We march for those sweet children torn from their parents... and for our own children, who will be shaped by our demonstrations of humanity, our cries for justice and decency #FamiliesBelongTogetherMarch
Portland, OR stands with all of you, our brothers and sisters in solidarity across the country #FamiliesBelongTogtherPDX
They are old enough to remember some of this day. I hope they will always know to stand up and shout when they see wrongs in the world
(My children belong with me like puzzle pieces. If one were taken from me carelessly, tossed away without record, I could never begin to understand that casual cruelty.)
And to the babies out there spending night after night in isolation and terror... I hope some part of our voices today reach you & give you a measure of peace. You are loved. We stand with you. We will fight to get you back where you belong.
"What does it say about this country that this is the state of our discourse? That Kavanaugh even stands any chance of being made one of the most powerful figures in the American government, with control over life and liberty?" currentaffairs.org/2018/09/how-we…
"He went before the United States Senate and showed total contempt for his vow to tell the truth. He attempted to portray a highly esteemed doctor as a crazy person, by consistently misrepresenting the evidence. He treated the public like we were idiots..."
"... like we wouldn’t notice as he pretended he was ralphing during Beach Week from too many jalapeños, as he feigned ignorance about sex slang, as he misread his own meticulously-kept 1982 summer calendar, as he replied to questions about his drinking habits ..."
One of the most emotional, awful parts of today for me: 1/2 thru Dr. Ford's opening statement, I became attuned to a sense of relief. It took me a second, then I realized I was reacting to:
-Her whiteness
-Her country club background
-Her level of education & sophistication
1/
Because surely *this* woman could be believed. A woman of color, a poor woman, an uneducated woman - these women would be dismissed, torn apart, stripped of credibility and humiliated well before the hearing today and utterly destroyed within it. 2/
And I realized the only reason I had a smidgen of hope that she would come out intact was that she was about as dominant culture as she could be, save for her gender. 3/
Yale continues to elevate a School of Medicine faculty member known to have committed sexual harassment. This is how academic institutions foster a toxic culture for women yaledailynews.com/blog/2018/09/0…
This is my beloved alma mater, and I know we can do better @TIMESUPNOW@nytimes
Over 650 students, residents, faculty, and alumni have signed a letter to Yale President Salovey protesting this decision as well as Dean Alpern’s role in addressing harassment over the years, which included a reluctance to penalize Simons in any meaningful way.
In a painfully painful statement, Yale clarified that Simons had not been honored but rather removed from one highly prestigious endowed chair (only after protest from the family sponsoring the endowment) to another one: news.yale.edu/2018/09/06/uni…
Apropos of nothing, I thought I'd muse a little on what pathological narcissists do when backed into a corner.
Narcissists are self-focused, have an inflated, grandiose sense of self, and rarely cede personal goals to other ideals.
They are not oblivious to threat to self: they simply have abnormal, extreme responses to it. On the one hand, they demonstrate deficient fear processing and can be oblivious to the potentially devastating consequences of pursuing their self-serving goals.
“Nobody embodies more fully the connection between the African-American spiritual, the blues, R. & B., rock and roll—the way that hardship and sorrow were transformed ...
... into something full of beauty and vitality and hope. American history wells up when Aretha sings. That’s why, when she sits down at a piano and sings ‘A Natural Woman,’ she can move me to tears—...
...the same way that Ray Charles’s version of ‘America the Beautiful’ will always be in my view the most patriotic piece of music ever performed—because it captures the fullness of the American experience...