Daily Archives: June 18, 2022

New Marcos Administration Wants Red-Tagging to Stop – Voice of America – VOA News

Posted: June 18, 2022 at 1:47 am

manila, philippines

Philippine President-elect Ferdinand Marcos Jr.s national security adviser-designate has urged a stop to the dangerous and deadly practice of red-tagging, or labeling government critics and activists as communists or terrorists.

Clarita Carlos, a retired professor of political science, would become the first woman to hold the position of national security adviser (NSA) if confirmed, as expected, by July 1. Its a powerful post that oversees the countrys security and defense approach and is usually reserved for high-ranking military officials.

To the extent of my mandate as NSA, I would like to stop red-tagging, Carlos said in a recent TV interview after her appointment was announced, adding that it was a lazy, counterproductive practice.

Red-tagging in the Philippines is the practice by the military and police of branding human rights defenders, activists, journalists and other members of civil society who have been critical of the government. Some people who have been red-tagged have been harassed and have turned up dead.

The United Nations, expressing concern about the practice, has said it posed a serious threat to civil society and freedom of expression.

'It is not productive'

Carlos, if approved, will chair the National Security Council and be vice chair of the Anti-Terrorism Council. She advocates for a human security approach to solve the Philippines' decadeslong battle with a communist insurgency, the longest in Asia.

Lets stop red-tagging because it is not productive. Lets put our energies on the ground, addressing inequalities, lack of opportunities, Carlos said. If you prevent these people from becoming journalists scientists, if you kill their future, they will hold guns.

Carlos proposed plan, if she gets to implement it once in office, is a total reversal of President Rodrigo Dutertes policy, which saw a surge of red-tagging and the killing of activists totaling 318 people in 2021, according to a human rights group.

In 2018, Duterte formed and poured money into funding the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC) to counter the insurgency. The task force has been widely criticized for harassing activists, government critics and journalists.

Empirical evidence shows that the military route never works, so we should stop it. We look stupid doing the same things that do not work. We should do what works, Carlos said.

Human rights organizations have welcomed Carlos call to end red-tagging, but there are doubts she will get to have the last say on the matter.

As an academic with a nonmilitarist mindset, we can give her the benefit of the doubt. We hope, though, that the traffickers of red-tagging will not outmaneuver her sensible position in the end, said lawyer Edre Olalia, president of the National Union of Peoples' Lawyers.

Silence from Marcos, so far

But Olalia, whose organization has worked with people who have been red-tagged, jailed or killed by government security forces, doubts Marcos will heed Carlos call.

I doubt especially that [Marcos] has endorsed the NTF-ELCAC during the campaign, and he seems to be deafeningly silent on the issues of red-tagging and the Anti-Terrorism Act up to now. And he has to deal with many sponsors and practitioners of red-tagging around him, he said.

Cristina Palabay, secretary-general of rights group Karapatan (rights in Filipino), called on Carlos to advocate the abolition of the controversial NTF-ELCAC.

Aside from its notorious and dangerous red-tagging sprees, it has directed and incited several gross human rights violations numerous arrests and raids of progressive leaders and organizers and trumped-up charges against activists, Palabay told VOA.

But the challenge for Carlos, Palabay said, is to stand her ground and heed the calls to end NTF-ELCAC and red-tagging amid the overall framework of policies of Marcos Jr. and the military.

Similarly, Human Rights Watch called on Carlos to make good on her statement to end red-tagging.

What remains uncertain is whether her new boss, and the Philippines armed forces, will allow her to do that, once she is in office, HRW Philippines researcher Carlos Conde said.

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Secretary Antony J. Blinken and Colombian President Ivn Duque Mrquez at the 200th Anniversary of US-Colombian Relations Celebration – United States…

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SECRETARY BLINKEN: Well, good afternoon, everyone.

It is wonderful to see everyone here today, particularly for this occasion. Susan, thank you very much, both for the introduction but also for what youre doing every day to really bring our diplomacy alive, to bring it to new generations of Americans. Were grateful for this. Its a remarkable project and one that were fully invested in, so thank you.

And Mr. President, its so good to have you again in Washington. We were just in Los Angeles days ago. Its wonderful to see you here. Its an opportunity, in a small way, for us to return the hospitality that youve extended to us over this past year and a half, including my own visit to Bogotlast year, and also to celebrate a truly joyous occasion. And maybe well do away with the microphone and Ill try and project. (Laughter.) The 200th anniversary of our bilateral relations that were celebrating today I guess were giving new meaning to Juneteenth next week as well.

And Mr. President, I really wanted to thank you again publicly, as I just did privately, for not just your participation in the Summit of the Americas, but for Colombias leadership in the Summit of the Americas. We got a lot done for the people of our hemisphere over those three days in Los Angeles, and in no small measure because of Colombias leadership, including on the migration declaration, which I may say a few additional words about in a few minutes. But that leadership, as always, was invaluable. Our partnership, as always, was invaluable. And Im grateful to you, President Biden is grateful to you, for that partnership.

Mr. Ambassador, Ambassador Pinzn, friends for a long time its great to have you here today; other colleagues from across the Government of Colombia: So I know this is only one in a series of events that have been organized to celebrate our 200 years. Were grateful to our colleagues from Colombia for actually, in a sense, hosting the event today, co-hosting it with us.

Our team in Bogot is also extremely active in organizing celebrations in multiple Colombian cities over the coming days.

And finally, let me say to our colleagues who are here from the Colombian and American private sectors: Thank you for being here today; thank you for your work every day to strengthen ties between our countries. The economic bonds that bind us together are strong and growing stronger, and of course, its a profound benefit to the people in both of our countries.

It is, I think, fitting that we are celebrating today at the National Museum of American Diplomacy. How are we doing? Lets see. (Laughter.) Its a rogue microphone. (Laughter.)

We have and I suspect the president will get into this as well a long history of being bound together, even before 1822, when our formal diplomatic relations began.

From 1806 to 1807, Simon Bolvar spent six months in the United States traveling the East Coast from Charleston, South Carolina, up to cities along the coast, before, of course, leading the independence movement in South America.

Beyond history, we, of course, have been and continue to be enriched immeasurably by Colombias culture the magical realism of Garcia Marquez, the art of Botero, the music of Shakira. (Laughter.) Colombia is said to be the land of a thousand rhythms; I suspect Shakira is responsible for 999. (Laughter.)

But to the point that Susan made and I think its really important this is a relationship that has remained strong over 200 years, even in the most challenging times, and that speaks volumes. A few decades ago, Colombias entire future was on the line, under assault from drug cartels and insurgent groups. Conflict ravaged the nation. Many Colombians endured violence or lived in fear of it. And of course, at that time huge unemployment as well, economic difficulties.

We came together the United States and Colombia and I see leaders of that effort in this room today. We undertook Plan Colombia. We ended half a century campaign to topple the Colombian Government, as well as a war that killed more than 200,000 people. Plan Colombia became Peace Colombia, and though many issues remain, Colombia has expanded access to education, to jobs, other social services in its rural areas, and to the countrys underserved communities, including Indigenous and Afro Colombian communities; reformed land laws; established institutions like the disappeared persons unit. Much work remains, but it is a remarkable thing, especially at a time of so much challenge around the world, to see the commitment the enduring commitment that Colombia has made to peace and progress.

Last month, we saw the strength of democracy in action. I think you had the highest turnout for the first round of presidential elections in memory. Regardless of the results, the United States looks forward to working with the next administration to continue the progress thats underway and the relationship that generations of our officials and our people have built together.

Let me just say a few words before turning it over to the president.

We are deepening our economic ties. Last month marked the 10-year anniversary of the Colombia Trade Promotion Agreement that has helped double U.S. agricultural exports to Colombia, while making the United States the top importer of agricultural goods from Colombia.

Last week in Los Angeles, at the Summit of the Americas, President Biden announced the Americas Partnership for Economic Prosperity. We will work closely with countries across the region, including Colombia, to remove barriers to investment, to accelerate economic growth across our hemisphere, while ensuring that the gains of growth are more equitable because we know that even as our economies grow, so have gaps between the rich and poor, and were determined to address that.

Were advancing our shared security together. Our partnership over the years has allowed U.S. and Colombian security forces to work together. Ambassador Pinzn and I worked on this some years ago. We now see the benefits in the work Colombian security forces are doing to train others throughout the hemisphere. Colombia has become an exporter of security in our hemisphere, and that matters. The recent designation of Colombia with President Duque as a Major Non-NATO Ally will enhance this cooperation by helping our militaries work even closer together in the years ahead.

And this partnership, besides being a bilateral partnership, besides being a regional partnership, is increasingly a global partnership. Were working together on global challenges, like the climate crisis. We see the stakes of this in Colombias extraordinary natural beauty, from the snow-capped mountains in Los Nevados to the tropical rain forests in the south. Were working together to protect these and other diverse ecosystems across the country for example, through Amazonia Connect, also announced at the Summit of the Americas. This initiative will work to reduce deforestation across the Amazon the lungs of the hemisphere, and an unmatched source of biodiversity.

In my visit to Bogot last year, I had a chance to talk to a group of young Colombians, who asked me about several other areas where our countries work together, from creating safe pathways for migration to promoting understanding through culture and education.

So I had one conversation with someone from a much younger generation and a much more talented musical background. (Laughter.) Juan Carlos Mindinero is an Afro Colombian musician from Tumaco who told me about his work using music to promote peace and to address some of the most difficult issues in his community, like racism. His work reminded me in so many ways of the songs of the Civil Rights Movement in the United States, which played such a key role in inspiring and mobilizing ordinary people to act.

And when it comes down to it, that is really one of the most beautiful things about democracy: ordinary citizens confronting the toughest challenges that we face out in the open. And ultimately, these dedicated citizens are what give me the most optimism for the future of the relationship between Colombia and the United States. People who believe in the bonds between our countries, who stand ready to continue to grow them, to make their own governments and the relationship between them even better, even stronger, in the years ahead. Thats what really drives this.

So let me simply say to everyone present, because in various ways virtually everyone here has been involved in this relationship, thank you for the commitment to this work. And simply put, Mr. President, friends and colleagues, here is to the continued friendship between Colombia and the United States. We could ask for no better partner, no better friend in the world.

Mr. President, over to you. (Applause.)

PRESIDENT DUQUE: Good afternoon. Its a great honor for me to be here at the State Department and especially at the Diplomacy Center. Thank you so much, Secretary Blinken, for your words, for your friendship, for your permanent support to Colombia. Susan, thank you so much for having us today. Ambassador Pinzn, Dr. Mara Paula Correa. My also special greetings to the panelists that were going to have this afternoon. Maureen, thank you. Joseph, Luis Alberto, and Marie Arana, a great writer who has written a lot about Latin Americas history. I also want to express my salute to the former ambassadors from the United States to Colombia. Speaker Boehner, its great to have you here with us.

And I would love to express, Mr. Secretary, that we feel very honored of this 200 years celebration. It has been 200 years of our relationship that has been driven by values, by common purpose, and obviously by principles. And I would like to make some references of a historical nature. The first one is that the flag that I have behind me yellow, blue, and red was designed by Francisco de Miranda. Francisco de Miranda designed that flag, and Francisco de Miranda, who has to always be considered as one of our founding fathers, was very close to General Lafayette, and he was pretty much inspired by the founding fathers of the United States. He was approached later in time by the leaders of the Liberty Society of Caracas to come back and fight for liberty. But before that, in 1807, Simn Bolvar departed from the Port of Cdiz and he was coming to the Americas with the idea of fighting for liberty. But instead of going directly to La Guaira that was the common trip that he would have made, he decided to stop in Charleston. And he remained in the United States for a few months, and it was during Thomas Jeffersons mandate.

About that trip, there are no important documents about what happened to Bolvar, with the exception that he ran out of money and his brother had to send some money, finding a carrier. But what is interesting is that years after, there was this amazing letter that Bolvar wrote to a Jamaican diplomat. And this has been recalled also by Professor John Lynch. And he said in the letter, During my short stay in the United States, I tasted the flavor of liberal democracy. Those were major words that also inspired Bolvar. And he fought for independence. We got our independence in 1819. Then he fought in the Venezuelan territory against Toms Boves. He finally also built the independence of Venezuela. And then he started the southern campaign.

But at the time when he started the southern campaign, he called for a former Spaniard that had turned himself into a New Granadan and a Colombian, Manuel Trujillo y Torres, to be appointed as a representative to the United States of America. He came to Washington. He was a very clever guy. He had this capacity to speak eloquently. And he started knocking everybodys doors in order to make the case for the recognition of Colombia by the United States of America. People who knew him describe him as the Colombian Franklin. And there are few historical records about him, and it is very common that he is always referred with that phrase. He was a Renaissance man, and he was a very persuasive man.

He got to constitute a very powerful friendship with John Quincy Adams, who was the secretary of state at the time. And he made such a strong case for the recognition that John Quincy Adams approached President Monroe, and President Monroe in 1822 signed the recognition ofla Gran Colombia, becoming the first former Spanish colony to be recognized as a state by the United States of America. And Manuel Trujillo y Torres was a big fan of Thomas Jefferson. He always mentioned that that great inscription in the Declaration of Independence, to hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, became a mantra that also inspired the abolition of slavery in our countries.

Since then, this relationship has always been stronger and stronger. And we remember always the first visit that a U.S. president did to Colombia, and it was FDR, who came to Cartagena. Then we also remember President Kennedys visit to Colombia, when he launched the Alliance for Progress with his good friend, Alberto Lleras Camargo. We remember Ronald Reagans visit to President Betancourt; President Bush 41, his visit to Colombia, where he also met with President Barco in the city of Cartagena. We remember the visit that President Clinton made to Colombia. And we also remember how, in times of despair, the United States came to us and said: We will support you. And thats how Plan Colombia was built. And Im very glad to see here Ambassador Pickering, who was also an architect of Plan Colombia.

At the time when Plan Colombia was approved, Colombia was considered at the brink of becoming a failed state. Twenty years after this policy that has been bipartisan and bicameral, Colombia has become the 37th member of the OECD. And that just clearly speaks about how this diplomatic effort, based on values and principles, has been able to change our diplomacy.

And also, after Plan Colombia, President Bush 43 decided to move forward the free trade agreement between Colombia and the United States. Speaker Boehner, we remember all the big efforts in Congress, how this also became a bipartisan, bicameral effort. And it has opened many opportunities for us.

Then, during President Obamas administration, we got strong support from the United States in multiple fronts. We also finalized the putting in practice of the free trade agreement, and it marked a very important era for us. I remember as president how President Trump supported us in the midst of the pandemic, and how he also supported us to face the situation of the migrants in the border zone. And I have to express to you, Secretary Blinken, and to President Biden, my gratitude because you have saved millions of lives. You have become the largest donor of vaccines to Colombia in the midst of this pandemic. You have opened the accessibility of products to the United States like no other time before. And we have been able to work on climate action, the protection of the Amazon, the protection of the migrants and it all came together in multiple ways.

First, bringing our diplomatic relations to the highest peak ever by declaring Colombia a strategic non-NATO member ally, which means Colombia is today among the few countries that have that kind of recognition. But also, being able to work along, as we did last week in Los Angeles, in two major policies: the migration declaration of L.A., which out of the complex noise that we have on permanent politics is one of the most important statements ever in a summit to describe by all ourselves that we need to treat migration with a sense of fraternity, as we have done when 1.8 million Venezuelan brothers and sisters, Ambassador Vecchio one million already have their TPS cards in their hands.

And the other very important statement the launching of the economic prosperity framework by President Biden. This can become as important as the Alliance for Progress because it can bring investment back to the Americas, thinking on the opportunities that we have with North America; and it can be an effective deterrent of migration driven by lack of opportunities. This will open opportunities for many Latin Americans. And we also believe that its an opportunity to bring U.S. investment back in issues such as infrastructure, 5G networks, renewable energies, among many others.

So I consider that what we built last week was very important, and I feel proud that we were very much cohesive, the countries that participated. And we remembered that if there were reasons why some countries were not there, its because in 2001, when we signed the Inter-American Democratic Charter, we also signed the Protocol of Quebec. That protocol established that the summits are not spaces for dictatorships, and that will never be a space for dictatorships. (Applause.)

So, Mr. Secretary, I feel so honored that today were celebrating these 200 years of this relationship in a very special day that I want to bring to your attention. It was in June 15, 1952, that Colombian troops entered South Korea. Colombia was the only Latin American country that participated in the Korean War, and we came with a contingent of more than 5,000 troops, which can be called Ambassador Pinzn, whos a military expert, has said that it could have been more than 40 percent of the Colombian army at the time. And those soldiers came there hand by hand to participate with the United States in saving the South Korean democracy. And no country would have done that if it wasnt because we share those values, those objectives, and those purposes.

I believe that this celebration is an opportunity for keep on strengthening our ties, and we will remain the most important ally for the United States in the Western Hemisphere. We will continue to differentiate ourselves, by embracing democracy, with autocracies with pleasure and we will also remain united to protect those in need, especially the migrant communities in our country that have left the horrible impact of the Maduro dictatorship.

Secretary Blinken, you have been a friend of Colombia, you are a friend of Colombia, and I want to express my gratitude to all the diplomatic corps of the U.S. State Department here today. You have to always see the relationship between Colombia with the United States as an example of what bipartisan, bicameral policies can do and what bipartisan diplomacy can do. I definitely want to express to each one of you, thank you for doing so much for our country.

And with your permission, Secretary Blinken, I would love to close my remarks by asking Ambassador Tom Pickering to join us here to impose him the 200 years condecoration to celebrate this 200 years anniversary between Colombia and the United States for (applause) to an example of one of the greatest minds in U.S. diplomacy. You have been an ambassador in many places around the world, in complex scenarios, Dr. Pickering, but as the president of Colombia, we have to thank you for being one of the brightest minds who created Plan Colombia, and we can say that because of Plan Colombia, we are today in a much better shape in a country of law and order and opportunities.

And Ill finish by saying the following: In my last four years, I have been honored with being the president of my country, fighting every day for the good of our people. We passed a pandemic. Out of 48 months of my administration, 30 months will be facing a pandemic. But were leaving Colombia with the highest growth ever, with the lowest multidimensional poverty ever reached by Colombia, with the lowest job informality rate, being a country that delivers on an energy transition, and a country that is considered today one of the most important places for start-ups in the region. Obviously, we still have challenges, but none of the things that we have achieved would have not been achieved without the support of an ally such as the United States of America.

So Ambassador Pickering, Im going to impose this condecoration. I invite Secretary Blinken to join me here.

(A decree was read.)

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Secretary Antony J. Blinken and Colombian President Ivn Duque Mrquez at the 200th Anniversary of US-Colombian Relations Celebration - United States...

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Abortion Funds Are Preparing For a Storm. To Help, Get in Where You Fit in. – Truthout

Posted: at 1:47 am

Abortion rights demonstrators march into downtown following a rally in Union Park on May 14, 2022, in Chicago, Illinois.Scott Olson / Getty Images

We have to be thinking and dreaming and planning really expansively because when Roe falls, band-aid solutions are not going to be enough, says Meghan Daniel, a support coordinator with the Chicago Abortion Fund. In this episode of Movement Memos, Daniel and host Kelly Hayes talk about the end of Roe, abolishing police and prisons and how funding abortions builds power.

Music by Son Monarcas, Pulsed & Imprismed

Note: This a rush transcript and has been lightly edited for clarity. Copy may not be in its final form.

Kelly Hayes: Welcome to Movement Memos, a Truthout podcast about organizing, solidarity and the work of making change. Im your host, writer and organizer Kelly Hayes. Today, we are talking about how the Chicago Abortion Fund is gearing up for the end of Roe and how prison and police abolition intersect with the fight for reproductive justice. We will be hearing from Meghan Daniel, who is a support coordinator with the Chicago Abortion Fund, or CAF for short. CAF provides financial, logistical, and emotional support to people seeking abortion care throughout Illinois and the Midwest. Laws restricting abortion access in red states have made Chicago a crucial hub for abortion care in the midwest. Those laws have also led to an increased demand for the assistance of groups like the Chicago Abortion Fund. In the first three months of 2022, over 80% of abortion seekers who contacted the Chicago Abortion Fund were living outside the state of Illinois. That out-of-state demand is expected to continue to surge after the fall of Roe. Receiving hundreds of calls per month, CAF is presently on a years-long streak of helping every caller.

For the unacquainted, abortion funds are local, autonomous organizations that provide resources and build power for cultural and political change. After the Hyde Amendment ensured financial barriers to abortion access for impoverished people by banning the use of federal healthcare funds to pay for abortion care, abortion funds began to emerge to help impoverished abortion seekers pay for their procedures. In addition to paying for procedures, some funds provide practical support, including transportation, child care expenses, lodging, translation services, abortion doulas, and more. Black and brown people have been disproportionately impacted by the Hyde Amendment, and were largely left behind by mainstream feminist organizations, which failed to make ending the Hyde Amendment a priority.

The National Network of Abortion Funds, or NAF, has 90 grassroots member groups that received over 200,000 requests for assistance in 2019. The funds directly supported 62,933 abortion seekers in 2019. When laws attacking abortion access dominate the news cycle, some abortion funds may see an influx of cash. But the need still greatly exceeds what is being donated, and in a post-Roe U.S., requests for assistance are expected to surge further, as pregnant people in red states attempt to travel to places like Chicago, where they can legally receive care.

United by a national network, these groups operate independently, across varying cultural and political geographies. Here in Chicago, I have been in the streets protesting alongside members of the Chicago Abortion Fund and the abortion fund Midwest Access Coalition many times often at actions waged in response to police killings. Ive also been known to hit up CAFs annual bowl-a-thon, even though I dont bowl. As abortion funds around the country work to scale up their operations, Meghan and I talked about the end of Roe; why transphobia, prisons and police violence are reproductive justice issues; and how funding abortions builds power.

Meghan Daniel, in addition to being a support coordinator with the Chicago Abortion Fund, is also a PhD candidate in Sociology at University of Illinois Chicago, where she teaches, writes, and conducts research about reproductive justice, social movements and state violence.

Meghan Daniel: So my name is Meghan. I use she and her pronouns. I am one of two support coordinators at the Chicago Abortion Fund, and I work in a team of four full-time staff at Chicago Abortion Fund or CAF as we like to call it. We also have a few part-time folks and a really amazing team of volunteer case managers. There are upwards of 20 folks who donate their time and love and wisdom to supporting people who call our helpline in need of support for abortions. Chicago Abortion Fund provides financial, logistical, and sometimes emotional support to people seeking abortions in Chicago, in Illinois, the Midwest, and really nationwide.

Chicago Abortion Fund was founded in the mid-1980s, by a group of people that came together to meet this need, and I came across some numbers that are pretty astonishing. So in our first full year of serving callers, October 1986 to November 1987, we got calls from 106 people who needed financial support for their abortion care, and we were able to fund 33 of them. And thats awesome. And in the almost 40 years, since weve opened our doors, the landscape of abortion access has shifted and barriers have multiplied, and weve really scaled up to meet the need. So in the first four months of this year alone, January through April, we received calls from 2,000 people, 2,000, and these callers came from 33 states. So roughly 30% were calling from Missouri where folks have been living in a so-called post-Roe reality for quite some time now. 20% of these calls came from Indiana where the cost of an abortion in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy is nearly $900, and 15 percent from our home state of Illinois, where though Medicaid does cover abortion services at no cost and legislation posits that all private Illinois insurance must cover abortion care, all pregnant people dont fit neatly into these insurance categories and costs still run really high.

Chicago is going to remain an important hub. Illinois is going to remain an important hub because Illinois is one of the states in the U.S. where abortion access will remain protected when Roe falls. In previous years with the passage of the Reproductive Health Act, weve repealed the so-called trigger ban on abortion so that when Roe v. Wade gets overturned at the federal level, abortion will remain legal in Illinois. So well see these trends continuing, and by these trends I mean people from out of state calling, people traveling to Illinois in increasing numbers. And so Illinois, like many other states in the U.S. with either protected or expanded access to abortion care, will remain an important place for people to get the care that they need and deserve.

KH: The Chicago Abortion Fund has been on a roll, in terms of not having to turn anyone away, but like abortion funds across the country, they are currently preparing for a storm.

MD: Post-Roe I think that we will continue to see an influx in callers. I think that we can expect those numbers to grow exponentially, and I think that the barriers those people are facing are going to multiply. Were talking people coming from rural areas in states with low access, were talking people having to take multiple days off work.

Were already coordinating things like childcare, ride shares, hotels, sometimes flights, stipends for food. At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, which is ongoing, of course, we initiated what we call mini-grants, which are direct payments to folks in the amount of $50; no questions asked. If it seems like they need them and theyre struggling with their lights getting shut off, or just needing a little something extra, we send that to folks and thats something were really proud of. The intersections of economic precarity and access to health care being very difficult are very real for our callers, and we anticipate this to grow as the cost incurred by people seeking abortion care grow as well.

Having to travel multiple days to get health care from states with low access or from states with 24- or 48-hour mandatory wait periods, its a lot to coordinate. We have been expecting this for a long time. Its something that people inside of repro have been struggling with. It feels like youre trying to warn people about something they may not be as alarmed about. You know its real, you know its coming because youre living in it and perhaps they dont want to see it, or theyre not seeing it, but the writings been on the wall so to speak for years now. So weve been deepening our partnerships with funds in the Midwest and across the country with funds in Nebraska, with funds in Wisconsin, because many of our callers are calling us from there.

Abortion funds just deserve so much more than what we currently have, so as a staffed fund, this is painfully clear and were interested in continuing to support other volunteer-led funds with intake, with data and with our best organizational practices so that they can get access to the resources that they need and deserve too. Were not trying to be like the midwest abortion fund. We want to work in solidarity and link arms with our sibling funds with whom we cant do this work without. We do it in a constellation of other sibling funds of independent clinics, of bigger networked clinics, of providers, of practical support organizations, doulas, midwives of other mutual aid organizations. And deepening those partnerships in the coming weeks and months is going to be so important. Were going to need each other more than ever.

Illinois protected access is not enough, we need expanded access. So weve been talking to elected officials and agitating for more protection and expansion of abortion care and engaging with and growing our base to support that work. We also expect that You know, we see this in cycles, right? With the passage of Senate Bill 8 in Texas, there was an influx in people wanting to get involved and thats amazing. And with the leaked Supreme Court opinion in May, theres an influx of people who want to get involved. We want to engage that base to put pressure on our elected officials in Illinois to agitate for expanded abortion access. So in California, for example, theres a bill that passed the house and crossed over to the Senate that would protect anyone who helps someone have an abortion by prohibiting California courts from taking up any cases based on out of state laws. These are just examples of the sort of creative legislation that people are coming up with to protect each other, and I think that matters.

And were using this moment to preach a pro-abortion gospel, so to speak. So we are in the majority; two thirds of people in the U.S. want Roe upheld, and were not going to see that happen, but we cant be quiet about it. We need to name abortion explicitly and we have to have conversations with our people. We have supported a hundred percent of our callers since July 2019, and we want to keep that going. We dont want to go back to listening to voicemails, logging those voicemails, doing all of that data intake and not being able to support any single one of those people. Its a horrible feeling to not be able to meet that need, and I am remaining very disciplined in my hope that we wont have to.

KH: I am so glad Meghan brought up the need for legislation to protect pregnant people, and people who miscarry or abort, even in blue states. As we recently saw in California, with the attempted prosecution of two women who experienced stillbirths, people are still at-risk of being criminalized for pregnancy outcomes in blue states. What can we do about that? Well, there is a piece of model legislation, written by the Public Leadership Institute called The Pregnant Womens Dignity Act, and while I would obviously prefer a trans-inclusive title, the gist of this bill is that it would protect people who experience the loss of a pregnancy from criminal investigation. We need some version of this bill passed in every possible state. Because right now, we have states declaring themselves welcoming states for abortion seekers where residents can still be investigated and criminalized for their pregnancy outcomes, if they are suspected of managing their own abortion. We also have prosecutors in conservative counties in blue states who are going to want to get in on the criminalization of pregnancy, and will look for any legal avenue to do so. If states want to declare themselves safe havens for abortion, then they need to decriminalize pregnancy entirely. In my opinion, the fact that we even have to talk about decriminalizing pregnancy is a strong argument for prison and police abolition. Laws that offer abortion funds and residents in blue states some legal insulation, when helping abortion seekers in red states that are implementing aiding and abetting laws could also prove important.

This crisis is largely being presented to people as though there are states where abortion is safe and states where it is not. But even with Roe intact, a map of so-called abortion deserts in the U.S., created by Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health in 2018, revealed a bleak picture. The color-coded maps that depict what states are most likely to allow or restrict abortion post Roe do not capture the actual availability of abortion care within blue states. As Robin Marty wrote in The New Handbook for a Post-Roe America, when clinics and providers are mapped, most of America is a spotted wasteland where pregnant people live over a hundred miles from care and thats now, prior to the fall of Roe. For this and many other reasons, even within blue states, people will sometimes opt to self manage their own abortions. Others will simply be accused of doing so, whether they have or not, because pregnancy outcomes are being surveilled, and profiling will come into play. We know this is happening and that it has happened, and if we say we are going to defend reproductive autonomy, we have to fight to protect everyone.

When a swath of near total abortion bans passed in 2019, CAF was among the groups my collective worked with to organize a reproductive justice rally in Chicago. The rally had a major online fundraising component, as we were trying to direct money to abortion funds in states affected by the bans. That rally included chants like, All genders, all voices, our bodies, our choices, to emphasize the inextricable connection between abortion rights and all trans health care rights. We also held our ground that day against right-wing protesters. I have been thinking about that action lately, and all the values it tied together, and how desperately those values are needed in this moment. Because, as we have covered in recent episodes of the show, the fight against transphobia and the struggle against white supremacy cannot be divided from the struggle for abortion rights.

MD: The struggle against white supremacy and transphobia shows up in our work every day. At CAF we work towards abortion access from a reproductive justice model and reproductive justice is not interchangeable with abortion access. Its not interchangeable with reproductive rights or with reproductive health. Reproductive justice is a very specific framework and theory and praxis that was founded by Black and African American women, a group of 12 people here in Chicago in 1994 and it encompasses the right to have children, the right to not have children and the right to parent and care for our families in safety and with dignity. So its very broad and its a very deliberately laid out framework and theory.

So its fundamentally about whether you as an individual or the state has control over your body or your destiny, your family, your community, these bills are all connected. So the history of fighting for reproductive justice is essentially the history of fighting against anti-Blackness and xenophobia and settler colonial violence. So in order to have the right to care for our families in safety and in dignity, these structures of violence cant exist. So day after day, were seeing transphobic bills roll out across U.S. states, around girls sports, for example; that would deputize everyday people to subject young folks to invasive and medically unnecessary pelvic exams, for example, tantamount to sexual assault in order to ensure that only cis girls are allowed to play girls sports. And were involving multiple social systems here: schools, health care, the family in what amounts to the sexual assaults of young people.

And this is fundamentally a reproductive justice issue, and we do not need a dissertation to understand why, right? And the deputizing of everyday concerned citizens in these efforts should ring the same alarm bells for us as the bounty hunter provisions in the Texas Senate Bill 8 and its copycat bills do. And this isnt to mention other transphobic legislation that makes hormones difficult or impossible to access for trans folks of all ages. Again, its about bodily autonomy, about creating and caring for the families that we want and deserve. Queer children deserve to be protected and we deserve to see our elders grow up. And we know that because of how different forms of oppression intersect, that people of color, especially Black folks, are going to be most impacted by these types of bounty hunter legislations, right?

We have seen, and we can talk about this when we talk about criminalization, we have seen how invitations to become bounty hunters most adversely impact people of color, right? And we dont have to do mental backflips to try to get inside their head or ask ourselves, How can they be doing this if they know women and girls, or if they care about women and girls? Right? I think its well intentioned and I think folks are really trying, but white supremacy is what ties all of these strategies together for the right. It is what allows them to justify the control of particular peoples bodies, of particular peoples reproductive and sexual health, and its what allows the right to control how particular people create and care for their families, and whether particular people are separated from their children or whether particular people are caged. Thats how they make sense of their strategy.

In our daily work, were very deliberate in our language. We say abortion, and we say pregnant people. We ask people what their pronouns are, we dont assume. We dont use euphemisms like a womans right to choose because thats not what were talking about. And we know that the framework of choice is overly individualistic anyway, right? We refuse to leave our trans and non-binary and queer siblings behind. Were not going to do that. Additionally, we see over and over again, that white supremacy creates multiple barriers for Black women, especially.

If folks have not listened to the Movement Memos episode with Dr. Dorothy Roberts, she lays this out exquisitely and all of her research and all of her books do as well, right? That white supremacy creates structural barriers, anti-Blackness specifically. And that pregnancy and reproductive healthcare are particularly dangerous for Black women. This shows up in our work every day and we see the barriers that people are facing in pregnancy, unwanted pregnancy, right? And its our job to fill that gap in care, to fill that gap in resources and connect them to the abortion care that they need and that they deserve, and to make sure that its a good experience when they get there.

KH: At that reproductive justice action in 2019, that I mentioned earlier, we actually used some coathanger imagery in our signage and props. It made sense at the time, but if we organized the action today, we would not use that same imagery, because we are now in a moment when we are desperately trying to get the word out to people that, even after Roe falls, there will be medically safe options outside the law. For now, at least, there are many trustworthy online sources of information for people who want to self-manage their own abortions, and there are already people working in their communities to assist people who are managing their abortions outside the medical system, on their own terms. But the threat of criminalization hangs heavy.

Even with Roe intact, we have seen the criminalization of pregnancy fall most heavily upon Black and Indigenous women and people of color. State Supreme Courts in Alabama and South Carolina have ruled that a persons substance use during pregnancy constitutes criminal child abuse. Several states have also created child welfare laws that make prenatal drug exposure grounds for terminating parental rights because of child abuse or neglect. Such penalties have been disproportionately applied to Black women, whose demonization during the crack epidemic of the 1980s was leveraged to pass such laws. As Dr. Dorothy Roberts explained in a previous episode of Movement Memos, the criminalization of pregnancy as we know it today evolved from this framework of demonizing Black mothers who had used substances while pregnant.

In 2018, 19-year old Brittney Poolaw was convicted of manslaughter in Oklahoma after having a miscarriage. When she was questioned by police at the hospital, Poolaw, who is a member of the Comanche Nation, admitted she had recently used methamphetamine and marijuana. At trial, a medical expert testified that Poolaws drug use may not have resulted in her miscarriage, but the jury was unmoved and convicted Poolaw in less than three hours. She was sentenced to four years in prison.

Many people are familiar with the case of Purvi Patel, a South Asian American woman who was sentenced to 20 years for feticide and child neglect in Indiana before her conviction was overturned. Patels pregnancy ended outside of a medical setting and she was accused of self-managing an abortion. By the time the court downgraded the charges against her, Patel had already served a year and a half in the Indiana Womens Prison. Feticide laws ostensibly exist so that people who commit violence against pregnant people can be charged with the death of the fetus. Patel was the first woman charged in the U.S. under a feticide law, but it appears likely that she will be the first of many. While investigating, police questioned Patel about the ethnicity of the fetuss father, believing that because she was an Indian woman, Patel might want to abort a baby conceived with someone of another race. This kind of profiling and surveillance provides a snapshot of what to expect from the state as it polices and surveills miscarriages in a post-Roe United States.

In the 1980s, laws criminalizing drug use during pregnancy led many pregnant people to forgo necessary medical treatment. The same should be expected in the new age of surveilled miscarriages in red states after the fall of Roe.

Given the role of criminalization in this moment, I was eager to hear Meghans thoughts on how the fight for abortion rights connects with the struggle for prison and police abolition.

MD: Prison and police abolition is integral to our fight for abortion rights and specifically integral to our fights for abortion justice and reproductive justice. Criminalization, especially criminalization of people of color and Black people in particular is the foundation upon which the right hopes to control peoples reproductive outcomes. So the hyperfocus and hyper-criminalization of Black womens pregnancies. And again, Dr. Dorothy Roberts speaks to this, whether conduct during pregnancy or miscarriage or still birth, criminalizing pregnancies for Black women is widespread and has deep historical roots.

Beyond the criminalization of pregnancy outcomes, whether they be miscarriages, whether they be still births, whether its the criminalization of abortion, we can think about prisons and policing themselves as reproductive justice issues. Incarcerated people who are pregnant may be outright denied access to abortion or pressured by guards and jailers into getting abortions if their pregnancy is the result of assault. Roth and others have done incredible work on this really important research, documenting these horrific practices inside. So there are tremendous medical needs for people who are incarcerated: substandard prenatal care, abortion restrictions and bans, coerced birth control and shackling during childbirth, even though this has been specifically outlawed in many places. So we can think of incarceration itself as a reproductive justice issue.

Now, if were talking about somebody who is on electronic monitoring or EM, lets picture them in a state where theres a 48-hour mandatory wait period, or a 24-hour mandatory wait period, that means they have to leave the house twice, right? And getting clearance to leave the house is such a bureaucratic nightmare and thats part of it. Its part of the punishment. Additionally, anti-choice protestors outside of clinics create massive, massive disturbances and people will say, Well, oh, cant the police be there? And the police and the anti-choice protestors are some of the same folks. The Venn diagram is almost a circle. We can think of policing as a reproductive justice issue as well. We have had folks stopped by the police in Chicago on their way to get abortion care, harassed by the police in Chicago. There have been multiple studies about policing influencing poor reproductive health outcomes, especially, especially for Black women and Black pregnant people.

We can think about what it takes to cross state borders for pregnant people to access abortion care, we need to be thinking about warrants. We need to be thinking about the fact that somebodys support person might not be able to cross state boundaries because of being criminalized. The pregnant person might not be able to because of being criminalized, and then where does that leave us? Right? So when we are thinking about abortion access, it might feel overwhelming, but we have to be thinking and dreaming and planning really, really, really expansively. We have to be doing what prison and police abolitionist thinking encourages us to do. We need to be thinking about building a new world entirely because when Roe falls, band-aid solutions are not going to be enough. We need to be thinking about building something better in its place, because a lot of people are going to be left behind otherwise.

When we think very critically about criminalization and policing and prison, we need to keep our focus laser focused on the social structures that criminalize people and the lack of resources that make people more susceptible to criminalization.

And when we do that, it frees us from these awful perceptions that blame people for their own incarceration, that blame people for ending up in cages. And It frees us from this invitation to categorize people into good people and bad people. It frees us from this moral binary that I think ultimately is so useless. And when we can imagine ourselves in solidarity with folks who are incarcerated, we can do really good work. We can be more strategic. I think we can build better movements, we can build stronger movements and our analyses will be sharper. On a less theoretical level and a more material level, we can get people free, and thats the most important thing.

For people who are newly activated, newly energized, or perhaps reactivated and re-energized in the wake of Roe v. Wade being overturned, I say welcome. Were so glad youre here. And we need you. I think everybody has something to offer, and doing a scan of what your skills are and how that matches to the needs of collectives and organizations that are already doing work to make abortions more accessible for people in your community is the best way to get started. I think doing a bit of research to see whats already being done and then figuring out how you fit into that is the way to go. My mentor and friend, Sekila Enzenga, always says, Get in where you fit in. And I think thats a really sound piece of advice.

There are so many ways to help with organizing and to help with this type of work. Not all of it is glamorous, not all of it is fun. Some of it can be crunching numbers. Some of it can be transcribing a really beautiful virtual event. Some of it, yes, can be helping to organize the marshals at a protest or a march in your local city or town at the behest of an organization who needs your help. For those who are really interested in direct service work, something I wish I knew earlier is that it can be really hard.

There is a lot that abortion funders and people working with these collectives can address. Abortion funds work magic. I mean, we just do: financial support, logistical support, getting people from A to B. And there are so many things going on in peoples lives that we, even as an organization, even in a beautiful network of funds and clinics, practical support providers, with all of the connections that we as individuals bring to this work cannot solve. And that is crushing. Sometimes you will feel crushed under the weight of systemic oppression and thats part of the work.

KH: One thing Meghan and other organizers have strongly cautioned people against in this moment is the reinvention of wheels. Before you consider starting anything new, please do a solid search for people and groups who might already be addressing the need you are concerned with. Because they are probably out there, and this kind of support work requires a lot of training and preparation. There are major safety concerns to navigate, and there are also many essential lessons that organizers have learned along the way, in their years, or even decades of doing this work.

MD: For people who are newly activated, newly energized, or perhaps reactivated and re-energized in the wake of Roe v. Wade being overturned, I say welcome. Were so glad youre here. And we need you. I think everybody has something to offer, and doing a scan of what your skills are and how that matches to the needs of collectives and organizations that are already doing work to make abortions more accessible for people in your community is the best way to get started. My mentor and friend, Sekile Nzinga, always says, Get in where you fit in. And I think thats a really sound piece of advice.

There are so many ways to help with organizing and to help with this type of work. Not all of it is glamorous, not all of it is fun. Some of it can be crunching numbers. Some of it can be transcribing a really beautiful virtual event. Some of it can be helping to organize the marshals at a protest or a march in your local city or town at the behest of an organization who needs your help. For those who are really interested in direct service work, something I wish I knew earlier is that it can be really hard.

There is a lot that abortion funders and people working with these collectives can address. Abortion funds work magic. I mean, we just do: financial support, logistical support, getting people from A to B. And there are so many things going on in peoples lives that we, even as an organization, even in a beautiful network of funds and clinics, practical support providers, with all of the connections that we as individuals bring to this work cannot solve. And that is crushing. Sometimes you will feel crushed under the weight of systemic oppression and thats part of the work.

When Trump got elected, we saw these so-called anti-networks popping up. In our movement, we knew immediately that these were pretty dangerous. I want folks to know that you need a lot of training and expertise to do direct service with people who are seeking abortion care. And I would say you probably need even more to be running that kind of practical support network to be hosting people in your home or to be starting your own organization. So get in where you fit in is again, the sound piece of advice that I keep coming back to. But everybody has skills that they can offer and if its not within an organization, then there are some really great low-lift individual ways that people can get involved. You can become a monthly donor to your local abortion fund. And when I say any amount matters, I do really mean any amount. You can give $5 a month to your local abortion fund. That goes much further than giving to a big national organization.

We work in partnership with some of these organizations and they do excellent work in clinics, and we appreciate them so much, and your donation to your local abortion fund will go much further by way of getting direct support to people needing abortion access. If a monthly donation just isnt it for you right now, you can have a heart to heart conversation with somebody in your life about abortion. You can say the word abortion when you have that conversation. I think people may not realize how important this is: Ask folks in your lives if anyone they know has had an abortion.

Ive had really beautiful conversations with my family members about whether or not grandmas or great aunts have had abortions. And Ive learned that they had, but it was always in secret, right? It was very hush hush. And this work has cracked open a lot of really beautiful conversations with loved ones for me that just never would have happened and has shifted them in ways that I had never expected. And its because I was encouraged and supported by people in our network to have those conversations. And that peer-to-peer work and connecting with us or connecting with your local fund for resources about having those conversations is I think more powerful than people realize.

KH: Despite being uplifted and even celebrated in some circles, abortion funds remain seriously underfunded.

MD: Abortion funds are still seriously underfunded compared to large national organizations, when we look at the funding landscapes of major grants making organizations. When we look at the breakdown from major grant making organizations in the reproductive rights, health and justice landscape, abortion funds receive just 3% of that funding.

This is really important because the direct service budget of abortion funds is quite large proportional to their organizational funding needs. So weve gotten 2000 calls in the first four months of 2022, weve called all of those people back. Our average pledge or grant to a caller for their abortion care is about $160, $175 right now. They could be as little as $100 and they could go all the way up to $2,000. So that funding is needed and that funding goes directly to our callers. Funding abortion funds, equipping abortion funds with the financial material resources to do this work will help us scale up to meet the growing need that were going to see in the next weeks and months to come. Weve already seen a huge influx of calls in the past year. I gave you a quick statistic about what we funded in 1986 and what were funding now. So 33 calls versus 2000 calls and thats a huge jump.

But in 2019, we were getting just under 200 calls the whole year and funding just under 200 people the whole year, and now were getting 2000 calls in four months. So this influx began as barriers were starting to stack up for people, before the overturn of Roe v. Wade became imminent. And thats exactly what the right has designed for us to be the reality for pregnant people across the U.S. And so abortion funds need material resources so that we can scale up, so that we can have staff to do this work, so that we can spread out the number of calls, so that we dont have people who are burned out, so that we can invest in the leadership and wisdom of people who have had abortions to do this work of Black and Brown people to lead our funds and make sure that this work is sustainable for the folks who are doing it.

KH: This is a tense and angry time for a lot of us. I know Im fucking furious. Every day, I take in the news, and I process the trajectory we are on, and I feel like I could punch a hole in the wall. But, as talking with Meghan reminded me, our anger is not our greatest strength right now. Dont get me wrong, our anger has power and I plan to put mine to use. But we are going to need so much more than anger to get through this. To protect and defend each other, to fight for reproductive justice and the world that we deserve, we are going to need to double down on our relationships, and we are going to have to care for each other.

MD: I think in the coming weeks and months, there will be a lot of fear and a lot of sadness and a lot of anger, but that wont sustain us. I think what will sustain us is our hope and is our love for each other. What will sustain us is our commitment to our callers. What will sustain us is our commitment to reproductive justice and our commitment to eradicating criminalization, to fighting against white supremacy. Loving each other and holding each other close will be what gets us through these moments. We need each other and we cant do this alone.

That means all of us individually can be thinking about how to love each other, how to appreciate each other, how to hold each other close. And it means as an organization, were always aware that we dont do this work alone either. Its made possible by all of the incredible sibling funds we have in the Midwest and nationwide, all of our clinic partners who are opening up extra days already to meet the growing need for their influx of patients, the amazing doulas and midwives who do abortion care work, people who provide practical support. All of us and all of the people who love on us so that we can show up to do this work, have to keep hopeful and grounded that the wisdom and love that we have cultivated together will get us through because it has to. And having each other and relying on each other has to be our fuel because the fear and the anger and the resentment is only going to get us so far. I think the hope and the love has to be what gets us the rest of the way.

KH: The hope and the love have to be what gets us the rest of the way. I could not agree more. There are so many ways we can show up for each other in that spirit right now, and I really encourage folks to do so. I also encourage everyone to have conversations, not only about abortion, but about the prison-industrial complex and its many tentacles. Talk about what pregnant people are going to be up against in 2022, given that the surveillance state extends into schools, hospitals and interpersonal communications. We live in an age when texts about being surprised, scared or unhappy about being pregnant could become evidence in a criminal case, as could the information in our period tracker apps. Purvi Patels doctors helped the police criminalize her. That is the world we live in now and we have to talk about it.

Many people have never really imagined themselves as being subject to the criminal system, or even begun to process what that would mean, if they have considered it. For this reason, that system, and its expansive reach, can become invisible to them. But its time to see the unseen. Its time to make connections and understand what were really up against. Because the prison-industrial complex is the beast the Republicans would feed us to, and its ongoing fortification and expansion is a bipartisan project. But we have the power to organize against that monstrosity and compromise its reach. We have the power to organize for abortion rights and reproducive justice. We have power. And we have each other. So lets do what we can, when we can, to get each other through these times.

I am so grateful to Meghan Daniel for talking with me about the Chicago Abortion Fund and the powerful work that they are doing. You can learn more about their work at chicagoabortionfund.org. You can also check out the show notes of this episode on our website for more resources about funding abortion, self-managed abortion and how you can take action. I also want to thank our listeners for joining us today, and remember, our best defense against cynicism is to do good, and to remember, that the good we do matters. Until next time, Ill see you in the streets.

Show Notes

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Abortion Funds Are Preparing For a Storm. To Help, Get in Where You Fit in. - Truthout

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Yes on 3: Bipartisan coalition seeks to remove slavery from TN Constitution – WKRN News 2

Posted: at 1:47 am

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WKRN) A new effort to remove slavery conditions from the Tennessee State Constitution is making headway on Capitol Hill in coordination with the celebration of Juneteenth.

A bipartisan coalition consisting of advocacy groups, pastors, elected officials and more has set to pass Amendment 3 later this year, which would officially ban the practice of slavery in the state of Tennessee.

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Currently, the state Constitution allows for slavery as punishment for a crime, much like the United States Constitution.

Article I, Section 33 of the 1870 Tennessee Constitution, reads: That slavery and involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime, whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, are forever prohibited in this State.

The amendment, which passed the Tennessee Senate in March and the House in May 2021, proposes removing that language entirely and replacing it with a new section:

Slavery and involuntary servitude are forever prohibited. Nothing in this section shall prohibit an inmate from working when the inmate has been duly convicted of a crime.

Constitutional amendments require a referendum vote of the entire state if passed by the Tennessee General Assembly. The question will appear on the November general election ballot later this year.

The campaign to vote Yes on 3 is led by Director Kathy Chambers, who shared she was proud to lead the charge on the amendment.

I am honored to be leading a non-partisan coalition to finally address this overlooked part of our State Constitution, she said. This campaign is not about right and left, its about right and wrong. Slavery has no business anywhere in our state, especially in our highest governing document.

In order to vote on the amendment, Tennessee voters must also cast a ballot for governor, according to Chambers.

Were going to lead this campaign and educate voters on what the amendment will do and how they can make their vote count this November, she said. That begins today by letting voters know that they must also vote in the governors election to ensure their yes vote for Amendment 3 counts. Vote your conscience or write in the name of your choice just make sure you dont skip it!

Theeda Murphy, an organizer of the effort, celebrated the momentum the amendment is gaining.

On this Freedom Day, Tennesseans are celebrating the opportunity to finally finish the work of emancipation, she said. We can eliminate the last vestiges of slavery from our state constitution by voting Yes on 3 this November.

The resolution allowing the issue to be placed on the November ballot passed the legislature with overwhelming bipartisan support, according to the campaign. Of 132 members in the General Assembly, only six opposed it.

The measure has received support from faith leaders as well as elected officials. Greeneville pastor Dr. Kenneth Saunders considered the measure a human rights issue.

As a believer in Jesus of Nazareth, and as an Episcopal priest, I made vows to uphold these ideals in my life, he said. So, it bothers me to the core of who I am as a child of God to know that slavery still exists in whatever form in this country and in this state. To consider another human being a slave is very much a human rights issue.

Our state and federal constitutions arent just our primary and most important governing documents, said coalition leader Jeannie Alexander, they are moral documents. As long as the stain of slavery remains in either of these constitutions we can never have a truly or just moral society. This November, Tennessee voters have the chance to do something right, to do something good and to finally finish the job of abolition. I am proud the state of Tennessee will lead the way toward freedom.

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Boston’s Colonial Universities Grab Land for Profit, War, and Medical Apartheid – CounterPunch

Posted: at 1:47 am

Allston hates Harvard. Source: Shin Eun-jung, Vertia$: Harvards Hidden History (2015).

Universities on Turtle Island, as la papersonwrites, are land-grabbing, land-transmogrifying, land-capitalizing machines. Indigenous land theft, and profits from slavery, enabled these universities to be built in the first place and theystill collect profitsfrom stolen lands.[1]

With this accumulated capital, major US universities have become colonial real estate agents. Harvard University, notably, ownsland all over the world from vineyards in Washington state to farmlands in Brazil, South Africa, New Zealand, andRomania.[2]Harvards land-grabbing machine has harmed Indigenous communities,poisoning their water and cropsin Brazil, anddenying access to burial sites and pasture landin South Africa.

In the Boston area, too, Harvard and other universities grab land and put it to work for private profit, war, and perpetuation of medical apartheid. These land grabs increase property values and rents, fuel the displacement and ethnic cleansing of local communities, and make it harder for grassroots organizations to survive in the city.

Universities take control of city politics and grab land

Today, Greater Bostons major universities control many expensive land parcels (Figure 1). As of 2021, the estimated total market value of Harvards lands and buildings in Massachusetts comes to a staggering $9.8 billion. Harvard is followed by MIT, whose lands and buildings are valued at $6.7 billion, and Boston University ($2.7 billion).[3]In Cambridge alone,Harvard owns190 tax-exempt acres, while MIT owns over 150. These massive footprints are the spoils of an 80-year expansion strategy. Harvard and MIT have built up large land banks[4] property holdings so vast that universities policies can harm entire communities.

Figure 1: University land grabs. Land holdings of Boston-area universities (as of 2021) with the most highly valued properties (data from MassGIS).

To gain control of the land, universities have helped rewrite the rules ofCambridges government. Key to this was the implementation of Plan E: an anti-democratic system in which a small number of city councilors are elected from across the entire city, and where the financial power to implement council decisions is held by an unelected city manager. Plan E replaced the more decentralized ward-based system that, despite its problems, arguably kept powerful entities like Harvard from expanding into new areas. The brainchild of Harvard academics, Plan E enabled the university to expand by pushing its favored candidates into city council.[5]Although Plan E was met with fierce opposition by local groups who denounced it as fascistic in the late 1930s, it was eventually adopted in 1940.[6]

Universities used the new rules to push racist slum clearance policies. At the end of WWII, Cambridge was a working-class, immigrant city: it was still home to factories, organized labor, and racially integrated neighborhoods, despite theredlining of its historically Black neighborhoods. As the war ended, however, universities seized the opportunity to turn what they saw as slums into research and development centers for the reconfigured war industry. Harvards push for urban removal (urban renewal) was also motivated by a nakedly racist white fear of the surrounding communities, with one Harvard student claiming the university was in the position of a man about to be eaten by cannibals.[7]In 1956, Cambridges unelected city manager (empowered under Plan E) appointed Jos Luis Sert, dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD), as chair of its planning board to steer urban renewal in the city.[8]Collaborating with municipal offices filled with their alumni, MIT and Harvards urban planning departments advocated bulldozing entire neighborhoods, especially majority Black and Brown neighborhoods. These neighborhoods were replaced by developments like Kendall Square that house the companies and academics working for the US war machine, with Pentagon sponsorship.[9]

As universities expanded, the influx of students and faculty put pressure on surrounding neighborhoods. Between 1960 and 1970, the student populations of Harvard and MIT increased by 35%, and by 1968, 4,000 units of Cambridge housing were occupied by Harvard faculty, staff, and students, with another 2,000 occupied by MIT students and staff.[10]Over the same decade, Harvard bought 834 Cambridge housing units and tore down 172. One frontline of the offensive was Riverside, a small neighborhood between Harvards campus and Central Square, threatened for destruction under the Inner Belt plan.[11]Since Riversides school population was 50.5%non-white, replacing the school building to expand student capacity was rationalized as a way to restore racial balance.[12]The architecture firm of the Harvard GSD dean, Sert, Jackson & Associates, drew up plans that required demolishing the surrounding homes. At a public meeting, residents voiced their outrage: As far as were concerned, we wont be here to enjoy a new school, said David Bailey. Lucille Crayton questioned where people whose homes were taken would go: It looks like theyd let us stay there. Theres only a few colored left, she said, adding Im fighting to the end.[13]By the time the new school opened in 1976 as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. School, 30 families had been displaced.

Anti-displacement groups working in coordination with student activists also pressured Harvard to halt the evictions caused by its expansion. In 1970, 300 community members and students disrupted Harvards graduation ceremonies to demand the last open space on the Charles River waterfront, the Treeland Bindery site in Riverside, be reserved for 100 low-income housing units. Under pressure, Harvard bought an alternate site for 32 low-income townhouses. As local politician and Riverside resident Saundra Graham put it, We successfully stopped Harvard from buying up the whole community they only got half of it.[14]

Since then, universities have continued to accumulate properties by playing the real estate market. They buy housing for their faculty, students, and staff, which drives up home prices and rents which in turn boosts the value of universities real estate holdings. In the 1970s and 80s, Harvard Real Estate Inc. ramped up its approach, seeking to buy any properties available at a reasonable price, and introducing an option plan for faculty homebuyers under whichHarvard retained the right to buy upon resale.[15]As landlords, Harvard and MIT often bypassed rent control when it existed, and pushed hard for its abolition in the later ballot fight.[16]

By the 1990s, these university-backed ethnic cleansing programs had filled Harvards surrounding neighborhoods with affluent white residents who were no longer happy with university expansion so the cityenacted policies to limit it. But since Cambridge rent control was abolished in 1995 through the actions of the militant landlord groupSmall Property Owners Association (SPOA), Harvard and MITs leverage has only increased. Today, the land-grabbing machine continues to work at full speedacross the river inAllston.

University expansion fuels the currenthousing crisis in Cambridgeand continues toethnically cleanseworking-class communities. Meanwhile, these universitieseconomics departmentsand housing research centers produce the propaganda that helped make rent control ataboo termamong the political class, even asrents have risen by 30% in Cambridgebetween 2021 and 2022 alone.[17]This ideological consensus helps universities grow their real estate empires.

When universities are powerful landlords, who gets space and what is it used for?

Real estate for war and medical apartheid

Living up to its nicknamePentagon East,MIT leases buildings to weapons developers and war profiteers. MIT leases space toBoeing(Figure 2), a company that provides the Israeli state with missiles, fighter jets, and helicopters, and also servicesImmigration and Customs Enforcement(ICE).

Figure 2: MIT deals land for war and medical apartheid. A subset of MITs real estate relationships and partnerships with pharma, weapons developers, and computing corporations in Kendall Square, Cambridge. MIT parcels as of 2021 shown in green (data from MassGIS).

MIT has also built a joint laboratory withIBM, a company that has helped racist regimes keep records from the US to the German Nazis and the South African apartheid government. The Hollerith machine, a mechanical tabulator developed in the 19th century that was core to IBMs founding, offered a way torecord peoples race and sexon a large scale for purposes of criminalization. The company has continued to develop tools of repression with more sophisticated computers. IBM helped develop COPLINK, a platform used by police departments across the US to share and analyze records. In Massachusetts,as many as 25 police departmentsautomatically feed most of their data from arrests, complaints, and citations to interviews with police officers into COPLINK. IBM also services Israelspopulation registry, which the Israeli state uses to issue ID cards. The registry supports a colonial divide-and-conquer strategy in which Palestinians are differentially oppressed by Israel based on where they reside (e.g., Palestinians with Israeli citizenship versus Palestinian non-citizens living in East Jerusalem), a distinction which is tracked using IBMs tools.

Along with war, MIT also allocates space to the companies that sustain medical apartheid, such asPfizer,Novartis, andTakeda(which bought the Cambridge-based biotech Millennium Pharmaceuticals). During the Covid pandemic, Pfizer cut a deal with the Israeli state: the company provided vaccines for distribution to Israeli citizens (at the expense of Palestinians) in exchange for medical data. Novartis fights to keep drug prices high and to block the production of more affordable generics in the Global South. In 2013, for example,Novartisfought in Indias courts for the right to charge exorbitant prices for Gleevec, a cancer drug.Takedasimilarly charges exorbitant fees for cancer drugs while flexing legal muscle toblock production of cheaper generics. Like Pfizer and Novartis,Takedas expansion, which residents have tried to stop, contributes to the ethnic cleansing of Cambridges communities. Harvard has followed a similar strategy when expanding into Allston, where it has built biomedical research facilities geared towardsprivatizationand the creation ofstartup companies against residents will.[18]

Replacing the resistance

For the colonial university, Cambridge is a success story: if you visit today, youll find a booming industry that works for capital and empire, built on the ruins of displaced communities. Youll see pharmaceutical companies, computing corporations, weapons developers, and secretive weapons research labs such asDraper Laboratory. But what existed before this landscape was reorganized by the land-grabbing machine?

Cambridge was once home to a third of all organizing spaces in Greater Boston, according to local historian Tim Devin who documented a range of mutual aid groups, radical feminist organizations, and tenants unions working in the city in the 1970s. Part of the force of these groups was their visibility, Devin writes inMapping Out Utopia, both in the media, and in the physical space of the city. The physical visibility of storefront organizing spaces depended upon the cheap rent that existed in Cambridge at that time cheap rent which was made possible by priorracist redlining and organized abandonmentthat had devalued real estate in Cambridges historically Black and immigrant neighborhoods. As universities expanded into these neighborhoods and displaced their residents, rents increased and many radical groups couldnt afford to stay.

Figure 3: Harvard Square, then and now. Left: Tim Devins map of community organizations in Harvard Square in the 1970s (source: Mapping Out Utopia).

The groups mapped by Devin have been progressively replaced (Figure 3). The landlords of Sanctuary (74 Mt. Auburn St), a shelter and provider of counseling services for people experiencing homelessness, sold the building to Harvard in 1974, who terminated the lease; today it houses the Harvard Office for the Arts. A feminist cooperative daycare (46 Oxford St) survived a move into a Harvard-owned building only to become a $2,780/month daycare serving Harvard parents. Other Ways, an alternative school at 5 Story St, was swallowed up by Harvards campus. Organizations not directly replaced by universities were destroyed by their effects on the real estate market. In 2015, a triple-decker at 186 Hampshire St that lefty landowners had been renting affordably to radical groups for 40 years was seized by the city for back taxes (for most other landlords, rising property values are enough to kill low rent).[19]

Occupation of a Harvard University building on Memorial Drive, March 1971.

Some organizations held on through struggle, like theCambridge Womens Center, which in 1971 raised money to buy their current space through a 10-dayoccupation of a Harvard building(888 Memorial Drive) that demanded a Womens Center and more low-income housing. But most oppositional spaces from that period are either gone or transformed into liberalNGOs.

Beyond Cambridge, in those parts of Greater Boston that havent been as thoroughly cleansed, the struggle to stay continues.

Colonizing Boston in the service of the US war machine

By reshaping city politics, universities have directly contributed to the whitening of the city. But even when universities arent directing displacement, their colonial presence sets the stage for it. The resulting increases in property values further enrich the universities as landowners, and enable them to take more resources for war and medical apartheid. Universities colonization of Roxbury illustrates this racist feedback loop and its connections to US imperialism.

Protest sign against BUs bioterror lab that emphasizes link between bioweapons and environmental racism.

In the early 2000s, Boston University decided to establish a government-funded bioweapons lab called NEIDL (National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories) on Albany Street in the South End, at the edge of Roxbury (Figure 4), against the residents will. NEIDL cultivates dangerous air-borne pathogens, including Ebola, smallpox, and anthrax all to enhance the harm capacities of the US war machine. Pathogens and epidemics have long been weaponized by empires for use against colonized peoples and as weapons of counterinsurgency. The US government has grown its biological weapons research since World War II, and has a record of experimenting with bioweapons in urban areas without residents consent, especially in Black communities and other communities of color.[20]

Figure 4: Universities grab land and create private wealth amidst displacement and ethnic cleansing. Universities land parcels are color-coded (Boston Universitys parcels in orange), black dots indicate eviction filings filed between 2015-2022, and blue dots indicate police stations (data from MassCourts and MassGIS; note location of Boston Police Department Headquarters). Eviction filings are certainly an underestimate of the number of actual evictions, which often take place informally through intimidation, coercion, and/or punitive rent hikes, without leaving a legal record.

Continuing this pattern, the state chose to build one of its most dangerous biolabs in Roxbury. Roxburys predominantly Black residents were already suffering from displacement, criminalization, and organized abandonment under racial capitalism. As George Lipsitz writes inHow Racism Takes Place, living in segregated inner-city neighborhoods imposes the equivalent of a racial tax on people of color a racial tax that manifests in literal harm to the health and well being of Black bodies.

Some of the citys most polluting facilities have been imposed on Roxbury, including power stations, high-traffic bus stations, junkyards, and waste incinerators.[21]The areas residents lack access to health care and nourishing foods, and parts of Roxbury have the shortestlife expectancyin the city (59 years), dramatically lower than that of the wealthy Back Bay area (92 years) which is half a mile away. Roxbury is also where the forces of ethnic cleansing and displacement are most intense. The Boston Housing Authority and real estate companies have been evicting residents in Roxbury at far higher rates than in Cambridge and Somerville (Figure 4).

By fueling displacement and pursuing biowarfare, universities and their corporate-state partners negate efforts to build life-affirming communities. This negation is covered up with propaganda. NEIDL is presented as a public health lab that will develop treatments for infectious diseases, and which is entirely safe. Yet NEIDL is sponsored by the very entities that block affordable access to medicines and vaccines, such as theGates Foundation(which also supports bioweapons development) and pharmaceutical companies likeMerckandTakeda, and by the US war machine that sucks resources away from communities and pollutes the earth.

Roxbury residents saw through the lies, and tried to stop Boston Universitys bioterror lab.

Community resistance to the colonial university

As soon as plans for Boston Universitys bioterror lab became known, Roxbury residents organized against it.Stop the BU Biolab, a coalition of Roxbury residents and allies, fought against the lab because of the health and environmental dangers the facility brings, and because of the inherent harm of putting bioweapons in the hands of the state. Chuck Turner, then a Boston city councilor backed by Roxbury residents, repeatedly tried to get the cityto ban the lab. The community managed to delay NEIDLs opening by nearly a decade, until the National Institutes of Health ruled that the lab poses no substantial risks despite the history of accidents in Boston Universitys facilities and other bioweapons labs.

Community protests against BUs bioterror lab (photographs from 2005-2007).

Even some local politicians voiced opposition: at a2005 protestagainst NEIDL, then Boston city council member Tito Jackson said, Our community will no longer get dumped on. We have an expressway, we have all the traffic that occurs in a city in that area, and we also have a prison. We do not need ebola, or whatever other airborne or non-airborne agents in our community. Organizers have since continued to warn about NEIDLs harms. As Klare X. AllentoldBostons WBUR radio station in 2012, NEIDL has failed to address basic questions about the facility, such as How are we going to be safe? How are we going to eat? How will we be notified [in case of an accident]? Will there be an alarm? How is it going to be transported? What neighborhoods is it going through?

Roxbury resident and organizer Klare X. Allen speaking at a2006 protestagainst BUs bioterror lab.

The resistance persists today, as NEIDL continues its secretive operations. The lab has started working with SARS-Cov-2 in recent years, and as expected, it has had a series ofdangerous accidentsthat even made it into NEIDLs sanitized reports.

Boston University, meanwhile, continues to accumulate wealth. Down the street from NEIDL, on 700 Albany Street, the university has a set of campus buildings that the state of Massachusetts values at over $96 million and that sit on land valued at ~$21 million (as of 2021). Northeastern University also holds expensive real estate in the area (Figure 4). Private wealth is thus being created amidst evictions, criminalization, and organized abandonment by the state. The university drives this violence, both directly through policy (as we have seen) and more indirectly. The accumulation of property invites morepolicing to protect that property; more policing brings more criminalization and evictions of the undesirable residents; evictions clear the way for real estate developers to serve the growing population of university professionals; this population invites more accumulation of property and hence more policing, and the cycle continues.

Yet history shows that this colonial loop can be disrupted. The universitys land-grabbing machine has been challenged at every stage by the organized efforts of the people it seeks to exploit, push out, and harm. We can fight this machine by building local community power, and connecting our struggle for health, housing, and liberation with the struggle against imperialism and war.

Further reading

About US universities displacing and extracting profits from communities

* John Trumpbour (ed), How Harvard Rules: Reason in the Service of Empire(1989)

* Lily Geismer, Dont Blame Us: Suburban Liberals and the Transformation of the Democratic Party(2014)

* Shin Eun-jung, Verita$: Harvards Hidden History(2015)

* Davarian Baldwin, In the Shadow of the Ivory Tower: How Universities Are Plundering Our Cities(2021)

* Stop LAPD Spying Coalition, Automating Banishment: The Surveillance and Policing of Looted Land(2021)

* Bill Cunningham, Belonging(unpublished manuscript).

About bioweapons and Boston Universitys NEIDL

* Stop the Biolabwebsite

* BU flunks the trust test,Boston Globe(2005)

* Roxbury, Massachusetts: Direct Action Civics and Biodefense in Thomas Beamish, Community at Risk Biodefense and the Collective Search for Security(2015).

* Aberrant Wars in Harriet Washington, Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present(2017).

* Mark Wheelis, Lajos Rzsa, and Malcolm Dando, Deadly Cultures: Biological Weapons since 1945(2006)

Notes

[1]Land. And the University Is Settler Colonial, in la paperson,A Third University is Possible(2017); Robert Lee and Tristan Ahtone, Land-grab universities,High Country News(April 2020) (see alsoLand-Grab Universities Map).

[2]Harvards billion-dollar farmland fiasco. So Paulo: GRAIN & Rede Social de Justia e Direitos Humanos. August 2018.

[3]These numbers were calculated from estimates of land and building value to the capitalist market system, done by the state of Massachusetts (source: MassGIS).

[4]Zachary Robinson and Oscar Hernandez, Neighborhood Bully: Harvard, the Community, and Urban Development, in John Trumpbour (ed),How Harvard Rules, 190.

[5]Bill Cunningham,Belonging(unpublished manuscript), 43;How Harvard Rules(1989), 182-184

[6]As Zachary Robinson and Oscar Hernandez write, Perhaps city-wide at large elections [as implemented by Plan E] are not inherently anti-democratic, but at the time it had that effectPlan E changed the tone of politics, creating a sort of mysticism of the professional municipal problem-solver. It changed the focus of politics towards highly organized interest groups. (How Harvard Rules, 185).

[7]The University today is in the position of a man about to be eaten by cannibals The fully matured product is visible in a slum-surrounded university like Columbia or Chicago.It is hard enough to find good teachers. Inducing them to live in slums is next to impossible.The only alternative is to attack the existing pattern, to develop a new pattern through urban renewal.Harvard cannot be fitted to a slum community, and Harvard cannot move. (Belonging, 44)

[8]At the same time, Harvard opened its own planning office, to work closely with the city manager and his urban renewal assistant (Belonging, 43).

[9]Belonging, 49-50; Throughout the postwar era, MIT boasted the largest defense research budget of any university, with neighbor Harvard following closely behind in third place. (Lily Geismer,Dont Blame Us, 21). See alsoHow Harvard Rules, 186.

[10]Jon Pynoos,Housing Urban America, 58.

[11]The Inner Belt (I-695) was a ring road highway proposed to link I-95 to Boston, Brookline, Cambridge, and Somerville under the eminent domain powers of the 1949 Housing Act. A cross-neighborhood coalition of residents succeeded in getting the project canceled in 1971, thereby preventing massive clearance of central Cambridge and southern Somerville neighborhoods but not before neighborhoods in Roxbury had been leveled along what is now Melnea Cass Boulevard (Karilyn Crockett,People before Highways).

[12]Belonging, 56.

[13]Seek Houghton School Site Which Wont Involve Homes,Cambridge Chronicle(March 3, 1966):1.

[14]How Harvard Rules, 187-190.

[15]In the words of Thomas OBrien, vice president for financial affairs at HRE in the 1980s: In the long run the University may have the need to use its properties in other ways that they are currently being used When property is available at a reasonable price it has thus been sensible for the University to buy it.

[16]How Harvard Rules, 194;Belonging, 107, 158.

[17]According to apaper by MIT economists, written for the National Bureau of Economic Research, the gentrification produced by rent deregulation (abolition of rent control) reduces crime. They write: Our findings establish that reductions in crime are an important part of gentrification and generate substantial economic value.

[18]A Hedge Fund With Libraries: The Financial Crisis of 2008, in Shin Eun-jung,Verita$: Harvards Hidden History(2015).

[19]Mapping Out Utopia, 46-48.

[20]Aberrant Wars in Harriet Washington,Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present(2017).

[21]Roxbury, Massachusetts: Direct Action Civics and Biodefense in Thomas Beamish,Community at Risk Biodefense and the Collective Search for Security(2015).

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Everyone You Know Is a Believer – The Gospel Coalition

Posted: at 1:47 am

Of course, you know I could never share your faith. So wrote a friend of mine in a letter. She felt it was constitutionally impossible for her to believe. Many of my friends feel the same; perhaps yours are similar. They think theyre not people of faith and that Christians are.

Its a way of thinking thats as popular as it is preposterous. But really, it is wildly preposterous. Because Im a believer and Im a skepticit just depends what things Im being asked to believe (or doubt). At the same time my friend is a believer (about certain things), and shes a skeptic (about others). We are all living by faithall of us, all the timeso its really important to examine such beliefs.

Sometimes I classify our faith positions in terms of day-to-day beliefs and deepest beliefs. Day-to-day beliefs are ones we exercise all the time. Theyre our moral assumptions about what makes the world go round, what makes people tick, what makes society work. We rarely examine these beliefs and we almost never seek to prove or justify them; they are simply the air we breathe.

Im a believer and Im a skepticit just depends what things Im being asked to believe (or doubt).

These beliefs include things like people have intrinsic value, a society should be judged by the way it treats its weakest members, might does not make right, everyone should be free to make their own decisions in the world, the arc of history is long but it bends toward justice, and so on.

What youll notice about these day-to-day beliefs is how commonly theyre held. I believe them, my friends believe them, it seems as if most people in the modern world believe them. So really, were incredibly united by faith, wouldnt you say? Except that we havent discussed our deepest beliefsour metaphysical and religious views about the fundamental nature of reality. At that level a great chasm opens up.

For atheist Richard Dawkins, the universe appears at bottom [to contain] no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference. For Moses, on the other hand, underneath are the everlasting arms (Deut. 33:27). So take your pickunderneath there are uncaring, brute forces or an eternal God with outstretched arms of love. Which is it? The clash of beliefs at the deepest level seems irreconcilable.

Given this immense difference, its completely understandable why my friend would consider herself incapable of my kind of faith. The gulf between blind, pitiless indifference and the everlasting arms of love appears unbridgeable. But maybe we need to reframe things. Instead of focusing on the chasm between those two deepest beliefs, why dont we focus on a different disparity? Because the really unbridgeable chasm is the one that exists within our atheist friends. Consider the following clashes:

My friends believe the second half of all these statements, passionately. As do I. And these dearest intuitions shape us at every levelindeed we stake our lives on such beliefs (as unprovable as they are). We are all persons of faith. But the real inconsistency to point out is not the inconsistency between the atheists deepest beliefs and the Christians. The starkest contradiction is among the atheists own beliefsthe gulf between their dearest intuitions and their deepest beliefs.

In my book The Air We Breathe, I take seven of our dearest intuitions and show how theyve become commonplace:

The Air We Breathe explores each of these values in the context of the Christian story, taking the reader from Genesis to George Floyd. We begin in the Old Testament, continue in the New, then chart the early churchs growth, then medieval Christendom, the scientific evolution, the abolition of the slave trade, and on through World War II and the civil rights movement into the present day.

The starkest contradiction is among the atheists own beliefsthe gulf between their dearest intuitions and their deepest beliefs.

At each juncture we see that the dearest intuitions we hold are not at all obvious, natural, or universal. These values are largely unknown to pre- and non-Christian cultures. Each of these beliefs has come specifically through the Jesus revolution (a.k.a. Christianity) and they make little sense apart from it.

When were tempted to focus on the clash between believers and unbelievers, we should think again. Everyone is a believer. And there can be surprising agreement on the dearest beliefs we holdsuch unprovable values have, through the Christian revolution, become the air we breathe. But we need to go further. As we press into those heartfelt beliefs, we see the most urgent clash to resolve is really the one that exists within the non-Christian. The beliefs our friends cherish (even while claiming to be unbelievers) are unfounded apart from Jesus Christ. He alone is a solid foundation. All other ground is sinking sand.

This article is adapted from Glen Scriveners The Air We Breathe (The Good Book Company, 2022) and was published in partnership with The Good Book Company.

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NHRC asks gov’t to make IDs, passports affordable to Gambians – The Point – The Point

Posted: at 1:47 am

This call by the rights commission came years after an intense debate across the country, following the introduction of the new ECOWAS Identity Card, whose total transaction costs up to 500 dalasis.

"Section 26 and 39 of the 1997 Constitution protects political rights and the rights to vote and be registered respectively. To fulfill these rights, the Independent Electoral Commission oversaw successful voter registration, political campaign and elections in December 2021," NHRC stated in its 2021 State of Human Rights Report.

"The issuance of attestation proving Gambian nationality and citizenship by Alkalolu and the authority to do so culminated in accusations and the counter accusations between sympathizers of different political parties as they accused each other of using influence over the Alkalolu to register unqualified individuals to boost the numerical advantage of registered followers."

NHRC also observed that the authority of the Mayoress of Banjul to issue an attestation to potential voters was also questioned and eventually challenged before the courts.

The court held that the Mayoress does not have the authority to issue attestations for voter registration. There were also instances where the NHRC observed that some individuals were denied registration because their Gambian nationality was not verified, thus raising the need for the government to work on regularising the naturalisation procedure for qualified individuals and issuing national documents to citizens.

The Commission, however, stated that despite these underlining issues, the process were hailed for being fair, transparent and in-line with international standards.

The Commission has also asked government to enhance access to immigration services for citizens to acquire their required national documents and to also make the issuance of birth certificates compulsory upon birth at all health centres.

The NHRC has also thought it wise that The Gambia government should conduct adequate sensitisation on importance of birth registration, issuance of birth certificates, age for voter registration and citizenship requirements across the country, especially in rural communities.

The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which Gambia ratified in 1979, prohibits restrictions on freedom of expression on national security grounds unless they are provided by law, strictly construed, and necessary and proportionate to address a legitimate threat. Such laws cannot put the right itself in jeopardy.

The sedition law, it observed, is a contentious law that civil liberties activists, human rights lawyers and journalists have questioned.

The global movement has been overwhelmingly anti-sedition with different countries either easing the law or simply getting rid of it. Many democratic countries, including the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, Canada, Ghana, Nigeria and Uganda, have held sedition law as undemocratic, undesirable and unnecessary.

The predominant argument for the abolition of sedition has been the protection of freedom of speech. The potential misuse of sedition laws to further political agendas is also a factor.

On July 27, 2001, Ghanas parliament unanimously repealed the Criminal Libel and Seditious Laws, which had been used to incarcerate a number of journalists in the past. The repeal follows the passage of the Criminal Code (Repeal of the Criminal and Seditious Laws Amendment Bill) Act 2001 by a unanimous vote in the House.

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Trump criticizes Pence during Nashville speech; Jan. 6 hearings continue – Tennessean

Posted: at 1:46 am

Former President Donald Trump on Friday criticized former Vice President Mike Pence as lacking courage for refusing to carry out a plan to overturn the 2020 election results, echoing a tweet Trump sent on Jan. 6, 2021 as the countrys second-in-command sheltered from a violent mob attacking the U.S. Capitol.

In a keynote speech at a conservative Christian political conference in Nashville, Trump delivereda lengthy speech against what he calls a ludicrous narrative and witch hunt as a House committee continues its investigation into Trumps role in the Jan. 6 attack.

Former Trump aides and staff testified on Thursday of Trumps efforts to pressure Penceto illegally reject the 2020 election results. A former Trump assistant testified Trump called Pence a wimp in a heated Jan. 6 phone call.

I never called Mike Pence a wimp, Trump said. Mike Pence had a chance to be great. He had a chance to be, frankly, historic, but just like Bill Barr and the rest of these weak people, Mike did not have the courage to act.

The bipartisan committee on Thursday alleged Trump's actions endangered the vice president's life in his pursuit of a legal theory that Pence could overturn the election. Pence refused to do so. Republican U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney, vice chair of the Jan. 6 committee,called the strategy "illegal and unconstitutional."

Related: Jan. 6 hearing revelations: Trump called Pence a 'wimp' as VP resisted 'pressure campaign' to overturn election

Trump spoke to an enthusiastic crowd at Gaylord Opryland Resort &Convention Center, where hundredsgathered this week to hearprominent conservative and evangelicalspeakers at the Faith and Freedom Coalition's "Road to Majority."

Despite the friendly reception, Trump's speech struck a discordant tone from other speakers at the conference that at times resembled a well-produced church service.

Following a speech from Texas Republican Rep. Dan Crenshaw encouraging Republicans not to match the "sheer anger of the left" in actions and rhetoric,Trump mocked political opponents' appearances and said he believes one Republican on the select committee has a "mental disorder."

The conference featured a slate of Republican heavy hitters and Tennessees Senate delegation, including U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn, U.S. Sen. Bill Hagerty and former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, all of whom avoided any mention of the ongoing Jan. 6 committee on Thursday and early Friday.

Related: Nikki Haley helps kick off Faith and Freedom event as Jan. 6 hearings continue

Before his own speech atthe Faith & Freedom conference, U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, tweeted Thursday that "Real America" doesn't care about the Jan. 6 investigations.

But Trump appeared to be paying attention, spending more than a half hour of his speech disparaging the committee and current Republican leadership.

"We have to fight some very sick and very evil people, Trump said, describing the bipartisan House committee as having amenacing spirit and being con artists" putting on a "theatrical production."

Trump said if he sought a second term in 2024, he would"very seriously" consider giving pardons to the hundreds of people arrested in the wake of the Jan. 6 Capitol attack. The rioters face charges ranging from seditious conspiracy to assaulting law enforcement.

Related: Capitol riot arrests: See who's been charged across the U.S.

Conference speakers this week repeatedly referred to upcoming midterm elections as a "battle," invoking biblical and military language to rally supporters for an aggressive push to take back the upper chamber and effectively hobble Democratic President Joe Biden for the remainder of his term.

"It is time to rescue America," U.S. Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., said. "God favors those who are bold."

Multiple speakers decried public schools and education trends, an ongoing, hot-topic issue that has raged in school board meetings and state legislatures since last year.

Related: Age-appropriate school library bill heads to Tennessee governors desk

Former Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos praisedschool choice, calling students "hostages" to the public education system.

"Today, kids have been held hostage to radical-left fever dreams," DeVos said. "Education should not be in the domain of government, it should be in the domain of family."

Even with the attention on the 2022 midterms, Trump's appearance stoked continuing questions about his potential candidacy for another term in 2024. Haley, a one-time Trump critic and rumored to be considering a presidential run herself, told a conference attendee on Thursday she would support Trump if he ran.

"Would anybody like me to run for president?" Trump asked on Friday, to thunderous applause.

Reach Melissa Brown at mabrown@tennessean.com.

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Trump criticizes Pence during Nashville speech; Jan. 6 hearings continue - Tennessean

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Donald Trump teases 2024 presidential run at conservative conference – PBS NewsHour

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NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) As religious conservatives gathered this week at a sprawling resort near the Grand Ole Opry House, Nikki Haley pressed the Faith and Freedom Coalitions Road to Majority crowd to look to the future.

Its up to us to deliver a new birth of patriotism, said Haley, the former South Carolina governor who was ambassador to the United Nations under President Donald Trump. And together with you, and with trust in God, I pledge to answer that call and inspire our country once again, she said, sounding like a White House candidate herself.

Such comments are typical for a party thats out of power and in search of its next leader. Whats unusual: The partys last leader is plotting his own comeback.

Trump spoke from the same stage Friday, making his first public appearance since the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection began to lay bare his desperate attempts to remain in power. It presented harrowing video footage and searing testimony, including accounts from Trumps close associates and members of his family.

He spent much of his speech blasting the committees efforts as politically motivated and insisting hed done nothing wrong.

WATCH: Trump asked us to come, rioters said during Jan. 6 attack

In the face of the video and allies accounts, he still said, What youre seeing is a complete and total lie. Its a complete and total fraud. He claimed footage had been selectively edited and downplayed the insurrection as a simple protest that got out hand.

And he made sure to tease his own plans.

One of the most urgent tasks facing the next Republican president I wonder who that will be, Trump said at one point, prompting a standing ovation and chants of USA!

Would anybody like me to run for president? he asked the crowd, unleashing more cheers.

Trumps return to the public conversation comes as he has been actively weighing when he might formally launch a third presidential run, according to people familiar with the discussions. The debate, according to aides and allies who insist he has yet to make a final decision, centers on whether to announce a campaign in the coming months or, in accordance with tradition, wait until after the November midterm elections.

Trump has spent the past year and a half holding rallies, delivering speeches and using his endorsements to exact revenge and further shape the party in his image. But some supporters say the former president, who has decamped from his Florida Mar-a-Lago club to Bedminster, New Jersey, for the summer, is also growing impatient.

While he has relished his role as a party kingmaker with candidates all but begging his endorsement and racking up large tabs at fundraisers in his ballrooms Trump also misses the days when he was actually king, particularly as he watches Democratic President Joe Biden struggling with low approval ratings and soaring inflation.

I think a lot of Trumps future plans are directly based on Biden, and I think the more Biden continues to stumble on the world stage and on the domestic stage, people forget about the downside, the dark side of Trumps presidency, said Bryan Lanza, a GOP strategist and former Trump campaign official.

An announcement in the near future could complicate efforts by other ambitious Republicans to mount campaigns. Haley, for instance, has said she wouldnt run against Trump.

And there also are concerns that a near-term announcement could hurt Republicans going into the final stretch of a midterm congressional campaign that appears increasingly favorable to the party. A Trump candidacy could unite otherwise despondent Democratic voters, reviving the energy that lifted the party in the 2018 and 2020 campaigns.

WATCH: Jan. 6 committee hearings Day 3

Republicans want the November election to be framed as a referendum on the first two years of Bidens presidency. They dont want anything, including Trump, to throw them off that trajectory.

Regardless of his decision, the aura of inevitability that Trump sought to create from the moment he left the White House has been punctured. Some Republicans have tried to make clear that a Trump candidacy would have little influence on their own decisions.

They include his vice president, Mike Pence, who has been hailed by the Jan. 6 committee as someone who put the national interest ahead of his own political considerations. Trump continued Friday to criticize Pence, who has spoken at the conference numerous times.

Eyeing a White House bid, Pence is maintaining a brisk political schedule focused on drawing attention to Democratic vulnerabilities.

Other possible candidates including Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie have also indicated their decisions do not rest on Trumps. And they and others have become increasingly brazen in their willingness to cross the former president, including endorsing candidates running against his.

Some of these could-be candidates, including Trumps former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Florida Sen. Rick Scott and South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, were appearing alongside the former president at the Faith and Freedom Coalitions gathering in Nashville.

The field could include a long list of others, including Rep. Liz Cheney, the lead Republican on the Jan. 6 panel and Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan both Trump critics. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, meanwhile, is seen by many loyal Trump supporters as the future of his movement.

Indeed, many of those attending the conference in Nashville the resort is near the Opry House, where the longtime Grand Ole Opry country music radio show is broadcast werent sold on a third Trump run.

READ MORE: U.S. to ramp up tracking of domestic extremism on social media

I dont know. The jurys still out with me, said Jonathan Goodwin, a minister who works as a Faith and Freedom organizer in South Carolina. I like him, but I think he shot himself in the foot too many times

Goodwin said he definitely had his own concerns about the 2020 election but didnt support how Trump had handled the situation. I think he should have bowed out gracefully, he said, whether it was rigged or not.

Illinois conservative Pam Roehl, who arrived at the conference Friday wearing a red Trump baseball cap and Trump 2020 necklace, said she still supports the former president, but increasingly finds herself in the minority among friends who have moved on, discarding their bumper stickers and embracing DeSantis.

Theyre like kind of, Get with the program. Why arent you backing DeSantis? she said.

Though its increasingly clear that Trump wouldnt march to the GOP nomination unchallenged, a large field of candidates could still work to his advantage. The dynamic is beginning to resemble the 2016 campaign, when Trump faced a large and unwieldy group of candidates that split the anti-Trump vote.

Some in his orbit, like former campaign adviser Jason Miller, have urged him to jump in sooner rather than later, to get a head start on building out a campaign, freeze out competition and keep attention on himself.

An early strategy would also allow Trump to cast his mounting legal vulnerabilities as merely political attacks. An Atlanta district attorney has impaneled a special grand jury to probe his meddling in the 2020 presidential election. And in New York, Trump and two of his children have agreed to sit for depositions next month in the state attorney generals civil investigation into his business practices.

Others are urging Trump to wait until after the midterms, so he can run on Republicans November victories. They also warn that formally declaring his candidacy would trigger campaign finance laws that set limits on how much donors can give. It also would change his relationship with his Save America PAC, which has more than $100 million in the bank more than both national party organizations combined and currently funds his campaign travel.

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Donald Trump teases 2024 presidential run at conservative conference - PBS NewsHour

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The growing list of people Donald Trump hired who eventually soured on him – Yahoo News

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In the opening public hearings of the select committee investigating the riot on Jan. 6, 2021, at the U.S. Capitol, the most damning evidence that former President Donald Trump conspired to overturn a lawful election has come from the people Trump himself appointed or hired.

Former Trump Attorney General William Barr, for instance, told the committee that his former boss had "become detached from reality" on the subject of his election loss, adding that Trump had no "interest in what the actual facts were. Barr described as "bulls***" and "complete nonsense" what he called Trump's "crazy" assertions that fraud had cost him the election, and said he had let the president know it.

In response to Barr's testimony to the committee, Trump predictably lashed out at the man he chose to be his attorney general, saying in a statement last week that "he sucked!"

A video of former Attorney General William Barr plays at a hearing on Capitol Hill on June 13. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images)

It's well-knownthat many of the people who were willing to go to work for the former president have since revised their opinion of him. Trump's four years in the White House saw the highest turnover rate of any administration in U.S. history, and many of those who moved on appear to have left with a bitter taste in their mouth.

As Trump eyes another presidential bid, it is worth considering the people whose opinions of Trump deteriorated as a result of having worked for him. The following is a list of Trump aides and administration officials who have spoken out against their old boss.

Video of former Vice President Mike Pence plays at a hearing June 9 of the Jan. 6 select committee. (J. Scott Applewhite/AP)

Trump's pressure on his vice president, Mike Pence, to send the Electoral College results back to the states is at the center of the Jan. 6 select committee hearings. Pence's refusal to do so earned him the wrath of Trump and his supporters, who chanted "Hang Mike Pence!" as they ransacked the Capitol.

In a speech to the Federalist Society in February, Pence publicly disclosed his thinking about Trump's request.

President Trump is wrong. I had no right to overturn the election, Pence said, adding, The presidency belongs to the American people, and the American people alone. And frankly, there is no idea more un-American than the notion that any one person could choose the American president.

Story continues

A screen on June 13 plays the testimony of Bill Stepien, former campaign manager for Donald Trump's 2020 presidential campaign, to the Jan. 6 select committee. (Jonathan Ernst/Reuters)

In his testimony to the Jan. 6 committee, Bill Stepien, Trump's 2020 campaign manager, said that the dishonest campaign by Trump and his underlings to convince the American people that the election had been "stolen" inspired him to resign.

I didnt think what was happening was necessarily honest or professional at that point in time, so that led to me stepping away, Stepien told lawmakers.

Former U.S. Attorney for Georgia, B.J. Pak, testifies at a select committee hearing on June 13. (Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images)

Trump's former U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Georgia, B.J. Pak, told the Jan. 6 committee that he had investigated claims of voter fraud in Georgia, including ones made by Trump's lawyer Rudy Giuliani about voting improprieties in Fulton County, and found them all to be "false." After learning that Trump planned to fire him over that finding, Pak resigned as U.S. attorney.

Eric Herschmann, former White House attorney, in a video deposition played on June 13 on Capitol Hill. (House Select Committee via AP)

In his testimony to the committee, former White House lawyer Eric Herschmann described conversations he had with right-wing attorney John Eastman, the author of an infamous memo imploring Pence to try to reverse the 2020 election results. Wyoming Republican Rep. Liz Cheney, the vice chair of the Jan. 6 committee, has said Eastman plotted with Trump to try to overturn the election results.

When Eastman pressed Herschmann to pursue a challenge to the results in Georgia, the White House lawyer said he replied, "Are you out of your f***ing mind?" Herschmann, who had no patience with Trump's claims that the election had been rigged against him, said he then offered Eastman some free legal advice: "Get a great f***ing criminal defense lawyer. You're going to need it."

Education Secretary Betsy Devos listens during a briefing on the COVID-19 pandemic at the White House on Aug. 12, 2020. (Kevin Lamarque/Reuters)

One of Trump's most loyal Cabinet members, former Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, said she lost faith in her former boss the day his supporters stormed the Capitol to try to block the certification of Joe Biden's victory.

"When I saw what was happening on Jan. 6 and didn't see the president step in and do what he could have done to turn it back or slow it down or really address the situation, it was just obvious to me that I couldn't continue," DeVos said in an interview published June 9 in USA Today.

DeVos said she also spoke to other Cabinet members and Pence about invoking the 25th Amendment to remove Trump from office.

Former national security adviser John Bolton speaking at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington on Sept. 30, 2019. (Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP

Throughout his 17-month tenure as national security adviser, John Bolton clashed with Trump over how to handle U.S. policy toward North Korea, Iran, Afghanistan and Ukraine. A year after Trump fired him, Bolton made clear that he would not be casting a vote for Trump in the 2020 election.

I hope [history] will remember him as a one-term president who didnt plunge the country irretrievably into a downward spiral, Bolton said in an interview with ABC News.We can get over one term. I have absolute confidence. Two terms, Im more troubled about.

U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis listens to President Donald Trump at the White House on Oct. 23, 2018. (Leah Millis/Reuters)

In his 2018 resignation letter to Trump, former Defense Secretary James Mattis made clear that he strongly opposed the foreign policy decisions of his boss. "Our strength as a nation is inextricably linked to the strength of our unique and comprehensive system of alliances and partnerships," Mattis wrote.

While remaining mostly silent about his issues with Trump, Mattis issued a stinging rebuke in 2020 of the president's approach to handling civil unrest stemming from police misconduct against African Americans.

"Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people does not even pretend to try," Mattis wrote in the Atlantic. "Instead he tries to divide us. We are witnessing the consequences of three years of this deliberate effort. We are witnessing the consequences of three years without mature leadership."

Then-White House chief of staff John Kelly listens as President Donald Trump speaks at a lunch with governors in the Roosevelt Room of the White House on June 21, 2018. (Evan Vucci/AP)

Former White House Chief of Staff John Kelly, who left the White House in 2019 after repeated clashes with Trump, reportedly called him "the most flawed person" he had ever met.

Kelly shared Mattis's assessment of Trump published in the Atlantic, and essentially told his interviewer, Trump's short-lived communications director Anthony Scaramucci, that the country had made a mistake in electing him.

I think we really need to step back," Kelly said. I think we need to look harder at who we elect.

Then-Acting Defense Secretary Richard Spencer listens during a Cabinet meeting in the Cabinet Room of the White House on July 16, 2019, in Washington. (Alex Brandon/AP)

Trump fired Secretary of the Navy Richard V. Spencer in 2019 over his objections to Trump's insistence that a member of the Navy SEALs charged with war crimes and murder be allowed to retire with full benefits and with his military rank restored. In an op-ed in the Washington Post, Spencer said Trump's intervention was "a reminder that the president has very little understanding of what it means to be in the military, to fight ethically or to be governed by a uniform set of rules and practices."

Gary Cohn, former director of the U.S. National Economic Council, speaks at a Reuters Newsmaker event in New York on Sept. 17, 2018. (Jeenah Moon/Reuters)

Picked by Trump to serve as a senior adviser and director of the National Economics Council, Gary Cohn left after little more than a year in those roles after a dispute over the president's plan to impose tariffs on steel and aluminum. Months after leaving his job, Cohn was quoted in Bob Woodward's book "Fear: Trump in the White House," calling Trump "a professional liar."

Tom Bossert, homeland security adviser to President Donald Trump at the time, holds a press briefing at the White House on Dec. 19, 2017, to blame North Korea for unleashing the so-called WannaCry cyberattack. (Kevin Lamarque/Reuters)

Trump's homeland security adviser Tom Bossert said that in early 2018 he informed the president that the conspiracy theory that Ukraine, not Russia, had interfered with the 2016 presidential election had been "completely debunked." That didn't stop Trump from embarking on a pressure campaign to convince the government in Kyiv to come up with damaging information on his political rival, Joe Biden. Bossert resigned in April of 2018 and vented months later in an interview with ABC News.

I am deeply frustrated with what he and the legal team is doing and repeating that debunked theory to the president. It sticks in his mind when he hears it over and over again, and for clarity here. ... Let me just again repeat that it has no validity.

Omarosa Manigault Newman, former assistant to President Donald Trump and director of communications for the White House Office of Public Liaison, appears on "Meet the Press" in Washington, D.C., on Aug. 12, 2018. (William B. Plowman/NBC/NBC Newswire/NBCUniversal via Getty Images)

The former "Apprentice" contestant hired by Trump as a political aide fell out with her boss after serving nearly a year in his administration. After she was fired, she published one of the first tell-all books about working in the Trump White House.

"Donald Trump, who would attack civil rights icons and professional athletes, who would go after grieving black widows, who would say there were good people on both sides, who endorsed an accused child molester; Donald Trump, and his decisions and his behavior, was harming the country. I could no longer be a part of this madness," she wrote in her book.

Trump fired back at the reality TV star turned politico, calling her "wacky" and "vicious."

Stephanie Grisham, former spokesperson for first lady Melania Trump, arrives for a campaign rally with President Donald Trump in Orlando, Fla., on June 18, 2019. (Carlos Barria/Reuters)

Stephanie Grisham, former White House press secretary and communications director, says she began to sour on Trump before she resigned on Jan. 6, 2021.

In her tell-all book "I'll Take Your Questions Now," she detailed Trump's regular verbal abuse and compromising requests.

I knew that sooner or later, the president would want me to tell the public something that was not true or that would make me sound like a lunatic, Grisham wrote.

Grisham has predicted that if Trump were to win a second term, "He will be about revenge."

Alyssa Farah, then White House director of strategic communications, speaks to the media at the White House on Oct. 9, 2020. (Erin Scott/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Former White House Communications Director Alyssa Farrah Griffin left her post in the Trump administration shortly before the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol, because she said the president knew full well that he had lost the election but continued to peddle false claims about voter fraud.

He knew, Farrah said in an interview with CNN's Pamela Brown. He told me shortly after that he knew he lost, but then folks got around him. They got information in front of him, and I think his mind genuinely might have been changed about that, and thats scary, because he did lose, and the facts are out there.

Griffin has emerged as a persistent critic of the former president, telling Vanity Fair in May that she is trying to reach those who, like her, "drank the Kool-Aid" and once supported him.

The people Im most hoping to reach and convince that Trump is terrible for our country, are people who, like I once did, support him," she said.

Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster listens as U.S. President Donald Trump announces his appointment as national security adviser on Feb. 20, 2017. (Kevin Lamarque/Reuters)

Reported to have mocked Trump at a private dinner party as having the intelligence of a "kindergartener," former national security adviser H.R. McMaster left his White House post in 2018, little more than a year after he accepted the post. The two men had often clashed on subjects such as how to end the war in Afghanistan, but McMaster kept his criticism of the president mostly hidden until a month before the 2020 election.

Asked if Trump was as big a threat to election integrity in the U.S. as Russia, McMaster was unequivocal.

He is aiding and abetting Putins efforts by not being direct about this, McMaster said of Trump in an interview on MSNBC.

McMaster theorized that if Trump did not confront Russian President Vladimir Putin over his 2016 election meddling directly, "he'll inadvertently draw his own election into question."

Anthony Scaramucci, former White House communications director, appears on "Meet the Press" in Washington, D.C., on Oct. 21, 2018. (William B. Plowman/NBC/NBC Newswire/NBCUniversal via Getty Images)

Anthony Scaramucci served in the Trump administration as White House communications director for all of 11 days, but that apparently was enough to dramatically change his view of Donald Trump.

Amid criticism of Trump's response to mass shootings in El Paso, Texas and Dayton, Ohio, and Trump's responses to it, Scaramucci diagnosed the fate of all Trump critics.

For the last 3 years I have fully supported this President, Scaramucci tweeted in 2019. Recently he has said things that divide the country in a way that is unacceptable. So I didnt pass the 100% litmus test. Eventually he turns on everyone, and soon it will be you and then the entire country.

Nikki Haley, former U.S. envoy to the United Nations, addresses the Republican National Convention from the Mellon auditorium on Aug. 24, 2020, in Washington, D.C. (Olivier Douliery/AFP via Getty Images)

Trump's former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, took aim at the former president a week after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

"We need to acknowledge he let us down," Haley, once a steadfast Trump loyalist, told Politico. "He went down a path he shouldn't have, and we shouldn't have followed him, and we shouldn't have listened to him. And we can't let that ever happen again."

Especially galling to Haley was Trump's tweet attacking Pence, as a mob of his supporters roamed the Capitol chanting that he should be hanged.

"When I tell you I'm angry, it's an understatement," Haley said. "Mike has been nothing but loyal to that man. He's been nothing but a good friend of that man. ... I am so disappointed in the fact that [despite] the loyalty and friendship he had with Mike Pence, that he would do that to him. Like, I'm disgusted by it."

Haley softened that criticism in the months that followed, however.

Michael Cohen, former trusted aide and lawyer to President Donald Trump, testifies before the House Oversight and Reform Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., on Feb. 27, 2019. (Melina Mara/The Washington Post)

The longtime Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, who also served as the vice president of the Trump Organization, pleaded guilty in 2018 to criminal counts that included campaign finance violations, tax fraud and bank fraud. Known as Trump's "fixer," Cohen quickly turned on his former boss, arguing in court that he had broken laws at Trump's direction.

Since his conviction, Cohen has spoken out regularly about his relationship with Trump, and has helped federal and state investigators in their probes of the former president. In a YouTube series posted following the second public hearing of the Jan. 6 select committee, Cohen summarized his attitude toward Trump.

"You may all remember when I testified before the House Oversight Committee and I stated emphatically that Donald Trump is a racist, he's a liar, he's a con man, he's a cheat," Cohen said.

"And over the course of the years, I've called Donald Trump what? The grifter-in-chief. And today what did we learn? That right after they lost the election, the campaign with, of course, Donald's approval puts out this massive request for people to donate to the legal fund to challenge the big lie, to challenge the electoral vote and the theft that he keeps claiming took place. Well, they raised a ton of money. None of that money ended up getting spent, so where did that money go?"

Outgoing U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson arrives to deliver farewell remarks at the U.S. State Department in Washington, D.C., on March 22, 2018. (Yuri Gripas/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Trump fired his Secretary of State Rex Tillerson in March 2018 in a tweet after a year that the two men had spent disagreeing on the role of U.S. allies and whether to pursue another nuclear deal with Iran. In the months that followed, Tillerson, the former chairman and CEO of ExxonMobil, let it be known that he did not have an elevated opinion of Trump's intelligence or attention span.

Tillerson said he found it challenging "to go to work for a man who is pretty undisciplined, doesnt like to read, doesnt read briefing reports, doesnt like to get into the details of a lot of things, but rather just kind of says, This is what I believe, he told CBS News in December 2018.

By 2021, his view of Trump had further dimmed.

"His understanding of global events, his understanding of global history, his understanding of U.S. history was really limited. It's really hard to have a conversation with someone who doesn't even understand the concept for why we're talking about this," Tillerson told Foreign Policy.

President Donald Trump listens on April 22, 2020, as Dr. Deborah Birx, then White House coronavirus response coordinator, speaks about the coronavirus in the James Brady Press Briefing Room of the White House. (Alex Brandon/AP)

in her memoir, Silent Invasion: The Untold Story of the Trump Administration, Covid-19, and Preventing the Next Pandemic Before Its Too Late, former Trump White House coronavirus response coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx describes the former president's efforts on COVID-19 a "tragedy, on many levels."

Recounting the famous April 2020 briefing during which Trump suggested treating COVID-19 by injecting disinfectant, Birx wrote,I looked down at my feet and wished for two things: something to kick and for the floor to open up and swallow me whole.

Birx said she demanded that guidance be immediately reversed, and Trump quickly pivoted to saying he had only been joking.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, addresses a press briefing at the White House on April 13, 2021. (Patrick Semansky/AP)

Like Birx, Dr. Anthony Fauci also quickly ran afoul of Trump in the early days of the coronavirus pandemic for questioning his judgment on how to deal with rising infections and deaths and publicly correcting him at news conferences.

Fauci, who had declared prior to the 2020 election that he would not stay in his job if Trump were to win, has described the "liberating feeling" of working for Biden. That's not surprising given that Trump and his allies have often attempted to blame the pandemic on Fauci.

In an interview with the New York Times, Fauci said he realized that his relationship with Trump was likely to go south as he continued to appear at daily coronavirus briefings with the president.

"He would say something that clearly was not correct, and then a reporter would say, 'Well, lets hear from Dr. Fauci.' I would have to get up and say, 'No, Im sorry, I do not think that is the case.' It isnt like I took any pleasure in contradicting the president of the United States. I have a great deal of respect for the office. But I made a decision that I just had to. Otherwise I would be compromising my own integrity, and be giving a false message to the world. If I didnt speak up, it would be almost tacit approval that what he was saying was OK," Fauci said.

"Thats when I started to get into some trouble."

Cover photo: Peter Casey/USA TODAY Sports via Reuters

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The growing list of people Donald Trump hired who eventually soured on him - Yahoo News

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