Just pictures. Some mine, some collected from Twitter.
After the rally, the group marched to the Capitol.
There are marches like this happening in cities all over the country tonight.
Category: Blog
Last night St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Bob McCullouch gave a long, rambling press conference in which he announced that the grand jury decided not to indict Darren Wilson for the killing of Michael Brown. McCullouch, sounding more like a defense attorney than a prosecutor, repeatedly blamed social media and “the 24-hour news cycle” for the civil unrest which followed the shooting, and rather callously said of the grand jury that they “gave up their lives” to look over evidence in the case.
That last bit was necessary because he, as prosecutor, declined to take a position on whether or not the grand jury should indict. Here’s a Vox article on what that means, complete with this important quotation for former federal prosecutor Alex Little:
So when a District Attorney says, in effect, “we’ll present the evidence and let the grand jury decide,” that’s malarkey. If he takes that approach, then he’s already decided to abdicate his role in the process as an advocate for justice. At that point, there’s no longer a prosecutor in the room guiding the grand jurors, and — more importantly — no state official acting on behalf of the victim, Michael Brown…
Then, when you add to the mix that minorities are notoriously underrepresented on grand juries, you have the potential for nullification — of a grand jury declining to bring charges even when there is sufficient probable cause. That’s the real danger to this approach.
Mr. Little isn’t the only lawyer questioning the way this was handled. The National Bar Association almost immediately released a statement questioning the result, and requesting the U.S. Department of Justice to bring federal charges against Darren Wilson.
It’s crucial to remember: the grand jury has nothing to do with saying whether Darren Wilson was guilty or innocent. An indictment is just about whether or not to have a trial at all. By declining to indict, the grand jury declared that no crime was even committed in the fatal shooting of an unarmed 18-year-old, and the issue of Darren Wilson’s guilt or innocence need never be addressed.
The most important statement last night comes from Mike Brown’s family, who said,
We are profoundly disappointed that the killer of our child will not face the consequence of his actions.
While we understand that many others share our pain, we ask that you channel your frustration in ways that will make a positive change. We need to work together to fix the system that allowed this to happen.
Join with us in our campaign to ensure that every police officer working the streets in this country wears a body camera.
We respectfully ask that you please keep your protests peaceful. Answering violence with violence is not the appropriate reaction.
Let’s not just make noise, let’s make a difference.
Let’s make a difference indeed. Let’s take military equipment out of the hands of the police. Let’s put a body camera on every cop in the country. Let’s do it in the name of Mike Brown and the many, many other victims of racially motivated police brutality. And let’s start with solidarity. There are are protests tonight all around the country, with a list aggregated here. I know where I’m going to be.
I have many of them, and they just keep on writing things you should read. Also I’m instituting an new tag, My Friends Write Things, to link all these posts together. I’ve propagated it back through my archives, so clicking that will lead you to a trove of work from my most-loved people.
Fiction
- “The Husband Stitch” – Carmen Machado, one of the best fantasists writing today, in Granta with a gorgeous story inspired by Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark.
- “Mothers” – Carmen Machado again, because she is a force of nature. This time in Interfictions, with a story about two women in a broken relationship who make a baby. Carmen has put personal experience at the service of fiction with astonishing force and efficacy. You can read a little about the writing of this story on her blog.
- “Becoming” – Anna Noyes in Guernica with a story from the point of view of a chimpanzee being raised as a human. I was lucky enough to see an early draft of this memorable story in workshop, and am thrilled it’s found a home.
- “Quality of Descent” – Megan Kurashige in Lightspeed with a story about a man meeting a woman who definitely has wings, and may or may not be able to fly.
- “Ideal Head of a Woman” – Kelly Luce in Midnight Breakfast with a story about a museum employee who has an unusual relationship with a piece of sculpture.
Nonfiction
- “The Gospel of Paul” – Ariel Lewiton writing in the LA Review of Books with a profile of bookseller and new author Paul Ingram. In addition to being a gorgeous portrait of a fascinating man, this is also the best record of the culture of Iowa City that I’ve read.
- “Did Eastern Germany Experience an Economic Miracle?” – Ben Mauk writing in the New Yorker about regional economic variations in Germany 25 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall.
- “Freedom to Fuck Up” – Thessaly La Force interviewing Merritt Tierce about her novel Love Me Back, discussing pregnancy, abortion, and sex in fiction.
- “Reconciliation” – Monica Byrne on the need for reconciliation between the United States and Iran, and how that can begin with connection between individuals. If you’re an American and her article makes you want to visit Iran yourself, she’s also written a how-to for U.S. citizens on her blog.
Poetry
- “The New Ways” – Amal El-Mohtar in the inaugural issue of Uncanny Magazine.
- “The Mermaid of Lincoln Park Lagoon” – Valya Dudycz Lupescu in Strange Horizons.
A few (how many?) articles and sites that I want to save.
- “The $9 Billion Witness” – An article about the woman who was willing to whistleblow on J.P. Morgan-Chase’s misconduct during the financial crisis. I just keep reading these articles. I want to remember, always, that these people are crooks, and that they own us. A fun excerpt about former Attorney General Eric Holder:
In September, at a speech at NYU, Holder defended the lack of prosecutions of top executives on the grounds that, in the corporate context, sometimes bad things just happen without actual people being responsible. “Responsibility remains so diffuse, and top executives so insulated,” Holder said, “that any misconduct could again be considered more a symptom of the institution’s culture than a result of the willful actions of any single individual.”
In other words, people don’t commit crimes, corporate culture commits crimes! It’s probably fortunate that Holder is quitting before he has time to apply the same logic to Mafia or terrorism cases.
- “War of the Words” – Long article about the conflict between Amazon and the Hachette group, incorporating more context than those articles usually do.
- “Tabletop Whale” – A Seattle designer’s tumblr, where he posts some very impressive infographics in animated .gif format.
- “Scientists Have Discovered How Common Different Sexual Fantasies Are” – There’s an article, but the interesting bit is the table at the bottom, where all the fantasies in the survey have their responses broken down by percentage.
- “These Are The Movies Recommended By The Church of Satan” – I have a real soft spot for the Church of Satan. Part of that is because, despite the words of reactionary Christians who want to use them as a rhetorical cudgel, it’s members are very open in not believing Satan exists, which tickles me. Another part is that they serve as a weird, fifth column force in support of separation of church and state, as in this recent example, where schools were handing out bibles and not letting atheists hand out books–until the Church of Satan started handing out coloring books. Then, suddenly, it was decided that maybe religious proselytization on school grounds was a bad idea. “Lucien’s Law. It’s like the nuclear option of church/state separation cases. When nothing else works, count on Satanists to settle the matter!” Anyway. I kind of like the Church of Satan, and found this interview in io9 delightful. I didn’t bother to count how many movies are discussed, but it’s some integer.
- Greg Egan’s Foundations – A series of articles by the most rigorous hard science fiction writer who has ever lived on the topics of physics that most inform modern hard science fiction. “These articles are for the interested lay reader. No prior knowledge of mathematics beyond high school algebra and geometry is needed.” Though, as is always the case with Greg Egan, that doesn’t mean the reading will be easy. Egan, always, asks you to think.
- Theorem of the Day – Robin Whitty curating an online museum of mathematical theorems.
- “Molly Crabapple’s 15 Rules for Creative Success in the Internet Age” – Just what it says on the tin. Things like, “Be a mercenary towards people with money. Be generous and giving to good people without it.”
- Finally, a video of Anna-Maria Hefele, demonstrating the many ways she is able to sing two notes at once. I’d heard some examples of polyphonic singing before, but nothing like this.
Given my post the other day about how much better voting in Iowa was than voting in Texas, I’d be remiss if I didn’t link to this article from the ACLU, “I was arrested for voting.”
When I was convicted on a nonviolent drug charge in 2008, my defense attorney told me that once I served my probation, I would regain my right to vote automatically – correct information at the time. But Gov. Terry Branstad suddenly changed the rules in 2011, and now all citizens with a felony conviction lose their voting rights for life. Our Secretary of State Matt Schultz, in fact, has made this subversion of democracy a point of pride. He has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars hunting down and prosecuting people with past convictions who unknowingly registered or cast a vote.
Considering how successful disenfranchisement tactics have been, I suppose it’s unsurprising that a state with a Republican Governor has been instituting some of them.
On Election Day I posted the Facebook status,
For the record, voting in Iowa feels like a massively more civilized activity than voting in Texas does. The disenfranchisement efforts here are palpable.
To expand on that: Iowa had same-day voting registration, paper ballots that you sealed yourself, and incredibly helpful election officials that exuded concern for protecting everyone’s franchise. In contrast, when I moved back to Texas I rushed to register before the October 6 deadline. I assumed that since I had lived in Texas for all but the previous 3 years of my life and been a Texas voter before, this would be a straightforward process. It wasn’t. It took me two days of driving back and forth from Pflugerville, four forms of ID, and a document from the county tax assessor’s office to get my Texas ID and voter registration. It was important to do those at the same time, because if there are any discrepancies between the two–such as the presence of a middle name on one but not the other–you will not be allowed to vote normally on election day. You will be able to, should you be willing to take the time, fill out an affidavit and a provisional ballot, which may or may not end up being counted. And even if everything is in order, you will be voting electronically, with all the potential for abuse that brings.
I was able to get my Texas ID and register in only two days because I’m childless and self-employed and was able to take as much time jumping through bureaucratic hoops as was required. Also, I had four forms of identification. But what if my time was more limited, or I had a shorter history as a voter in this state? I might not have managed to register in time at all. And the presence of such irritating barriers might have stopped me from caring enough to try.
That effect is exactly the reason the barriers are there: to stop minorities, the poor, anyone who is demographically unlikely to support the Republican party from voting. And this year it was remarkably effective. Texas had a voter turnout rate of only 28.5%, the lowest in the entire country. Relatedly, the conservative candidates rolled to easy victories. Iowa’s a swing state and Texas isn’t. Voting in Iowa feels like a celebrated act of civic responsibility. Voting in Texas feels like being patted down by the TSA.
Nonfiction
- “Awkwardly Dapper: The Strange Exhilaration of Buying, and Wearing, a Suit” – Meghan McCarron writing for The Toast with her typical verve and humor, on the personal identity issues brought up by working at being handsome in men’s formalwear.
- “Your Prescribing Doctor: Dispatches from the Psycho-Pharmaceutical Complex” – Rebekah Frumkin’s new column for McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, about her relationship with lithium and similar substances, and how this relationship changed while she was in India. In the entire time I’ve known her, Rebekah has never written a sentence that wasn’t worth reading. This new, continuing column contains many sentences.
- “My Night With Afghanistan’s Only Female Warlord” – Jen Percy writing for New Republic, about the most terrifying sleepover I’ve ever heard of.
Fiction
- “A Dismal Paradise” – Ashley Davidson with a story in Five Chapters that really stayed with me. It’s a gorgeous, subtle look at the complicated boundaries of humanity and infirmity. This is a favorite subject of mine, and Ashley has explored it with memorable grace.
- “We Are The Cloud” – Sam Miller in Lightspeed Magazine, with a science fiction story about the exploitation of orphan children that is, by turns, tender and brutal.
- “The Glass Bottle Trick” – Nalo Hopkinson in Fantasy Magazine with a new take on the Bluebeard story. I overdosed on retold folklore a few years ago and haven’t usually been able to enjoy it since, but perhaps I’ve gotten over it, because I liked this. Bit of a linked variables problem, though; I almost always like Nalo’s work.
My new home page header image is Leaf Relief by Mark Englebrecht. My previous header image was one of his photographs as well. His Flickr page is full of wonderful, CC-licensed nature photography, and I’d encourage you to give it a look. As ever, all CC images used on this site are attributed on the About page.
I recently went with Meghan McCarron to a screening of the long, excellent video essay Los Angeles Plays Itself, and since then have been reading some interviews with the director, Thom Andersen. In an interview with StopSmiling in 2007 he commented on changes in public transportation in Los Angeles.
Since I made the movie, the bus system and public transportation system in general has gotten better. But it’s on the verge of getting worse because, over the next couple years, they want to raise fares more than 100 percent. They’re losing money. It’s attributable to the investment in subways and so-called “light-rail” projects. The ridership on those systems has never been very high because the idea of those systems is not to serve the public that actually uses public transportation, but to attract another public to using public transportation.
I don’t know how these issues have developed in the seven years since he gave that interview, but his observation–that new public transport proposals were designed to appeal to wealthier people, and therefore not only didn’t address the needs of those who actually used pubic transport but exacerbated them–strikes me as profound. I suspect this is a common phenomenon, and one that I will strive to look for now that it’s been pointed out for me. It reminds me of something I once heard articulated by a Berkeley economist on the radio: the free market works on price signaling, so people too impoverished to contribute a meaningful signal are invisible, treated by the market as if they don’t exist. Thus, free market solutions are simply inapplicable to problems of poverty. Andersen’s observation is an example of how, even if the needs of impoverished communities is invisible to the free market, the rhetoric of those needs, or more specifically their value as a tool to justify profitable endeavor, is not.