called on mobs of his followers to “liberate” states with Democratic governors, specifically the battleground states of Michigan, Minnesota, and Virginia. His rabid supporters turned out at state capitals, and some of them were armed.
“One wears a Guy Fawkes mask. Two men wear Trump-branded baseball caps. Two women, the closest to the windows, shape their mouths into the same elongated howl as Edvard Munch’s ‘The Scream.’ American flags obscure some of the protesters in the back.”
“It looked awfully familiar to Michael Satrazemis, the director of photography for ‘The Walking Dead’ and director of ‘Fear the Walking Dead,’ two shows that seem a little scarier these days, since they’re about a zombie apocalypse that begins with an uncontrollable pathogen.
The visual trope is ‘classic horror,’ says Satrazemis. It plays on the common fear of claustrophobia, making the audience “\’feel the walls are closing in and the world is shrinking around you. And there’s no way out.’”
— “That Ohio protest photo looked like a zombie movie. Zombie movie directors think so, too.”Maura Judkis, Washington Post
Tens of thousands of citizens marched in Washington DC Saturday to demand that Donald Trump release his tax returns, as every American president has done since Watergate. Mr. Trump made many promises to do this before and during the campaign, then reneged. After a 2-hour demonstration on the U.S. Capitol grounds, protesters marched past the GSA-ownedTrump International Hotel to the Lincoln Memorial.
Senator Ron Wyden and U.S. Representatives Jamie Raskin and Maxine Waters spoke, but the big surprise was an appearance by the Chief Executive himself, who released his tax returns:
“The Million Puppet March — a political rally against Mitt Romney’s debate remarks about Big Bird and cutting funding to public television — may not have actually been a million puppets strong, but furry monsters came from far and near in a post-Halloween parade of support for PBS on Saturday.
The march to the Capitol set off from Lincoln Park shortly after 11 a.m., with the participants singing the “Sesame Street” theme song, and the Muppets’ “Mahna Mahna.” They were asked to keep to the sidewalk, but the hundreds of marchers soon spilled into the street, requiring a police escort. They chanted:
‘Power to the puppets! We can save the Muppets!’
‘Whose street? Sesame Street!’
‘What do we want? Cookies! When do we want them? Now!’
‘EL-MO! We won’t go!’
–“The Million Puppet March: Fighting for public broadcasting, with felt and fur,” Maura Judkis, Washington Post
Three members of the feminist Russian punk band Pussy Riot were found guilty of “hooliganism motivated by religious hatred” and sentenced to two years in prison. The criminal incident in question: On February 21st, the band performed a “punk prayer” protest in Moscow’s Christ the Saviour Cathedral as part of the demonstrations following the disputed re-election of Vladimir Putin. Some feel the Church is too politically tied to the Putin regime.
The prison-bound band members are philosophy student and mother Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, mother and Greenpeace activist Maria Alekhina, and artist and computer programmer Yekaterina Samutsevich. To mark the occasion, the band released a new recording (above), and it’s not a statement of remorse. The song is called “Putin Lights Up the Fires”(путин зажигает костры).
More:
“Russian band’s sentencing shows punk’s power,” Randall Roberts, Los Angeles Times
“Is Vladimir Putin Richer Than Carlos Slim?” Worldcrunch
Hundreds of thousands of middle class Israelis began protesting a huge jump in dairy prices this summer, resulting in the largest demonstrations the country has ever seen. These soon became protests about widening economic inequalities in the small nation.
The protests are getting results. The Israeli cabinet has just approved a new tax plan reducing taxes on low-income wage earners and raising them for the rich and for corporations. Other new policies include cuts to the defense budget.
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