Native social values then and now are centered on a view of humanity, the natural world, and the spiritual realm as a whole. . . . Native social values, based on an alternate calculation, have always been simply counterintuitive to a capitalist mind. The “kindness” of Native nations, sovereign then and sovereign today, not to mention their lands, rivers, minerals, timber, and other resources — for which they received virtually nothing — are the original source of United States “greatness.” Theft and exploitation of indigenous resources and labor, human-rights violations, and commodified African bodies, without which there would be no American ingenuity, created the big boost to U.S. world domination.

This Thanksgiving, I exhort Americans to honor their first president’s decree with petitions to the government of his and other founders’ creation “to protect and guide all Sovereigns and Nations (especially such as have shown kindness to us) and to bless them with good government, peace, and concord.” Recognize our treaties, humanity, and agency in your ancestors’ survival. Absent that, we will continue to meet you, treaties in hand, in the courts of the land.

No more jumps out of the page and slaps you in the face, but the Eleventh Circuit still does not think that a worker often called ‘boy’ established a racially hostile environment.

In Alexander v. Opelika Pub. Schs., No. 08-11014 (11th Cir. 11/10/09), a public school employee in Alabama who allegedly was called “boy” eight times over two years and heard a supervisor comment about a noose did not present sufficient evidence to survive summary judgment on his racial harassment claim.

If we’re lucky, the 11th Circuit’s miserly construction of Title VII will be slapped down again by the Supreme Court.

The most important new antidiscrimination law in two decades — the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act — will take effect in the nation’s workplaces next weekend, prohibiting employers from requesting genetic testing or considering someone’s genetic background in hiring, firing or promotions.

[...]

The biggest change resulting from the law is that it will — except in a few circumstances — prohibit employers and health insurers from asking employees to give their family medical histories. The law also bans group health plans from the common practice of rewarding workers, often with lower premiums or one-time payments, if they give their family medical histories when completing health risk questionnaires.

In October 2009, President Obama signed the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act into law.  This law makes it a federal hate crime to assault people based on sexual orientation, gender and gender identity by expanding the scope of a 1968 law that applies to people attacked because of their race, religion or national origin. In support of this goal, it expands the authority of the U.S. Department of Justice to prosecute such crimes instead of or in collaboration with local authorities.  The law also provides major increases in funding for the U.S. Department of Justice and local law enforcement to use in prosecuting these crimes – including special additional resources to go toward prosecution of youth for hate crimes.

The recent expansion of the federal hates crimes legislation has received extensive praise and celebration by mainstream lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender organizations because it purports to “protect” LGBT people from attacks on the basis of their expressed and/or perceived identities for the first time ever on a federal level. The Sylvia Rivera Law Project does not see this as a victory. As an organization that centers racial and economic justice in our work and that understands mass imprisonment as a primary vector of violence in the lives of our constituents, we believe that hate crimes legislation is a counterproductive response to the violence faced by LGBT people.

Already, the U.S. incarcerates more people per capita than any other nation in the world. One out of every thirty-two people in the U.S. live under criminal punishment system supervision. African-American people are six times more likely to be incarcerated than white people; Latin@ people are twice as likely to be incarcerated as white people.  LGBTS and queer people, transgender people, and poor people are also at greatly increased risk for interaction with the criminal justice system.  It is clear that this monstrous system of laws and enforcement specifically targets marginalized communities, particularly people of color.

What hate crimes laws do is expand and increase the power of the same unjust and corrupt criminal punishment system. Evidence demonstrates that hate crimes legislation, like other criminal punishment legislation, is used unequally and improperly against communities that are already marginalized in our society.  These laws increase the already staggering incarceration rates of people of color, poor people, queer people and transgender people based on a system that is inherently and deeply corrupt.

The evidence also shows that hate crime laws and other “get tough on crime” measures do not deter or prevent violence.  Increased incarceration does not deter others from committing violent acts motivated by hate, does not it rehabilitate those who have committed past acts of hate, and does not make anyone safer. As we see trans people profiled by police, disproportionately arrested and detained, caught in systems of poverty and detention, and facing extreme violence in prisons, jails and detention centers, we believe that this system itself is a main perpetrator of violence against our communities.

We are also dismayed by the joining of a law that is supposedly about “preventing” violence with the funding for continued extreme violence and colonialism abroad.  This particular bill was attached to a $680-billion measure for the Pentagon’s budget, which includes $130 billion for ongoing military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Killing people in Iraq and Afghanistan protects no one, inside or outside of U.S. borders.

We continue to work in solidarity with many organizations and individuals to support people in prison, to reduce incarceration, to end the wars on Iraq and Afghanistan, and to create systems of accountability that do not rely on prisons or policing and that meaningfully improve the health and safety of our communities–especially redistribution of wealth, health care, and housing.  A few of the many other organizations doing radical and transformative work to increase the health and safety of our communities include:

• The Audre Lorde Project
• FIERCE
• Incite! Women of Color Against Violence
• Queers for Economic Justice
• Right Rides
• TGI Justice Project
• and The Transformative Justice Law Project of Illinois

For these reasons, we believe that a law that links our community’s experiences of violence and death to a demand for increased criminal punishment, as well as further funding for imperialist war, is a strategic mistake of significant proportion.

ACORN is suing the U.S. government over a law passed recently by Congress that bars the controversial community group from receiving federal money.

In a complaint filed this morning in U.S. District Court in New York, ACORN charges that the law is unconstitutional, because it’s a bill of attainder — that is, it targets a specific individual or group for punishment.

The complaint, brought on behalf of ACORN by the Center for Constitutional Rights, also mounts a broader push-back against ACORN’s conservative critics. According to a draft version examined by TPMmuckraker, it claims that the law to defund ACORN was passed thanks to “a public relations campaign orchestrated by political forces” that are hostile to its work registering low-income voters. And it charges that ACORN “earned the animosity of political forces who are dedicated to the proposition that the fewer poor people who vote the better.”

Complaint for Injunctive and Declaratory Relief [PDF]
Bill of Attainder Fact Sheet [PDF]
ACORN v. USA Exhibits [PDF]
ACORN v. USA Memo of Law [PDF]

From Gotham Gazette:

The Senate yesterday decided to table a vote on same-sex marriage during its extraordinary session. Supporters said they were worried they didn’t have enough votes for the bill to pass. Gov. David Paterson said he wanted the bill to come to a vote regardless of the head count. The Senate has also been locked in negotiations over a plan to reduce the deficit, but they failed to come to an agreement on this, too. Paterson scheduled two more extraordinary sessions for next week.

NY Governor David Paterson will address the State Legislature today to urge it to approve a round of state health and education cuts to close a $3.2 billion deficit. But Senate Finance Committee Chairman Carl Kruger came up with his own plan over the weekend, which calls for refinancing tobacco settlement bonds and extending hours for video slot machine parlors instead of many of the governor’s controversial cuts. The governor’s office said Kruger’s plan avoided the necessary proposals to deal with the state’s fiscal crisis. The legislature is scheduled to enter an extraordinary session tomorrow to consider the governor’s cuts and some other issues, including gay marriage.

Last week, Maine’s Bishop, Richard Malone, gloated after his campaign to repeal Maine’s marriage equality took away the rights of same-sex couples in that state. In Maine, the Bishop turned his church into a political operation.

This weekend, the Catholic Bishops are getting credit for undermining women’s rights in the new health care bill through the Stupak amendment.

Read the rest here.

See also: Blindsided by Christian Fundamentalism Again, Plus 2010 Looms

Democrats say the House measure — paid for through new fees and taxes, along with cuts in Medicare — would extend coverage to 36 million people now without insurance while creating a government health insurance program. It would end insurance company practices like not covering pre-existing conditions or dropping people when they become ill. [Source: Sweeping Health Care Plan Passes House]

The passage of the bill came at the expense of reproductive rights, with restrictions on abortion “barring any insurance plan that is purchased with government subsidies from covering abortions” by a vote of 290-194 (see NYT: Abortion Was Heart of Wrangling; see also Reproductive Rights Prof Blog). Follow the links below to see how members of the House voted on the bill and the controversial Stupak/abortion restrictions amendment. Next up: passage of the bill in the Senate (the chamber of congress that has the greatest and most special kind of prima donnas and attention whores (read: Jackass Lieberman) who will undoubtedly find a number of ways to play politics with human rights, i.e., since health care is a human right). The culmination of this epic melodrama/circus show is expected to happen before the end of the year when President Obama hopes to sign the bill into law. This is so much fun that I can hardly wait until we get to immigration reform.

In other news, the U6 has unemployment figures at 17.5%, as mentioned here last month.

Affordable Healthcare for America Act Headlines

Roll Call on Affordable Health Care for America Act

Roll Call on Stupak/Abortion Restrictions Amendment

Sweeping Health Care Plan Passes House

Abortion Was at Heart of Wrangling

Gay Benefits in Health Bill (editorial comment: this NYT headline is so dumb — I didn’t know the “benefits” had a sexuality)

…just so we can hear it ALL OVER AGAIN! Happy Election Day!

A Night to Remember

Obama Wins – World Reacts

Emotional Moment on BET as Obama is Elected

MSNBC Call Election for Barack Obama

Michelle Obama at the DNC Convention

Hillary Clinton at the DNC Convention

2008 DNC Roll Call Vote

A More Perfect Union

Read the full report here [PDF]

Why does H1N1 call for a Presidential designation as a national emergency while the preventable deaths of 45,000 Americans every year (122 every day) is not?

Swine flu leads the news. You can die from swine flu, or should we say H1N1, even if you have no underlying health conditions. Young people have died, and pregnant women are at risk. People are lining up to be vaccinated. Health professionals are at risk due to poor preparations at some health facilities. As many as 1,000 deaths have occurred due to this flu outbreak. It’s scary out there.

But the swine flu is no match for the killing going on at the hands of the for-profit healthcare system in these United States. We bury kids, pregnant moms, babies, teens, young fathers, mid-lifers and older folks too without even batting an eye in the chambers of power in this nation.

Read the rest of this piece here.

From Robin at the National Women’s Law Center:

Written by Judy Waxman, Vice President for Health and Reproductive Rights,
National Women’s Law Center

I don’t deserve health care that meets my needs.
I shouldn’t demand fairness in my health care coverage.
I can’t do anything about it anyway.

That’s what the health insurance profiteers want you to think.

They aren’t thinking about the mother who is struggling to find insurance because she had a Caesarean section. Not the woman who survived domestic violence and now must face rejection by an insurance company for having a so-called “pre-existing condition.” Not the woman who pays more than a man for the same health coverage, even when maternity care isn’t covered.

Being a woman is NOT a pre-existing condition.

Being a woman is NOT a pre-existing condition.