Discourse that allows us to express a wide range of ideas, opinions, and analysis that can be used as an opportunity to critically examine and observe what our experience means to us beyond the given social/cultural contexts and norms that are provided us.
Showing posts with label The Supreme Court. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The Supreme Court. Show all posts
The major and most important issue facing the United States in 2024 and beyond is whether FASCISM will flourish and ultimately prevail in every single political, economic, social, cultural and judicial Institution in the country no matter who is (cough) "elected" in November. It is crystal clear to me and millions of others not only here but throughout the world that we are all at this point seriously "on the brink and about to sink." For more deadly evidence of this fundamental fact please read and share the very stark information from both May 16 and May 22 provided below...Stay tuned and especially STAY WOKE because it is destined to get far worse very soon...
Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, An Upside Down American Flag and January 6, 2021: How the US Supreme Court Became an Arm of the Republican Party
FALL OF THE AMERICAN EMPIRE by Kofi Natambu
AMERICA wants another Pep talk It’s never satisfied Banality rules its days & nights
Another mass rally
Never satisfied Mass media not enuff Mass boredom not enuff Mass murder not enuff now nothing can quench its rampaging thirst for lies
AMERICA wants a panacea wants a placebo wants a panderer wants a papier-mache god it can pray to wants a Victim it can identify with scream at cry over stomp on BE!
AMERICA WANTS ANOTHER ENEMY (besides itself) You see: it’s never satiated Infantilism rules Its afternoons & evenings
Another mass tally
Never satiated Stupidity not enuff Cynicism not enuff Suicide not enuff now nothing can impede its spiralling flight toward emptiness
AMERICA wants another alibi wants another excuse wants still another thrill wants another ‘reason’ to eat up the world wants a Fear it can live with fawn over suck on talk about BE!!
[Poem from the book THE MELODY NEVER STOPS by Kofi Natambu. Post Aesthetic Press, 1991]
At Justice Alito’s House, a ‘Stop the Steal’ Symbol on Display
An
upside-down flag, adopted by Trump supporters contesting the Biden
victory, flew over the justice’s front lawn as the Supreme Court was
considering an election case.
A photo obtained by The Times shows an inverted flag at the Alito residence on Jan. 17, 2021, three days before the Biden inauguration.
Another Provocative Flag Was Flown at Another Alito Home
The
justice’s beach house displayed an “Appeal to Heaven” flag, a symbol
carried on Jan. 6 and associated with a push for a more Christian-minded
government.
The “Appeal to Heaven” flag flew outside the Alitos’ New Jersey vacation home last summer, along with a “2022” Phillies flag and a Long Beach Island flag.
Last summer, two years after an upside-down American flag
was flown outside the Virginia home of Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr.,
another provocative symbol was displayed at his vacation house in New
Jersey, according to interviews and photographs.
This
time, it was the “Appeal to Heaven” flag, which, like the inverted U.S.
flag, was carried by rioters at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Also known
as the Pine Tree flag, it dates back to the Revolutionary War, but
largely fell into obscurity until recent years and is now a symbol of
support for former President Donald J. Trump, for a religious strand of
the “Stop the Steal” campaign and for a push to remake American
government in Christian terms.
Three
photographs obtained by The New York Times, along with accounts from a
half-dozen neighbors and passers-by, show that the Appeal to Heaven flag
was aloft at the Alito home on Long Beach Island in July and September of 2023. A Google street view image from late August also shows the flag.
The
photographs, each taken independently, are from four different dates.
It is not clear whether the flag was displayed continuously during those
months or how long it was flown overall.
A Google street view photo taken in August 2023 shows the flag flying at the Alitos’ house.
Justice
Alito declined to respond to questions about the beach house flag,
including what it was intended to convey and how it comported with his
obligations as a justice. The court also declined to respond.
In
commenting for the Times report last week about the upside-down
American flag at his Virginia home in 2021, Justice Alito said that it
had been raised by his wife, Martha-Ann Alito, during a clash with a
neighbor.
The revelation about that flag prompted concerns from legal scholars and ethicists, and calls from dozens of Democratic lawmakers that the justice recuse himself from cases related to Jan. 6. The news also drew criticism from some conservative politicians, including Senator Lindsey Graham, who said that displaying the inverted flag was “not good judgment.”
During the period the Appeal to Heaven flag was seen flying at the justice’s New Jersey house, a key Jan. 6 case arrived at the Supreme Court, challenging whether those who stormed the Capitol could be prosecuted for obstruction.In coming weeks, the justices will rule on that case, which could
scuttle some of the charges against Mr. Trump, as well as on whether he
is immune from prosecution for actions he took while president. Their
decisions will shape how accountable he can be held for trying to
overturn the last presidential election and his chances at regaining the White House in the next one.
The flag was a presence at the Jan. 6 attack on the capitol.Credit: JT/STAR MAX/IPx, via Associated Press
The
disclosure about the new flag is troubling, several ethics experts said
in interviews, because it ties Justice Alito more closely to symbols
associated with the attempted election subversion on Jan. 6, and because
it was displayed as the obstruction case was first coming for
consideration by the court.
Judges are
not supposed to give any impression of bias, yet the flag could be seen
as telegraphing the Alitos’ views — and at a time when the justices
were on the cusp of adopting a new ethics code.
“We all have our biases, but the good judge fights against them,” said
Charles Geyh, a law professor at Indiana University Bloomington. “When a
judge celebrates his predispositions by hoisting them on a flag,” he
added, “that’s deeply disturbing.”
Records
show that the Alitos have owned the beach house since 2014, and he is a
well-known presence in the waterfront community. Residents said they
recalled seeing the justice last summer, though it is unclear how much
time he spent there. Neighbors said that once they realized what the
flag signified, they were surprised to see it displayed, particularly in
a prominent spot where many boaters glide by. The six people who shared
their accounts and photographs asked not to be identified because they
didn’t want to antagonize a longtime neighbor. When The Times visited
the house on Wednesday, the flagpole was bare.
Until
about a decade ago, the Appeal to Heaven flag was mostly a historical
relic. But since then it has been revived to represent “a theological
vision of what the United States should be and how it should be
governed,” said Matthew Taylor, a religion scholar at the Institute of Islamic, Christian and Jewish Studies. He is also the author of a forthcoming book
tracing how a right-wing Christian author and speaker who repopularized
the flag helped propel Mr. Trump’s attempt to overturn the election.
That figure, Dutch Sheets, has led a yearslong campaign to present the flag to political figures, including Sarah Palin, the former Alaska governor and vice-presidential pick, and an Indiana gubernatorial candidate whom Mr. Sheets wrapped in the flag at a recent rally. Republican members of Congress and state officials have displayed the flag as well, among them Doug Mastriano, a Pennsylvania state senator and a leader
of the “Stop the Steal” campaign. The highest-ranking elected official
known to show the flag is Representative Mike Johnson, who hung it at
his office last fall shortly after becoming speaker of the House.
A
spokesman for Mr. Johnson said that the speaker “has long appreciated
the rich history of the flag, as it was first used by General George
Washington during the Revolutionary War.” It was a gift, the spokesman
said, from Pastor Dan Cummins, a guest chaplain for the House of
Representatives.
“An Appeal to Heaven” is one of three flags outside the office of the House speaker, Mike Johnson. Credit: Kenny Holston/The New York Times
Since
its creation during the American Revolution, the flag has carried a
message of defiance: The phrase “appeal to heaven” comes from the
17th-century philosopher John Locke, who wrote of a responsibility to
rebel, even use violence, to overthrow unjust rule. “It’s a paraphrase
for trial by arms,” Anthony Grafton, a historian at Princeton
University, said in an interview. “The main point is that there’s no
appeal, there’s no one else you can ask for help or a judgment.”
As part of CSREA’s Third Rail Lecture series, author and professor Robin D.G. Kelley visits the Center to discuss the topic of affirmative action. The Third Rail Series aims to address some of the most thorny and contentious social, political, and cultural issues related to race and ethnicity in contemporary society.
During his visit, Robin provided a detailed presentation on affirmative action, followed by a moderated discussion with Tricia Rose.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER:
Robin D. G. Kelley is Distinguished Professor and Gary B. Nash Endowed Chair in U.S. History at UCLA. His books include, Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists During the Great Depression; Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination; Yo’ Mama’s DisFunktional!: Fighting the Culture Wars in Urban America; Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original; and Our History Has Always Been Contraband: In Defense of Black Studies, co-edited with Colin Kaepernick and Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor.
His essays have appeared in dozens of publications, including The Nation, New York Times, Monthly Review, Dissent, New Labor Forum, American Quarterly, Social Text, Metropolis, Journal of American History, New Labor Forum, and The Boston Review, for which he also serves as Contributing Editor. He is also a member of Scholars for Social Justice.
ABOUT THE EVENT:
The Supreme Court’s overturning of affirmative action, the passage of anti-DEI legislation, and the criminalization of liberal multicultural education have caused panic in higher education. We have attributed this shift to “whitelash” and the neo-fascist turn in American politics, but it is not new. The assault on affirmative action began at its inception, both as policy and as an idea rooted in color-blind racism and stigmatizing myths of undeserved privilege. To paraphrase W. E. B. Du Bois, the Right murdered affirmative action so completely we do not recognize its corpse. Kelley’s “autopsy” will revisit the history of affirmative action, the long war on racial justice in higher education, and offer reflections on the struggle ahead.
The Supreme Court Is Playing a Dangerous Game by Jamelle Bouie March 22, 2024 New York Times
Christopher Lee for The New York Times
If
the chief currency of the Supreme Court is its legitimacy as an
institution, then you can say with confidence that its account is as
close to empty as it has been for a very long time.
Since
the court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization
nearly two years ago, its general approval with the public has taken a
plunge. As recently as the last presidential election year, according to the Pew Research Center,
70 percent of Americans said they had a favorable view of the court. In
the wake of Dobbs, that number dipped to 44 percent. Twenty-four
percent of Democrats, according to Pew, said they approved of the
Supreme Court.
In the latest 538 average, just over 52 percent of Americans disapproved of the Supreme Court, and around 40 percent approved.
Does
the court know about its precipitous decline with much of the public?
It’s hard to say. It’s easier to answer a related question: Does it
care? If the recent actions of the conservative majority are any
indication, the answer is no.
Over the past month, members of that majority have effectively rewritten the 14th Amendment
to functionally shield Donald Trump from the constitutional
consequences of his actions leading up to and on Jan. 6. They have taken
up the former president’s tendentious argument that he is immune to
criminal prosecution for all actions taken while in office — postponing a trial
and potentially denying the public the right to know, before we go to
the polls in November, whether he is a criminal in the eyes of the law.
Most
recently, the court allowed the State of Texas, governed by a cadre of
some of the most reactionary conservatives in the country, to carry out its own immigration policy
in contravention of both federal officials and the general precedent
that it’s the national government that handles the national border, not
the states.
It is enough to make teachers and practitioners of constitutional law wonder, as my colleague Jesse Wegman noted last month,
whether there’s any reason to play the table as though it were still on
the level — to continue to treat the court as if it were anything other
than a partisan political institution.
Here
I want to raise an additional point. It’s not just the recent actions
of the Supreme Court — including the corrupt conduct of some of its
members — that jeopardize its legitimacy and political standing but also
the circumstances under which this particular court majority came into
being.
There is no way to look past
the fact that five of the six members of the conservative majority on
the Roberts court were nominated by presidents who entered office
without the winds of a popular majority. John Roberts and Samuel Alito,
the author of Dobbs, were placed on the court by George W. Bush, who
entered office short of a popular vote win and on the strength of a
contested Electoral College victory. The other three — Neil Gorsuch,
Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett — were nominated by Trump, who
lost the national popular vote by more than two million ballots in 2016.
The
three Trump justices bring additional baggage. Each one was nominated
and confirmed in a show of partisan power politics. Gorsuch was the
direct beneficiary of Senator Mitch McConnell’s blockade of the seat
held by Justice Antonin Scalia, who died early in 2016. Republicans, led
by McConnell, then the Senate majority leader, refused to give
President Barack Obama’s nominee, Judge Merrick Garland of the U.S.
Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, a hearing in the Senate Judiciary
Committee. It was the first time the Senate had simply ignored a
president’s nominee for the Supreme Court.
Kavanaugh
was confirmed by a narrow vote of 50 to 48 (with one abstention and one
absence) in the face of a credible accusation of sexual assault.
Barrett was confirmed in flagrant violation of McConnell’s own rule for
Supreme Court nominations. To block Garland, McConnell said that it was
too close to an election to move forward; to confirm Barrett, McConnell
said that it was too close to an election to wait.
There
is no question that the Supreme Court’s ruling in Dobbs was the
catalyst for its poor standing with the public. But the Dobbs majority
owes itself to a garish Republican partisanship that almost certainly
worked to weaken the political ground on which it stood in relation to
the American people.
At the risk of
sounding a little dramatic, you can draw a useful comparison between the
Supreme Court’s current political position and the one it held on the
eve of the 1860 presidential election.
It
was not just the ruling itself that drove the ferocious opposition to
the Supreme Court’s decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford, which overturned
the Missouri Compromise and wrote Black Americans out of the national
community; it was the political entanglement of the Taney court with the
slaveholding interests of the antebellum Democratic Party.
"I'm for truth, no matter who tells it. I'm for justice, no matter who it's for or against."
W.E.B. DuBois (1868-1963)
"There is but one coward on earth, and that is the coward that dare not know."
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968)
"Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle. And so we must straighten our backs and work for our freedom. A man can't ride you unless your back is bent. "
James Baldwin (1924-1987)
"Precisely at the point when you begin to develop a conscience you must find yourself at war with your society."
"A civilization that proves incapable of solving the problems it creates is a decadent civilization. A civilization that chooses to close its eyes to its most crucial problems is a stricken civilization. A civilization that uses its principles for trickery and deceit is a dying civilization."
Nina Simone (1933-2003)
"There's no other purpose, so far as I'm concerned, for us except to reflect the times, the situations around us and the things we're able to say through our art, the things that millions of people can't say. I think that's the function of an artist and, of course, those of us who are lucky leave a legacy so that when we're dead, we also live on. That's people like Billie Holiday and I hope that I will be that lucky, but meanwhile, the function, so far as I'm concerned, is to reflect the times, whatever that might be."
Amilcar Cabral (1924-1973)
"Always bear in mind that the people are not fighting for ideas, for the things in anyone's head. They are fighting to live better and in peace, to see their lives go forward, to guarantee the future of their children ....Hide nothing from the masses of our people. Tell no lies. Expose lies whenever they are told. Mask no difficulties, mistakes, failures. Claim no easy victories..." .
Angela Davis (b. 1944)
"The idea of freedom is inspiring. But what does it mean? If you are free in a political sense but have no food, what's that? The freedom to starve?”
Duke Ellington (1899-1974)
“Jazz is the freest musical expression we have yet seen. To me, then, jazz means simply freedom of musical speech! And it is precisely because of this freedom that so many varied forms of jazz exist. The important thing to remember, however, is that not one of these forms represents jazz by itself. Jazz simply means the freedom to have many forms.”
Amiri Baraka (1934-2014)
"Thought is more important than art. To revere art and have no understanding of the process that forces it into existence, is finally not even to understand what art is."
Frederick Douglass (1817-1895)
"Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.” --August 3, 1857
Cecil Taylor (1929-2018)
“Musical categories don’t mean anything unless we talk about the actual specific acts that people go through to make music, how one speaks, dances, dresses, moves, thinks, makes love...all these things. We begin with a sound and then say, what is the function of that sound, what is determining the procedures of that sound? Then we can talk about how it motivates or regenerates itself, and that’s where we have tradition.”
Ella Baker (1903-1986)
"Strong people don't need strong leaders"
Paul Robeson (1898-1976)
"The artist must take sides. He must elect to fight for freedom or for slavery. I have made my choice. I had no alternative."
John Coltrane (1926-1967)
"I want to be a force for real good. In other words, I know there are bad forces. I know that there are forces out here that bring suffering to others and misery to the world, but I want to be the opposite force. I want to be the force which is truly for good."
Miles Davis (1926-1991)
"Jazz is the big brother of Revolution. Revolution follows it around."
C.L.R. James (1901-1989)
"All development takes place by means of self-movement, not organization by external forces. It is within the organism itself (i.e. within the society) that there must be realized new motives, new possibilities."
Frantz Fanon (1925-1961)
"Now, political education means opening minds, awakening them, and allowing the birth of their intelligence as [Aime] Cesaire said, it is 'to invent souls.' To educate the masses politically does not mean, cannot mean, making a political speech. What it means is to try, relentlessly and passionately, to teach the masses that everything depends on them."
Edward Said (1935-2003)
“I take criticism so seriously as to believe that, even in the midst of a battle in which one is unmistakably on one side against another, there should be criticism, because there must be critical consciousness if there are to be issues, problems, values, even lives to be fought for."
Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937)
“The challenge of modernity is to live without illusions and without becoming disillusioned. There must be pessimism of the intellect and optimism of the will.”
Susan Sontag (1933-2004)
"Do stuff. Be clenched, curious. Not waiting for inspiration’s shove or society’s kiss on your forehead. Pay attention. It’s all about paying attention. Attention is vitality. It connects you with others. It makes you eager. Stay eager."
Kofi Natambu, editor of The Panopticon Review, is a writer, poet, cultural critic, and political journalist whose poetry, essays, criticism, reviews, and journalism have appeared in many literary magazines, journals, newspapers, and anthologies. He is the author of a biography MALCOLM X: His Life & Work (Alpha Books) and two books of poetry: THE MELODY NEVER STOPS (Past Tents Press) and INTERVALS (Post Aesthetic Press). He was the founder and editor of SOLID GROUND: A NEW WORLD JOURNAL, a national quarterly magazine of the arts, culture, and politics and the editor of a literary anthology NOSTALGIA FOR THE PRESENT (Post Aesthetic Press). Natambu has read his work throughout the country and given many lectures and workshops at academic and arts institutions. He has taught American literature, literary theory and criticism, cultural history and criticism, film studies, political science, creative writing, philosophy, critical theory, and music history and criticism (Jazz, Blues, R&B, Hip Hop) at many universities and colleges. He was also a curator in the Education Department of Detroit’s Museum of African American History. Born in Detroit, Michigan, Natambu currently lives in Berkeley, California with his wife Chuleenan.
