The Seattle LGBTQ Commission will announce on Thursday that they are joining calls for Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan to resign or be removed from office.
The public open letter to Durkan and the Seattle City Council reads, in part:
“It is with a heavy heart that we call for Mayor Durkan’s resignation. Mayor Durkan is Seattle’s first out lesbian mayor and only the second woman to hold that office. We believe that LGBTQ+ people and women, along with Black people and others targeted by white supremacy, belong at all levels of the local and federal government. Such representation is important. However, that representation must involve work to protect our community members from very real harm and violence that has been leveraged against Black and brown LGBTQ+ people. Mayor Durkan’s
actions in office have not only failed to create meaningful change for our community but have
indeed undermined other efforts within Seattle to create a more just future.”
Link to LGBTQ Commission Letter: https://t.co/IZV2Ayv3qo?amp=1
The advisory body of representative residents of Seattle advises the Mayor, City Council, Seattle Office for Civil Rights, and other Seattle City departments on issues or policies and their ramifications for LGBTQIA residents of the city.
The mayor herself identifies as a lesbian. She and her partner Dana Garvey have two sons but remain unmarried and are not registered as domestic partners.
The Seattle Human Rights Commission had sent out an open letter on October 7, 2020. It reads, in part:
“As the Commission charged with amplifying the human rights concerns of the Seattle community and providing the City’s leadership with recommendations on improving the rights of all the people of Seattle, it is our duty to speak up and speak out for our least privileged community members and not to be complicit in the harm done to them by City leadership.
Given this, it is our belief that we cannot wait until November of 2021 to remove Mayor Durkan and replace her with a servant-leader who will uphold the duty to protect the rights of all citizens, to hold their humanity above all else, and to live up to Seattle’s designation as a Human Rights city.
“We call on Mayor Durkan to immediately resign, and in the absence of her resignation, we call on the City Council to begin removal proceedings for willful violation of duty…”
Link: https://www.seattlehumanrights.org/…/seattle-human-rights-c…
The total number of current Seattle LGBT Commissioners was not available but 12 commissioners took part in a vote on the matter. The Commission can have up to 21 members; eight appointed by the Mayor herself. The City Council can also appoint eight members. Four are appointed by the Commission itself. The final Commissioner can come through a leadership development program for 18-29-year-olds.
Thanks to some Malcontents who did a bit of research, we have an answer to the question, is this national pride or white nationalism.
The answer is – national pride. The story behind the story is actually pretty fascinating, and you can watch this video to learn more.
I’m back from a break and our annual photography trip to the Palouse region of Washington state. We spent four days covering almost 1200 miles taking pictures from sunup to sundown. Last night I discovered I snapped 1059 images on my primary camera, and maybe 50 to 100 more on my cellphone. I also shot a handful of video clips.
When I saw this picture right after I snapped it, I had a lot of thoughts going on in my head. Here is a piece of rusting farm equipment with a tattered American flag flying off of it. The field of wheat it sits in appears lush and healthy, but the soil is parched, and the plants are shorter than our last trip, which was a full month earlier in the growing season. The state has been in a drought, and there isn’t much relief to come.
Depressed prices have rocked United States grain farmers along with extreme weather, changing growing seasons, tariffs, and the changing American diet. Chapter 12 farm bankruptcies are accelerating in 2019, but are nowhere near peak levels during the 1980s.
Last night I poured through a thousand images and selected about 80 for post-processing, including this photo, which I posted on Instagram and Facebook while on my trip. I had planned on Thoughtful Tuesday to write about the struggles of the American farmer, the strategic role they play for the nation, and the dying of rural America. That was my plan. Then I did post-production on this photo.
If you’re not familiar with the photography process, the first step is to zoom in on an image as part of the selection process. You’re looking to see how crisp the picture is. A perfect photo with proper focus will have crisp details in the areas you want to pull the viewer to and the required depth. The fastest way to figure that out is to zoom in on key features. Text, numbers, and words are an excellent choice for this process.
My two choices for this picture was the American flag and the word, “Harris,” on the equipment. The stars on the American flag were surprisingly crisp as the tatters were in motion with a stiff wind blowing. When I zoomed into the “Harris,” I suddenly felt sick to my stomach. There below the Harris, in smaller font but equally crisp the number 88.
The number 88 is associated with white nationalism and Neo-Nazis, with the letter H being the eighth letter in the alphabet. In these circles, the number 88 is a hidden in plain sight reference to, “Heil Hitler.” The problem, of course, is the number 88 could also be completely innocuous. The farm could have been established in 1888; the person who put this here could have some connection to 1988, or 1888. There may be no connection with white nationalism at all, or there may be.
Three years ago I wouldn’t have given this a second thought. I still knew of the 88 connection to white nationalism, but I wouldn’t even consider someone would be this brazen, but that was then, and this is now. Located on the Idaho panhandle border, a known hotbed of white nationalism, the Pandora’s box open and supporters of the doctrine almost as visible as the civil rights unrest of the 1950s and 1960s, or when the German American Bund was active in the 1930s.
There are so many seeds of distrust sown in our nation due to social media and political agendas, ironically some of it backfiring on the architects of this erosion. US allies have been told for almost three years that US intelligence arms can’t be trusted, and now the same administration is saying, “trust us, our intelligence agencies say Iran attacked two oil tankers!” All but our most ardent ally, the UK, is looking at us going, “we’d like to see other intelligence, as you’ve been saying you can’t trust your own.”
So is this a monument of white nationalism? A homage to MAGA and a proclamation that greatness is achieved when we are white? Is this a symbol of hate? Or is this simply a number on a rusting piece of equipment? A monument to a time when rural America had a path to prosperity supported by the local businesses? In 2019, it is really hard to tell.
Think about it.
Malcontent, out!
Yesterday I was at a major chain coffee shop located in a grocery store. There was a striking human being that served me as the cashier and barista. I write human being as I’m not exactly sure how to refer to them without potentially providing an insult, so it is no way meant as a slur.
The individual appeared genetically as a male (or, could be intersex), and if they were on a trans journey, it was only at the very beginning (no hormones, no surgery). Their body and face are decidedly masculine. This individual had the most amazing makeup! I mean, girlfriend, you need to take lessons from this person because, WOW. It was striking. It was amazing. As an avid photographer one of my first thoughts was, “I would love 60 to 90 minutes in the studio with you,” and my next thought was, “I wonder if they could teach me to put on makeup for my livecasts,” and my third thought was, “wow that must take a lot of time.”
People that know me know that I am 100% comfortable in my sexuality. I freely admit I’ve been hit on my two men in my life, and both times I was flattered. I made it politely clear that I was hopelessly heterosexual, but I was flattered. It has never been an issue, and I believe that for people where it is a serious issue, criminology and science indicates a lot of people who do take issue have repressed feelings (not all, but the science is pretty darn solid). I go back to the point of the individual and human being as my typical thank you for great service, and I got great service is something on the lines of, “thank you sir/ma’am, and have a great rest of your day!”
Ahhh, but do I say sir, or ma’am, or cis, or gender fluid, or individual. Has this been a slight in the past to sir or ma’am – as I was raised to do? So instead I modified my thank you to, “thank you, thank you and have a great rest of your day,” with a broad smile.
Now to part two of this story. From a genealogy standpoint, I’m an Italian-Jew and Hungarian. Italians and Jews have a lot in common. We both love deli meats, we both have hair growing everywhere, we both are into big families with some degree of dysfunction, we are both religious, we both love food and will insist you continue to eat even after you cannot eat anymore, and we are both loud. I admit it; I’m loud. Now to the punch line.
The other thing about myself (sorry this is a lot about me today) is my radar for threats and danger around me is pretty weak. Not so weak as I’ve gotten myself in serious trouble, but weak enough that I’m aware, when my radar goes off, be very alert. As I say these words, my radar goes, “dude, yellow alert!”
I see two people; both are of my generation; they are not together. One is an Asian woman, she is looking at me disapprovingly, and I watch to see she is avoiding any eye contact with me or the barista. The other is a man sitting at a table; he is glaring at me. I am suddenly in a spot of wait, is what I think is going on going on? I’m not drunk or rowdy loud, but someone would hear my thanks and well wishes. Was I not supposed to show some common courtesy to this individual who makes my coffee quickly and with a smile?
I could feel the eyes of this man burning into my back, which is what set my radar off. I turn and look, and I’m glared at. We’re talking if looks could kill, people would be a pile of Drogon created ash on the floor. I would be found clutching the charred remains of my white Starbucks cup.
Why is this an issue? What does it matter? If a person is happy not living with gender assignment how does that hurt – anyone? If I show respect to someone who has the bravery to paint outside the lines for good service, why should that be an issue? I don’t think I was that loud as I needed the coffee as a pick me up at that moment. Why is this such an issue? What exactly am I missing? If the argument is, “this just isn’t right,” it just isn’t right in what way? In a way that it makes someone feel – uncomfortable? Does it matter to me what this person does in the privacy of a bedroom with one or more consenting adults? I could care less! Bring out the gimp suit, the power tools, a peanut butter and Vaseline sandwiches, and let your freak flag fly while you swing from the shower curtain rod. If that’s you’re thing – you go. You want to wear makeup that would make Taylor Swift say, “teach me all you know,” and it makes you happy – then do it. If you have a problem with that, keep it to your feckin’ self.
Anyway, think about it.
