Overturning Abortion Rights is Fascism – Pure and Simple

June 27, 2022 stevenmsinger Accountability, Civil Rights, Democrat, Education, Feminism, Gun Control, Healthcare, Junk science, Local Control, Parents, Philosophy, Politics, Prejudice, protest, Republican, School Funding, Schools, Sexism, Social Justice, Uncategorized abortion, body autonomy, Civil Rights, fascism, human rights, Politics, religion, Roe v Wade, SCOTUS, theocracy

The US Supreme Court is a fascist organization.

Let me cut right to the chase to explain why.

This week the conservative majority (I won’t call them justices) overturned Roe v. Wade – the landmark 1973 decision that expanded access to abortion nationwide.

This is on top of decisions deeply wounding state’s rights to make gun regulations, to hold police civilly accountable for reading suspects their Miranda rights, and even the separation of Church and State in regard to public funding of parochial schools.

Let me be very clear – this is not about consistency based on legal precedent or interpretation of the law. It is ideology – pure and simple.

In the case of abortion, these four men and one woman did it because they wanted to. That’s all.

And they wanted to for a while now. They each lied to Congress during their confirmation hearings.

Maybe money exchanged hands. Maybe they were influenced by powerful pundits, politicians and ideologues.

But their rulings were certainly not based on logic. After all, in the same week they decided states CAN’T regulate guns but states CAN regulate women’s bodies.

This is inconsistent and irrational.

The right to an abortion is one of the most fundamental rights a person can have.

It is central to the very idea of personal freedom and autonomy.

And no argument based on the rights of the unborn can support this travesty of justice.

Look at the facts.

At the beginning of pregnancy, a fetus is nothing but a cluster of cells.

This cluster is alive but so is cancer. So are insects. So are bacteria.

Being alive is not enough to give it rights over-and-above the person these cells are clustered inside.

Electrical impulses in these cells do not constitute a heartbeat. Nearly every cell has such electrical impulses – the brain, muscles, organs, etc. That doesn’t make them separate organisms.

Your belief that a cluster of cells is a person is not a compelling argument for anything.

There are no facts behind it.

It is purely a matter of a faith.

There is no way to prove either position right or wrong. It is definitional.

It is purely something you believe without any evidence.

It is religion, and in a free society one person’s religion cannot compel someone of another faith or someone of no faith whatsoever.

Catholics can’t make Jews attend midnight mass before Christmas. Jews can’t make Baptists refrain from eating pork. Muslims can’t stop atheists from drawing cartoons of religious figures.

Doing so would be theocracy.

So using your belief as a justification to force people who do not share it to take that cluster of cells to term is a textbook example of fascism.

It clearly violates the First Amendment establishment clause of the Constitution. It forces others to be compelled by your faith-based claims.

Moreover, it violates a person’s right to bodily autonomy.

If you have a right to anything, it is to do whatever you want with your own body. After all, that is you at its most essential.

Without this right, you are the same as livestock or an enslaved person.

No one should be able to force you to do anything with or to your body that you don’t want.

Obviously that right has limits – for example if you intend to use your body to hurt or kill someone else.

But we’ve already established that a fetus – a glob of cells – cannot be assumed to be someone else.

Doing otherwise would be absurd.

So someone has beliefs about what’s happening inside your body. So what?

Imagine if some cult thought your kidneys have souls and must be kept inside you at all costs. Should they be able to pass a law forbidding you from removing one if it gets infected? If you want to donate it to save another person’s life?

They’re your kidneys. And that fetus is your cluster of cells. You can do with it what you want.

Eventually, if you let that cluster of cells develop long enough, it may become something else. It may become viable to live on its own and what almost everyone would agree is a person. But it is not a given at all that this conglomeration of tissue is one yet.

And your insistence that your beliefs about it must compel my actions violates my rights.

Moreover, this argument has been predicated on the believer in the personhood of a clump of cells acting in good faith.

In point of practice, we do not even see that.

The same people in favor of repealing a person’s right to abortion may be in favor of the knot of tissue developing through birth, but they do not support doing anything to help it once it has unequivocally reached personhood.

No universal healthcare. No universal daycare. No neonatal care. No robust education funding. And no protection against gun violence.

This shows that most people professing this belief in the personhood of something inside your body is pure balderdash.

It’s not about that mass growing inside a woman. It’s about the woman, herself – controlling her actions, making her bend to your will, making it harder for her to exercise her autonomy and benefit from her own economic power.

It is about upholding patriarchy. It is about subjugating women – especially poor women and women of color who are more likely to be impacted.

Make no mistake.

This is fascism.

Our Supreme Court is fascist.

And whether you are likely to ever have an abortion or not is beside the point.

Every woman, every man, every person is impacted.

We must fight this kangaroo court and the political power behind it.

We must make them regret such blatant autocracy and totalitarianism.

This is everyone’s fight.

Every PERSON. Everywhere.

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Back to the Past with the US Supreme Court

May 3, 2022 stevenmsinger Accountability, Bernie Sanders, Civil Rights, Compassion, Congress, Democrat, Feminism, Healthcare, history, Local Control, Parents, Politics, Prejudice, protest, Racism, Republican, Sexism, Social Justice, Uncategorized, voting abortion, feminism, history, interracial marriage, marriage, marriage equality, patriarchy, Politics, progress, regressive, religious fanaticism, reproductive rights, Roe v Wade, sexism, Supreme Court, white supremacy, women, women's rights

“Daddy, are gay people not allowed to get married?”

My daughter was looking at me in confusion as we sat together on the couch watching an old episode of “Top Chef.”

In Season 6, episode two, the chefs were asked to cook for a bachelor party. One of the contestants, Ashley, was indignant that she had to participate in a challenge centered on marriage when she, herself, couldn’t marry another woman.

I was surprised.

It hadn’t occurred to me that the show was so old. It first aired in 2009. Was that really so long ago?

We’ve only had marriage equality in all 50 states since 2015. That’s just seven years ago.

So I explained to my daughter that gay people can marry today, but that it wasn’t always the case.

My 13-year-old thought the idea that people couldn’t marry whoever they wanted to was just too crazy to be believed. And I agreed.

It was later that night that I read the article in Politico about Roe v. Wade.

Apparently, the landmark 1973 decision that expanded access to abortion nationwide is about to be overturned by the Republican majority on the Supreme Court.

Some folks are even speculating that this could mean the roll back of similar rulings such as ones allowing same sex marriage and even interracial marriage.

What the heck!?

Did I just sleep through a monologue by Rod Serling?

I’m still seeing things in color but they’re starting to feel very black and white.

These are issues of settled law.

Roe v. Wade is older than I am. Women have been able to terminate unwanted pregnancies for my entire life and the world hasn’t come to an end. In fact, if you read about what life was like before this decision, things have improved.

Women have freedom over their own bodies. They aren’t trapped by the Catch 22 of whether to submit to a forced birth or risk their lives with a back alley procedure.

I remember having a similar moment of cognitive dissonance as my daughter did when I was in high school.

I read the book “An American Tragedy” by Theodore Dreiser and was shocked at what life was like in the 1920s before women had such freedoms. In the book, a couple get pregnant and have to choose between an unwanted marriage while raising an unwanted child or a black market abortion and the freedom to move on. When they can’t agree, the protagonist, Clyde, murders the poor woman.

At the time, the whole situation seemed entirely quaint. It was a series of arguments, examples, and counter examples on an issue that had been decided long ago.

That anyone could think differently struck me as absurd.

In my high school public speaking class, we debated the issue. I argued in favor of reproductive rights, and a girl I had a crush on argued against them.

She was certainly passionate about the rights of the unborn. But she seemed startlingly unconcerned with the rights of the already born.

She wasn’t concerned about the child’s welfare or even the rights of a woman to make decisions about her own body – assuming those decisions were different than those my crush might make for herself.

As I got older, I met others who felt the same way. For them the guiding principle was a religious fairy tale that didn’t even connect with the Bible but instead some fundamentalists view of gender politics.

That’s fine if you want it to be the deciding factor in your own life, I guess. But leave the rest of us out of your faith-based world view.

That such folderol is actually being considered by the highest court in the land is hard to believe.

This is not the future I imagined back in high school when it occurred to me that I’d probably live into the sci-fi era of the 2000s.

It’s more like getting stuck in Doc Brown’s Delorean and sent back to the past.

And that’s exactly what it is.

So-called conservatives want to return us to a mythical time when all was good with America.

It says so on their precious red hats.

But things were never that good in America for most people – unless you were white, Protestant and male.

Let’s cut to the chase. None of this really is about stopping abortions. (If that was the concern, we’d be talking about free birth control, neonatal care and making a better world to raise children in.) Nor is it about safeguarding marriage between a man and a woman – or a white man and a white woman.

It’s about strengthening white supremacy. It’s about bolstering the patriarchy.

This is politics – pure politics.

And there is a political solution.

As Sen. Bernie Sanders has already suggested, Congress can codify reproductive rights into the law. There’s nothing the courts could do about it then.

Democrats have a majority in both the House and the Senate and we have the Presidency.

If we can’t get 60 votes in the Senate (and we probably can’t) we can end the filibuster and pass it with 50 votes.

I hope with all my heart that we do this.

I will push and organize and protest and electioneer. But I fear it will not be enough.

Just making it to this regressive moment in time seems to indicate that our system is too broken to be fixed that way.

This is not the world I wanted for my daughter. I fear it is the world she will have to fight to overcome.

The battles of our grandparents have become our inheritance to our posterity.

They deserve a much better world.

But all we seem to have for them are reruns.

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An Originalist Reading of Public Schools

October 17, 2020October 17, 2020 stevenmsinger Accountability, Antonin Scalia, Betsy DeVos, Budget, capitalism, Charter Schools, Child Predators, church and state, Civil Rights, Congress, Corporate Education "Reform", Donald Trump, Education, Election, Gun Control, Guns, Healthcare, history, immigration, Judicial Reform, Learning, literature, Philosophy, Politics, Prejudice, President, private schools, privatization, Propaganda, Racism, Republican, School Choice, School Funding, school segregation, school vouchers, Schools, segregation, Sexism, small class size, Social Justice, Students, Supreme Court, Teachers, voting absurd, Amy Coney Barrett, Antonin Scalia, Donald Trump, education, founding fathers, freedom of speech, Gun Control, Healthcare, history, language, linguistics, originalism, Politics, public schools, Republicans, SCOTUS, Students, Supreme Court, teachers

Let’s say you went to a restaurant and ordered a big ol’ meat sandwich only to find nothing but straw between two pieces of bread.

“Waiter!” You say, calling over a server.

“What’s wrong, Sir?”

“There’s no meat in my sandwich.”

“Oh, Sir?” He says smiling, examining your plate. “Here at Scalia’s Bar and Grill we adhere to a strict originalist interpretation of language.”

“What does that have to do with my sandwich?”

“Well, Sir, in Old English ‘meat’ meant any solid food, anything other than drink. As in ‘A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland’ (1775), Samuel Johnson noted, ‘Our guides told us, that the horses could not travel all day without rest or meat.’”

“But that’s not what I ordered!”

“Oh yes it is, Sir. You ordered the meat sandwich. Enjoy your fresh hay and oats.”

In everyday life, you wouldn’t put up with that kind of nonsense.

But for some reason, far right ideologues think it’s exactly the right way to interpret the U.S. Constitution.

The meanings of words change over time.

But ignoring that fact allows disingenuous crackpots to sweep over centuries of judicial precedent in favor of what they pretend to THINK the words meant at the time the law was written.

It’s not even about what the writers of the law SAID it meant. It’s about what today’s justices decide some hypothetical average Joe of the distant past would take certain words to mean.

The most obvious example, according to Pulitzer Prize winning historian Joseph Ellis, is District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008), which reversed 200 years of precedent on gun regulations.

Before this ruling, the Second Amendment was interpreted to be referring only to service in the militia. The Militia Act of 1792 required each able-bodied male citizen to obtain a firearm (“a good musket or firelock”) so he can participate in the “well regulated militia” the Amendment describes.

It was about the obligation to serve your country, not the right to own a gun. However, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia – the most infamous proponent of judicial originalism – orchestrated the majority opinion in this case changing all that. By doing a thought experiment about what words might have meant in the 1700s, he papered over two centuries of established law. He was so proud of it that he even described it as “my masterpiece.”

THAT’S judicial originalism.

And now that Scalia fanboy and federal judge for not even three whole years, Amy Coney Barrett, is being rammed through Senate Confirmation Hearings, that preposterous ideology is about to have another proponent on the highest court in the land.

Just imagine if we interpreted everything like people living in the 18th Century!

Black people would lose any semblance of equal rights even being forced back into slavery.

Women couldn’t get checking accounts, their own healthcare, make decisions about their own bodies, even vote (least of all hold positions on the Supreme Court).

And our public schools wouldn’t even exist!

After all, there was no widespread, comprehensive system of public education in the country before John Dewey championed it in the 1930s.

Sure, Presidents Washington, Adams, Jefferson and Madison all spoke at length about the importance of education to a free and just democratic society.

But remember, originalists don’t care about the writer’s intent. They only care about what regular people would understand by the terms. And regular people wouldn’t even understand the words “public” and “school” used together as a single concept at the time.

The first school that opened in what would become the United States was The Boston Latin School in 1635.

Its mission, and that of other colonial schools, was not to teach academics like math and literacy. It taught religion, family values and community spirit kind of like many parochial schools today.

Moreover, most schools were for boys only. If they deigned to teach girls at all, they taught them how to read but not write. No reason to give people a voice who weren’t seen as worthy of being heard.

Academics didn’t become something schools were responsible for until the mid-1800s. And even then, how they went about achieving it differed greatly from region to region of the country.

In the South, education rarely had anything to do with anything we’d call a school today. Rich families paid private tutors for their children. Everyone else was expected to work as soon as they were able.

In fact, it wasn’t until the Civil War ended and the Reconstruction era began when public schooling really became a thing in the South.

And even when it did, it didn’t look much like our schools of today. These were often one-room schoolhouses where a single teacher tried to educate children of various ages, grades and abilities.

Moreover, these schools weren’t solely supported by taxes – if at all. These Common Schools were more like private or parochial schools of today. Parents paid tuition, provided housing for the teacher, or contributed other commodities in exchange for their children’s education.

Even then, the learning students received wasn’t nearly as comprehensive as our kids routinely expect in even the most under-funded urban public schools today. And special education services was non-existent. Kids with special needs were routinely left out of education altogether.

Only 31 states passed laws requiring children to go to school by 1900, and kids only went from age 8-14. It wasn’t until 1918 that every state even required elementary school.

But let’s not forget segregation.

It was the law of the land until Brown vs. Board in 1954, and even then it took until the late 1970s to become even moderately enforced.

Subsequent rulings have weakened school integration efforts to such a degree that today many districts are as segregated – if not even more – than they were in the 1950s.

Just imagine if Barrett gets together with the wingnut Republican majority on the court to reevaluate that ruling!

Imagine how many centuries of slow progress she could overturn by appealing to the common man – of 1776.

Imagine if she and the regressive right examined free speech cases! After all, many of these laws were written during the time of the Adams Administration’s Alien and Sedition Acts which radically cracked down on free expression.

We could expect a rush to return to the mire and muck that many of our enlightenment heroes were trying to escape in the first place.

But originalists like Barrett claim only they can interpret what the language in these laws originally meant. Yet their training is in law, not literacy or antiquity. They’re not linguists or historians. They don’t have some shortcut to what people used to mean by these words. They’re just playing with the language to make it mean what they want it to mean so they can rule however they so choose.

Even if they could figure out the original meaning of the words in these laws, that doesn’t guarantee it would make sense in today’s world. How, for example, do the founding fathers views on medicine have anything to do with today’s healthcare system that didn’t exist in the 1700s and that the founders couldn’t even comprehend? How do the founders views on gun rights relate to today’s firearms when they knew only of muskets and not automatic weapons?

Finally, why should we give preference to antiquated ideas over modern concepts? The laws of yesteryear may have been suited to the days in which they were written. However, if a law cannot grow to encompass the world as it exists, it has no right to continue to exist.

Judges are not supposed to overturn precedent based on lingual folderol. They’re supposed to uphold the law based on logic, reason and sound judgement.

Any judge that disagrees has no place in our courts.

It’s ironic that such degeneration would come from the Republican Party.

After all, the GOP platform is certainly different today than it was when Abraham Lincoln was sworn in as their first President.

They used to stand for abolitionism, immigrant rights and progressive values.

Now they’re the party of plutocrat neofascist Christian fundamentalism.

If anything were to revert back to its original meaning, I wish it were the Grand Old Party, which is now neither grand, barely a party and merely old.

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Bernie Sanders Supporters Have Every Right to Be Furious

April 12, 2020 stevenmsinger Accountability, Arizona, Bernie Sanders, capitalism, Chicago, Civil Rights, Compassion, Congress, Credibility, Democrat, Donald Trump, Election, Election Reform, Feminism, Healthcare, Hillary Clinton, history, Labor, LGBT, Local Control, Media, Obama, Politics, Prejudice, protest, Republican, Sexism, Social Justice, standards, Supreme Court, Uncategorized, voting 2020, Bernie Sanders, Election, Joe Biden, Politics, voting

Dear non-Bernie Sanders supporters,

Shut up.

Seriously.

Sit down, and shut the fuck up.

You’ve been doing an awful lot of talking lately, and there’s a few things you need to hear.

We, the Bernie supports, are sick and tired of the never-ending flow of bullshit coming out of your mouths.

For the past five years you’ve called us Bernie Bros, Bernie’s Internet army, Russian bots, naive, sexist, racist, privileged, pigs.

Yet women, people of color, LGBTQ folks, social, racial and ethnic minorities make up a sizable portion of our numbers, but somehow we’re prejudiced.

You didn’t listen to us in 2016 when we said Hilary Clinton was unelectable. You didn’t listen to us when we said Donald Trump had a real chance at winning. But you blamed the entire catastrophe on the handful of us who didn’t vote for your candidate.

And now the second Bernie Sanders suspends his 2020 campaign, you’re all over us to commit to your boy, Joe Biden.

We’ve been here before. We have a pretty good idea how this story ends. Maybe you’d do well to listen to us for once.

We’ve spent years of intense effort changing the narrative of politics in America. We’ve held live streams, phone banked, knocked on doors, overfilled arenas. We’ve pushed Medicare for all, raising the minimum wage, universal college, a Green New Deal.

And the only thing you can say is “I told you so”?

All you have to say is “blue no matter who”?

It’s just “Get in line or you’ll be responsible – again.”

Let me ask you a question: what are YOU responsible for?

When Bernie was winning state after state, the media acted like it was a literal invasion of brownshirts. When Biden was winning, it was the best news since sliced bread.

Who’s responsible for that?

Bernie was running away with the primary until nearly all the other candidates mysteriously dropped out all at once right before Super Tuesday. And now we find out Barack Obama gave them each a call before hand – putting his finger on the scale.

Who’s responsible?

The Democratic National Committee literally pushed to continue primaries in Illinois, Florida and Arizona during a pandemic in case waiting might bolster Bernie – the candidate with policies tailor made to fight COVID-19. And the result has been a flood of sick people and a nearly insurmountable delegate lead.

Who’s responsible?

Once again – no one.

Not a single establishment Democrat, Hillary or Biden supporter has ever said, “We fucked up.” It’s only what everyone else did. No accountability for your actions at all.

Don’t Bernie supporters have a right to be pissed off about it?

Can we just have a moment to express our authentic human rage?

This may come as a shock but almost all Bernie supporters want to beat Trump in November.

And now we have no choice but Biden with which to do it.

We have a candidate with a long history of outrageous and provable lies – including statements only a month old that he was arrested while visiting Nelson Mandela in South Africa.

We have only a candidate with a history of inappropriate touching of women and a credible rape allegation.

We have a candidate who degraded Anita Hill to help far right Republican Clarence Thomas get on the Supreme Court.

We have a candidate who wrote the bankruptcy bill that stopped protection from millions right before a recession.

We have a candidate who has repeatedly been willing to cut social security.

We have a candidate who refuses to support Medicare for all – even during a global pandemic.

And you think Berners are somehow out of line for expressing anger over this shit?

You need to wake up.

At this point, we need unity more than ever.

We need to come together and defeat Trump.

But to do that, we need more than just hatred of the incumbent.

Sure we need someone who will nominate sane Supreme Court justices, but we need a base that will give him the support to get these nominees approved and not leave them in the wind like Merrick Garland.

We need real policies that people can get behind. And even if Bernie came up short on delegates, his policies are still incredibly popular – more popular than he is.

If you want some of us to pull the lever for your boy in November, you’d do a lot better fixing Biden’s policy positions than gaslighting Bernie folk.

You’d do a lot better getting Biden to pick strong progressives for cabinet positions and leadership positions in his electoral campaign than trying to bully us into obedience.

You’d do a lot better committing to Bernie as a second choice if Biden somehow demonstrates he’s unable to continue with the campaign (and you KNOW what I mean).

And perhaps more than anything – you’d do well to give us a little fucking space.

Berners need time to mourn.

I said that before and someone thought I was joking. I’m not.

If Bernie folk have a weakness, it’s that we’re believers.

We believed in our political revolution.

We believed in the idea of “Not me. Us.”

We believed a better world was possible.

Now that better world is further out of reach.

And all you have to offer us is one that’s slightly less fucked.

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The World Mourns for Jews After Pittsburgh’s Synagogue Shooting. What About Other Targets of Hate?

November 2, 2018November 2, 2018 stevenmsinger #BlackLivesMatter, Accountability, antisemitism, Art, Civil Rights, Compassion, Donald Trump, Education, Feminism, Gun Control, Guns, Hate Crimes, Healthcare, immigration, Labor, LGBT, Mass Shooting, Media, nonviolence, Pennsylvania, Pittsburgh, Politics, Prejudice, President, protest, Racism, Refugees, Schools, segregation, Sexism, Shooting, Social Justice, Teachers, White Allies, White Privilege, Whiteness anti-racism, jewish, Mass Shooting, Pennsylvania, Pittsburgh, Politics, prejudice, racism, Squirrel Hill, synagogue, Tree of Life, white supremacist, white supremacy

When a white supremacist killed 11 people and wounded 6 others at a Pittsburgh synagogue last weekend, the world took notice.

Lights dimmed at the Eiffel Tower and Empire State building.

Candlelight vigils were held nationwide – including in Boston, Houston, Washington D.C., Philadelphia, New Orleans, Atlanta, Chicago, New York City and Los Angeles.

A host of international leaders from the Pope to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to German Chancellor Angela Merkel expressed outrage, sadness and solidarity.

I’ll admit that as a native Pittsburgher and person of Jewish descent, it touched me deeply.

For a moment, it seemed like the whole world had stopped spinning and from every corner of the globe people were with us in our tragedy.

But at the same time, it was troubling.

After all, there were at least two other major hate crimes in the U.S. perpetrated within 72 hours of the shooting.

In Kentucky, a white man shot and killed two African-Americans at a Kroger grocery store following a failed attempt to break into a black church.

Only two days later, a deranged man who had railed against Democrats and minorities with hate-filled messages online was arrested for allegedly sending mail bombs to people who’d been criticized by President Donald Trump.

Where were the candlelight vigils for those atrocities?

Where were the international landmarks going dark?

Where was the worldwide condemnation?

In the wake of Pittsburgh’s tragedy, these other violent acts have been almost forgotten.

Yet they’re all symptoms of the same disease – hate and bigotry.

Don’t get me wrong.

What happened in Pittsburgh was terrible.

The Anti-Defamation League estimates that the shooting at the Tree of Life Synagogue may be the most deadly attack on Jews on American Soil in our history.

But me and mine do not have a monopoly on sorrow.

We suffer, but we are not the only ones hurting.

This all happened not far from my home.

I’ll admit that I am having a really hard time dealing with it.

I am not sleeping well.

I find myself zoning out in the middle of everyday activities.

And I feel this constant anxiety like part of me is expecting to hear a gunshot ringing down the hall at any time.

When the alleged shooter entered the sanctuary armed to the teeth and shouted “All Jews must die!” before carrying out his plan, he included me in his declaration.

All Jews.

That’s me.

That’s my daughter. My parents. My family.

It means something to me that so many people have come together to repudiate this crime.

The Islamic Center of Pittsburgh and other U.S. based Muslim groups donated more than $200,000 for funeral expenses. An Iranian refugee (who hadn’t even been to the three rivers) started a GoFundMe that brought in $1 million for the victims and their families.

You can’t go anywhere in Pittsburgh without a memorial, a moment of silence, a shared statement of solidarity and love.

At the symphony, musicians read two statements from the stage against hate before playing a Hebrew melody with string quartet.

At my school – I’m a teacher – the union decided to collect money for the victims.

I saw a barge floating down one of the rivers that had the message “Stronger Than Hate” on the side next to the modified Steelers logo where the top star had been replaced by a Star of David.

I even saw a similar message on a Wendy’s sign: “PittsburghStrong/ Stronger/ Than Hate”.

The community has come together in a way I’ve never seen before.

But I can’t help wondering why.

Even after Richard Baumhammers went on a racially motivated killing spree in 2000 murdering five people including two Jews, the response wasn’t this overwhelming.

Perhaps it’s just that this latest shooting is the final straw.

Perhaps it is the moment when our nation finally pulls together and says that enough is enough – We won’t tolerate this kind of hate and violence.

I hope that’s it.

However, in the shadows of my mind I wonder if it might not be a reflection of the same beast that struck us last weekend.

Could it be that we’re willing to put up with violence against brown people, but only draw the line when those targeted have lighter skin?

I guess my point – if I have one – is this: Thank you, But.

On behalf of Pittsburgh’s Jews, thank you for having our back.

If we’re going to survive this, we’re going to need your continued support and solidarity.

But it’s not just us.

Hate crimes have jumped from about 70 incidents a year in the 1990s to more than 300 a year since 2001. And after Trump was elected, 900 bias-related incidents were reported against minorities within the first 10 days.

Our country was built on the genocide of over 110 million indigenous Americans and the enslavement of 30 million Africans.

The idea of concentration camps didn’t originate with the Nazis. Hitler got the idea from U.S. treatment of Native Americans.

Racism didn’t end with the Civil Rights Movement. It just changed shape and is hidden in the way we practice health care, education, and policing all the way to mass incarceration.

The shock and solidarity in the wake of the synagogue shooting is appreciated, but it’s not enough to mourn only when 11 Jews are murdered in cold blood.

It’s not enough to take a stand against anti-Semitism.

We need to join together to fight all of it.

We need to be unified against school segregation, police brutality, xenophobia and prejudice in all of its forms.

The white supremacist who killed my friends and neighbors targeted us because he thought we were helping brown-skinned immigrants into the country.

We can’t just stand for the helpers. We need to stand for those in need of that help.

It just won’t work any other way.

We can’t just be against violence to light skinned minorities. We have to empathize and protect our brown skinned brothers and sisters, too. We have to love and cherish our LGBTQ neighbors, as well.

We have to realize that our freedom, our safety, our very lives depend not just on what rights we have – but on what rights we give to all.

That is the only way any of us will ever feel safe again.

Through love and solidarity for every. Single. Human. Being.

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The Pittsburgh Community is Stronger Than the Synagogue Shooter’s Hate

October 27, 2018 stevenmsinger antisemitism, Civil Rights, Compassion, Education, Feminism, Gun Control, Guns, Hate Crimes, immigration, Mass Shooting, Media, nonviolence, Pennsylvania, Philosophy, Police, Politics, Prejudice, Racism, segregation, Sexism, Shooting, Social Justice anti-semitism, Civil Rights, Gun Control, gun sense, Gun Violence, Guns, hate crimes, jewish, Mass Shooting, Nazi, nonviolence, Pennsylvania, Pittsburgh, racism, Squirrel Hill, synagogue, white supremacist

There’s a popular yard sign in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood of Pittsburgh.

In bands of green and blue and yellow, it projects the same message in Spanish, English and Arabic:

“No matter where you are from, we’re glad you’re our neighbor.”

If the community had a motto, I think that might be it.

Though known for its high concentration of Jewish residents, the Pennsylvania locale is a multicultural crossroads.

That may have made it a target today when a shooter entered the Tree of Life Synagogue.

Though the alleged culprit has been captured, details are still being uncovered. The death toll has yet to be tallied.

Unconfirmed reports state that he shouted “All Jews must die,” before opening fire.

But I don’t believe that the Jewish community was his only target.

Or more precisely – it wasn’t just the Jewish part – it was the community that had grown up around it.

I know Squirrel Hill well.

I live close by. I grew up on those streets. I’ve been to services at that synagogue. I have family who are members.

Thankfully it seems that no one related to me was there this morning. But when victims names are released, I probably will know who they are.

I know this community.

I am an extended part of it.

And that’s something of which I am proud.

Just walk along Murray Avenue and you’ll see Indian, Italian, Jewish, African, Chinese – every nationality imaginable – offering the fruits of their culture for friendly commerce.

You’ll see Hasidic Jews in dark hats and flowing tzitzit walking next to women in colorful saris next to trans and lesbians, kids with every color skin playing together in harmony.

Whenever I want a good corned beef sandwich or a quality lox and bagel, I go there. Whenever I want a spicy curry or the freshest sushi or an authentic macaroon, that’s the place. If I want to hear a string quartet or a lecture from a visiting dignitary or even if I want to swim in a public pool, membership to the Jewish Community Center is open to all.

It’s like a few blocks of cosmopolitan life tucked away in a city more known for segregation. We have many ethnic neighborhoods but few where one culture flows so easily into another.

Heck. Even the Tree of Life Synagogue, itself, doesn’t serve one congregation. It serves three who all had services going on at different parts of the building this morning.

There’s just something very special about this place.

It’s where you can go to be yourself – in fact, you’re encouraged to be who you are and not conform to any particular norm. Yet in doing so, you’re somehow demonstrating unity.

Paradoxically, being you makes you one of us.

It’s weird.

I think it may have been that sense of community that made Squirrel Hill, in general, and the Tree of Life Synagogue, in particular, a target.

The hate-filled person who attacked us today was terrified of that unity.

He was so frightened of disillusion, of losing his sense of self, that he had to end the lives of those who could do what he couldn’t.

It’s pathetic, really.

If your sense of self is only a negative, only opposition to someone else’s otherness, you really don’t have much self to lose.

If you define yourself by your hate, what are you?

Do you even really exist?

Most of us are very different.

We are complex assortments of personality – a family identity, a cultural heritage, a work persona, a spirituality, a sense of justice.

Communities like Squirrel Hill nurture this multifarious nature.

They welcome and celebrate difference.

I wish America was more like Squirrel Hill and not the other way around.

If this community’s normal was our national ideal, think of the country we would be living in!

Being different wouldn’t be an obstacle, it would be cherished.

When meeting someone with an unfamiliar name, a heritage of which you were ignorant, a sexuality or gender identity of which you had little knowledge – your response wouldn’t be fear or discomfort. It would be a thrill of excitement that you are lucky enough to broaden your understanding of the many ways there are to be human.

It would be a country where no one grew up so stunted and afraid that the only solution they could imagine would be the death of others.

That’s the America I want to live in.

Squirrel Hill is stronger than this synagogue shooters hate.

I hope our country is, too.

Dear Non-Voters, Your Country Needs You

October 26, 2018October 26, 2018 stevenmsinger Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Civil Rights, Congress, Data, Democrat, Donald Trump, Education, Election, Election Reform, Feminism, Healthcare, Hillary Clinton, immigration, Labor, Learning, Politics, Poverty, Prejudice, President, protest, Racism, Refugees, Republican, School Funding, Schools, Sexism, Social Justice, Students, voter suppression, voting, Voting Rights Civil Rights, Democrats, Donald Trump, duty, education, Election, Election Reform, Non-voter, Politics, Republicans, Supreme Court, voter supression, voter turnout, voting, Voting Rights, Voting Rights Act

Four in 10 Americans who were eligible to vote in 2016 didn’t do so.

That’s some 92 million U.S. Citizens.

These people weren’t purged from the polls.

They weren’t barred from voting.

They just didn’t bother.

So, the way I see it, the responsibility for President Donald Trump rests with you.

The United States has a Reality TV Show clown in the oval office.

He is a dimwitted narcissist who panders to racists, sexists and xenophobes to stay in power.

He is an incurious liar who constantly trolls the media and the public.

He is an admirer of dictators and fascists across the globe with no qualms about enriching himself and those like him at the expense of you and me.

Everyday he provides aide and comfort to anti-American regimes from Moscow to Riyadh by diminishing our international stature, withdrawing us from treaties and contracts, leaking sensitive information and otherwise pursuing foreign interests over those of American citizens.

And that’s before we even begin to examine his colossal impact on human rights – emboldening terrorists and white supremacists while his own administration throws children in cages and forcibly separates them from their families.

This is on you, non-voters.

You did this.

A democratic republic is like any other machine – it only functions properly if all of its parts are working.

You can’t have majority rule when 40% of voters shirk their duty.

A study by the Pew Research Center found that not only were non-voters likely to be younger, less educated, less affluent, and nonwhite, but 55% of them were Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents.

If more non-voters under the age of 30 had gotten their acts together in just a few swing states, we wouldn’t all be living through this national nightmare.

So if you think voting doesn’t make a difference, look around.

Look at your bank account for instance.

Wonder why your wages continue to stagnate while the rich pocket more and more of the economy?

Look at your neighborhood. Wonder why our schools, roads, bridges and other public services are crumbling into disrepair?

It’s because you didn’t vote.

I’m not saying everything would have been great under President Hillary Clinton. But Trump sets an awfully low bar for competency.

You think your vote doesn’t matter?

Republicans disagree with you.

They aren’t working overtime to stop people like you from voting because it makes no difference.

Robert Kennedy put it this way:

“The most significant civil rights problem is voting. Each citizen’s right to vote is fundamental to all the other rights of citizenship and the Civil Rights Act of 1957 and 1960 make it the responsibility of the Department of Justice to protect that right.”

Our courts have given up that responsibility.

Since 2013 when the Supreme Court invalidated a key part of the Voting Rights Act, millions of people have been barred from casting a ballot.

The federal government used to require nine states with a history of racial discrimination to obtain federal approval before making such changes. Now that they no longer need to do so, between 2014 and 2016 there’s been a 33% increase in voter purges in these states.

This isn’t just cleaning the polls of the names of people who’ve died. It’s actively preventing people – especially the poor and people of color – from having their voices heard.

In Arkansas, thousands of voters were erroneously flagged in 2016 under the guise of removing people who had been convicted of felonies. In Virginia, voters were wrongly deleted from the rolls in 2013 under the excuse of removing people who allegedly had moved.

And this election cycle more than one hundred thousand Georgia voters were removed because they didn’t respond to a mailer or there was a typo on their registration form.

To make matters worse, the purge was overseen by Secretary of State Brian Kemp, a Republican candidate for governor. Since most of the people being removed from the polls are people of color, the poor and other Democrats or leaning Democrat voters, the move makes it harder for Democrat Stacey Abrams to challenge him.

Kemp and his Republican buddies wouldn’t be going through all this trouble if voting made no difference.

“Too many people struggled, suffered, and died to make it possible for every American to exercise their right to vote,” said civil rights icon and U.S. Senator John Lewis.

And people have died for the opportunity that millions of people decide not to exercise.

People like James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, who were murdered in 1964 while trying to register black voters in Mississippi. People like Viola Liuzzo, who was murdered a year later by the Ku Klux Klan during the Selma march for voting rights.

When you willingly give up an opportunity that was purchased so dear, you disrespect the memories of the dead.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt put it like this:

“Nobody will ever deprive the American people of the right to vote except themselves and the only way they could do this is by not voting.”

Our country is under attack. Our very freedoms are on the line.

Will you be a willing accomplice by standing idly by and allowing these miscreants to defecate all over the flag?

Or will you take a stand, do your duty and vote!?

“Bad politicians are sent to Washington by good people who don’t vote.”

-William E. Simon

Brett Kavanaugh is the Link Between Rape and Abortion

September 30, 2018September 30, 2018 stevenmsinger Accountability, Civil Rights, Compassion, Congress, Credibility, Democrat, Donald Trump, Education, Election, Election Reform, Feminism, Healthcare, Politics, Poverty, Prejudice, Propaganda, protest, Republican, Schools, Sexism, Social Justice, Students, Supreme Court, voting abortion, abuse of power, Brett Kavanaugh, Christine Blasey Ford, Congress, consent, dehumanization, Donald Trump, human rights, male, male privilege, men, patriarchy, Politics, Rape, religion, Republicans, Senate, sexism, Sexual Assault, sexual harassment, Supreme Court, women

I think I will always associate Brett Kavanaugh with the taste of vomit in the back of my throat.

I couldn’t watch his sham of a confirmation hearing without my gag reflex going into overdrive.

Here was one of the most privileged of people on the planet alternatively weeping and raging that he was being denied his due.

Here was a man bemoaning that no matter what happened, his reputation forever would be ruined, but who likewise refused to call for an investigation to exonerate himself.

At least three separate women have accused him of sexual assault, yet Congressional Republicans are still planning to ram through his nomination to the Supreme Court – a lifetime appointment where he will almost certainly be the tie breaking vote to overturn Roe vs. Wade.

How fitting.

What perfect symmetry.

You couldn’t have planned it any more poetically.

A man accused of multiple attempted rapes who is doing everything in his power to make abortion illegal.

An overgrown frat boy crying into his beer that we can’t take away his God given right to take away women’s rights.

A confederacy of almost exclusively male lawmakers ready to discount women’s reports of violence so that they can limit women’s freedom to make decisions about their own bodies.

If there is one good thing to come from this farce, it is the spotlight it has shown on the relationship between rape and the movement to recriminalize abortion.

These two things are essentially intertwined.

On the one hand, we have sexual intercourse carried out under threat of violence, sex without consent or in direct violation of consent – a crime invariably perpetrated by men on women.

On the other hand, we have the removal of female consent from the birthing process.

They are almost the same thing, or at least two sides of the same coin.

In both cases, we’re removing or ignoring female permission, agreement, approval, agency. We’re saying it doesn’t matter what the woman wants. It only matters what men or a patriarchal society wants.

And the justification is an ancient text – the New Testament – that doesn’t mention abortion once. And the Old Testament actually gives instructions on how to conduct an abortion (Numbers 5:11-31).

Not that it really should matter. The United States is not a theocracy.

But it IS a patriarchy.

That’s what this is – an attempt by the most insecure, power hungry men to control women.

It is about keeping and strengthening a caste system where men are allowed to be fully realized people and women are allowed only secondary status.

It is about dehumanization clothed in piety and false morality.

All those people crying for the lost lives of a cluster of cells in female uteruses care not a wit about the thousands of women who will die from unsafe abortions once safe procedures become unlawful.

We’ve been here before. Abortion was illegal in the US from the early 1800s until 1973, and we know what will happen. There is actual history on this – back alley procedures conducted by quacks using sharp implements to pierce the womb – and there is no reason to think it won’t repeat itself.

Changing the law won’t stop abortions. It will just make them unsafe for everyone except rich women who can afford doctors willing to take a chance on going to jail for a big payday.

If these people really wanted to stop abortions, they’d support handing out free contraception. They’d turn every orphanage into a palace. They’d each adopt as many children as they could. They’d make neonatal care free, expand services to help women raise children, increase maternity leave, pay for free childcare, expand education funding.

But they don’t do any of that because despite their crocodile tears, their objection has nothing to do with unborn children.

It has to do with mature women making decisions for themselves. It has to do with conceptualizing them as people equal to men and with minds capable of consent.

It’s about allowing women the right to choose – choose whom to have sex with and what exactly the consequences of that sex will or will not be.

I am so thankful that Dr. Christine Blasey Ford came forward with her testimony. What bravery! What grace under pressure!

To be able to share with an entire nation her personal trauma at the hands of Kavanaugh. Such courage boggles the mind almost as much as those who refuse to accept her story as genuine.

They say that this is political. That it’s a hit job. Yet they pound their fists onto their ears to drown out Kavanaugh’s words in self-defense where he makes it entirely clear how partisan he is and will be once he takes the bench:

“This whole two-week effort has been a calculated and orchestrated political hit, fueled with apparent pent-up anger about President Trump and the 2016 election. Fear that has been unfairly stoked about my judicial record. Revenge on behalf of the Clintons. And millions of dollars in money from outside left-wing opposition groups.”

These are not the words of a fair arbitrator. They are the ravings of someone with an axe to grind.

But they do well to point out the elephant in the room – Donald Trump.

The man who nominated Kavanaugh has had at least 19 women accuse him of sexual assault. He even admitted to it on video in the infamous Access Hollywood tape.

Yet a minority of Americans elected him President through a legislative loophole kept open by centuries of neglect, apathy and moneyed interest.

I don’t know how this all will end. The FBI will conduct a limited investigation this week – probably stymied as much as possible by the Trump administration.

But the road that lead us here is achingly clear.

This is a tantrum of the patriarchy.

It is the weakest, most twisted men and their Stockholm syndrome suffering accomplices.

It is not about defining when life begins.

It’s about defining who gets to count as fully human – who gets the freedom to choose.

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This Fathers Day Let’s Be Worthy of Our Children

June 17, 2018 stevenmsinger Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Budget, capitalism, Charter Schools, Child Predators, Child Safety, Civil Rights, Compassion, Corporate Education "Reform", edtech, Education, Feminism, Parents, Politics, Prejudice, School Choice, School Funding, school segregation, school vouchers, Schools, segregation, Sexism, Social Justice, Standardized Testing, Students, Teachers Big Business, Depersonalized Learning, edtech, education, Fathers Day, immigration, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, personalized learning, schools, separating parents and children, teachers, teaching

My daughter wrote me a card for Father’s Day.

It had a heart on the front and the following message on the back:

“Happy Fathers Day! Dad, you are my superstar. You help me when I’m sad. And I love everything you do for me. That is why I wish you a Happy Fathers Day.”

It was a sweet token of affection from a 9-year-old to her sleepy daddy sitting at the kitchen table.

But it got me thinking.

All over this country fathers are probably receiving something similar from their children.

Hawaiian shirts, blotchy neckties and more finger paintings than you could fit in the Louvre.

But the sentiment is probably the same.

Thank you for being there for me.

But are we there for America’s children?

We may be there for our own kids, but where genetics end, are we there for others?

Our government has separated approximately 2,000 children from their parents at the border, according to the Department of Homeland Security.

Two thousand children forcibly separated from their parents in our name and we dare to celebrate Father’s Day?

From April through May, the policy has separated 1,995 minors from 1,940 adults traveling with them who said they were the children’s guardians.

A country that doesn’t respect the rights of parents – even if those parents aren’t documented US citizens – has no right to pretend it values fatherhood or motherhood.

At best, we value WHITE parenthood, and that, my friends, is not good enough.

Look at what we subject our own children to in the public school system.

We segregate our schools by race and class so we can horde resources for wealthy and middle class white kids while providing the bare minimum to the poor and children of color.

In the name of accountability we bestow upon them high stakes standardized tests to “prove” even those meager funds are wasted – yet we ignore the financial disparity, the social problems, the health issues and a host of other obstacles the underprivileged face.

The only help we’re willing to offer is privatized schools that can pocket a portion of their funding and reduce resources for these kids. We demand local control and democratically elected school boards for rich white kids, but expect the poor brown ones at charter and voucher schools to get along with appointed boards where their parents have no choice except to take it or leave it.

Does a society that routinely treats its children this way deserve a thank you card? I think not.

Last month, the CDC released a report indicating that the U.S. birth rate ― the number of babies born nationwide ― is the lowest it’s been in 30 years and is below the “replacement” rate needed to sustain the population.

Various media sources were quick to blame women nationwide. Women put off having kids because they want to focus on careers. They aren’t sexy or submissive enough.

Yet few look at the responsibilities of men in this equation.

Who is it behind the salary gap between men and women? Who conflates women’s healthcare with abortion and communism? Who makes it easier to get a gun in this country than proper maternity leave, childcare or any adequate resources to make having a family sustainable?

Answer: men.

We’re grossly over-represented in government, business and management.

We don’t even support men who want to have families. Men make more money than women, but salaries are down for them as well. If there’s little support for pregnant women, there’s little support for the fathers who impregnated them.

We pretend family values are the bedrock of our society but we don’t do much to support families.

And when we look to the future, it doesn’t appear to be getting any better.

Big business and huge corporations are salivating all over the prospect of further monetizing our children.

They’re piloting scores of so-called personalized learning programs, apps and devices to spy on children and monitor every aspect of their learning.

Not only are they asking kids whether they feel excited or bored by canned test prep lessons provided on-line, they’re focusing cameras on children’s faces, monitoring their breathing and heart rate. They’re collecting mountains of data with little accountability, privacy or even the promise of these things.

Investment bankers and hedge fund managers are funding these programs and more to create a priceless database on each individual child that can be used for lifelong marketing, job placement, even profiling by law enforcement.

These are not practices that are done in the best interest of children. They are in the best interest of investors and free market privateers.

No wonder fewer people are having children! They don’t want their kids to become helpless victims to a society that cares less and less about our humanity and more and more about our marketability.

It is us vs. them – where the us is significantly limited by race, economics and class.

So this Fathers Day, we need to do more than accept a congratulatory pat on the back.

We need to accept our responsibility for the status quo.

If we don’t like the way things are, we need to commit ourselves to doing something about it.

Call and/or write your Senators and Representatives about the policy of separating undocumented parents and children. Visit your lawmakers’ offices and demand fair funding and an end to school segregation, high stakes testing and school privatization. Get active in your local school district going to meetings and making your voice heard. Do everything you can to educate the powers that be on the coming Ed Tech scandal and remove or block it from your district.

We’re not just fathers on Fathers Day.

We’re fathers all year long.

Let’s do something more to deserve it.

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Twenty-One Reasons People Hate, Hate, HATE Betsy DeVos

March 12, 2018 stevenmsinger Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, church and state, Civil Rights, Corporate Education "Reform", Cyber Charter Schools, Donald Trump, Education, Gun Control, Guns, Local Control, Parents, Politics, Prejudice, privatization, Propaganda, Racism, Republican, School Choice, School Funding, school violence, school vouchers, Schools, Sexism, Shooting, Social Justice, Special Education, Students, Teachers 60 Minutes, Betsy DeVos, charter schools, education, education secretary, Lesley Stahl, Politics, Privatize, school vouchers, Secretary of Education

Lesley Stahl: Why have you become, people say, the most hated Cabinet secretary?

Betsy DeVos: I’m not sure exactly how that happened…

I’m more misunderstood than anything.

The above exchange from last night’s 60 Minutes interview highlights an important point about our Education Secretary.

She is deeply unpopular, but not because she’s misunderstood. If anything, she’s understood too well.

We know what she stands for and we don’t like it.

If she was really so misunderstood, why didn’t her answers in the interview veer away from the same usual canned responses she’s given time-and-time-again to the same type of questions?

What’s wrong with schools? NOT ENOUGH CHOICE.

How do we prevent school shootings? LET SCHOOLS ARM TEACHERS.

You didn’t really even need DeVos to show up to the interview to be able to guess with a high degree of accuracy what her answers would be.

In fact, many of her responses seemed to have been coached – as if someone had prepared her with talking points before the interview even took place.

So without further ado, here is my exhaustive list of all the reasons I can think of why people really, REALLY hate Betsy Devos. If I’ve left something out, please feel free to add it in a comment.

WHY PEOPLE HATE BETSY DEVOS:

1) She didn’t earn her position as Education Secretary. She bought it. And even then it took a tie breaking vote by Vice President Mike Pence to shove her down our throats.

2) She wants to spend tax dollars to boost privatized schools in which she has a financial stake.

3) She doesn’t mind taking funding away from public schools to do it.

4) She wants to destroy the entire system of public schools which enroll 90% of America’s children.

5) She doesn’t really know what public schools are, having never attended one or having never sent her children or grandchildren to one.

6) She wants to arm teachers not because it will protect kids from school shooters, but because that boosts her family’s investment portfolio. (i.e. her brother’s mercenary army for hire, Blackwater)

7) She won’t make charter and voucher schools give the same services to special education kids as those provided by traditional public schools.

8) She’s getting rid of students’ civil rights protections while adding protections for nefarious student loan providers and fly-by-night on-line schools.

9) She’s rescinded rules that protected trans students.

10) She’s considering rescinding rules that protect minority students from being unfairly and disproportionately disciplined by schools.

11) She’s made it harder for victims of sexual assault and harassment to report abuse and easier for those accused to avoid prosecution.

12) She talks about state’s rights to determine their own education systems while using the power of the federal government to coerce them to doing things her way.

13) She wastes public tax dollars. She is the only Cabinet member protected by Federal Marshals, which costs us nearly $1 million a month. Whether this is necessary or not, as a billionaire she could save the taxpayers money by taking on this cost, herself.

14) She doesn’t care if the public doesn’t want her at their school or event. She goes anyway and then pretends to be angry that protestors showed up. She doesn’t seem to understand that as a public servant she should serve at our pleasure – not the other way around.

15) She uses tragedy as a photo-op – as she did when she visited the Parkland school to promote arming teachers. She didn’t meet significantly with students or staff. She didn’t listen to their concerns. She even bailed on her own press conference there when the queries weren’t to her liking.

16) She has no problem whitewashing black history as she did when she claimed historic black colleges were pioneers of school choice. In reality they had no choice. For many African Americans at the time, it was create black colleges or forgo post-secondary education at all.

17) She is ignorant (purposefully or not) of the results of her own policies. Her advocacy of school choice in her home state of Michigan has weakened that state’s public schools, not strengthened them.

18) She’s out of touch with average Americans. She’s the richest member of Trump’s cabinet and often travels in her on super luxury yacht.

19) She’s rich not because she earned it, but because she was born into it and married into even more wealth. Moreover, much of her wealth is due to her family’s Amway fortune – basically it’s founded on rooking average people out of their hard earned money with what’s essentially a pyramid scheme.

20) She’s arrogant. She smiles vacantly at topics that don’t deserve a smile – they deserve serious regard.

21) She is extremely biased and partisan. She is supposed to serve the public interest, but her radical Christian Fundamentalism and anti-LGBT activism make her untrustworthy to serve in that capacity. Statements such as “There is enough philanthropic dollars in America to fund what is currently the need in education… Our desire is to confront the culture in ways that will continue to advance God’s kingdom,” do not help.

Okay. That’s all I can think of – though more may pop into mind as soon as I publish this. If I missed something please include it in the comments.

Hopefully this answers DeVos’ question about why she’s hated.

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