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American Observances Of IDAHO Focus Inward

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From NYC to San Francisco, America’s LGBT community marked the International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia (IDAHO) in a far different fashion than our international brothers and sisters.

May 17 is International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia (IDAHO) and once again was observed across the globe this year. IDAHO is an annual event marking the day the World Health Organization removed homosexuality from its classification of diseases in 1990.

In years past the occasion has been used as a vehicle to demonstrate solidarity for those in countries where discrimination is rife, or where being gay or transgendered is punishable by death. From the murder of gays in Iraq to the murder of activists like David Kato in Uganda, IDAHO is not a celebration. It’s about creating awareness.

In a well-rounded overview on TNCRM, Vincent Warren, the executive director of the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), revisits the hate being exported to places like Uganda, reminding those of us in the U.S. committed to the full civil and human rights of all people, including LGBTQ people, that we have a particular obligation in this situation.

This year, to mark the occasion, EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton issued a statement reaffirming the European Union’s “commitment to equality and nondiscrimination,” while EU Justice and Fundamental Rights Commissioner Viviane Reding stated that homophobia and transphobia are “violations of human dignity.”

As expected, in places like Tbilisi, Georgia’s capital at least 17 people were injured by a violent outbreak before the start of a rally to mark IDAHO there. According to Radio Free Europe, “thousands of antigay demonstrators led by Orthodox priests broke through police lines and attacked gay-rights demonstrators, who had to be evacuated by police.” Yep, you read that right – lead by Orthodox priests. Men of God. Apparently.

But here in the United States, while unprecedented successes in marriage equality; the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell; and the relaxing of attitudes in general suggest all is rosy, the situation is a lot more complicated. And not just in the typical bastions of red-State hate.

In New York, a rally was staged on May 16th by the organizations Queer Rising, GLAAD, and New York’s Anti-Violence Project, which although had nothing to do with IDAHO, (and which perhaps should have,) was an urgent response to an unusually violent spate of anti-gay hate in Manhattan.

And yes, even though a steady spate of transgender violence has not precipitated the kind of reaction we’re seeing in New York, the community response is nonetheless an important and necessary step. There is legitimate cause for concern, and New Yorkers are not taking these developments lying down.

In San Francisco, IDAHO seems to have taken on a very different meaning than in years past. And while San Francisco has also seen an alarming increase in anti-gay violence, this year, Gays Without Borders teamed with the Bradley Manning Support Network to observe IDAHO.

A simmering feud which erupted over SF Pride’s decision to rescind the selection of Bradley Manning as Grand Marshal of the June parade by former Grand Marshals, has raged on for weeks, galvanizing activists to form a coalition to get Manning reinstated, and resulting in a series of embarrassing missteps by SF Pride in their attempts to stem the hemorrhaging.

A group of activists, including David Waggoner, former President of the Harvey Milk LGBT Democratic Club and former Vice President of the National Lawyers Guild; Gary Virginia, Community Grand Marshal for 2012, and one of the Members of the Pride Electoral College that voted for Manning, filed a discrimination complaint against SF Pride with the City’s Human Rights Commission.

Manning is the army private accused of the greatest security breach in US history by giving hundreds of thousands of classified war and diplomatic documents to Wikileaks. Manning is currently in custody awaiting a Court Martial and facing 22 charges, ranging from the improper use of government computers, to the capital offense of aiding the enemy, and violating the Espionage Act of 1917. He pled guilty to the ten lesser offenses. Reports of unusually harsh interrogation techniques – the very type of abuse he sought to whistle blow over – have been cruelly justified as part of a suicide watch, and many, including the President, and many media outlets, have prematurely convicted him.

SF Pride’s decision has bitterly divided San Francisco’s community, and politicians who typically weigh in on any given opportunity have remained uncharacteristically mute. One SF Supervisor, David Campos weighed in about two weeks into the controversy, as mounting public distaste, the Human Rights Commission Complaint, staged protests outside SF Pride offices and widespread media interest has made it all but impossible to sit on the sidelines.

But it has also breathed life into an increasingly disenchanted segment of the community who are frustrated by the co-opting of the movement by an elite few, claiming to represent and speak for a community they apparently view with disdain. An attempt to shelve the issue until Gay Pride was over, and cancel a public meeting scheduled for May 12, 2013 resulted in a mock meeting outside their offices, where a crowd of protestors did a symbolic reinstatement of Manning as Grand Marshal in their absence. SF Pride’s admission in an exclusive interview with their virtual mouthpiece — the Bay Area Reporter — that they had “fired” a staffer for what was, by their own admission, the systemic failure of their own procedures, did as much to quell the community as President Obama’s firing of the acting IRS commissioner did to end the recent IRS scandal.

On Friday afteroon, the tone-deaf SF Pride CEO, Earl Plante announced the selection of Bebe Sweetbriar as Grand Marshal, stating that Sweetbriar “is a shining exemplar of how the power of local community talent can so positively impact the lives of so many near and far.”

The San Francisco rally in Harvey Milk Plaza, was additionally symbolic. The bitter battle over control over the rainbow flag under which the protest will be held remains unresolved three years later. Attempts to lower the rainbow flag for previous IDAHO solidarity actions were unsuccessful, and the furor that arose last November when Veronika Fimbres had her request to fly the Transgender Pride flag for Transgender Day of Remembrance on November 20th refused.

With the support of Supervisor Scott Weiner, Merchants of Upper Market and Castro (MUMC) snubbed community requests to set up a transparent system to govern the process of dealing with requests related to the flag, instead killing the option altogether.

Last night’s IDAHO protest to reinstate Bradley Manning took place under the rainbow flag in all its glory.

Disclaimer. I am one of the signatories to the complaint filed with San Francisco’s Human Rights Commission against SF Pride. I am also part of the coalition of activists that has loosely formed in response to the events surrounding SF Pride and Bradley Manning. I have also met with city officials in San Francisco, including the Human Rights Commission, in relation to the legitimacy of MUMC’s claim of ownership of a flag on city property.

Image: Former Community Grand Marshal, Gary Virginia, expressing support for Manning on May 17’s IDAHO Rally in San Francisco. By Clinton Fein.

Clinton Fein is an internationally acclaimed author, artist, and First Amendment activist, best-known for his 1997 First Amendment Supreme Court victory against United States Attorney General Janet Reno. Fein has also gained international recognition for his Annoy.com site, and for his work as a political artist. Fein is on the Board of Directors of the First Amendment Project, “a nonprofit advocacy organization dedicated to protecting and promoting freedom of information, expression, and petition.” Fein’s political and privacy activism have been widely covered around the world. His work also led him to be nominated for a 2001 PEN/Newman’s Own First Amendment Award.

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Jeffries Vows Democrats Will Ensure Ukraine Aid Passes as Johnson Defectors Grow

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April 19, 2024

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Democratic House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries vowed Friday the majority of Democrats will support Republicans’ Ukraine, Israel, Taiwan, and Gaza foreign aid legislation as Republican Speaker Mike Johnson lost support of another member of his conference to a faction determined to oust him.

“Democrats will provide a majority of our majority as it relates to funding Israel, humanitarian assistance, Ukraine, and our allies in the Indo Pacific,” Minority Leader Jeffries said. “It remains to be seen what Republicans will do in terms of meeting the national security needs of the American people, but it was important for House Democrats to ensure that the national security bills are going to be considered.”

Despite Republicans having a one-vote majority, more Democrats on Friday voted to move the critical and long-awaited foreign aid bills forward than did Republicans.

READ MORE: ‘Stop Bringing Up Nazis and Hitler’: Marjorie Taylor Greene Smacked Down by Democrats

The 316-94 vote included 165 Democrats and 151 Republicans voting yes, and 55 Republicans and 39 Democrats voting no.

Axios’ Juliegrace Brufke posted the list of Republicans voting against their party’s legislation.

Calling it a “rare” moment in modern congressional history to have to rely on opposition party votes to pass legislation, BBC News reports Speaker Johnson’s “hold on power is tenuous, and the legislators who oppose him – and his bid to provide aid to Ukraine – occupy some key positions within the House’s power structure.”

Amid the procedural vote to move the foreign aid funding bills forward, U.S. Rep. Paul Gosar, a far-right Republican of Arizona, announced he is joining Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), and Congressman Tim Massie (R-KY) in formally announcing their will vote to oust Speaker Johnson.

Gosar, like Greene, is reportedly a Christian nationalist. In 2022 CNN reported his “lengthy ties to White nationalists, [a] pro-Nazi blogger and far-right fringe received little pushback for years.”

RELATED: ‘Repercussions’: Democrats and Republicans Stand Against ‘Pro-Putin’ House GOP Faction

“We’ve been very honest in our assessment of the situation from the beginning,” Jeffries on Friday also declared. “At the appropriate time as House Democrats, we will have a conversation about how to deal with any hypothetical motion to vacate.”

“Moscow Marjorie Taylor Greene, Massie, and Gosar are quite a group. But central to our conversation is to make sure that the national security legislation in totality is passed by the House of Representatives.”

Watch the videos above or at this link.

 

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Biden Amps Up Field Offices, Trump to Mobilize Thousands of Lawyers to Monitor Vote Counts

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April 19, 2024

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With less than seven months before Election Day the Biden campaign and the Trump campaign are taking shape, and like their politics they could not be more different.

President Biden is “scooping up record-making donations,” “flush with cash,” “building a behemoth of a campaign,” and “plowing the money into an expanding campaign operation in battleground states that appears to surpass what Donald Trump has built,” NBC News reported earlier this month.

Ex-President Donald Trump, struggling with donations, has “raised $75 million less for his presidential bid than Joe Biden and has 270,000 fewer unique donors now than at the same stage of his run for the White House four years ago,” the Financial Times reported Wednesday.

Now, as the Biden campaign invests in a massive ground game, Trump’s strategy is emerging, and it appears to be built on his “Big Lie,” the false and debunked conspiracy theory that there was and is tremendous election fraud.

READ MORE: ‘Repercussions’: Democrats and Republicans Stand Against ‘Pro-Putin’ House GOP Faction

Politico reports the Trump campaign plans to dispatch “more than 100,000 attorneys and volunteers across battleground states to monitor — and potentially challenge — vote counting in November.”

The Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee are calling their plan “the most extensive and monumental election integrity program in the nation’s history.” The RNC is chaired by Trump’s hand-picked elections specialist who worked on the Bush 2000 election Florida recount team, and co-chaired by Trump’s daughter-in-law.

Despite Trump’s claims of a stolen election in 2020, his own Attorney General, Bill Barr, his own FBI Director, Chris Wray, his own Director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, Chris Krebs, all concluded there was no widespread election fraud and none that would have changed any election results. An independent federal agency, the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, came to the same conclusion, all as The Brennan Center for Justice reported more than a month after the 2020 election.

Politico warns, “should Trump once again attempt to overturn the election, he will already have in place tens of thousands of workers who could help with that effort.”

“Having the right people to count the ballots is just as important as turning out voters on Election Day,” Trump said in a statement.

The Trump campaign “plans to deploy lawyers to monitor voter machine testing, early voting, election day voting, mail ballot processing and post-election canvassing, auditing and recounts. The campaign also plans to station lawyers at mail-in voting processing centers and set up a hotline that poll watchers and voters can use to report problems,” Politico adds. “The RNC also stated that attorneys will be stationed at ‘every single target processing center where mail ballots are tabulated.'”

READ MORE: ‘Big Journalism Fail’: Mainstream Media Blasted Over Coverage of Historic Trump Trial

The announcement of that massive operation comes on the heels of a convention this week hosted by the far-right Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association that “drew a parade of felons, disgraced politicians, election deniers, conspiracy theorists and, in the end, a few sheriffs,” NBC News reports. Also among attendees were “MAGA celebrities.”

“The group sees sheriffs as the highest authority in the U.S., more powerful than the federal government, and it wants these county officers to form posses to patrol polling places, seize voting machines and investigate the Democrats and foreign nations behind what they claim is a criminal effort to rig the vote by flooding the country with immigrants who vote illegally.”

David Gilbert at Wired reported: “Far-Right Sheriffs Want a Citizen Army to Stop ‘Illegal Immigrant’ Voters.”

Their plan perfectly dovetails with Donald Trump’s campaign push.

Gilbert writes, “election deniers and conspiracists have coalesced around a narrative they plan to push ahead of November: Blame the immigrants.”

Richard Mack, founder of the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association told Wired that immigrants “have already disrupted the election because they are getting registered to vote.”

“That is election fraud,” Mack added, “these people are not qualified to vote. They are going to vote for whoever got them here and gave them a bunch of free stuff to get here, and of course that’s the Democrat Party, who are complicit in all of this.”

There are no reports of undocumented immigrants registering to vote in any substantial number. NBC News last week reported, “noncitizen voting” is “already illegal and very rare.”

READ MORE: ‘They Want Russia to Win So Badly’: GOP Congressman Blasts Far-Right House Republicans

Those claims, however, echo some made by the Republican Speaker of the House Mike Johnson one week ago in his joint press conference with Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago.

“We only want U.S. citizens to vote in U.S. elections,” Johnson said, standing next to Trump, “but there are some Democrats who don’t want to do that. We believe that one of their designs, one of the reasons for this open border, which everybody asked all around the country, why would they do this? Why would they allow all this chaos? Why the violence? Because they want to turn these people into voters.”

“Right now the administration is encouraging illegals to go to their local welfare office to sign up for benefits,” Johnson, one of the top election deniers in the country, claimed as he explained his conspiracy theory. He did not state how the Biden Administration is communicating with undocumented immigrants, nor did he offer proof of these communications. He also did not state that the vast majority of undocumented immigrants are ineligible for any government welfare program.

 

Image via Shutterstock

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‘Repercussions’: Democrats and Republicans Stand Against ‘Pro-Putin’ House GOP Faction

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20 hours ago

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April 18, 2024

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Some House Democrats and House Republicans are coming together toward a common opponent: far-right “pro-Putin” hardliners in the House Republican conference, who appear to be led by U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA).

Congresswoman Greene has been threatening to oust the Republican Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson. Last month she filed a “motion to vacate the chair.” If she chooses to call it up she could force a vote on the House floor to try to remove Speaker Johnson.

House Democrats say they are willing to vote against ousting Johnson, as long as the Speaker puts on the floor desperately needed and long-awaited legislation to fund aid to Ukraine and Israel. Johnson has refused to put the Ukraine aid bill on the floor for months, but after Iran attacked Israel Johnson switched gears. Almost all Democrats and a seemingly large number of Republicans want to pass the Ukraine and Israel aid packages.

RELATED: Marjorie Taylor Greene, ‘Putin’s Envoy’? Democrat’s Bills Mock Republican’s Actions

Forgoing the possibility of installing Democratic House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries as Speaker, which is conceivable given Johnson’s now one-vote majority, Democrats say if Johnson does the right thing, they will throw him their support.

“I think he’ll be in good shape,” to get Democrats to support him, if he puts the Ukraine aid bill on the floor, U.S. Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL) told CNN Thursday. “I would say that there’s a lot of support for the underlying bills. I think those are vital.”

“If these bills were delivered favorably, and the aid was favorably voted upon, and Marjorie Taylor Greene went up there with a motion to remove him, for instance, I think there’s gonna be a lot of Democrats that move to kill that motion,” Congressman Krishnamoorthi said. “They don’t want to see him getting punished for doing the right thing.”

“I think it is a very bad policy of the House to allow one individual such as Marjorie Taylor Greene, who is an arsonist to this House of Representatives,” U.S. Rep. Dan Goldman (D-NY) told CBS News’ Scott MacFarlane, when asked about intervening to save Johnson. He added he doesn’t want her “to have so much influence.”

U.S. Rep. Anthony D’Esposito, one of several Republicans who won their New York districts in 2022, districts that were previously held by Democrats, opposes Greene’s motion to vacate – although he praised the Georgia GOP congresswoman.

CNN’s Manu Raju reports Republicans “say it’s time to marginalize hardliners blocking [their] agenda.”

D’Esposito, speaking to Raju, called for “repercussions for those who completely alienate the will of the conference. The people gave us the majority because they wanted Republicans to govern.”

U.S. Rep. Mike Lawler, like D’Esposito is another New York Republican who won a previously Democratic seat in 2022. Lawler spoke out against the co-sponsor of Greene’s motion to vacate, U.S. Rep. Tim Massie (R-KY), along with two other House Republicans who are working to block the Ukraine aid bill via their powerful seats on the Rules Committee.

U.S. Rep. Mikie Sherrill (D-NJ), a former Navy pilot, blasted Congresswoman Greene.

RELATED: ‘They Want Russia to Win So Badly’: GOP Congressman Blasts Far-Right House Republicans

“Time is of the essence” for Ukraine, Rep. Sherrill told CNN Wednesday night. “The least we can do is support our Democratic allies, especially given what we know Putin to do. To watch a report and to think there are people like Marjorie Taylor Greene on the right that are pro-Putin? That are pro-Russia? It is really shocking.”

U.S. Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-TX), as NCRM reported Thursday, had denounced Greene.

“I guess their reasoning is they want Russia to win so badly that they want to oust the Speaker over it,” he said, referring to the Ukraine aid bill Greene and her cohorts want to tank. “I mean that’s a strange position to take.”

The far-right hardliners are also causing chaos in the House.

“Things just got very heated on the House floor,” NBC News’ Julie Tsirkin reported earlier Thursday. “Group of hardliners were trying to pressure Johnson to only put Israel aid on the floor and hold Ukraine aid until the Senate passed HR2.”

HR2 is the House Republicans’ extremist anti-immigrant legislation that has n o chance of passage in the Senate nor would it be signed into law by President Biden.

“Johnson said he couldn’t do it, and [U.S. Rep. Derrick] Van Orden,” a far-right Republican from Wisconsin “called him ‘tubby’ and vowed to bring on the MTV [Motion to Vacate.]”

“No one in the group (Gaetz, Boebert, Burchett, Higgins, Donalds et al.) were threatening Johnson with an MTV,” Tsirkin added. “Van Orden seemed to escalate things dramatically…”

Despite Greene’s pro-Putin and anti-Ukraine positions, her falsehoods about “Ukrainian Nazis,” and Russians not slaughtering Ukrainian clergy, reporters continue to “swarm”:

Watch the videos above or at this link.

READ MORE: ‘Afraid and Intimidated’: Trump Trial Juror Targeted by Fox News Dismissed

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