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       #Post#: 916--------------------------------------------------
       Alabama state troopers, beat and shot an unarmed man,
       26-year-old Jimmie Lee Jackson, who was marching for voting
       rights
   DIR By: AGelbert
       Date: March 6, 2023, 1:36 pm
       ---------------------------------------------------------
       AGelbert NOTE: The history, all the way to the
  HTML https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-050422182057.gif<br
       />present, that Heather Cox Richardson relates is 100% accurate,
       but Biden is IMHO, just giving lip service to the injustice of
       the events and plight of the victims, not really doing anything
       to reverse the [glow=red,2,300]Republican[/glow] AND
       Supreme([glow=red,2,300]ly Corrupt[/glow]) Court sponsored
       [glow=red,2,300]racist tyranny[/glow]. Graphics, colored font
       and large font size emphasis are by me.
       March 5, 2023 By Heather Cox Richardson
       [center]&#128367;&#65039; Letters from an &#129413; American
       &#128509;[/center]
       President Joe Biden spoke this afternoon in Selma, Alabama, to
       commemorate the 58th anniversary of Bloody Sunday, when law
       enforcement officers tried to beat into silence Black Americans
       marching for their right to have a say in the government under
       which they lived. Standing at the Edmund Pettus Bridge, which
       had been named for a Confederate brigadier general, Grand Dragon
       of the Alabama Ku Klux Klan, and U.S. senator who stood against
       Black rights, Biden said: “On this bridge, blood was given to
       help ‘redeem the soul of America.’”
       The story of March 7, 1965, commemorated today in Selma, is the
       story of Americans determined to bring to life the principle
       articulated in the Declaration of Independence that a
       government’s claim to authority comes from the consent of the
       governed. It is also a story of how hard local authorities,
       entrenched in power and backed by angry white voters, worked to
       make the hurdles of that process insurmountable.
       In the 1960s, despite the fact Black Americans outnumbered white
       Americans among the 29,500 people who lived in Selma, Alabama,
       the city’s voting rolls were 99% white. So, in 1963, local Black
       organizers launched a voter registration drive.
       It was hard going. White Selma residents had no intention of
       permitting their Black neighbors to have a say in their
       government. Indeed, white southerners in general were taking a
       stand against the equal right of Black Americans to vote. During
       the 1964 Freedom Summer voter registration drive in neighboring
       Mississippi, [glow=red,2,300]Ku Klux Klan members [/glow]worked
       with [glow=red,2,300]local law enforcement officers[/glow] to
       murder three voting rights organizers and dispose of their
       bodies.
       To try to hold back the white supremacists, Congress passed the
       1964 Civil Rights Act, designed in part to make it possible for
       Black Americans to register to vote. In Selma, a &#128127;
       [glow=red,2,300]judge[/glow] stopped voter registration meetings
       by prohibiting public gatherings of more than two people.
       To call attention to the crisis in her city, voting rights
       activist [glow=teal,2,300]Amelia Boynton[/glow] traveled to
       Birmingham to invite the [glow=teal,2,300]Reverend Dr. Martin
       Luther King, Jr.[/glow], to the city. King had become a
       household name after the 1963 March on Washington where he
       delivered the “I Have a Dream” speech, and his presence would
       bring national attention to Selma’s struggle.
       King and other prominent Black leaders arrived in January 1965,
       and for seven weeks, Black residents made a new push to register
       to vote. &#128520; [glow=red,2,300]County Sheriff James
       Clark[/glow] arrested almost 2,000 of them on a variety of
       charges, including contempt of court and parading without a
       permit. A federal court ordered [glow=red,2,300]Clark[/glow] not
       to interfere with orderly registration, so &#128520; he forced
       Black applicants to stand in line for hours before taking a
       “literacy” test. Not a single person passed.
       Then, on February 18, [glow=red,2,300]white police officers,
       including local police, sheriff’s deputies, and Alabama state
       troopers[/glow], beat and shot an unarmed man, 26-year-old
       Jimmie Lee Jackson, who was marching for voting rights at a
       demonstration in his hometown of Marion, Alabama, about 25 miles
       northwest of Selma. Jackson had run into a restaurant for
       shelter along with his mother when the police started rioting,
       but they chased him and shot him in the restaurant’s kitchen.
       Jackson died eight days later, on February 26. Black leaders in
       Selma decided to defuse the community’s anger by planning a long
       march—54 miles—from Selma to the state capitol at Montgomery to
       draw attention to the murder and [glow=maroon,2,300]voter
       suppression[/glow].
       On March 7, 1965, the marchers set out. As they crossed the
       Edmund Pettus Bridge, [glow=red,2,300]state troopers and other
       law enforcement officers[/glow] met the [glow=teal,2,300]unarmed
       marchers[/glow] with billy clubs, bullwhips, and tear gas.
       [glow=red,2,300]They[/glow] fractured the skull of young
       activist [glow=teal,2,300]John Lewis[/glow] and beat
       [glow=teal,2,300]Amelia Boynton[/glow] unconscious. A newspaper
       photograph of the 54-year-old Boynton, seemingly dead in the
       arms of another marcher, illustrated the
       [glow=red,2,300]depravity[/glow] of those determined to
       [glow=red,2,300]stop[/glow] [glow=teal,2,300]Black
       &#128509;voting[/glow].
       Images of “Bloody Sunday” on the national news mesmerized the
       nation, and supporters began to converge on Selma. King, who had
       been in Atlanta when the marchers first set off, returned to the
       fray.
       Two days later, the marchers set out again. Once again, the
       troopers and police met them at the end of the Edmund Pettus
       Bridge, but this time, [glow=teal,2,300]King &#128330;&#65039;
       led the marchers in &#128591;&#127996; prayer[/glow] and then
       took them back to Selma. That night, a [glow=red,2,300]white mob
       beat to death[/glow] a [glow=teal,2,300]Unitarian Universalist
       minister[/glow], James Reeb, who had come from Massachusetts to
       join the marchers.
       On March 15, President Lyndon B. Johnson addressed a nationally
       televised joint session of Congress to ask for the passage of a
       national voting rights act. “Their cause must be our cause too,”
       he said. “[A]ll of us…must overcome the crippling legacy of
       bigotry and injustice. And we shall overcome.” Two days later,
       he submitted to Congress proposed voting rights legislation.
       The [glow=teal,2,300]marchers[/glow] were determined to complete
       their trip to Montgomery, and when Alabama’s governor, &#128127;
       [glow=red,2,300]George Wallace[/glow], refused to protect them,
       President Johnson
  HTML https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-040422164718-5381960.png<br
       />stepped in. When the [glow=teal,2,300]marchers[/glow] set off
       for a third time on March 21, [glow=navy,2,300]1,900 members of
       the nationalized Alabama National Guard, FBI agents, and federal
       marshals protected [/glow] [glow=teal,2,300]them[/glow].
       Covering about ten miles a day, they camped in the yards of
       well-wishers until they arrived at the Alabama state capitol on
       March 25. Their ranks had grown as they walked until they
       numbered about 25,000 people.
       On the steps of the capitol, speaking under a Confederate flag,
       Dr. King said: “The end we seek is a society at peace with
       itself, a society that can live with its conscience. And that
       will be a day not of the white man, not of the black man. That
       will be the day of man as man.”
       That night, [glow=teal,2,300]Viola Liuzzo[/glow], a 39-year-old
       mother of five who had arrived from Michigan to help after
       Bloody Sunday, was murdered by [glow=red,2,300]four Ku Klux Klan
       members[/glow] who tailed her as she ferried demonstrators out
       of the city.
       On August 6, Dr. King and Mrs. Boynton were guests of honor as
       President Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965 &#128509;
  HTML https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-110422180554-644315.gif.<br
       />Johnson recalled “the outrage of Selma” when he said, "This
       right to vote is the basic right without which all others are
       meaningless. It gives people, people as individuals, control
       over their own destinies."
       The Voting Rights Act authorized federal supervision of voter
       registration in districts where African Americans were
       historically underrepresented. Johnson promised that the
       government would strike down “regulations, or laws, or tests to
       deny the right to vote.” He called the right to vote “the most
       powerful instrument ever devised by man for breaking down
       injustice and destroying the terrible walls which imprison men
       because they are different from other men,” and pledged that “we
       will not delay, or we will not hesitate, or we will not turn
       aside until Americans of every race and color and origin in this
       country have the same right as all others to share in the
       process of democracy.”
       But less than 50 years later, in 2013, the
       [glow=red,2,300]Supreme Court[/glow] gutted the Voting Rights
       Act. The [glow=maroon,2,300]Shelby County v. Holder
       decision[/glow] opened the door, once again, for
       [glow=red,2,300]voter suppression[/glow].
  HTML https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-060323151846.png<br
       />Since then, &#128024; [glow=red,2,300]states[/glow] have made
       it
       [size=14pt]harder to vote. [/size]
       In the wake of the 2020 election, in which voters handed control
       of the government to Democrats, Republican-dominated
       legislatures in at least 19 states passed 34 laws restrict­ing
       access to voting. In July 2021, in the [glow=red,2,300]Brnovich
       v. Democratic National Committee decision[/glow], the
       [glow=red,2,300]Supreme &#128024;&#128520; Court[/glow] ruled
       that
  HTML https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-040622210450-1415528.gif<br
       />&#128024; election laws that
       [glow=red,2,300]disproportionately
       affected[/glow] [glow=greenl,2,300]minority voters[/glow] were
       not unconstitutional so long as they were
  HTML https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-090822151052-17321038.png&#128520;<br
       />not intended
  HTML http://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/gallery/renewablerevolution/1/3-250718202127.gif<br
       />to be racially discriminatory.
  HTML https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-250422162849-1033113.jpeg<br
       />
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       />
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       [center]
  HTML https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-240422195200-976611.png[/center]
       When the Democrats took power in 2021, they vowed to strengthen
       voting rights. They immediately introduced the For the People
       Act, which expanded voting rights, limited the influence of
       money in politics, banned partisan gerrymandering, and created
       new ethics rules for federal officeholders. Republicans in the
       Senate blocked the measure with a filibuster.
       [glow=blue,2,300]Democrats[/glow] then introduced the
       [glow=teal,2,300]John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement
       Act[/glow], which would have restored portions of the Voting
       Rights Act, and the [glow=teal,2,300]Freedom to Vote Act[/glow],
       a lighter version of the For the People Act. &#128024;
       [glow=red,2,300]Republicans[/glow] blocked both of those acts,
       too.
       And so, in 2023, the right to vote is
       [glow=red,2,300]increasingly precarious[/glow].
       As Biden told marchers today, “The right to vote—the right to
       vote and to have your vote counted is the threshold of democracy
       and liberty. With it, anything is possible. Without it—without
       that right, nothing is possible. And this fundamental right
       remains under [glow=red,2,300]&#128024; assault[/glow].”
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       [move]
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       />
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       />
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       />
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       />
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       />
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       />
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       />
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       />
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  HTML https://open.substack.com/pub/heathercoxrichardson/p/march-5-2023-sunday
       —
       Notes:
  HTML https://www2.census.gov/prod2/decennial/documents/37721510v1p2.pdf
  HTML https://millercenter.org/the-presidency/presidential-speeches/august-6-1965-remarks-signing-voting-rights-act
  HTML https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/selma-montgomery-march
  HTML https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/feb/25/fight-to-vote-newsletter-voting-rights-act
  HTML https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/06/10/john-lewis-black-lives-matter-protesters-give-until-you-cannot-give-any-more/
       &#8203;&#8203;
  HTML https://www.wsfa.com/2022/03/06/vp-harris-speak-selma-bloody-sunday-anniversary/
  HTML https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/voting-laws-roundup-december-2021
  HTML https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/voting-laws-roundup-february-2022
  HTML https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/court-cases/brnovich-v-democratic-national-committee
  HTML https://www.democracydocket.com/analysis/whats-next-for-voting-rights-after-brnovich/
  HTML https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2023/03/05/remarks-by-president-biden-commemorating-the-58th-anniversary-of-bloody-sunday/
  HTML https://millercenter.org/the-presidency/presidential-speeches/march-15-1965-speech-congress-voting-rights
  HTML https://www.axios.com/2021/08/24/john-lewis-house-voting-rights-bill
  HTML https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/freedom-vote-act
       #Post#: 983--------------------------------------------------
       ... &#128530; “A more perfect union” and “bringing the races
       together” rhetoric.
   DIR By: AGelbert
       Date: April 7, 2023, 1:28 pm
       ---------------------------------------------------------
       AGelbert NOTE: The following was written in 2009 following
       &#128530; President Obama's rhetoric filled speech which
       included such phrases as, “A more perfect union” and “bringing
       the races together”. It is EVEN MORE VALID TODAY (i.e. April 7,
       2023) than it was then:
       [center]Citing his book, The Price of Racial Reconciliation (The
       Politics of Race and Ethnicity),[glow=blue,2,300] Professor
       Walters[/glow] zeroes in on the critical issue of who has the
       powerful last word:[/center]
       The voice of the victim of racism has been devalued and the
       voice of the perpetrators of racism is elevated because of the
       power they hold over the interpretation and treatment of racial
       events. This is the curious way in which whites, who by every
       study I have seen experience racism far, far less than blacks,
       end up having the dominant interpretation over events. They
       control the power over the voice that interprets events and
       control over the resources dedicated—or not dedicated—to resolve
       them.
       “A more perfect union” is not about “bringing the races
       together” but about bringing equal access to economic and
       political power to the races.
       It is not about “individuals of every ethnic or racial group”
       getting along better but about them getting by better.
       It is not about the “inflamed tensions” of interracial group
       dynamics but about human potential and hope turned into ashes by
       group discrimination.
       It is not about an “honest dialogue on race” but about an honest
       diagnosis of America’s racial inequities.
       It is not about making the ism disappear from “race” but about
       removing racism from America’s institutions.
       It is not about being “colorblind” but about being colorful.
       It is about making America’s white-controlled
       [glow=green,2,300]&#128181; hierarchy of access[/glow]
       disappear.
       It is about every person’s right to “life, liberty and the
       pursuit of happiness.”
       [glow=blue,2,300]Rev. William E. Alberts[/glow], Ph.D. is a
       hospital chaplain and a diplomate in the College of Pastoral
       Supervision and Psychotherapy. Both a Unitarian Universalist and
       a United Methodist minister, he has written research reports,
       essays and articles on racism, war, politics and religion. He
       can be reached at william.alberts@bmc.org.
       #Post#: 1127--------------------------------------------------
       The order went on: “The freedmen are advised to remain quietly
       at their present homes and work for wages. They are infor
   DIR By: AGelbert
       Date: June 19, 2023, 5:44 pm
       ---------------------------------------------------------
       June 18, 2023 By Heather Cox Richardson
       [center]&#128367;&#65039; Letters from an &#129413; American
       &#128509;[/center]
       SNIPPET:
       The addition of the [glow=teal,2,300]Fourteenth Amendment to the
       Constitution[/glow] in 1868 [glow=teal,2,300]remade[/glow] the
       [glow=teal,2,300]United States[/glow]. But
  HTML https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-120422122619-6812456.gifhttps://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-040622210450-1415528.gif[glow=red,2,300]<br
       />those[/glow] determined to preserve a world that
       [glow=red,2,300]discriminated[/glow] between Americans according
       to race, gender, ability, and so on, [glow=red,2,300]continued
       to find workarounds[/glow]. &#128544;
       Read more:
  HTML https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-121022140312-20561315.jpeg
  HTML https://open.substack.com/pub/heathercoxrichardson/p/june-18-2023
       #Post#: 1128--------------------------------------------------
       &quot;As the years progressed, I took for granted how much care
       patients received without oversight by more senior
       doctors.&quot; 
   DIR By: AGelbert
       Date: June 19, 2023, 7:04 pm
       ---------------------------------------------------------
       [center]
  HTML https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-040623141651.png[/center]
       Brian H. Williams, MD, is a trauma surgeon.
       June 19, 2023 by [glow=blue,2,300]Brian H. Williams, MD[/glow]
       [center]I Never Asked Why the Bodies Kept Coming[/center]
       [move]— An excerpt from Brian Williams' forthcoming book on
       [glow=maroon,2,300]racism[/glow],
       [glow=red,2,300]violence[/glow], and how we &#127807;
       heal[/move]
       SNIPPET:
       A roiling history of exploitation of and experimentation on
       Black people has fostered distrust of the medical establishment.
       A brief survey of history includes J. Marion Sims, MD, past
       president of the American Medical Association and often revered
       as the "father of modern gynecology," who performed barbaric
       vaginal operations on enslaved women. They were denied
       anesthesia, physically restrained, and repeatedly mutilated.
       Involuntary hysterectomies -- what Fannie Lou Hamer came to call
       the "Mississippi appendectomy" -- were frequently performed on
       Black women, often by medical students in training. These are
       part of the legacy of "dehumanizing attempts to control Black
       women's reproductive lives," as Dorothy E. Roberts describes in
       [glow=red,2,300]Killing[/glow] the Black Body.
       Full article: &#128064; &#128542;
  HTML https://www.medpagetoday.com/opinion/second-opinions/105061
       #Post#: 1251--------------------------------------------------
       &quot;Originalist&quot; Constitutional Lawyers Weighing In
       &#128296; AGAINST &#129408; Trump!? &#128064; &#128562; YES!!!
       &#128077;&#127870;&#128513;
   DIR By: AGelbert
       Date: August 20, 2023, 1:21 pm
       ---------------------------------------------------------
       &#128367;&#65039; Letters from an &#129413; American &#128509;
       August 19, 2023 By Heather Cox Richardson
       Various constitutional lawyers have been weighing in lately on
       whether former president Donald Trump and others who
       participated in the effort to overturn the results of the 2020
       presidential election are disqualified from holding office under
       the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution. The third section
       of that amendment, ratified in 1868, reads:
       “No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or
       elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office,
       civil or military, under the United States, or under any State,
       who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress,
       or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any
       State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any
       State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall
       have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or
       given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by
       a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.”
       On August 14 an article forthcoming from the University of
       Pennsylvania Law Review by William Baude of the University of
       Chicago Law School and Michael S. Paulsen of the University of
       St. Thomas School of Law became available as a preprint. It
       argued that the third section of the Fourteenth Amendment is
       still in effect (countering arguments that it applied only to
       the Civil War era secessionists), that it is self-executing
       (meaning the disqualification of certain people is automatic,
       much as age limits or residency requirements are), and that
       Trump and others who participated in trying to steal the 2020
       presidential election are disqualified from holding office.
       This paper was a big deal because while liberal thinkers have
       been making this argument for a while now, Baude and Paulsen are
       associated with the legal doctrine of originalism, an approach
       to the law that insists the Constitution should be understood as
       those who wrote its different parts understood them. That theory
       gained traction on the right in the 1980s as a way to push back
       against what its adherents called “judicial activism,” by which
       they meant the Supreme Court’s use of the law, especially the
       Fourteenth Amendment, to expand the rights of minorities and
       women. One of the key institutions engaged in this pushback was
       the [glow=maroon,2,300]&#128181;&#127913;&#128520; Federalist
       Society[/glow], and both Baude and Paulson are associated with
       it.
       Now the two have made a 126-page originalist case that the
       Fourteenth Amendment prohibits Trump from running for president
  HTML https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-040622153109-13652067.png.<br
       />Their interpretation is undoubtedly correct. But that
       interpretation has even larger implications than they claim.
  HTML https://soberthinking.createaforum.com/gallery/soberthinking/1-050422145344-560693.png
       [glow=teal,2,300]Moderate Republicans[/glow]—not “Radical
       Republicans,” by the way, which was a slur pinned on the Civil
       War era party by &#128127; [glow=red,2,300]southern-sympathizing
       Democrats[/glow]—wrote the text of the Fourteenth Amendment at a
       specific time for a specific reason that speaks directly to our
       own era.
       When [glow=red,2,300]&#128127; John Wilkes Booth[/glow]
       assassinated [glow=teal,2,300]President Abraham Lincoln[/glow]
       in April 1865, Congress was not in session. It had adjourned on
       the morning of Lincoln’s second inauguration in early March,
       after beavering away all night to finish up the session’s
       business, and congressmen had begun their long journeys home
       where they would stay until the new session began in December.
       Lincoln’s death handed control of the country for more than
       seven months to his vice president, Andrew Johnson, a former
       Democrat who wanted to restore the nation to what it had been
       before the war, minus the institution of slavery that he
       believed concentrated wealth and power among a small elite.
       [glow=red,2,300]&#128520; Johnson[/glow] refused to call
       Congress back into session while he worked alone to restore the
       prewar system, dominated by Democrats, as quickly as he could.
       In May, Johnson announced that all former Confederates except
       for high-ranking political or military officers or anyone worth
       more than $20,000 (about $400,000 today) would be given amnesty
       as soon as they took an oath of loyalty to the United States. He
       pardoned all but about 1,500 of that elite excluded group by
       December 1865.
       Johnson required that southern states change their state
       constitutions by ratifying the Thirteenth Amendment prohibiting
       enslavement except as punishment for a crime, nullifying the
       ordinances of secession, and repudiating the Confederate war
       debts. Delegates did so, grudgingly and with some wiggling, and
       then went on to pass the Black Codes, laws designed to keep
       Black Americans subservient to their white neighbors.
       Under those new state constitutions and racist legal codes,
       southern states elected new senators and representatives to
       Congress. Voters put back into national office the very same men
       who had driven the rebellion, including its vice president,
       Alexander Stephens, whom the Georgia legislature reelected to
       the U.S. Senate. When Congress reconvened in December 1865,
       Johnson cheerily told them he had reconstructed the country
       without their help.
       It looked as if the country was right back to where it had been
       in 1860, with legal slavery ended but a racial system that
       looked much like it already reestablished in the South. And
       since the 1870 census would count Black Americans as whole
       people for the first time, southern congressmen would have more
       power than before.
       But when the southern state delegations elected under Johnson’s
       plan arrived in Washington, D.C., to be seated, Republicans
       turned them away. They rejected the idea that after four years,
       600,000 casualties, and more than $5 billion, the country should
       be ruled by men like Stephens, who insisted that American
       democracy meant that power resided not in the federal government
       but in the states, where a small, wealthy minority could
       insulate itself from the majority rule that controlled Congress.
       In state government a minority could control who could vote and
       the information to which those voters had access, removing
       concerns that voters would challenge their wealth or power.
       White southerners embraced the idea of “popular sovereignty” and
       “states’ rights,” arguing that any attempt of Congress to
       enforce majority rule was an attack on democracy.
       But President LIncoln and the Republicans reestablished the idea
       of majority rule, using the federal government to enforce the
       principle of human equality outlined by the Declaration of
       Independence.
       And that’s where the Fourteenth Amendment came in. When Johnson
       tried to restore the former Confederates to power after the
       Civil War, Americans wrote into the Constitution that anyone
       born or naturalized in the U.S. was a citizen, and then they
       established that states must treat all citizens equally before
       the law, thus taking away the legal basis for the Black Codes
       and giving the federal government power to enforce equality in
       the states. They also made sure that anyone who rebels against
       the federal government can’t make or enforce the nation’s laws.
       Republicans in the 1860s would certainly have believed the
       Fourteenth Amendment covered Trump’s attempt to overturn the
       results of a presidential election. More, though, that amendment
       sought to establish, once and for all, the supremacy of the
       federal government over those who wanted to solidify their power
       in the states, where they could impose the will of a minority.
       That concept speaks directly to today’s Republicans.
       In The Atlantic today, two prominent legal scholars from
       opposite sides of the political spectrum, former federal judge
       J. Michael Luttig and emeritus professor of constitutional law
       at Harvard Law School Laurence H. Tribe, applauded the
       Baude-Paulsen article and suggested that the American people
       should support the “faithful application and enforcement of
       their Constitution.” &#129413;
       &#128509;
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       />
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  HTML https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/august-19-2023/comments
       —
       Notes:
  HTML https://newrepublic.com/article/174977/baude-paulsen-trump-14th-amendment
  HTML https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/08/donald-trump-constitutionally-prohibited-presidency/675048/
  HTML https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/19/politics/donald-trump-fourteenth-amendment-2024-race/index.html
  HTML https://www.in2013dollars.com/us/inflation/1865?amount=20000
  HTML https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4532751
       #Post#: 2354--------------------------------------------------
       Environmental Injustice: Dispatches From a Black Trauma Surgeon
       on Health Inequity
   DIR By: AGelbert
       Date: September 12, 2024, 3:44 pm
       ---------------------------------------------------------
       
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       [center]
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       [center]Wild, Incisive, Fearless.[/center]
       Book Excerpts
       September 11, 2024 - by Dr. Brian H. Williams
       [move]Dr. Brian H. Williams is an Air Force Academy graduate, a
       Harvard-trained surgeon, a former congressional health policy
       advisor, and a nationally recognized leader at the intersection
       of public policy and structural racism, gun violence, and health
       equity. [/move]
       [center]Environmental[glow=red,2,300] Injustice[/glow]:
       Dispatches From a Black Trauma Surgeon on Health
       [glow=red,2,300]Inequity[/glow][/center]
       SNIPPET:
       “Open up and say ahhh.” I coughed as the doctor gagged me with a
       popsicle stick and gasped when he placed an ice cube
       masquerading as a stethoscope to my back. “Cold, huh? Sorry
       about that.” My mother hovered, not saying a word as the man
       with the soothing voice in the long white coat poked and prodded
       while asking me about sports and school. “Well, we’re done,” the
       doctor said, smiling again. He gave my mother instructions about
       when to return to the hospital, said something to her about
       smoking, wished me luck in my upcoming game, and walked out.
       Squirming into my shirt, I asked: “Are there any Black doctors?”
       A decade before Bill Cosby reigned as America’s favorite TV dad,
       Dr. Heathcliff Huxtable — and decades before it became known
       that he was drugging and sexually assaulting women — my mother
       smiled like any parent deflecting an uncomfortable truth. I
       couldn’t articulate it yet, but I felt it just the same. To me
       the smiling man in the long white coat, with the fancy degrees
       and plaques and awards broadcasting greatness from his office
       walls, was a god. And like the Eurocentric religious ideals
       force-fed to me in Sunday school, his profession of medicine did
       not seem like somewhere I belonged.
       From that early age, I knew an unspoken truth: No matter how
       smart, articulate, or well-behaved I would become, there were
       always places Black boys would not be welcome.
       Black men in medicine represent less than 3% of doctors, and I
       know future Black men attempting to cross the threshold are
       depending on Black doctors like me. Patients have told me to get
       their “real” doctor, leave the room, remove their tray of
       half-eaten food, or empty the trash bin. Some have ignored me
       and others have spat at me. Some have prayed for me and others
       have wished me dead. I have been called a racist and a healer, a
       n-i-g-g-e-r and a sellout, a hypocrite and a hero. No matter our
       social status, from gang members to doctors, Black men still
       serve as a mirror for people’s fears. A screen on which to
       project one’s anxiety — and disgust.  An endangered species
       navigating a world both hostile to and dependent upon our
       existence.
       Read more: &#128542;
  HTML https://therevelator.org/black-trauma-surgeon/
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