29 June 21
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And so it barely made a ripple last week when a Texas congressman (and Donald Trump’s former White House physician) said aloud what’s supposed to be kept to a backroom whisper: Republicans intend to retake the US House of Representatives in 2022 through gerrymandering. “We have redistricting coming up and the Republicans control most of that process in most of the states around the country,” Representative Ronny Jackson told a conference of religious conservatives. “That alone should get us the majority back.” He’s right. Republicans won’t have to win more votes next year to claim the US House. In fact, everyone could vote the exact same way for Congress next year as they did in 2020 – when Democratic candidates nationwide won more than 4.7 million votes than Republicans and narrowly held the chamber – but under the new maps that will be in place, the Republican party would take control. How is this possible? The Republican party only needs to win five seats to wrench the Speaker’s gavel from Nancy Pelosi. They could draw themselves a dozen – or more – through gerrymandering alone. Republicans could create at least two additional red seats in Texas and North Carolina, and another certain two in Georgia and Florida. Then could nab another in Kansas, Kentucky, Tennessee and New Hampshire. They won’t need to embrace policies favored by a majority of Americans. All they need to do is rework maps to their favor in states where they hold complete control of the decennial redistricting that follows the census – some of which they have held since they gerrymandered them 10 years ago. Now they can double down on the undeserved majorities that they have seized and dominate another decade. If Republicans aggressively maximize every advantage and crash through any of the usual guardrails – and they have given every indication that they will – there’s little Democrats can do. And after a 2019 US supreme court decision declared partisan gerrymandering a non-justiciable political issue, the federal courts will be powerless as well. It’s one of the many time bombs that threatens representative democracy and American traditions of majority rule. It’s a sign of how much power they have – and how aggressively they intend to wield it – that Republicans aren’t even bothering to deny that they intend to implode it. “We control redistricting,” boasted Stephen Stepanek, New Hampshire’s Republican state party chair. “I can stand here today and guarantee you that we will send a conservative Republican to Washington as a congressperson in 2022.” In Kansas, Susan Wagle, the Republican party state senate president, campaigned on a promise to draw a gerrymandered map that “takes out” the only Democrat in the state’s congressional delegation. “We can do that,” Wagle boasted. “I guarantee you that we can draw four Republican congressional maps.” Texas Republicans will look to reinforce a map that has held back demographic trends favoring Democrats over the last decade by, among other things, dividing liberal Austin into five pieces and attaching them to rural conservative counties in order to dilute Democratic votes. Texas will also have two additional seats next decade due largely to Latino population growth; in 2011, when similar growth created four new seats for Texas, Republicans managed to draw three for themselves. North Carolina Republicans crafted a reliable 10-3 Republican delegation throughout the last decade. When the state supreme court declared the congressional map unconstitutional in 2019, it forced the creation of a fairer map in time for 2020. Democrats immediately gained two seats. But the state GOP will control the entire process once again this cycle, so those two seats will likely change side – and Republicans could find a way to draw themselves the seat the state gained after reapportionment. Two Atlanta-area Democrats are in danger of being gerrymandered out of office by Republicans. The single Democratic member from Kentucky, and one of just two from Tennessee, are in jeopardy if Republicans choose to crack Louisville and Nashville, respectively, and scatter the urban areas across multiple districts. Florida Republicans ignored state constitution provisions against partisan gerrymandering in 2011 and created what a state court called a conspiracy to mount a secret, shadow redistricting process. It took the court until the 2016 election to unwind those ill-gotten GOP gains, however, which provides little incentive not to do the same thing once more. This time, a more conservative state supreme court might even allow those gains to stand. Might Democrats try the same thing? Democrats might look to squeeze a couple seats from New York and one additional seat from Illinois and possibly Maryland. But that’s scarcely enough to counter the overall GOP edge. In Colorado, Oregon and Virginia, states controlled entirely by Democrats, the party has either created an independent redistricting commission or made a deal to give Republicans a seat at the table. Commissions also draw the lines in other Democratic strongholds like California, Washington and New Jersey. There are no seats to gain in overwhelmingly blue states like Massachusetts, New Mexico and Connecticut. In many ways, the Republican edge is left over from 2010, when the party remade American politics with a plan called Redmap – short for the Redistricting Majority Project – that aimed to capture swing-state legislatures in places like North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Wisconsin, Michigan and Florida, among others. They’ve never handed them back. Now Redmap enters its second decade of dominance – just as the lawmakers it put into office continue rewriting swing-state election laws to benefit Republicans, under the unfounded pretext of “voter fraud” that did not occur during 2020. Republicans already benefit from a structural advantage in the electoral college and the US Senate. Presidents that lost the popular vote have appointed five conservative justices to the US supreme court. Now get ready for a drunken bacchanalia of partisan gerrymandering that could make “hot vax summer” look like a chaste Victorian celebration. Meanwhile, this is how a democracy withers and disappears – slowly, legally, and in plain sight.
WISCONSIN GOP Candidate Bankrolled Jan 6 Riot Trip With Campaign Cash
Now Van Orden is running again, and has already scored major endorsements from senior GOP House leadership, including Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA). Van Orden, a former Navy SEAL and small-time actor, has previously acknowledged attending the Jan. 6 rally, but has repeatedly claimed he never entered the Capitol grounds. However, social media posts from the riot suggest that isn’t true. A Facebook image from Jan. 6 shows Van Orden standing on a wall on the Capitol grounds that was inside a restricted area. (The Daily Beast recreated the photo on Friday and confirmed that Van Orden would have had to cross police barricades to reach that area.) As for Van Orden’s campaign expenses surrounding Jan. 6, it’s unclear how they relate to Van Orden’s attendance. Federal Election Commission regulations state that travel expenses must be “directly related to the campaign.” Van Orden—who wrote off roughly $4,000 in transportation and D.C. hotel costs around Jan. 6 for him, his wife, and a campaign staffer—lost his race in November and didn’t declare his 2022 candidacy until April. Jordan Libowitz, communications director for campaign finance watchdog Citizens for Ethics and Responsibility in Washington, questioned the legitimacy of the expenses. “Campaign accounts are not personal slush funds. They must be used for campaign-related activities. Attempting to overthrow an election you just lost is not a proper campaign activity,” Libowitz told The Daily Beast. “If he did use his campaign to pay for travel for him and his staff to attend the rally-turned-insurrection, it would raise serious questions about his compliance with campaign finance laws.” In an op-ed published the week after the attack on the Capitol, Van Orden claimed he made the trip “for meetings and to stand for the integrity of our electoral system,” both “as a citizen and at the behest of my neighbors here in Western Wisconsin.” He didn’t specify the nature of those meetings, and did not reply to The Daily Beast’s questions about the trip. “If those were campaign-related meetings, he should say so,” Libowitz said. “If it was a personal trip as a private citizen, that’s another matter.” Van Orden’s op-ed went on to call the riot “one of the most tragic incidents in the history of our nation.” “At no time did I enter the grounds, let alone the building,” he said. But that Facebook image, posted at 5:15 p.m. on Jan. 6, shows Van Orden clearly on the Capitol grounds. And in a Facebook Live video shared earlier that afternoon from the Washington Mall, one of the candidate’s friends said he was heading to meet Van Orden, who, according to the friend, was “on the wall” and had told him he “got a great spot to watch.” “I got off the phone with Derrick Van Orden. He and a bunch of his frogman buddies are on the wall,” the friend says in the video. “He said he got a—they got a pretty good vantage point on the wall to the left side of the building. So that’s where I’m aiming for. He said, ‘Come on up. We got a great spot to watch.’ So that’s kind of where I’m shooting for.” The video was posted around 2:15 p.m., when the attack was in full swing. At one point, the friend says, “I can see people up on the steps. Apparently, last I heard they were inside the building at the door of the Senate.” In the op-ed, however, Van Orden claimed he “stood on the parapet that lines the perimeter of the grounds and watched what should have been an expression of free speech devolve into one of the most tragic incidents in the history of our nation.” He left, he said, when it became clear that “a protest had become a mob,” fearing his presence “could be construed as tacitly approving this unlawful conduct.” Van Orden’s attendance at the Capitol puts him in league with a slew of political hopefuls who attended the insurrection and have since declared candidacies for office. What sets Van Orden apart, however, is his support from powerful House Republicans and his strong showing in last year’s election. He lost by about 2.5 points to longtime incumbent Rep. Ron Kind (D-WI), who has held the seat since 1997. After the election, Van Orden questioned the vote count. Van Orden’s 2022 bid has already drawn major endorsements. Since April, he has scored support from McCarthy, as well as House Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-LA) and newly minted conference chair Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY). McCarthy, Scalise, and Stefanik all objected to the election results, as did two Wisconsin Republican congressmen who have also endorsed Van Orden—Rep. Tom Tiffany and Rep. Scott Fitzgerald. That tight 2020 race, which Kind described as “competitive since day one,” also attracted a record amount of campaign contributions. Federal disclosures show Kind raised about $3 million, and Van Orden pulled in almost $2 million—adding up to the district’s largest haul in at least 20 years. The fight nearly drained both campaigns, and by the end of the year, Van Orden had about $12,500 left. He spent about a third of it on the trip to what would become the Capitol riot. |
Michelle Bachelet, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights shown here last year, is urging countries worldwide to do more to help end discrimination, violence and systemic racism against people of African descent. (photo: Martial Trezzini/AP)
The report from Michelle Bachelet, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, offers a sweeping look at the roots of centuries of mistreatment faced by Africans and people of African descent, notably from the transatlantic slave trade. It seeks a "transformative" approach to address its continued impact today.
The report, a year in the making, hopes to build on momentum around the recent, intensified scrutiny worldwide about the blight of racism and its impact on people of African descent as epitomized by the high-profile killings of unarmed Black people in the United States and elsewhere.
"There is today a momentous opportunity to achieve a turning point for racial equality and justice," the report said.
The report aims to speed up action by countries to end racial injustice; end impunity for rights violations by police; ensure that people of African descent and those who speak out against racism are heard; and face up to past wrongs through accountability and redress.
"I am calling on all states to stop denying — and start dismantling — racism; to end impunity and build trust; to listen to the voices of people of African descent; and to confront past legacies and deliver redress," Bachelet said in a video statement.
While broaching the issue of reparation in her most explicit way yet, Bachelet suggested that monetary compensation alone is not enough and would be part of an array of measures to help rectify or make up for the injustices.
"Reparations should not only be equated with financial compensation," she wrote, adding that it should include restitution, rehabilitation, acknowledgement of injustices, apologies, memorialization, educational reforms and "guarantees" that such injustices won't happen again.
The U.N.-backed Human Rights Council commissioned the report during a special session last year following the murder of Floyd, a Black American who was killed by a white police officer in Minneapolis in May 2020. The officer, Derek Chauvin, was sentenced to 22-1/2 years in prison last week.
Protests erupted after excruciating bystander video showed how Floyd gasped repeatedly, "I can't breathe!" as onlookers yelled at Chauvin to stop pressing his knee on Floyd's neck.
The protests against Floyd's killing and the "momentous" verdict against Chauvin are a "seminal point in the fight against racism," the report said.
The report was based on discussions with more than 340 people — mostly of African descent — and experts; more than 100 contributions in writing, including from governments; and review of public material, the rights office said.
It analyzed 190 deaths, mostly in the U.S., to show how law enforcement officers are rarely held accountable for rights violations and crimes against people of African descent, and it noted similar patterns of mistreatment by police across many countries.
The report ultimately aims to transform those opportunities into a more systemic response by governments to address racism, and not just in the United States — although the injustices and legacy of slavery, racism and violence faced by African Americans was clearly a major theme.
The report also laid out cases, concerns and the situation in roughly 60 countries including Belgium, Brazil, Britain, Canada, Colombia and France, among others.
"We could not find a single example of a state that has fully reckoned with the past or comprehensively accounted for the impacts of the lives of people of African descent today," Mona Rishmawi, who leads a unit on non-discrimination at the U.N. human rights office, told a news conference. "Our message, therefore, is that this situation is untenable."
Compensation should be considered at the "collective and the individual level," she said, while adding that any such process "starts with acknowledgment" of past wrongs and "it's not one-size-fits-all." She said countries must look at their own pasts and practices to assess how to proceed.
The U.N. report called on countries to make " amends for centuries of violence and discrimination" such as through "formal acknowledgment and apologies, truth-telling processes and reparations in various forms."
It also decried the "dehumanization of people of African descent" that was "rooted in false social constructions of race" in the past to justify enslavement, racial stereotypes and harmful practices as well as tolerance for racial discrimination, inequality and violence.
It cited inequalities faced by people of African descent and the "stark socioeconomic and political marginalization" they face in many countries, including unfair access to education, health care, jobs, housing and clean water.
Gavin Grimm. (photo: ACLU)
he Supreme Court on Monday left in place a decision that allowed a transgender student to use the bathroom that corresponded to his gender identity, a victory for the LGBTQ community that has been fearful the high court would take up the case and reverse a lower court opinion.
The case concerns the scope of Title IX that prohibits schools from discriminating "on the basis of sex." It began when Gavin Grimm, a transgender male who was then a high-school student, challenged the local school board's decision to require him to use either a unisex restroom or a restroom that corresponds to the sex, female, he was assigned at birth.
Justice Clarence Thomas and Justice Samuel Alito said they would have taken up the case for next term.
"I am glad that my years-long fight to have my school see me for who I am is over. Being forced to use the nurse's room, a private bathroom, and the girl's room was humiliating for me, and having to go to out-of-the-way bathrooms severely interfered with my education," Grimm -- who has since graduated -- said in a statement Monday.
"Trans youth deserve to use the bathroom in peace without being humiliated and stigmatized by their own school boards and elected officials," he added.
The court's decision not to review an opinion by the 4th US Circuit Court of Appeals means that public school students in the mid-Atlantic states covered by the 4th Circuit, as well as states governed by the 7th Circuit and the 11th Circuit, can use the bathroom that corresponds to their gender identity. The issue is unsettled in other states and another appeal could conceivably make its way back to the Supreme Court, although Grimm's legal fight is over.
Grimm filed suit against the board in 2015, arguing that the school's policy violated Title IX and the Equal Protection Clause. The Obama Justice Department filed a "statement of interest" accusing the board of violating Title IX. A federal appeals court deferred to the interpretation ruling in Grimm's favor. The school board appealed the decision to the Supreme Court, which agreed to take up the case.
Before the high court could rule, however, the Trump administration withdrew the Obama-era guidance, and the Supreme Court wiped away the decision by the 4th US Circuit Court of Appeals and sent the case back down for further proceedings. The case began again at the district court and ultimately the 4th Circuit again ruled in favor of Grimm, this time citing the Supreme Court's landmark decision in 2020 that held that federal employment law protects LGBTQ workers.
Grimm began fighting the Gloucester County School Board's policies when he was a sophomore at a Virginia high school in 2015. As part of Grimm's medical treatment for severe gender dysphoria, Grimm and his mother notified school administrators of his male gender identity and received permission for Grimm to use the boys' restroom for almost two months. But once the school board began receiving complaints, it adopted a new policy denying him access to the boys' bathrooms.
In 2019, a federal judge in Virginia also ruled in favor of Grimm, telling the school board it must recognize him as male and saying the board had violated his constitutional rights. The judge awarded him one dollar in damages and told the school district to pay his court fees. The district was also told it must update his records to indicate he is male.
Steve Vladeck, CNN Supreme Court analyst and professor at the University of Texas School of Law, said Monday the high court's ruling is "an important tactical victory for transgender individuals, especially in public schools."
"The larger question, which wasn't at issue in this case, is how the Justices are going to address circumstances where accommodations based upon sexual orientation or gender identity run headlong into compelling countervailing interests, such as the protection of religious liberty," Vladeck said. "Just as in the Bostock employment discrimination ruling from last Term, leaving the decision below in this case intact kicks that question down the road."
The decision means that, for now, the high court won't wade into the culture wars on a key issue for members of the transgender community, which has faced an onslaught of attacks this year by conservative lawmakers around the country seeking to impose restrictions trans people in everything from public school athletics to access to gender-affirming health care.
The transgender bathroom debate has long been a flash point for conservatives and it was brought to the forefront during the 2020 Republican National Convention by the Rev. Billy Graham's granddaughter Cissie Graham Lynch, who told viewers that "Democrats pressured schools to allow boys to compete in girls' sports and use girls' locker rooms." And more than half the country's states have introduced more than 100 bills that aim to curb the rights of transgender people.
Last month, Tennessee's GOP governor signed into law a measure that requires public schools to make "reasonable accommodation" for a person who cannot or will not use a restroom or changing facility designated for their sex in a public school building or at a school-sponsored activity, which LGBTQ advocates said will deny trans students access to facilities that are consistent with their gender identity.
Meanwhile, advocates filed a lawsuit against Tennessee last week seeking to challenge another recently approved law that requires some businesses in the state to post signs indicating that they allow transgender and other non-binary people to use the bathroom in their establishment that matches their gender identity, a policy LGBTQ advocates say is "offensive and humiliating" for members of the community and could lead to harassment.
In December, the Supreme Court declined to take up a case from parents in Oregon who challenged a public school's policy allowing a transgender student to use the bathroom that corresponded with his gender identity. In declining to take up the petition, the justices left in place an appeals court decision earlier that year that held that the school's policy intended to "avoid discrimination and ensure the safety and well-being of transgender students."
Donald Trump supporters stand gather for his first post-presidency campaign rally in Wellington, Ohio, on Saturday. (Photo: Shannon Stapleton/Reuters)
Leaked data shows other high-profile members have overlapping membership in more explicitly racist or violent groups
But alongside these members are others who participated in and committed acts of violence at the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, and others who hold overlapping membership in violent neo-Confederate groups such as the League of the South (LoS).
The group, organized as a federation of state chapters, has recently made news for increasingly aggressive campaigns against the removal of Confederate monuments. This has included legal action against states and cities, the flying of giant Confederate battle flags near public roadways, and Confederate flag flyovers at Nascar races.
Last Monday, the Georgia division of SCV commenced legal action against the city of Decatur with the aim of restoring a Confederate memorial obelisk which was removed in June 2020, and later replaced with a statue of the late congressman and civil rights activist John Lewis.
Last year, in a widely criticized move, the University of North Carolina’s board of governors proposed creating a $2.5m charitable trust which would pay the state’s SCV organization to maintain a Confederate “Silent Sam” statue which had been removed from the campus.
That deal fell apart in recent weeks. But critics – including former members – alleged that the SCV commander for the state, Kevin Stone, associated with extremists and other “scary” individuals who had been recruited to the group.
Stone, who who also co-founded the SCV Mechanized Cavalry, a motorcycle club associated with the SCV, reportedly led a takeover of the branch which pushed out anti-racist members.
College of Charleston historian, Adam Domby, whose book, The False Cause, details the history of the neo-Confederate movement, said in a telephone conversation that “throughout its history, the SCV has been linked with white supremacist groups, and historically it has avowedly supported white supremacist groups”.
Jalane Schmidt, a professor of religion at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, has been active in the campaign to remove the statues that the Unite the Right rally sought to defend in 2017, and is working on a book about the history of neo-Confederate groups including SCV in Virginia.
In a telephone conversation, she pointed to an 1 April ruling of the Virginia supreme court which reversed lower court rulings in favor of the Sons of Confederate Veterans and the Monument Fund in their quest to ensure Charlottesville’s monuments stayed in place.
“According to the supreme court, the SCV and the Monument Fund were wrong all along, and we could have taken down our statues in 2017,” she said.
Instead, the statues were still standing when Unite the Right was organized. As a result of the rally, Schmidt added: “People are dead.”
SCV’s attempts to preserve Confederate monuments have become more difficult in the face of intensifying demands for their removal since the rise of the anti-racist Black Lives Matter movement, and the neo-Confederate-inspired mass murder of Black church-goers by Dylann Roof in South Carolina in 2015.
SCV last year rededicated removed statues of Confederate president Jefferson Davis and Confederate general and Ku Klux Klan founder Nathan Bedford Forrest at its National Confederate Museum in Columbia, Tennessee.
The data
The national membership data was provided to the Guardian by a self-described hacktivist whose identity has been withheld for their safety.
The data reveals the names, addresses, telephone numbers and email addresses of almost 59,000 past and present members of the organization, including 91 who used addresses associated with government agencies for their contact email, and 74 who used addresses associated with various branches of the armed forces.
They noticed that the organization’s website had been misconfigured, allowing access to membership rolls, recruiting data, and other information about the internal workings of the group. The website has had the security issue for a number of years, according to the hacktivist.
The membership data shows members’ names, addresses, telephone numbers, whether they are active or not, and their email addresses.
The Guardian identified members who were listed as active, and whose contact information included addresses associated with government agencies, the armed forces, educational institutions, and non-government organizations.
There was some previous reporting on an earlier version of the membership database, made public by Atlanta Antifa, which noted the presence of Georgia state legislators in the group’s data.
But the Guardian has found additional legislators, and active members who are in positions of influence and responsibility that stretch far beyond the walls of state legislatures.
High-profile members
One member listed as active in the data is Scott Wyatt, who represents the 97th district in Virginia’s house of delegates, which comprises rural counties north of Richmond, which served as the Confederate capital for much of the civil war.
Duane AJ Probst, who was elected coroner of Osage county, Missouri in 2020, after reaching the rank of Lt Col in the US Army National Guard, is also listed as an active member of the group.
In a telephone conversation, Probst confirmed his membership, saying that he had joined in the last “four or five years” after he discovered a relative had fought for the Confederacy, had attended meetings until around two years ago when he became too busy for regular attendance.
He said that in his experience of the local group in Missouri, it was “a friendly organization that doesn’t advocate white supremacy”, and the main activities he had been involved in were dinners and lectures.
On the question of statues, Probst said that “the men who forged the country were flawed”, and that “I don’t know that taking down a statue is going to ameliorate any issues”, adding that he was not opposed to adding plaques to monuments since “perspectives change as time goes on”.
On the presence of extremists in SCV, Probst said he had never encountered any, but that “it doesn’t surprise me. There are militant members of every organization.”
Probst, who ran for coroner as a Republican, added that: “I am a member of a political faction in this country. There are members of that faction who are loony in my opinion. That doesn’t mean I have to walk away from the organization. Instead I fight for the values I think it represents.”
Another member of the group who is listed as active, Dr Danny W Davis, is both a professor and program director at Texas A&M University and a training consultant to the US army reserve. His membership data includes a US army contact email address.
Davis states on his publicly available CV that he has “Department of Defense Secret Security Clearance”, that he is a “Training Consultant to US Army Reserve, San Antonio, Texas”, and the “Director, Certificate in Homeland Security Program”.
Davis’s CV includes details of courses Davis has taught and developed, including “Domestic Terrorism: The Internal Threat to America”, which is described as “a comprehensive survey of domestic terrorism”. The CV also points to Davis’s 20-year military career, which ended in 1997 with Davis a lieutenant colonel.
In a telephone conversation, Davis confirmed his active membership in the group, saying that he had joined because he had “three great grandfathers” who had fought for the Confederate army.
On the question of statues he said that “when we start taking down monuments, I think that’s wrong”, and that to him they “represent men who were fighting for something they believed in”.
Davis said that those beliefs “included slavery, but not only slavery”, adding: “Do I think the right outcome came out of the civil war? Yes.”
Davis said “I am not a white supremacist” and said he was surprised to hear about the overlap between the group and extremist organizations, saying that members were mostly “re-enactors”, “people like me who are interested in history”, and “military veterans”.
He said that he includes rightwing extremists in his graduate courses on domestic terrorism, and that he is currently revising a course to include the 6 January assault on the US Capitol, as well as the activities of “Antifa and BLM in the north-west”.
A number of members listed as active members use email addresses associated with the Citadel, a public military academy located in Charleston, South Carolina.
A total of 13 members using Citadel or Citadel alumni email addresses appear in the membership database, with six listed as active members.
One of those active members is retired National Guard Brig Gen Roger Clifton Poole, who has twice served as interim president of the college, and remains a professor in The Citadel’s School of Business.
Wyatt and Poole did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Radical neo-Confederates
Alongside these SCV members, however, are others who have overlapping membership in more explicitly racist or violent groups, or who have been involved in political violence at events like Unite the Right, the event where Heather Heyer was murdered by white supremacist James Fields in 2017.
They include North Carolina lawyer, Harold Crews, who is listed as an active member of the SCV. Crews is also a member of the League of the South, and marched with the group at Unite the Right in 2017.
Crews was involved in scuffles with counter-protesters on the day. Later, backed by a disinformation campaign pushed by white nationalist blogger, Brad Griffin, who was then LoS’s public relations officer, Crews persuaded a judge to issue a warrant for the arrest of DeAndre Harris, who was badly beaten in a parking garage by six Unite the Right attendees.
While the public positions of SCV emphasize the preservation of Confederate “heritage”, LoS is an openly secessionist group which seeks to separate the states which joined the confederacy as a new white supremacist state. Crews served as the North Carolina chair of LoS, and hosted a podcast called Southern Nationalist Radio, where his guests included LoS founder Michael Hill.
Other active members who attended Unite the Right include Virginian, George Randall, and North Carolina based James Shillinglaw. On the day of the rally, Shillinglaw was captured on video beating a counter-protester with a flagpole.
According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, Randall and Shillinglaw are also LoS members.
Also on the membership rolls, but listed as currently inactive, is long time Georgia-based far-right activist Chester Doles. Doles, a former Klansman and member of the neo-Nazi National Alliance who marched at Unite The Right with the Hammerskins white power gang, was pictured in 2013 wearing the insignia of the SCV Motorized Cavalry, a motorcycle club made up of members of SCV.
Doles was apparently a member of the group long after he was imprisoned first in Maryland in 1993 for beating a black man, and later for weapons charges in Georgia.
Crews, Doles, Randall, and Shillinglaw did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Colombians demanding the end of political violence in New York, U.S., May 5, 2021. (photo: Twitter/Jamie_Margolin)
n Sunday, Colombian Non-Governmental Organization (NGOs) denounced the assassination of 6 former Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia-People's Army (FARC-EP) members in the last 24 hours.
The first report is about former FARC-EP member and Peace Agreements signatory Norelia Trompeta's assassination, a 25-year-old girl from Buenos Aires municipality in Cauca Province.
According to Institute for Development and Peace Studies (Indepaz), Trompeta was found together with another woman, who still unidentified. Both of them were shot once in the temple, suggesting premeditated assassination.
The second massacre took place in San Vicente of Caguan, Caqueta Department, where five farmers, former FARC-EP members, and Peace Agreements signatory as well were found killed.
These assassinations, together with yesterday's killing of the social leader Diana Jaramillo and her partner, make this weekend one of the bloodiest of the year.
Moreover, on Saturday, government officials informed about the assassination of 4 police officers by unknown armed groups, three of them in the Cesar Department and the other one in Cali's suburbs.
Cali's Metropolitan Police is offering about 22.000 euros for good information leading to perpetrators' capture, something that certainly nobody will do for any of the abovementioned former FARC-EP members or social leaders.
Peace Agreements signatories and social leaders are the most common targets of paramilitary groups operating all over Colombia. Ivan Duque's government keeps turning a blind eye to a phenomenon that has caused over 350 casualties so far (277 former FARC-EP members and over 75 social leaders).
So far, Duque's far-right policies had only enhanced insecurity and violence, while neglecting Colombians' most urgent needs. During his time in office, he has deepened the social crisis and political upheaval in the country, something that has even affected him directly.
On Friday, the President's helicopter was shot in Santander's northern region while heading to Cucuta airport. He was accompanied by Defense and Interior Ministers during the trip. Local media informed that there were no further incidents and that no one suffered injuries.
Incarcerated firefighters working on the Detwiler Fire in Mariposa County, California, in 2017. (photo: Peter Bohler/High Country News)
In ‘Breathing Fire,’ Jaime Lowe uncovers the benefits and drawbacks of California’s inmate fire program.
n 2016, a boulder struck and killed 22-year-old Shawna Jones while she battled the Mulholland Fire in Malibu, California. Jones was part of an inmate crew from Correctional Camp 13, making her the first incarcerated woman to die while fighting a fire since 1983, the year women first joined California’s inmate firefighting program, which started in 1946.
After Jones’ death, the Los Angeles Times published a bare-bones article about the incident. It revealed little about Jones, but it drew the attention of California-raised journalist Jaime Lowe, who was determined to discover more. Lowe’s years-long investigation resulted in Breathing Fire, an immersive, comprehensive look at Jones’ life and the lives of other incarcerated firefighters, as well as California’s history of inmate firefighting and its growing reliance on it. Given the new reality of California’s fire season, which “lasts 13 months,” as environmental historian Stephen J. Pyne puts it, often all that stands between a family’s home and a conflagration are the imprisoned people that labor, sometimes for 24 hours straight, to restrain the flames.
Incarcerated people comprise up to 30% of California’s wildland fire crews. At the time Lowe reported this book, around 200 of these firefighters were female, making up three out of California’s 35 inmate fire camps. Imprisoned people do difficult work, establishing “a line, usually a few feet wide, by cutting through trees and shrubs and removing anything that could burn.” For this grueling and risky labor, they earn $2.56 per day while in camp, and up to $2 an hour while fighting fires. The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation estimated that paying such minuscule wages for this vital work, rather than the standard hourly rate, “saved the state at least $1.2 billion” over 13 years.
Lowe delves into California’s history of compulsory labor, including a cruel law passed in 1850 that allowed white people to accuse Indigenous people of lacking employment, whereupon they could be arrested and sold into four months of slavery at a public auction. Lowe draws a direct line from this to the inmate labor that contributed to the construction of much of California’s infrastructure, including building the Pacific Coast Highway and carving out the 22-mile stretch of land to create Sunset Boulevard. When World War II brought personnel shortages, corrections officers began forcing incarcerated people to fight fires.
Lowe vividly paints the realities of present-day firefighting. Her precise descriptions of sensory details — the air is “congested with blackened particles” — and firefighting and inmate lingo make readers feel as if they’re in camp with the women, jumping out of bunks at the 3 a.m. siren and piling into a buggy to race off toward a roaring wildfire. Lowe also weaves in accounts of the women’s lives, including their stints in standard prison facilities before they joined the firefighting program. Most were sentenced for drug offenses, as only nonviolent offenders who complete an intense training regimen can join the program. But even though her interviewees see the benefits of their work, Lowe notes that “most bristled at the idea that they volunteered.” When an incarcerated woman wants to avoid the trauma of prison, from sexual assault to solitary confinement, “she might be looking for any alternative,” Lowe writes. “She might even be willing to risk her life.”
Breathing Fire doesn’t shy away from complicated truths. For many women, the program offers relative dignity and purpose compared to the grim realities of incarceration. Besides receiving good food and exercise, they get to live in the forest of Malibu, where their families can visit them under pine trees rather than the fluorescent lights of a prison. Fire-threatened residents hold up signs to thank them for their work. Because the forestry programs are popular among imprisoned people, talked up as “a prison Shangri-La — lobster, shrimp, ocean breezes,” there is no sustained opposition to them, despite the low pay. But even these benefits are short-lived: Formerly incarcerated people face many obstacles if they seek to build a career in firefighting, given laws that prevent the state from hiring ex-felons and parolees. As Lowe pieces together Shawna Jones’ story through public records and interviews with her fellow inmate firefighters, family and friends, it becomes clear that Jones felt the firefighting program turned her life around. Had she lived, she would have tried to pursue it as a career.
In recent years, the firefighting program has dwindled. In 2016, 65% of California voters approved Proposition 57, which allows nonviolent felons with convictions for multiple crimes to seek early parole after they complete the full sentence for their most significant crime. Its backers aimed to ease prison overcrowding, but it also depleted the pool of potential firefighters. The proposition highlighted a point that David Fathi, the director of the ACLU National Prison Project, expressed to Lowe: “If these people are safe to be out and about and carrying axes and chainsaws, maybe they didn’t need to be in prison in the first place.” In the meantime, as questions surrounding criminal justice loom, the megafires will continue to rage, keeping California in perpetual need of firefighters.
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