Trump’s attacks on political adversaries are often followed by threats to their safety

Posted on October 29, 2020 by Bruce

One thing I REALLY hate is a bully . . . . .

From the front page of Thursday’s Post

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/threats-follow-trump-poliical-attacks/2020/10/28/c6dbce02-1792-11eb-82db-60b15c874105_story.html

National Security
Trump’s attacks on political adversaries are often followed by threats to their safety

President Trump speaks at a campaign rally Oct. 27 in Lansing, Mich.

President Trump speaks at a campaign rally Oct. 27 in Lansing, Mich. (Jonathan Ernst/Reuters)

By Greg Miller and Isaac Stanley-Becker
Oct. 28, 2020 at 7:00 a.m. EDT

The CIA’s most endangered employee for much of the past year was not an operative on a mission abroad, but an analyst who faced a torrent of threats after filing a whistleblower report that led to the impeachment of President Trump.

The analyst spent months living in no-frills hotels under surveillance by CIA security, current and former U.S. officials said. He was driven to work by armed officers in an unmarked sedan. On the few occasions he was allowed to reenter his home to retrieve belongings, a security team had to sweep the apartment first to make sure it was safe.

The measures were imposed by the CIA’s Security Protective Service, which monitored thousands of threats across social media and Internet chat rooms. Over time, a pattern emerged: Violent messages surged each time the analyst was targeted in tweets or public remarks by the president.

“The president was tweeting, ‘Where’s the whistleblower? Where’s the whistleblower?’” said a former senior U.S. official involved in overseeing the protection of the analyst, whose name has not been disclosed by the government. The analyst was never in direct danger, the official said, but some threats were so serious that without security, “there is a strong possibility that grave harm would have come to him.”

The CIA declined to comment.

Trump amps up attacks on whistleblower as some Republicans call for more strategic response to impeachment

Over the past year, public servants across the country have faced similar ordeals. The targets encompass nearly every category of government service: mayors, governors and members of Congress, as well as officials Trump has turned against within his own administration.

The dynamic appears to be without precedent: government agencies taking extraordinary measures to protect their people from strains of seething hostility stoked by a sitting president.
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In recent weeks, the danger has become more alarming and visible. The FBI disrupted an alleged plot to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D). Days later, Anthony S. Fauci, the U.S. immunologist leading the response to the coronavirus pandemic, revealed in an interview on “60 Minutes” that he requires near-constant security because of threats against him and his family.

It’s “sad,” Fauci said, that “a public health message to save lives triggers such venom and animosity that it results in real and credible threats to my life and my safety.”

A White House spokeswoman disputed that Trump has encouraged such threats with his verbal attacks on Fauci, Whitmer and others. “President Trump has never advocated for violence against those he disagrees with — unlike Democrats,” said spokeswoman Sarah Matthews.

She cited an instance in 2018 when Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) urged supporters to respond to the administration’s policy of separating migrant children from their families by confronting Trump officials in public. “You push back on them,” Waters said, “and you tell them they’re not welcome anymore, anywhere.”

The rise in such cases is part of a broader escalation in tension and violence across the United States, with clashes in major cities, shootings that have killed or wounded protesters and law enforcement officials, and dark murmurings of possible uprisings depending on the outcome of next week’s election.

The degree to which Trump is responsible for the spate of threats against public officials is difficult to determine. Politicians, including presidents, have always faced the worry of violence by angry constituents. The Internet and the country’s increasingly partisan climate are often cited as factors in the spread of threats and hateful rhetoric against officials across the political spectrum.

But more than any predecessor, Trump has fomented mob-like anger at perceived adversaries throughout his presidency. Though his exhortations generally stop short of explicitly promoting violence, his words have been echoed in hundreds of menacing online messages. And he has consistently resisted entreaties to disavow or discourage violence.

Elizabeth Neumann, a Trump appointee who left her post in April as the Department of Homeland Security’s assistant secretary for counterterrorism and threat prevention, said the president continues to use inflammatory rhetoric despite warnings about dangerous repercussions.

“A healthy leader, when confronted with such facts, would say, ‘Oh my gosh, I had no idea and that was not my intent. Let me clear the air to make it clear I do not support these causes,’ ” Neumann said in an interview. “He does the opposite. He doubles down. He cannot admit that his language is having this horrible effect, because he knows it’s motivating to his supporters.”

In the most striking recent case, Trump lashed out at Whitmer and her pandemic policies at an Oct. 17 campaign rally just days after the plot against her was exposed. As the president’s supporters broke out in “Lock her up!” chants, he responded approvingly.

“Lock them all up,” he said.

Within hours, new ripples of hostility on social media reached Whitmer and her subordinates.

“I am the Governor’s Deputy Digital Director,” Tori Saylor said in a plaintive posting to Twitter. “I see everything that is said about and to her online. Every single time the president does this at a rally, the violent rhetoric towards her immediately escalates on social media.”

“It has to stop,” Saylor said. “It just has to.”

Nine days earlier, unsealed FBI documents revealed that a group of men had spent months planning to abduct the governor in retaliation for restrictions she had imposed on state residents to slow the spread of the coronavirus.

The FBI picked up on online discussions about the scheme soon after those restrictions were implemented, according to an Oct. 6 criminal complaint. But the plotting appears to have accelerated after Trump began publicly taunting Whitmer and tweeted “LIBERATE MICHIGAN!” in mid-April.

The FBI complaint does not name Trump or indicate that he inspired the conspiracy. An FBI agent who testified in the case said he was unaware whether Trump’s tweets were discussed among the alleged plotters.

But there are other indications that those arrested were reacting to Trump’s rhetoric. The president had issued a similar call to “liberate” Virginia, whose governor, Ralph Northam (D), was also considered a possible target by the alleged plotters.

Whitmer said when the arrests were announced that she saw Trump as “complicit” because of how he has encouraged hate groups. “When our leaders speak, their words matter,” she said. “They carry weight.”

Self-identified members of extremist groups often repeat Trump’s rhetoric, down to “the same pieces of wording” in online channels, said Kevin Grisham, associate director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University at San Bernardino.

Criticism and conspiracy theories aimed by Trump at Fauci, philanthropist George Soros and other frequent targets course through messaging apps, including Telegram, as well as Parler, a relatively new platform that members of Trump’s campaign have promoted as unfettered by the constraints increasingly imposed by Facebook and other mainstream services.

Regardless of whether the president “really intends to incite violence,” Gri­sham said, “the evidence points to a strong correlation.”

The volatility in the country’s political life has put enormous pressure on federal, state and local government entities responsible for officials’ security. The FBI and the U.S. Capitol Police, which is responsible for protecting members of Congress, are now routinely engaged in investigations of threats against public officials attacked publicly by the president, according to U.S. officials.

Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.), who presented the impeachment case against Trump in the Senate, faced so many threats during that trial that he required round-the-clock security, officials said. The attacks from Trump have yet to stop.

“When Trump suggests darkly that ‘something should happen’ to his political opponents, as he did to me last week at a rally, or calls someone a traitor or urges that they be locked up, it goes beyond political rhetoric and borders on incitement,” Schiff said in a written statement to The Washington Post. “The truth is Donald Trump knows exactly what he’s doing with these statements and that some of his supporters will take him seriously and literally. We must not ignore the danger he is creating.”

Those who testified at impeachment hearings faced an almost immediate avalanche of online attacks. Among them was Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, a decorated Army officer who worked at the White House. At one point, Vindman was urged by Army officials to move his family to a military base for better security, Vindman said in an interview. He opted against doing so only after other measures were adopted, including regular police patrols past his house.

Lawmakers from both parties have endured increased threats to their safety. In 2017, a left-wing activist from Illinois opened fire on Republican House members at a baseball practice, gravely injuring House Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.).

But only Democrats have faced cycles of threats that surge and subside in sync with the president’s rhetoric. Among the most frequent targets is Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), one of four female minority members Trump declared should “go back” to their countries last year, even though all four are U.S. citizens, and three — including Ocasio-Cortez — were born in the United States.

Trump’s attacks on Ocasio-Cortez are part of a broader campaign of criticism fueled by right-wing media. Lauren Hitt, communications director for Ocasio-Cortez, said the congresswoman’s office routinely fields between two and eight “serious threats” each week, meaning communications that mention violence.

These are only the most worrisome messages among dozens more that come in each week that are deemed merely “harassing” because they don’t mention physical harm to the congresswoman. “We had one harassing caller last week leave 40 voice mails overnight,” Hitt said.

The threatening calls create burdens for staff and law enforcement agencies. Because of long-standing House rules, security resources are distributed largely based on seniority, meaning new arrivals to Capitol Hill have less to spend on protection even when they face more threats than higher-ranking counterparts.

Ocasio-Cortez has “had to make very expensive upgrades to our district office to ensure security,” Hitt said. That money, she said, “is coming out of a very limited freshman budget” that might otherwise be used to serve constituents.

Officials at the FBI and the U.S. Capitol Police declined to discuss security issues in detail, citing concern with disclosing measures they use to ensure officials’ safety. Only a small percentage of threats lead to arrests, and there is little if any available data on how often investigations connect threats to the words of the president.

Asked whether the number of threats to Ocasio-Cortez has risen after attacks by Trump or his surrogates in politics or in right-wing media, Hitt said, “We have seen spikes in all of those scenarios.”

Even mayors of cities far from Washington have experienced similar threats. As Portland, Ore., Mayor Ted Wheeler became the target of hostile Trump tweets this summer, his office received a series of unnerving messages. One, from a sender using an email address identifying himself as a Trump supporter, said: “You guys should be dragged out of your offices and hung by your necks and left there till dead.”

In early September, after Trump launched 15 tweets in a single day assailing Wheeler, more messages arrived. “I was hoping someone would crack your skull open,” one said, according to communications reviewed by The Post. “I hope someone assassinates mayor Wheeler,” said another.

Wheeler also came under attack from the left. In September, he moved out of his condo after protesters broke windows and hurled burning items into the building.

U.S. officials said threats against the CIA whistleblower soared not only when Trump lashed out against him on Twitter but when the president’s allies sought to expose the analyst’s identity to the public.

The analyst’s name and details about his position have been withheld under laws designed to protect whistleblowers. But right-wing news organizations have repeatedly speculated about his identity.

Threats against the whistleblower subsided after Trump’s Senate acquittal, officials said. And although some security measures have been scaled back, officials said that the analyst continues to be a target of online attacks, and that some protective measures are likely to remain in place indefinitely.

Julie Tate contributed to this report.
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Greg Miller
Greg Miller is a national security correspondent for The Washington Post and a two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize. He is the author of “The Apprentice,” a book on Russia’s interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential race and the fallout under the Trump administration.
Isaac Stanley-Becker
Isaac Stanley-Becker is a national political reporter.

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Bruce Potter

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NYU Journalism Award for 2010 — 2019 — column by Margaret Sullivan

Posted on October 15, 2020 by Bruce

From https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/media/best-journalism-decade-top-10/2020/10/14/d4cdbe0e-0d6e-11eb-8074-0e943a91bf08_story.html

Here’s a list of the 10 greatest works of journalism of the past 10 years.
Care to argue about it?

By
Margaret Sullivan
Media columnist
Oct. 14, 2020 at 2:45 p.m. EDT

With so much news slamming us at every moment, it’s hard to see any of it as having enduring value. Who can even remember what happened last week?

But not everything is ephemeral. Some journalism really does last.

Years ago, when New York University faculty ranked the best journalism of the 20th century, they came up with some selections whose classic nature is unarguable. The list was led by John Hersey’s “Hiroshima,” a feat of reportage that used novelistic techniques to tell the stories of six survivors of the atomic bomb; it took up an entire issue of the New Yorker magazine in 1946. Second place went to Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring,” the prescient warning about man-made damage to the planet. The Washington Post’s Watergate reporting made the list, too.

Now there’s a new ranking from the university’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute that looks at this past decade, 2010 to 2019, and is intended to “honor really great work that has already stood the test of time,” according to the project’s organizer, journalism professor Mitchell Stephens.

It’s “the most precious kind of journalism,” he said, “because it changes how we think and how we look at the world.” The group considered nonfiction books, daily reporting, documentaries, podcasts and more.

Here, then, is the ranked list, which was officially announced Wednesday at an online celebration for the authors:

1. Ta-Nehisi Coates, “The Case for Reparations,” the Atlantic.

The judges, 14 outside judges and 24 NYU faculty members, called it “the most powerful essay of its time.” Published in 2014, “it influenced the public conversation so much that it became a necessary topic in the presidential debate.” (Coates is a writer in residence at NYU; he did not participate in the judging.)

2. Isabel Wilkerson, “The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration.”

The judges called this 2010 book “a masterwork by one of our greatest writers and most diligent reporters. . . . essential reading to understand America.”

3. Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey, “She Said: Breaking the Sexual Harassment Story That Helped Ignite a Movement.”

Based on the duo’s groundbreaking #MeToo reporting for the New York Times in 2017, it’s a “pitch-perfect primer on how to take a hot-button-chasing by-the-minutes breaking story and investigate it with the best and most honorable journalistic practices.”

4. Katherine Boo, “Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity.”

The New Yorker writer’s moving portrait of a place and its people, published in 2012, is “unbelievably well written and well reported,” said a judge.

5. Michelle Alexander, “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.”

The 2010 book by the civil rights litigator, now a New York Times columnist, “demonstrates the ways in which the War on Drugs, and its resulting incarceration policies and processes, operate against people of color.” One judge called it “crucial as an engine toward transforming the criminality of our ‘justice’ system.”
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6. Julie K. Brown, “How a Future Trump Cabinet Member Gave a Serial Sex Abuser the Deal of a Lifetime,” Miami Herald.

The veteran reporter “essentially picked up a cold case,” note the judges, and without her dogged reporting, Jeffrey Epstein’s crimes and prosecutors’ dereliction might have slipped away. One judge astutely observed that Brown managed this “amid the economic collapse of a great regional paper.”

7. Sheri Fink, “Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital.”

This narrative medical journalism, written in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina by the Pro Publica and New York Times correspondent who is also a physician, is “compelling, compassionate, and unsettling.” The 2013 book expands on her reporting based on the 2005 disaster in New Orleans.

8. The 1619 Project, New York Times Magazine.

These essays, published in 2019, together have ignited a culture war in America, as they explore the beginning of American slavery. The project, said the judges, “reframes the country’s history by placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of our national narrative.”

9. David A. Fahrenthold, a series investigating candidate Donald Trump’s claims of generous charitable giving , The Washington Post.

The judges: “By contacting hundreds of charities — interactions recorded on what became a well-known legal pad — Fahrenthold [in 2016] proved that Trump had never given what he claimed to have given or much at all, despite, in one instance, having sat on the stage as if he had.”

10. Staff of The Washington Post, Police shootings database 2015 to present.

The judges called this the “definitive journalistic exploration and documentation of fatal police shootings in America.” In the wake of the infamous police shooting of an unarmed Black man in Ferguson, Mo., in 2014, the ambitious effort “set a new standard for real-time, data journalism and was a vital resource during a still-raging national debate.”

For those who might want to argue with these rankings — in the grand tradition of music fans getting outraged over Rolling Stone magazine’s list of, say, the 500 greatest albums of all time — they may find fodder in the larger list of more than 120 nominees. (“What?! Where’s Jane Mayer’s Fox News exposé in the New Yorker? What about “In the Dark,” the investigative podcast that helped free a Mississippi man once held on death row?”) Or they may have some other ideas altogether.

Whether you agree with the list, it might make you stop to think about some of the essential reporting that’s whizzing by you right now as you doomscroll the news endlessly into the nights. Will some of it endure and earn status as classic journalism? Ed Yong’s work this year on the coronavirus pandemic in the Atlantic comes to mind as a possibility. So does the New York Times’s reporting on Trump’s tax returns.
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But it’s ever so early in this crazily tumultuous decade. It’s sure to look quite different from the vantage of 2030.

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Kinda scary

Posted on October 13, 2020 by Bruce

from Science Magazine, Oct. 2020.

Two-thirds of lefties trust science, only one-in-five right-wingers.

So to the folks running the country, and most of the states, most of the scientific discoveries of the last generation or so is either fantasy or a left-wing political conspiracy.

Bruce

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Horrible Migrant Die-Off in SW US

Posted on September 24, 2020 by Bruce

from The Guardian, via High Country News < https://www.hcn.org/articles/climate-desk-southwest-experiences-mass-bird-die-off?utm_source=wcn1&utm_medium=email >

Southwest experiences mass bird die-off

‘To see this many individuals and species dying is a national tragedy.’

Phoebe Weston Sept. 18, 2020 Like Tweet Email Print

NMSU professor Martha Desmond, biologist in the Department of Fish, Wildlife and Conservation Ecology is trying to find out why hundreds of thousands of migratory birds have been found dead across the state.
Allison Salas/New Mexico State University

This story was originally published by the Guardian and is republished here through the Climate Desk partnership.

Thousands of migrating birds have inexplicably died in southwestern U.S. in what ornithologists have described as a national tragedy that is likely to be related to the climate crisis.

Flycatchers, swallows and warblers are among the species “falling out of the sky” as part of a mass die-off across New Mexico, Colorado, Texas, Arizona and farther north into Nebraska, with growing concerns there could be hundreds of thousands dead already, said Martha Desmond, a professor in the biology department at New Mexico State University (NMSU). Many carcasses have little remaining fat reserves or muscle mass, with some appearing to have nose-dived into the ground mid-flight.

“I collected over a dozen in just a two-mile stretch in front of my house,” said Desmond. “To see this and to be picking up these carcasses and realizing how widespread this is, is personally devastating. To see this many individuals and species dying is a national tragedy.”

Long-distance migrants flying south from tundra landscapes in Alaska and Canada pass over America’s southwest to reach winter grounds in Central and South America. During this migration it is crucial they land every few days to refuel before continuing their journey.

Historic wildfires across the Western states of the U.S. could mean they had to re-route their migration away from resource-rich coastal areas and move inland over the Chihuahuan desert, where food and water are scarce, essentially meaning they starved to death. “They’re literally just feathers and bones,” Allison Salas, a graduate student at NMSU who has been collecting carcasses, wrote in a Twitter thread about the die-off. “Almost as if they have been flying until they just couldn’t fly any more.”

The southwestern states of the U.S. have experienced extremely dry conditions – believed to be related to the climate crisis – meaning there could be fewer insects, the main food source for migrating birds. A cold snap locally between September 9 and 10 could have also worsened conditions for the birds.

Any of these weather events may have triggered birds to start their migration early, having not built up sufficient fat reserves. Another theory is that the smoke from the wildfires may have damaged their lungs. “It could be a combination of things. It could be something that’s still completely unknown to us,” said Salas.

“The volume of carcasses that we have found has literally given me chills.”

“The fact that we’re finding hundreds of these birds dying, just kind of falling out of the sky is extremely alarming … The volume of carcasses that we have found has literally given me chills.”

The first deaths were reported on August 20 on White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. Initially, incidents were thought to be unrelated, but thanks to online forums, ornithologists noticed that they were happening all across the region. Resident bird species such as curve-billed thrashers, great-tailed grackles and white-winged doves do not appear to have been affected.

Reports suggest some birds have been displaying unusual behavior before dying – becoming lethargic, approachable and congregating in groups. Species that normally rest in trees and shrubs have been seen hopping around on the ground looking for insects, said Desmond.

Large avian mortalities during migration are rare and few have been as large as this one. Records – which go back to the 1800s – show these events are always associated with extreme weather events such as a drop in temperature, snowstorm or hailstorm. The largest event on record in the region was a snowstorm in Minnesota and Iowa in March 1904 that killed 1.5 million birds.

The climate crisis is also changing the tundra landscape where many of these birds breed, while the destruction of rainforests in Central and South America is damaging their winter habitats. Since 1970, three billion birds have been lost in the U.S. and Canada. Mass die-offs such as this can have an effect on populations of both common and sensitive species. Salas said: “We’re kind of coming at them from all sides … if we don’t do anything to protect their habitat we’re going to lose large numbers of the populations of several species.

Carcasses are being sent to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service forensics laboratory in Oregon and National Wildlife Health Center in Wisconsin for testing, which is expected to take at least two weeks. Scientists are urging people in the area to log any sightings of dead birds on the citizen science website inaturalist.

Tristanna Bickford, the communications director at New Mexico department of Game and Fish, said it was a possibility that the climate crisis had affected the migration. “Until we get the actual reports back from the National Wildlife Health Center, we can’t say what is happening or is not happening,” she added.

Phoebe Weston is a biodiversity writer for the Guardian. Email High Country News at editor or submit a letter to the editor.

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Seven Super Yachts and One Happy Sailor

Posted on September 23, 2020 by Bruce

Well that’s just way too many for one.

Sent from Barbara’s iPhone

On Sep 22, 2020, at 4:58 PM, Bruce G. Potter <bpotter> wrote:

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Bruce Potter443-454-9044

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A Great Tradition from William and Mary is Being Flushed . . .

Posted on September 22, 2020 by Bruce

From The Washington Post < https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/fall-of-the-frat-house-students-target-greek-life-amid-a-racial-reckoning/2020/09/12/c5a44d0a-cd07-11ea-b0e3-d55bda07d66a_story.html >

Education
Fall of the frat house: Students target Greek life amid America’s racial reckoning

[Photo caption: Graham Payne-Reichert, left, was the vice president of a fraternity chapter at American University in D.C. before he and other members voted to disband the group. (Bill O’Leary/The Washington Post)


By Emily Davies September 17, 2020 at 1:05 p.m. EDT

Graham Payne-Reichert logged onto Zoom from a lawn chair in the backyard of his unofficial fraternity house, surrounded by three other members of Delta Tau Delta and a futon that had mysteriously snapped in half a few months before.

He watched faces appear one by one on his screen — first his former roommate, then his Spikeball teammate, then the older fraternity brother who had put him at ease during a hard transition to American University just two years ago.

It was one month after the killing of George Floyd and Payne-Reichert, vice president of his fraternity, kicked off a virtual meeting that would break up the chapter he once adored.

For two hours, the virtual group of 26 men discussed the lack of diversity in their fraternity chapter and the Instagram pages that shared anonymous accounts of racism and sexual assault at their school. The meeting ended with a unanimous vote to disband the chapter of Delta Tau Delta.

“The pressure was on those of us in Greek life to justify our existence and we couldn’t do it,” said Payne-Reichert, 20. “I realized that remaining complicit in the system was a moral issue, and it was one I could not live with.”

That day, Payne-Reichert and his brothers joined hundreds of students at more than a dozen elite colleges and universities nationwide who have cut ties with their fraternities and sororities over the past three months, saying the organizations with histories of sexual assault and White exclusivity are out of line with growing demands for social justice.

At Duke University, a Black sorority sister took off her lettered sweatshirt when grieving Floyd’s death. At the University of Richmond, every member of the Panhellenic Executive Board, which governs campus sororities, resigned. And at Tufts University, the school’s Panhellenic Conference said on Instagram it suspended recruitment to “reflect on the space held by Greek life at Tufts.”

Since first emerging in the 18th century, Greek life has been a cornerstone of college campuses, surviving for generations despite public outrage over high-profile sexual assaults and hazing deaths. But now, inspired by the nation’s racial reckoning and accelerated by the pandemic-induced social isolation, students once affiliated with Greek life have built a new movement calling for its abolition.

The movement, however, has met resistance from national organizations, university administrators and some students, who have pushed for change and increased efforts to expand diversity as an alternative to dismantling Greek life altogether.

The result is a confrontation increasingly familiar on college campuses: establishment leaders and students who support them believe they can help create change from within, while other students are determined to dismantle the institutions they say have failed them.

As students returned to campuses for an unprecedented school year, they got on group texts and inter-school Zooms, trying to figure out how to harness the energy from their summer of activism to take down the fraternity and sorority chapters that still stand.

“We are in a climate where traditionally White institutions are being targeted, and there is nothing more traditional and White and elitist than fraternities on a college campus,” said Alan Desantis, author of the 2007 book “Inside Greek U” and a longtime fraternity adviser. “This movement is without a doubt stronger than it has ever been.”

‘We don’t need to commit to the systems in place’

Greek life first appeared on college campuses in the late 1700s, when students at the College of William & Mary formed a club reserved for wealthy and White Christian men to discuss philosophy in secret. Sororities blossomed a century later, creating spaces exclusively for White women.

The current movement against Greek life singularly targets organizations built on a history of Whiteness, as opposed to other facets of the system such as historically Black sororities and fraternities that formed in the 20th century.

Calls for restructuring White Greek life are not new, but cries to abolish them have sharpened in recent months. After Floyd’s killing in police custody and amid national protests against racial injustice, new Instagram accounts began to surface at more than a dozen colleges nationwide. They shared anonymous stories of racism and sexual assault experienced on campuses, many of them allegedly involving members of Greek letter organizations.

“Once I had sex with a white guy in a fraternity and afterward when we came downstairs everyone high-fived him and say he finally lost his ‘Black virginity’ as if I was nothing more than a box to be checked off,” one post read.

At Washington University in St. Louis, more than 300 students joined a July 14 virtual town hall to discuss the future of Greek life. Earphones in, they listened intently as Nkemjika Emenike, the 18-year-old diversity and inclusion chair for the student union, questioned campus administrators who resisted abolishing Greek life.

“What I am hearing is that there is a need to center student voices and student and administration collaboration,” she said, responding to administrators who pleaded with students to join them in “active dialogue” to figure out how to best address the community concerns about Greek life. “But one thing we have heard from those student voices . . . is the need to abolish Greek life.”

[Photo Caption: In St. Louis, Washington University student Nkemjika Emenike is one of many student leaders in elite colleges across the country organizing to rebuild collegiate social life in a way that better reflects racial justice by abolishing historically White and social Greek letter organizations. (Melina Mara/The Washington Post)]

Emenike, who is Black and Asian American, was once a key player in advancing the types of internal change that administrators were promoting that day. She knew firsthand that sorority recruitment could be daunting for women of color — especially for those such as she who could not afford a new outfit for each event. But she had been pleasantly surprised when she walked into a campus building to find a diverse group of women greeting her at the door.

“The presence of people of color in the room made me feel included and safe right away,” she recalled.

During her first semester in her sorority, which she declined to name to protect the privacy of her sisters, Emenike found best friends, mentors and secured a $1,500 academic scholarship.

But the more time she spent in Greek life, the more she noticed its dark underbelly.

Upperclassmen would warn her to avoid certain fraternity houses where “there were increased chances of sexual assault.” Members of the LGBTQ community would describe feeling isolated in their sororities. And invite lists to Greek life parties seemed at times to automatically exclude women who looked like her.

Caught between gratitude and resentment, Emenike at first tried to improve the social system herself. She spent hours re-engineering social events to be more inclusive and spoke at roundtables with campus administrators to discuss decreasing the financial burden of Greek life, which she hoped would improve diversity.

But Emenike’s eye toward reform shifted after people around the world reacted to Floyd’s killing by calling for an entirely new system of policing. If she could help take down one system, she thought, she might as well try to do the same for a different kind of system on her college campus.

She has yet to drop her sorority because of logistical challenges but says it is only a matter of time before she officially leaves.

Since June, all nine sororities at Washington University in St. Louis have talked about whether they should permanently disband. They have also begun to discuss a new social system that could replace Greek life, suggesting fraternity houses could transform into cultural spaces for marginalized groups on campus.

“I truly loved my experience in Greek life and I wanted to make it more equitable for people,” Emenike said. “But then there was this cultural shift that showed us we don’t have to commit to the systems in place. We can replace them with new and better systems.”

‘I saw more value in staying’

The process of dismantling a historic system — made up of loyal university donors, a vast network of graduates and powerful public figures — is complicated.

When Payne-Reichert and his brothers voted to disband the Delta Tau Delta chapter at American University, they thought they had effectively ended its campus presence. But that was not the case.

As they learned, a national Greek letter organization can decide to preserve a chapter by sending one of its own representatives to campus to recruit a fresh class of brothers.

Jack Kreman, CEO of the national Delta Tau Delta organization, did not allow American University’s chapter to disband simply because Paye-Reichert and his brothers voted to end it.

“No decision has been made regarding the future of the chapter at American University at this time,” he said, adding that “the level of diversity in the local chapters is determined by the choice and preference of the local members.”

The national organization’s decision can only be challenged by members of university administration or a school’s Panhellenic Conference or Interfraternity Council — both groups that have historically supported Greek life as a hallmark of campus life and promoted its restructuring rather than eradication.

Judson Horras, president and CEO of the North American Interfraternity Conference, said the question of abolition is not worth consideration.

“It is not going to happen. These are very large institutions,” he said in an email. “Where we are going to make the most difference is our members’ commitment to positive change.”

“That is what we have always done, change to meet the needs of members and their campus community,” said Dani Weatherford, CEO of the National Panhellenic Conference, adding the board of directors is in the process of appointing an “equity and access advisory committee.”

By the fall, hundreds of chapters that had voted to disband learned that national organizations would keep their charters alive. There has yet to be a college or university to publicly ban Greek life in response to the mounting calls for abolition.

With influential institutions resistant to systemic change, students bent on ending Greek life say they are increasingly relying on social pressure to minimize the status and prestige that gives power to campus chapters. But not all students want Greek life to disappear.

Sean Woytowitz, a 20-year-old student at Duke University, was sitting in his car in San Diego one day in July, midway through his Instacart shift, when he scrolled through Instagram and saw a classmate calling for the end of Greek life. He felt a wave of dread wash over him.

Alpha Tau Omega had been the bedrock of his college experience, introducing him to friends that were as funny and loyal as the tightknit group he had struggled to leave behind in high school. The fraternity had also helped him feel more confident in his own interpretation of masculinity by connecting him with other men who “didn’t conform to cookie-cutter ideals and were really just a weird group of people.”

In his car that day, Woytowitz struggled to reconcile his love for his brotherhood with the stories of racism and sexual assault in Greek life that flashed on his phone screen. Distraught by what he was reading, he considered for a moment leaving Alpha Tau Omega and resigning from his position on Duke’s Interfraternity Council, where he served as director of inclusion, health and safety.

But then Woytowitz contemplated what Greek life would look like if he and his friends dropped out. He shuddered to think about what would remain without the brothers and sisters who had been advocating for change.

“In the end it actually was a pretty easy decision,” he said. “If everyone wasn’t going to drop, then I personally saw way more value in staying and reforming.”

Woytowitz has since helped launch an affinity group for men of color in fraternities to share experiences and crowdsource ways to make Greek life more inclusive. The group is working to establish channels of communication between fraternity men of color and first-years of color who are interested in joining Greek life. They are also in the midst of establishing a new racial bias policy and protocol to help prevent incidents of sexual assault.

“I don’t want Greek life to be abolished and then four years later there is another problematic system in place,” he said. “So we see value in students leading reform because students know the student experience.”

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Emily Davies
Emily Davies is a reporter working on the local desk in D.C.

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Seven Super Yachts and One Happy Sailor

Posted on September 22, 2020 by Bruce

Bruce Potter443-454-9044

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The Washington Post A Maryland suburb known for a slaveholding past confronts its racist present

Posted on September 16, 2020 by Bruce

Published on page A1 in the Wednesday 16 September Washington Post and at
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/maryland-news/anne-arundel-pasadena-black-lives-matter/2020/09/15/7dd0449a-d651-11ea-930e-d88518c57dcc_story.html >

Maryland
A Maryland suburb known for a slaveholding past confronts its racist present

[Photo caption:Jordan Keemer, 18, of Pasadena, Md., stands in front of Chesapeake High School with his parents, Nichole Keemer, 38, and Terry Keemer Jr., 40. All of them experienced racism as students at the school. (Sarah L. Voisin/The Washington Post)]

By Ovetta Wiggins September 15, 2020 at 3:37 p.m. EDT

Two years before George Floyd’s killing forced a reckoning with American racism, Jordan Keemer was in his high school government class in Pasadena, Md., acting as the judge in an exercise that resembled a mock trial.

The teen doesn’t remember the topic, or his verdict.

But stained in his mind are the stinging words he says his teacher uttered quietly as he sat, a 16-year-old Black student surrounded by mostly White classmates: “I don’t trust you n

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Reuters: Several boats sink at Trump parade on Texas lake

Posted on September 6, 2020 by Bruce

From Reuters News:

[in response to this Reuter’s’ hilarious story, I have made the following offer:

“ On behalf of the Eastport Annapolis Communist Party, I’d like to offer our politically misguided Texan boater brethren FREE LESSONS in basic seamanship (otherwise known as “Don’t Swamp Your Neighbor” — a basic Communist principle.)”

Several boats sink at Trump parade on Texas lake

A boat parade in support of U.S. President Donald Trump crowded Lake Travis in Texas on Saturday, generating waves and choppy waters that led at least four boats to sink and others to crash into rocks, local officials said, adding that no one was hurt.

This service is not intended to encourage spam. The details provided have been used for the sole purpose of facilitating this email communication and have not been retained by Thomson Reuters.

Bruce Potter443-454-9044

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New I understand

Posted on August 29, 2020 by Bruce

Thanks Alexandra Petri

Opinions

The perfectly logical case for Donald Trump


Opinion by Alexandra Petri

August 28 at 10:57 AM ET




If you think things are bad under Donald Trump, vote for Donald Trump, who will fix things.

To make America great again, again, you must vote for Donald Trump!
If you think things are bad now under Donald Trump, vote for Donald Trump, who will fix things. The chaos will continue unless you vote for Donald Trump, who will bring needed change by serving another term as president.


Any bad things happening now were sent by Joe Biden, from the future. Do not be fooled by the fact that they are happening in the present, when Donald Trump is president. They are not happening now; they are a preview of what will happen when Joe Biden is president.


Joe Biden wants to destroy the suburbs; he wants, also, to put America’s great workers into houses and basements, where he will force unwanted government assistance on them. Joe Biden has controlled all of government for the past 47 years but, confusingly, he has never gotten through any of the radical policies he really wanted — until now, when he assuredly will. His first act will be to get rid of hamburgers and make cows illegal.


Joe Biden is 40 feet tall, made of wood, hollow and filled with socialists. Joe Biden is also a puppet whose strings are pulled by China, and he would be a pushover to them, unlike Donald Trump, whom John Bolton remembered telling Chinese President Xi Jinping to “go ahead” building concentration camps for Uighurs because it was “exactly the right thing to do.” Joe Biden wants to defund the police, which is why he is advocating not defunding the police.


Most of all, Joe Biden wants to destroy America’s greatness. (Greatness is what we have right now, under Donald Trump, but also don’t have yet, but will definitely have in the future.) Joe Biden will never create jobs, the way Donald Trump has, by first presiding over the loss of millions of them.


Under Donald Trump, America has never been safer. It has also never been more dangerous. We must elect Donald Trump to make us safe again, which he has already made us, never more than we are now, although we also aren’t, and won’t be, unless we elect him! If you see.


Donald Trump supports law and order, except the Hatch Act, which he doesn’t think Americans care about. He was briefly impeached, but it was a big misunderstanding and doesn’t indicate anything about his respect for rule of law, which is absolute. Also, impeachment is illegal (not many people know this), so the most respectful thing is to resist it and call it illegitimate. The fact that impeachment seems to be included in the Constitution is another paradox from the Joe Biden timeline, to be ignored.


Donald Trump is a crusader against nepotism, corruption and the abuse of power for personal gain, wherever it may lurk. The fact that four of the main speechmakers on the four nights of the convention were his children was simply because they were literally the best people in America. He despises people who profit from public office, and the times when he has urged people to stay at Trump properties were just because he gives and gives without thinking of himself. We will see his tax returns very soon.


Elect him and nobody will be canceled, except those of whom Donald Trump disapproves, but that is okay because they did something bad. He is not racist and his appeals contain no dog whistles, but you are racist for thinking so.




In conclusion, Donald Trump has accomplished more than any other president, ever, in his single term, including some accomplishments that did not even happen during his term, like his landmark achievement, the Veterans Choice Bill, passed in 2014 under President Barack Obama. There is no pandemic to speak of, or to put on a mask for; if there ever was one, it was someone else’s fault; also, Joe Biden did not take it seriously, unlike Donald Trump, who does, and is continuing to, at his large unmasked gatherings of supporters breathing and shouting together. Donald Trump does not look at America and see thousands of people needlessly dying and millions losing their jobs — this is what Joe Biden sees. Donald Trump sees greatness!


Donald Trump has made America great again, and he will make it great again, again, if reelected, but right now, Joe Biden and the Democrats are ruining America and filling it with chaos. So don’t you think it’s time for a change?


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As America ages, more men and women are becoming their parents’ caregivers.

Read more from Alexandra Petri: 
My RNC review:

Hannibal Lecter’s dinner party was visually sumptuous!
Some last-minute additions to the RNC lineup
 Want a president who seems capable of human emotion?

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Read a transcript of Petri’s Aug. 25 live chat

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