Okay, so yeah, children were there, but then this sounds like an issue for the parents of those children, not the AGâs office. (Iâm also fully aware that theyâll take any excuse.)
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Houston in the summer? (Which is also hurricane season, so a two-fer)
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Camp Determination was near Snyder, Texas.
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I wonât watch the video, but I recommend listening to this.
Mehdi Hasan , editor-in-chief and CEO of Zeteo, columnist for The Guardian and former MSNBC host, talks about his experience debating 20 far-right conservatives on the YouTube series âSurrounded,â plus news related to the Jeffrey Epstein frenzy, the NYC mayoral race and more.
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From Mehdi himselfâŚ
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WTFâ
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Thereâs a quote from Bryan Stevenson, from an interview, from a conversation he has with some of the activists who worked alongside Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and John Lewis (among so many others).
So these veterans of the civil rights marches (and of course, lots of other actions) were now pretty elderly. They listened patiently to Stevensonâs plan to work with death row inmates in Alabama whose cases were unjust. Briefly (and this link is to his EJI work specifically even if Onebox doesnât show it⌠so I blockquoted it below, apologies for length):
Equal Justice Initiative
When the United States Congress eliminated funding for death-penalty defense, Stevenson converted the center and founded the non-profit Equal Justice Initiative (EJI) in Montgomery. In 1995, he was awarded a MacArthur Grant and put all the money toward supporting the center.[3] He guaranteed a defense of anyone in Alabama sentenced to the death penalty, as it was the only state that did not provide legal assistance to people on death row.[7] It also has the highest per capita rate of death penalty sentencing.
One of EJIâs first cases was the post-conviction appeal of Walter McMillian, who had been confined to death row before being convicted of murder and sentenced to death.[8] Stevenson was able to discredit every element of the prosecutionâs initial case, which led to McMillian being exonerated and released from jail in 1993.[9]
Stevenson has been particularly concerned about overly harsh sentencing of persons convicted of crimes committed as children, under the age of 18.[1] In 2005, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Roper v. Simmons that the death penalty was unconstitutional for persons convicted of crimes committed under the age of 18. Stevenson worked to have the courtâs thinking about appropriate punishment broadened to related cases applying to children convicted under the age of 17.
EJI mounted a litigation campaign to gain review of cases in which convicted children were sentenced to life-without-parole, including cases without homicide. In Miller v. Alabama (2012), the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in a landmark decision that mandatory sentences of life-without-parole for children 17 and under were unconstitutional; their decision has affected statutes in 29 states. In 2016, the court ruled in Montgomery v. Louisiana that this decision had to be applied retroactively, potentially affecting the sentences of 2300 people nationwide who had been sentenced to life while still children.[10]
As of 2022, the EJI has saved over 130 people from the death penalty.[11] In addition, it has represented poor people, defended people on appeal, overturned wrongful convictions, and worked to alleviate bias in the criminal justice system.[3] âŚ
In that conversation with those activists, Stevenson got experienced, seasoned confirmation that he was in for a long haul against huge odds. I am going to paraphrase what he recalled of that, itâs close enough:
(after listening to Stevensonâs plans) Woman #1: The work you are doing is going to be hard, hard, hard.
Woman #2: Thatâs why youâll need to be brave, brave, brave.
These words, this statement, is my takeaway from Hasanâs encounter as well. His debrief on Zeteo was the cherry-on-top of the most sobering, courageous account from a journalist that I have witnessed in a long dang time.
I try to draw strength from people like Hasan, Stevenson, Lewis, King, and the many who are still working to make the promise of America, with its constitution and its melting pot, its Flaminâ Hot Cheetos and vestigial stands of wild rice and blue corn, its Buckees and bison, its Alligator Alcatraz and National Museum of African American History and Culture, its bonkers hegemony and miraculous people working for justice.
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I mean they also unironically simp darth vader and it resonates with at least 20% of the population because they think Vader is a hero of sorts.
I had a similar, but perhaps more ambiguous, experience but with confederates. Like as in âyou wanna know what evil murderous confederates looked like? hereâs your great great uncle and his wife in a tintype!â
People make up safe clowns to feel safe laughing at. In doing so they minimize the real threat that is represented in a past war.
On one hand this is honestly kind of fine I think in the sense that people are always going to cope this way (eg south parkâs recent trump parody) so we might as well engage with it. OTOH people are way too inclined to see even ridiculously theatric fiction as a documentary.
Thereâs power in laughing at a threat, but thereâs also folly in believing clownish representations of a threat.
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⌠at their peril! 
We U.S.ians have gotten awfully comfortable. And some of us have all-too-willingly delegated the thinky-thinky bits of our modus vivendi to bad faith puppeteers who cheerfully profit by our lack of critical thinking skills. We are also very good at distracting ourselves, and numbing ourselves, because contemplating a dark future is so very painful. Animals avoid pain. But humans are unique in creating their own suffering on a massive scale.
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In the context of this renewed interest, the CEO and founder, Jason Y Lee, told Variety that the platform aimed to âprovoke understanding and create human connectionâ, to show âwhat discourse can and should look likeâ, and to be âthe Disney of empathyâ.
the disney of empathy
Lee added: âWe donât want to favor one side or the other, but we are very careful in trying to make sure that weâre not spreaders of misinformation or ideologies that might be hateful or bad.â
Well, ya failed, dude⌠you fucking FAILEDâŚ
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âThe Disney of empathyâ??? Wouldnât that mean itâs all fake, but painted with bright colors to make everyone forget that it isnât real?
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And a catchy, upbeat song into the bargain!
Oh, and tons of merchandise.
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CA Gubernatorial Candidate Kyle Langford Says âThe Nazis Were Coolâ
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Itâs the commodification of empathy, essentially. Not empathy as a human action that can knit us closer to others, but as a means of selling a product that people can feel like theyâre being empathetic, when in reality, they are just consuming yet another packaged emotion, much like Disney doesâŚ
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Thatâs real?
THATâS REAL??
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yeah. Itâs the same asshole who proposed this:
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But yeah, the anti-genocide in Gaza crowd are the REAL anti-SemitesâŚ
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