#California women entrepreneurs

[justposting1]

Dates Are Your Blood Sugar's Best Friend: Ditch the Myths! Dr. Mandell

In this article, we’re diving deep into the often-misunderstood world of dates and their incredible benefits for blood sugar management. Many people shy away from this naturally sweet fruit due to common myths, but we’re here to clear the air! Dates are not just a delicious snack; they are a powerhouse of nutrients that can actually help stabilize your blood sugar levels. Packed with fiber,…

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Sympathy for the spammer

Catch me in Miami! I'll be at Books and Books in Coral Gables on Jan 22 at 8PM.

In any scam, any con, any hustle, the big winners are the people who supply the scammers – not the scammers themselves. The kids selling dope on the corner are making less than minimum wage, while the respectable crime-bosses who own the labs clean up. Desperate "retail investors" who buy shitcoins from Superbowl ads get skinned, while the MBA bros who issue the coins make millions (in real dollars, not crypto).

It's ever been thus. The California gold rush was a con, and nearly everyone who went west went broke. Famously, the only reliable way to cash out on the gold rush was to sell "picks and shovels" to the credulous, doomed and desperate. That's how Leland Stanford made his fortune, which he funneled into eugenics programs (and founding a university):

https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/malcolm-harris/palo-alto/9780316592031/

That means that the people who try to con you are almost always getting conned themselves. Think of Multi-Level Marketing (MLM) scams. My forthcoming novel The Bezzle opens with a baroque and improbable fast-food Ponzi in the town of Avalon on the island of Catalina, founded by the chicle monopolist William Wrigley Jr:

http://thebezzle.org

Wrigley found fast food declasse and banned it from the island, a rule that persists to this day. In The Bezzle, the forensic detective Martin Hench uncovers The Fry Guys, an MLM that flash-freezes contraband burgers and fries smuggled on-island from the mainland and sells them to islanders though an "affiliate marketing" scheme that is really about recruiting other affiliate markets to sell under you. As with every MLM, the value of the burgers and fries sold is dwarfed by the gigantic edifice of finance fraud built around it, with "points" being bought and sold for real cash, which is snaffled up and sucked out of the island by a greedy mainlander who is behind the scheme.

A "bezzle" is John Kenneth Galbraith's term for "the magic interval when a confidence trickster knows he has the money he has appropriated but the victim does not yet understand that he has lost it." In every scam, there's a period where everyone feels richer – but only the scammers are actually cleaning up. The wealth of the marks is illusory, but the longer the scammer can preserve the illusion, the more real money the marks will pump into the system.

MLMs are particularly ugly, because they target people who are shut out of economic opportunity – women, people of color, working people. These people necessarily rely on social ties for survival, looking after each others' kids, loaning each other money they can't afford, sharing what little they have when others have nothing.

It's this social cohesion that MLMs weaponize. Crypto "entrepreneurs" are encouraged to suck in their friends and family by telling them that they're "building Black wealth." Working women are exhorted to suck in their bffs by appealing to their sisterhood and the chance for "women to lift each other up."

The "sales people" trying to get you to buy crypto or leggings or supplements are engaged in predatory conduct that will make you financially and socially worse off, wrecking their communities' finances and shattering the mutual aid survival networks they rely on. But they're not getting rich on this – they're also being scammed:

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4686468

This really hit home for me in the mid-2000s, when I was still editing Boing Boing. We had a submission form where our readers could submit links for us to look at for inclusion on the blog, and it was overwhelmed by spam. We'd add all kinds of antispam to it, and still, we'd get floods of hundreds or even thousands of spam submissions to it.

One night, I was lying in my bed in London and watching these spams roll in. They were all for small businesses in the rustbelt, handyman services, lawn-care, odd jobs, that kind of thing. They were 10 million miles from the kind of thing we'd ever post about on Boing Boing. They were coming in so thickly that I literally couldn't finish downloading my email – the POP session was dropping before I could get all the mail in the spool. I had to ssh into my mail server and delete them by hand. It was maddening.

Frustrated and furious, I started calling the phone numbers associated with these small businesses, demanding an explanation. I assumed that they'd hired some kind of sleazy marketing service and I wanted to know who it was so I could give them a piece of my mind.

But what I discovered when I got through was much weirder. These people had all been laid off from factories that were shuttering due to globalization. As part of their termination packages, their bosses had offered them "retraining" via "courses" in founding their own businesses.

The "courses" were the precursors to the current era's rise-and-grind hustle-culture scams (again, the only people getting rich from that stuff are the people selling the courses – the "students" finish the course poorer). They promised these laid-off workers, who'd given their lives to their former employers before being discarded, that they just needed to pull themselves up by their own boostraps:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/10/declaration-of-interdependence/#solidarity-forever

After all, we had the internet now! There were so many new opportunities to be your own boss! The course came with a dreadful build-your-own-website service, complete with an overpriced domain sales portal, and a single form for submitting your new business to "thousands of search engines."

This was nearly 20 years ago, but even then, there was really only one search engine that mattered: Google. The "thousands of search engines" the scammers promised to submit these desperate peoples' websites to were just submission forms for directories, indexes, blogs, and mailing lists. The number of directories, indexes, blogs and mailing lists that would publish their submissions was either "zero" or "nearly zero." There was certainly no possibility that anyone at Boing Boing would ever press the wrong key and accidentally write a 500-word blog post about a leaf-raking service in a collapsing deindustrialized exurb in Kentucky or Ohio.

The people who were drowning me in spam weren't the scammers – they were the scammees.

But that's only half the story. Years later, I discovered how our submission form was getting included in this get-rich-quick's mass-submission system. It was a MLM! Coders in the former Soviet Union were getting work via darknet websites that promised them relative pittances for every submission form they reverse-engineered and submitted. The smart coders didn't crack the forms directly – they recruited other, less business-savvy coders to do that for them, and then often as not, ripped them off.

The scam economy runs on this kind of indirection, where scammees are turned into scammers, who flood useful and productive and nice spaces with useless dross that doesn't even make them any money. Take the submission queue at Clarkesworld, the great online science fiction magazine, which famously had to close after it was flooded with thousands of junk submission "written" by LLMs:

https://www.npr.org/2023/02/24/1159286436/ai-chatbot-chatgpt-magazine-clarkesworld-artificial-intelligence

There was a zero percent chance that Neil Clarke would accidentally accept one of these submissions. They were uniformly terrible. The people submitting these "stories" weren't frustrated sf writers who'd discovered a "life hack" that let them turn out more brilliant prose at scale.

They were scammers who'd been scammed into thinking that AIs were the key to a life of passive income, a 4-Hour Work-Week powered by an AI-based self-licking ice-cream cone:

https://pod.link/1651876897/episode/995c8a778ede17d2d7cff393e5203157

This is absolutely classic passive-income brainworms thinking. "I have a bot that can turn out plausible sentences. I will locate places where sentences can be exchanged for money, aim my bot at it, sit back, and count my winnings." It's MBA logic on meth: find a thing people pay for, then, without bothering to understand why they pay for that thing, find a way to generate something like it at scale and bombard them with it.

Con artists start by conning themselves, with the idea that "you can't con an honest man." But the factor that predicts whether someone is connable isn't their honesty – it's their desperation. The kid selling drugs on the corner, the mom desperately DMing her high-school friends to sell them leggings, the cousin who insists that you get in on their shitcoin – they're all doing it because the system is rigged against them, and getting worse every day.

These people reason – correctly – that all the people getting really rich are scamming. If Amazon can make $38b/year selling "ads" that push worse products that cost more to the top of their search results, why should the mere fact that an "opportunity" is obviously predatory and fraudulent disqualify it?

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/29/aethelred-the-unready/#not-one-penny-for-tribute

The quest for passive income is really the quest for a "greater fool," the economist's term for the person who relieves you of the useless crap you just overpaid for. It rots the mind, atomizes communities, shatters solidarity and breeds cynicism:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/24/passive-income/#swiss-cheese-security

The rise and rise of botshit cannot be separated from this phenomenon. The botshit in our search-results, our social media feeds, and our in-boxes isn't making money for the enshittifiers who send it – rather, they are being hustled by someone who's selling them the "picks and shovels" for the AI gold rush:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/jan/03/botshit-generative-ai-imminent-threat-democracy

That's the true cost of all the automation-driven unemployment criti-hype: while we're nowhere near a place where bots can steal your job, we're certainly at the point where your boss can be suckered into firing you and replacing you with a bot that fails at doing your job:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/11/robots-stole-my-jerb/#computer-says-no

The manic "entrepreneurs" who've been stampeded into panic by the (correct) perception that the economy is a game of musical chairs where the number of chairs is decreasing at breakneck speed are easy marks for the Leland Stanfords of AI, who are creating generational wealth for themselves by promising that their bots will automate away all the tedious work that goes into creating value. Expect a lot more Amazon Marketplace products called "I'm sorry, I cannot fulfil this request as it goes against OpenAI use policy":

https://www.theverge.com/2024/1/12/24036156/openai-policy-amazon-ai-listings

No one's going to buy these products, but the AI picks-and-shovels people will still reap a fortune from the attempt. And because history repeats itself, these newly minted billionaires are continuing Leland Stanford's love affair with eugenics:

https://www.truthdig.com/dig-series/eugenics/

The fact that AI spam doesn't pay is important to the fortunes of AI companies. Most high-value AI applications are very risk-intolerant (self-driving cars, radiology analysis, etc). An AI tool might help a human perform these tasks more accurately – by warning them of things that they've missed – but that's not how AI will turn a profit. There's no market for AI that makes your workers cost more but makes them better at their jobs:

https://locusmag.com/2023/12/commentary-cory-doctorow-what-kind-of-bubble-is-ai/

Plenty of people think that spam might be the elusive high-value, low-risk AI application. But that's just not true. The point of AI spam is to get clicks from people who are looking for better content. It's SEO. No one reads 2000 words of algorithm-pleasing LLM garbage over an omelette recipe and then subscribes to that site's feed.

And the omelette recipe generates pennies for the spammer that posted it. They are doing massive volume in order to make those pennies into dollars. You don't make money by posting one spam. If every spammer had to pay the actual recovery costs (energy, chillers, capital amortization, wages) for their query, every AI spam would lose (lots of) money.

Hustle culture and passive income are about turning other peoples' dollars into your dimes. It is a negative-sum activity, a net drain on society. Behind every seemingly successful "passive income" is a con artist who's getting rich by promising – but not delivering – that elusive passive income, and then blaming the victims for not hustling hard enough:

https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/blog/2023/12/blueprint-trouble

I'm Kickstarting the audiobook for The Bezzle, the sequel to Red Team Blues, narrated by @wilwheaton! You can pre-order the audiobook and ebook, DRM free, as well as the hardcover, signed or unsigned. There's also bundles with Red Team Blues in ebook, audio or paperback.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/15/passive-income-brainworms/#four-hour-work-week

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

[soon-palestine]

@RBatniji is one of the most respected entrepreneurs in Silicon valley. He lost 37 members of his family on 18th Nov by an Israeli airstrike. He recently met with Secretary Blinken and here is what he shared,

"I am Rajaie Batniji. I take no pride and no honor in being here.

I was born in Gaza and immigrated to California as a young child. I am Rajaie Batniji. I take no pride and no honor in being here. Many of my fellow Palestinian Americans discouraged me from speaking with you today, concerned that this discussion was solely performative. I share their concern.

I come here out of a sense of duty, to try – as futile as it may be – to save my family in Gaza from being killed. I was born in Gaza and immigrated to California as a young child. I grew up visiting Gaza often, and those visits shaped me in many ways. I personally experienced some of the violence of occupation.

I studied the history of the region at Stanford, completed my doctorate in international relations at Oxford as a Marshall Scholar – honoring the legacy of one of your predecessors in this office – and became a physician focused on the health of those that have the least privilege. I’m an entrepreneur who builds teams and technologies that improve American health care.

I would rather not be here today. Mr. Secretary, you have provided the weapons and the political cover that enabled the murder of 65 members of my family, mostly women and children, over the past four months. In strikes in mid-November, three generations of my family were killed by missiles as they sought shelter and safety. I carry their memories with me. I see their crushed bodies when I close my eyes.

The survivors in my family are homeless. Some 70% of homes in Gaza have been destroyed, according to an analysis by The Wall Street Journal, along with almost all the schools, all the universities, many of the hospitals, the mosques, the churches, the historical sites and the public records.

My paternal grandparents��� home in Shejaiya had been among the last homes of my family still standing. This is the home where I was born. It collapsed in a “controlled demolition” just before the new year.

According to our own US intelligence agencies, Israel used 29,000 air-to-ground munitions during the first two months of its assault on Gaza. That’s more than were used in the years of the Iraq War – and Gaza is less than one thousandth the size.

No one I know in Gaza has a home, or possessions beyond what they carried as they fled Israeli bombardment.

My family may be better off than most in Gaza and they are still hungry. I spoke with my mom’s brother this week, and he told me he has lost almost 20 kilograms (44 pounds). Despite your promises, food aid has not been able to reach Gaza to come anywhere near meeting the need. It is blocked at every opportunity, including by Israeli protestors at the Kerem Shalom border crossing, and by Israeli inspections and within Gaza by the Israeli military. According to the United Nations, 4 out of 5 of the hungriest people anywhere in the world are in Gaza. You know that the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, provides food for most Gazans and critical infrastructure for other aid organizations. Yet, after Israel made unverified allegations that a handful of UNRWA staff participated in the October 7 attacks, you cut the funding for UNRWA in what I can understand only as an act of collective punishment. I fear this makes you, and me – as an American – party to the use of starvation as a weapon of war.

My cousins in Gaza, who are physicians like me, have no place to practice medicine. Their hospitals have been destroyed or incapacitated. After moving from Shifa to al-Aqsa hospital, only to be evacuated from each by the Israeli military after seeing patients and colleagues killed, they are now living in tents in Rafah and al-Mawasi, using their surgical skills to repair leaks in their tents while the bodies of wounded Palestinians go untreated, and often unretrieved.

I have worked extensively in global health and wrote a series of research papers in 2009 on what we thought then was a Palestinian health crisis. We could never, though, have imagined this – the complete destruction of Gaza’s health care system is unprecedented.

Even the dead among my family were not spared. Satellite images show that Israeli bulldozers and tanks desecrated the graveyards where my grandparents and great grandparents were resting. I hope to bury their remains again one day.

What do you wish to be your legacy, Secretary Blinken? You cannot say you didn’t know. You cannot say that you did not knowingly and materially support these deaths, which a US federal court and the International Court of Justice have both determined plausibly constitute genocide. I am the father of three young children in San Francisco. As adults, I am certain they will reflect on this “genocide” with horror. It will be taught in our classrooms and remembered in our museums as we vow never to repeat it.

I ask you to use the full power of your office and every bit of leverage the US has to allow aid to reach all of Gaza, including in the north, where hundreds of thousands of people remain in desperation. And, to resume the funding for UNRWA, which will be essential to the distribution of any aid. I ask you to uphold a rules-based order – which serves our long-term interests – by calling Israel’s indiscriminate bombing that has largely killed women and children, the attacks on health care and the use of starvation as a weapon of war as the war crimes you and I know they are. Your words matter, Mr. Secretary.

I feel indignity sitting before you in this comfortable conference room while my family desperately awaits word about a ceasefire, in the dark, hungry, and in tents in fear that the Israeli military will kill them at any moment.

In a dignified world, I would be asking for justice, not mercy. That day will come.

I hope that you, and this administration, can act quickly to bring our nation to the right side of history before it is far too late.I ask you to uphold a rules-based order – which serves our long-term interests – by calling Israel’s indiscriminate bombing that has largely killed women and children, the attacks on health care and the use of starvation as a weapon of war as the war crimes you and I know they are. Your words matter, Mr. Secretary.

I feel indignity sitting before you in this comfortable conference room while my family desperately awaits word about a ceasefire, in the dark, hungry, and in tents in fear that the Israeli military will kill them at any moment.

In a dignified world, I would be asking for justice, not mercy. That day will come.

I hope that you, and this administration, can act quickly to bring our nation to the right side of history before it is far too late.

[brookstonalmanac]

Holidays 9.1

Holidays

American Chess Day

Arbor Day (Peru)

Arts Day (Bardo)

Asbestos Awareness Day (UK)

Back to Hogwarts Day

Bahti Meskerem (Eritrea)

Building and Code Staff Appreciation Day

Carrington Event Day

Chicken Boy Day

Childhood Cancer Awareness Day (Tennessee)

Constitution Day (Slovakia)

Creation Day (According to Julius Africanus; 5,508 yrs, 3 months, 25 days BC)

Daffodil Day (New Zealand)

Day of Belarusian Written Language (Belarus)

Day of Knowledge (Estonia, Russia)

Disaster Prevention Day (Japan)

Draft Horse Day

Emma M. Nutt Day (a.k.a. Nutt Day)

Entrepreneur’s Day (Ukraine)

Euphrosyne Asteroid Day

Flag Day (Honduras)

Footy Colors Day (Australia)

Ginger Cat Appreciation Day

Global Talent Acquisition Day [1st Wednesday]

Human Resources Professional Day (South Dakota)

International Day of Awareness of the Dolphins of Taiji

International Naalbinding Day

International Neil Diamond Day

International Primate Day

International Trade Union Action Day for Peace

International Women in Cyber Day

Journalist Day (Taiwan)

Juno Steroid Day

Kama Sutra Day

Kanto Earthquake Memorial Day (Japan)

Knowledge Day (Armenia, Estonia, Russia, Ukraine)

Lake Baikal Day (Russia)

Letter Appreciation Day

Lose Your Virginity Day

Mary Had a Little Lamb Day

Meteorological Autumn begins (Northern Hemisphere)

Meteorological Spring begins (Southern Hemisphere)

National Acne Positivity Day

National Boykin Spaniel Day

National Child Identity Theft Awareness Day

National Disaster Prevention Day (Japan)

National Forgiveness Day

National Homecare Day of Action

National Hotel Employee Day

National Little Black Dress Day

National Marmoset Day

National No Rhyme (Nor Reason) Day

National Police K-9 Day

901 Day (Tennessee)

No Music Day (Nigeria)

Onam (Hindu harvest festival; India)

Partridge Day (UK)

Pink Cadillac Day

Presidential Message Day (Mexico)

Random Acts of Kindness Day (NZ)

Respect the Drive Day

Rites of Moawita (Elder Scrolls)

Save Japan’s Dolphins Day

Sing A Silly Song In Bed Day

Teacher’s Day (Singapore)

Tourist Day

Toy Tips Executive Toy Test Day

Trade Union Action for Peace Day (Tajikistan)

Trout Day (French Republic)

Veteran’s Day (Poland)

Wattle Day (Australia)

White Rabbit Day

World CLL Day

World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation

World Day of the Fingerprint

World Emotional Trauma Awareness Day

World Freestyle Football Day

World Letter Writing Day

World PCOS Day of Unity

World War Two Anniversary Day

Food & Drink Celebrations

Cherry Popover Day

Chop Suey Day

International Cap Classique Day (South Africa)

National Burnt Ends Day

National Gyro Day

National Oatloaf Day

National Tofu Day (UK)

Oyster Season begins

Rosolio Day (Italy)

Independence & Related Days

Alberta Province Day (Canada; 1905)

Baguio City Day (Philippines)

Baltia (Declared; 2014) [unrecognized]

Chrisland (Declared; 2015) [unrecognized]

Communist North China People’s Republic (Founded; 1948)

Gymnasium State (Declared; 2017) [unrecognized]

Jasaan Day (Philippines)

Qatar (from UK; 1971)

Revolution Day (Libya; 1969)

Saskatchewan Province Day (Canada; 1905)

Slovak Constitution Day (Slovakia)

Uzbekistan (a.k.a. Mustaqillik Kuni); from USSR, 1991)

New Year’s Days

New Year’s Day (Greek or Byzantine (Constantinople) Indication)

1st Sunday in September

Bowling League Day (a.k.a. U.S. Bowling League Day) [1st Sunday]

European Day of Jewish Culture [1st Sunday]

Father's Day (Australia, New Zealand) [1st Sunday]

Harvest Wine Celebration (Livermore, California) [1st Sunday]

Joust of the Saracen (Italy) [1st Sunday]

Mushroom Day (Denmark, Norway, Sweden) [1st Sunday]

National Commemoration Day (South Africa) [1st Sunday]

National Pastor’s Spouses Day [1st Sunday]

National Prayer Day for the Deaf (South Africa) [1st Sunday]

Pet Rock Day [1st Sunday]

Pffiferdaj (Day of the Strolling Fiddlers, or Fiddlers' Festival; Alsace, France) [1st Sunday]

Running of the Sheep (Montana) [Sunday of Labor Day Weekend]

Seven For Sunday [Every Sunday]

Snack Sunday [1st Sunday of Each Month]

Spiritual Sunday [1st Sunday of Each Month]

Start Over Sunday [1st Sunday of Each Month]

Sundae Sunday [Every Sunday]

Sunday Funday [Every Sunday]

Tales and Tallows (Elder Scrolls)

Wakes Sunday [Sunday after September 4]

Working Mother's Day [1st Sunday]

World Goddess Day [1st Sunday]

World Koesister Day [1st Sunday]

World Meditation Day [1st Sunday of Every Month]

Weekly Holidays beginning September 1 (1st Full Week of September)

International Enthusiasm Week (thru 9.7)

Legacy Week (Australia)

National Childhood Injury Prevention Week (thru 9.7)

National Nutrition Week (thru 9.7)

National Payroll Week (thru 9.7). [Week of Labor Day]

National Waffle Week (thru 9.7) [1st Week]

Self-University Week (thru 9.7)

Sobriety Checkpoint Week (thru 9.7) [1st Full Week]

Substitute Teacher Appreciation Week (thru 9.7) [1st Full Week]

Festivals Beginning September 1, 2024

Alaskan Grown Cheesecake Contest (Palmer, Alaska)

Atlanta Caribbean Jerk Festival (Lithonia, Georgia)

Bloemencorso Sint-Gillis-bij-Dendermonde (Sint-Gillis-bij-Dendermonde, Belgium)

Bloemencorso Zundert (Zundert, Netherlands) [thru 9.2]

California Wine Month (Statewide, California) [thru 9.30]

Flavor Palm Beach (Palm Beach, Florida) [thru 9.30]

Sydney Fringe Festival (Sydney, Australia) [thru 9.30]

Feast Days

Constantius (Costanzo) of Aquino (Christian; Saint)

Dalton (Positivist; Saint)

David Pendleton Oakerhater (Anglican Communion)

Drittel of Northumbria (Christian; Saint)

Ecclesiastical New Year (Orthodox Christian)

Edgar Rice Burroughs (Writerism)

Feast of Adjutor (Christian)

Feast of Macuilxochitl (5 Flower God; Mexico)

Festival of the Grapevines I: Ariadne (Pagan)

Felix, Donatus, Arontius, Honoratus, Fortunatus, Sabinianus, Septimus, Januarius, Vitalis, Satyrus, abd Repostius, 12 brothers (Christian; Martyrs)

Festival of Juno Regina and Jupiter Liber (Ancient Rome)

Fiacre (France, Ireland; Christian; Saint) [also 8.30]

Firminus II (Christian; Saint)

Gene Colan (Artology)

Gideon the Judge (Christian; Saint)

Giles (Christian; Saint)

Hilda Rix Nicholas (Artology)

Hobbit Remembrance Day (Pastafarian)

Jhonen Vasquez (Artology)

Loup (a.k.a. Lupus or Lew) of Sens (Christian; Saint)

Ludwig Merwart (Artology)

Nativity of Zoroaster (Starza Pagan Book of Days)

Nivard (a.k.a. Nivo; Christian; Saint)

Per Kirkeby (Artology)

Ramalamadingdong begins (Church of the SubGenius)

Sain (Celtic Book of Days)

Simeon Stylite (Eastern Orthodox)

Sixtus of Reims (Christian; Saint)

Sneeze-Wobbling Festival (Shamanism)

Soshana Afroyim (Artology)

Sweet Tater Festival (Cullman, Alabama) [thru 9.2]

Taddeo Zuccari (Artology)

Terentian (a.k.a. Terrence; Christian; Saint)

Timothy Zahn (Writerism)

The Twelve Brothers (Christian; Martyrs)

Uncle Ermisimo (Muppetism)

Verena (Christian; Saint)

Vibiana (Christian; Saint)

Yasuo Kuniyoshi (Artology)

Lucky & Unlucky Days

Historically Bad Day (Germany invaded Poland, earthquakes in Iran & Japan & 8 other tragedies) [7of 11]

Taian (大安 Japan) [Lucky all day.]

Premieres

The Abominable Mountaineers, featuring Sad Cat (Terrytoons Cartoon; 1968)

Address Unknown, by Kathrine Kressmann Taylor (Novel; 1938)

The Aleph, by Jorge Luis Borges (Short Story; 1945)

Arsenic and Old Lace (Film; 1943)

The Autograph Hound (Disney Cartoon; 1939)

The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer (Film; 1947)

Balloon Snatcher, featuring Astronut (Terrytoons Cartoon; 1969)

The Big Clean-Up (Hector Heathcote Cartoon; 1963)

Bye, Bye, Blackboard (Woody Woodpecker Cartoon; 1972)

Catching Fire, by Suzanne Collins (Novel; 2009) [#2]

Cat Happy (Terrytoons Cartoon; 1950)

The Cat’s Revenge (Terrytoons Cartoon; 1954)

The Charm Bracelet (Phantasies Cartoon; 1939)

Chocolates for Breakfast, by Pamela Moore (Novel; 1956)

Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, by Thomas De Quincey (Autobiography; 1821)

The Corrections, by Jonathan Franzen (Novel; 2001)

The Covered Pushcart (Terrytoons Cartoon; 1949)

Crank (Film; 2006)

Dames (Film; 1934)

The Discontented Canary (Happy Harmonies Cartoon; 1934)

Disguise the Limit (Modern Madcaps Cartoon; 1960)

Dr. Feelgood, by Mötley Crüe (Album; 1989)

Dug Days (Animated TV Series; 2021)

The English Patient, by Michael Ondaatje (Novel; 1992)

Ethan Frome, by Edith Wharton (Novel; 1911)

A Farewell to Arms, by Ernest Hemingway (Novel; 1929)

A Farewell to Kings, by Rush (Album; 1977)

The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins, by Dr. Seuss (Children’s Books; 1938)

Fine Feathered Friend (Noveltoons Cartoon; 1960)

The First Telephone (Hector Heathcote Cartoon; 1963)

Foxed by a Fox (Hector Heathcote Cartoon; 1963)

Git That Guitar (Terrytoons Cartoon; 1964)

The Good Scout, featuring Willie Whopper (Ub Iwerks Cartoon; 1934)

Gramps to the Rescue (Noveltoons Cartoon; 1963)

Happy Valley (Terrytoons Cartoon; 1952)

Harry Happy (Modern Madcaps Cartoon; 1963)

Hats Off to Hector (Hector Heathcote Cartoon; 1963)

Haydn String Quartets, Opus 10, by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (Quartets; 1785)

High Flyer (Hector Heathcote Cartoon; 1963)

Hobo’s Holiday (Noveltoons Cartoon; 1963)

Hold the Fort! (Hector Heathcote Cartoon; 1963)

Honorable Paint in the Neck, featuring Hashimoto (Terrytoons Cartoon; 1962)

Hook, Lion and Sinker (Disney Cartoon; 1950)

Honey’s Money (WB MM Cartoon; 1962)

Idiocracy (Film; 2006)

Julius Caesar, by William Shakespeare (Play; 1599)

Lady and His Lamp (Noveltoons Cartoon; 1964)

Little Problems (Terrytoons Cartoon; 1951)

Lolita, by Vladimir Nabokov (Novel; 1955)

Love’s Labor Won (Mighty Mouse Cartoon; 1948)

The Mass Psychology of Fascism, by Wilhelm Reich (Political Book; 1933)

Messy Messenger (Hector Heathcote Cartoon; 1963)

Middlemarch, by George Eliot (Novel; 1871)

The Mighty Hercules (Animated TV Series; 1963)

Mouse Menace (Terrytoons Cartoon; 1953)

The Mysterious Cowboy (Terrytoons Cartoon; 1952)

The Old Man and the Sea (Short Story; 1952)

Old Mother Clobber (Terrytoons Cartoon; 1958)

Outer Galaxy Gazette, featuring Astronaut (Terrytoons Cartoon; 1964)

Outside Providence (Film; 1999)

Peculiar Penguins (Silly Symphonies Disney Cartoon; 1934)

Pitchin’ Woo at the Zoo (Fleischer/Famous Popeye Cartoon; 1944)

The Plastics Inventor (Disney Cartoon; 1944)

Prehistoric Super Salesman (Woody Woodpecker Cartoon; 1969)

Private Eyes, by Hall & Oates (Album; 1981)

The Prophet, by Kahlil Gibran (Poems; 1923)

The Proton Pulsator, featuring Astronut (Terrytoons Cartoon; 1970)

The Rain Drain, featuring James Hound (Terrytoons Cartoon; 1966)

Really Big Act, featuring Sidney (Terrytoons Cartoon; 1961)

Rear Window (Film; 1954)

Robot Rival (Modern Madcaps Cartoon; 1964)

A Room of One’s Own, by Virginia Woolf (Novel; 1929)

Search for a Symbol (Hector Heathcote Cartoon; 1963)

The Slap-Happy Mouse (WB MM Cartoon; 1956)

Solitary Refinement (Modern Madcaps Cartoon; 1965)

The Spy Who Came in From the Cold, by John le Carré (Novel; 1963)

Square Shooting’ Square (Woody Woodpecker Cartoon; 1955)

Steeple Jacks (Heckle & Jeckle Cartoon; 1951)

The Stepford Wives, by Ira Levin (Novel; 1972)

Swordfishtrombones, by Tom Waits (Album; 1983)

TikTok (Social Media App; 2016)

Trois Morceaux en Forme de Poire (Three Pieces in the Shape of a Pear), Erik Satie (Suite for Piano Four Hands; 1903)

Tropic of Cancer, by Henry Miller (Novel; 1934)

The Two Barbers (Mighty Mouse Cartoon; 1944)

The Two Ton Baby Sitter, featuring Sidney (Terrytoons Cartoon; 1960)

What a Wonderful World, by Louis Armstrong (Song; 1967)

When Worlds Collide, by Philip Wylie (Novel; 1932)

Which is Witch, featuring James Hound (Terrytoons Cartoon; 1967)

Wild Life (Heckle & Jeckle Cartoon; 1959)

The Women (Film; 1939)

Worth Dying For, 15th Jack Reacher book, by Lee Child (Novel; 2010)

You Can’t Take It with You (Film; 1938)

Today’s Name Days

Ägidius, Ruth, Verena (Austria)

Damyan, Damyana, Kozma, Kuzman, Simeon, Simona (Bulgaria)

Aron, Egidije, Estera, Jošua, Oliver, Predrag, Šimun, Tamara, Viktor (Croatia)

Jaroslava, Linda, Samuel (Czech Republic)

Ægidius, Theobaldus (Denmark)

Eha, Ehala, Hämarik, Ülar, Ülari, Ülev, Üllar, Üllart, Üllas, Üllo, Ülo (Estonia)

Aaro, Aaron, Pirkka (Finland)

Aaron, Esther, Giles, Goulwen, Jossué, Thierry (France)

Ägidius, Ruth, Verena (Germany)

Anargyros, Argyris, Antigone, Antigoni, Athena, Athina, Damianos, Kosmas, Margarita, Polynike, Polyniki, Symeon (Greece)

Annamária, Egon, Egyed, Tihamér (Hungary)

Caio, Cono, Costanzo, Egidio (Italy)

Austrums, Ilmārs, Iluta, Irisa, Imants, Ingars, Intars, Teobalds, Verena (Latvia)

Burvilė, Egidijus, Gytautas, Gytis, Julijus, Liepa, Tautrimas, Tautrimė (Lithuania)

Ask, Embla, Solveig, Solvor (Norway)

Aaron, Bogusław, Bronisław, Bronisława, Bronisz, Halina, Idzi, Klarysa, Marian, Niegosława, Teobald (Poland)

Dionisie (Romania)

Diana, Drahoslava (Slovakia)

Aarón, Arturo, Ester, Esther, Gil, Josué, Leonor, Oliverio, Simeón, Sixto (Spain)

Aron, Mirjam, Sam, Samuel (Sweden)

Debbie, Deborah, Debra, Edgar, Edgardo, Giles, Josh, Joshua, Josue, Ruth (USA)

Today is Also…

Day of Year: Day 245 of 2024; 121 days remaining in the year

ISO: Day 7 of Week 35 of 2024

Celtic Tree Calendar: Muin (Vine) [Day 2 of 28]

Chinese: Month 7 (Ren-Shen), Day 29 (Wu-Chen)

Chinese Year of the: Dragon 4722 (until January 29, 2025) [Wu-Chen]

Hebrew: 28 Av 5784

Islamic: 26 Safar 1446

J Cal: 5 Gold; Fryday [5 of 30]

Julian: 19 August 2024

Moon: 2%: Waning Crescent

Positivist: 21 Gutenberg (9th Month) [Watt]

Runic Half Month: Rad (Motion) [Day 10 of 15]

Season: Summer (Day 74 of 94)

Week: 1st Full Week of September

Zodiac: Virgo (Day 11 of 32)

Calendar Changes

September (Gregorian Calendar) [Month 9 of 12]

[lboogie1906]

Janice Bryant Howroyd (September 1, 1952) is an entrepreneur, businesswoman, and author. She is the founder and chief executive officer of The ActOne Group, the largest privately held, minority-woman-owned personnel company founded in the US. She is the first African American woman to build and own a billion-dollar company.

She was born in Tarboro, North Carolina, the fourth of 11 children in her family. She was one of the first African American students to participate in the desegregation of her town’s high school.

She moved to Los Angeles and worked as a temporary secretary for her brother-in-law, Tom Noonan, at Billboard magazine. Noonan introduced her to business executives, celebrities, travel, and workplace diversity.

With an approximate budget of $1,000, she continued to focus on employment services and launched her company, The ACT 1 Group, in 1978, with Tom Noonan as her first client. ActOne Group companies include AppleOne, All’s Well, AT-Tech, ACT-1 Personnel Services, Agile-1, ACT-1Govt, A-Check Global, which provides personnel and recruiting services to different industries, and DSSI, which provides document management services.

She is an ambassador of the Department of Energy’s Minorities in Energy Initiative, and a board member of numerous organizations including the United States Department of Labor’s Workforce Initiative Board, Women’s Business Enterprise National Council, WeConnect, National Utilities Diversity Council, Harvard Women’s Leadership Board, California Science Center, Los Angeles Urban League and a member of the Industry Trade Advisory Committee on Services and Finance Industries of the U.S. Trade Representative and the United States Department of Commerce. She serves on the Board of Trustees for North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University.

She received a key presidential appointment by President Barack Obama as a member of the President’s Board of Advisors on HBCUs. She joined the Diversity Committee of the FCC.

She has served on the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation Board of Directors as an officer and Treasurer. #africanhistory365 #africanexcellence

[reasoningdaily]

Neo-Griot

Kalamu ya Salaam's information blog

HISTORY: Indians, Slaves, and Mass Murder: The Hidden History

Indians, Slaves, and

Mass Murder:

The Hidden History

by Peter Nabokov

The Other Slavery: The Uncovered Story of Indian Enslavement in America by Andrés Reséndez Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 431 pp., $30.00

 

An American Genocide: The United States and the California Indian Catastrophe, 1846–1873 by Benjamin Madley Yale University Press, 692 pp., $38.00

Carl Lumholtz: Tarahumara Woman Being Weighed, Barranca de San Carlos (Sinforosa), Chihuahua, 1892; from Among Unknown Tribes: Rediscovering the Photographs of Explorer Carl Lumholtz. The book includes essays by Bill Broyles, Ann Christine Eek, and others, and is published by the University of Texas Press.

1.

The European market in African slaves, which opened with a cargo of Mauritian blacks unloaded in Portugal in 1441, and the explorer Christopher Columbus, born in Genoa ten years later, were closely linked. The ensuing Age of Discovery, with its expansions of empires and exploitations of New World natural resources, was accompanied by the seizure and forced labor of human beings, starting with Native Americans.

Appraising that commercial opportunity came naturally to an entrepreneur like Columbus, as did his sponsors’ pressure on him to find precious metals and his religion’s contradictory concerns both to protect and convert heathens. On the day after Columbus landed in 1492 on an island in the present-day Bahamas and saw its Taíno islanders, he wrote that “with fifty men they could all be subjected and made to do all that one wished.” Soon the African trade was changing life in Spain; within another hundred years most urban families owned one or more black servants, over 7 percent of Seville was black, and a new social grouping of mixed-race mulattos joined the lower rungs of a color-coded social ladder.

Columbus liked the “affectionate and without malice” Arawakan-speaking Taíno natives. He found the men tall, handsome, and good farmers, the women comely, near naked, and apparently available. In exchange for glass beads, brass hawk bells, and silly red caps, the seamen received cotton thread, parrots, and food from native gardens. Fresh fish and fruits were abundant. Glints in the ornaments worn by natives promised gold, and they presumably knew where to find more. Aside from one flare-up, there were no serious hostilities. Columbus returned to Barcelona with six Taíno natives who were paraded as curiosities, not chattel, before King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella.

The following year, Columbus led seventeen ships that dropped 1,500 prospective settlers on Caribbean beaches. As they stayed on, relations with local Indians degenerated. What was soon imposed was “the other slavery” that the University of California, Davis, historian Andrés Reséndez discusses in his synthesis of the last half-century of scholarship on American Indian enslavement. First came the demand for miners to dig for gold. The easy-going Taínos were transformed into gold-panners working under Spanish overseers.

The Spaniards also exploited the forms of human bondage that already existed on the islands. The Caribs of the Lesser Antilles, a more aggressive tribe, regularly raided the Taínos, allegedly eating the men but keeping the women and children as retainers. A similar discrimination based on age and gender would prevail throughout the next four centuries of Indian-on-Indian servitude. As Bonnie Martin and James Brooks put it in their anthology, Linking the Histories of Slavery: North America and Its Borderlands:

North America was a vast, pulsing map of trading, raiding, and resettling. Whether the systems were pre- or postcontact indigenous, European colonial, or US national, they grew into complex cultural matrices in which the economic wealth and social power created using slavery proved indivisible. Indigenous and Euro-American slave systems evolved and innovated in response to each other.*

Taínos who resisted the Spanish were set upon by dogs, disemboweled by swords, burned at stakes, trampled by horses—atrocities “to which no chronicle could ever do justice,” wrote Friar Bartolomé de las Casas, a crusader for Indian rights, in 1542. Against the Caribs the Spaniards had a tougher time, fighting pitched battles but capturing hundreds of slaves as well. Columbus sailed home from his second voyage with over a thousand captives bound for slave auctions in Cádiz (many died en route, their bodies tossed overboard). He envisioned a future market for New World gold, spices, cotton, and “as many slaves as Their Majesties order to make, from among those who are idolators,” whose sales might underwrite subsequent expeditions.

Thus did the discoverer of the New World become its first transatlantic human trafficker—a sideline pursued by most New World conquistadors until, in the mid-seventeenth century, Spain officially opposed slavery. And Columbus’s vision of a “reverse middle passage” crumbled when Spanish customers preferred African domestics. Indians were more expensive to acquire, insufficiently docile, harder to train, unreliable over the years, and susceptible to homesickness, seasickness, and European diseases. Other obstacles included misgivings by the church and royal authorities, which may explain Columbus’s emphasis on “idolators” like the Caribs, whose status as “enemies” and cannibals made them more legally eligible for enslavement.

Indians suffered from overwork in the gold beds, as well as foreign pathogens against which they had no antibodies, and from famine as a result of overhunting and underfarming. Within two generations the native Caribbean population faced a “cataclysmic decline.” On the island of Hispaniola alone, of its estimated 300,000 indigenous population, only 11,000 Taínos remained alive by 1517. Within ten more years, six hundred or so villages were empty.

But even as the Caribbean was ethnically cleansed of its original inhabitants, a case of bad conscience struck Iberia. It had its origins in the ambivalence of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella over how to treat Indians. In the spring of 1495, only four days after the royals advised their bishop in charge of foreign affairs that slaves “would be more easily sold in Andalusia than in other parts,” they ordered a halt to all human enslavement until the church informed them “whether we can sell them or not.” Outrage was more overt in the polemics of Las Casas, who had emigrated to the islands in 1502. He had owned slaves and then renounced the practice in 1515. After taking his vows as a Dominican priest, he helped to push the antislavery New Laws of the Indies through the Spanish legal system in 1542.

Slaving interests used a succession of verbal strategies for justifying and retaining unfree Indian labor. As early as 1503 tribes designated as “cannibals” became fair game, as were Indian prisoners seized in “just wars.” Hereafter labeled esclavos de guerra (war slaves), their cheeks bore a branded “G.” Automatic servitude also awaited any hapless Indians, known as esclavos de rescate (ransomed slaves), whom Spanish slavers had freed from other Indians who had already enslaved them; the letter “R” was seared into their faces.

In 1502 Hispanola’s new governor, Nicolás de Ovando, made use of an old feudal practice for ensuring control over workers’ bodies. To retain native miners but check rampant cruelty, Ovando bestowed on prominent colonizers land grants (encomiendas) that included rights to tribute and labor from Indians already residing there. Although still vassals, they remained nominally free from “ownership.” They could reside in their own villages, were theoretically protected from sexual predation and secondary selling, and were supposed to receive religious instruction and token compensation of a gold peso a year—benefits that were often ignored. Over the next two centuries the��encomienda system and other local forms of unfree labor were used to create a virtually enslaved Indian workforce throughout Mexico, Florida, the American Southwest, down the South American coast, and over to the Philippines.

The story of Native American enslavement told by Reséndez becomes confused by the convoluted interplay of indigenous and imported systems of human servitude. Despite his claim of uncovering “the other slavery,” when speaking of the forms of bondage imposed on Indians he fails to acknowledge that there was no monolithic institution akin to the “peculiar” transatlantic one that would become identified with the American South, which imported Africans auctioned as commodities. Even the distinction some scholars draw between such “slave societies” and “societies with slaves” (depending on whether slave labor was essential or not to the general economy) only partially applies to the highly complex, deeply local situations of enslaved American Indians. For these blended a dizzying variety of customary practices with colonial systems for maintaining a compulsory native workforce. If Reséndez is claiming to encompass the full tragedy of Indian slavery “across North America,” he does not distinguish among the different colonial systems of Indian servitude—enabled by Indian allies of the colonizers—that existed under English, French, and Dutch regimes.

During the seventeenth century, as some Spaniards continued to raise the question of the morality of slavery, silver mines opened in northern Mexico, and the demand for Indian manpower increased. This boom would require more workers than the Caribbean gold fields and last far longer. Now the physical effort turned from surface panning or shallow trenching to sinking shafts hundreds of feet into the ground. More profitable than gold, silver was also more grueling to extract. Miners dug, loaded, and hauled rocks in near darkness for days at a time. Around present-day Zacatecas, entire mountains were made of the gray-black ore.

To meet the growing labor demand, Spanish and Indian slaving expanded out of the American Southwest, sending Pueblo and Comanche slaves to the mines, and seizing slaves from the defiant Chichimec of northern Mexico during particularly violent campaigns between the 1540s and the 1580s. From the beginning of the sixteenth century to the first decade of the nineteenth, twelve times as much silver was extracted from over four hundred mines scattered throughout Mexico as was gold during the entire California Gold Rush.

At Parral, a silver-mining center in southern Chihuahua and in 1640 the largest town north of the Tropic of Cancer, over seven thousand workers descended into the shafts every day—most of them enslaved natives from as far off as New Mexico, which soon became “little more than a supply center for Parral.” After the state-directed system for forcibly drafting Indian labor for the Latin American silver mines, known as the mita, was instituted in 1573, it remained in operation for 250 years and drew an average of ten thousand Indians a year from over two hundred indigenous communities.

As Reséndez shifts his narrative to the Mexican mainland, however, one is prompted to ask another question of an author who claims to have “uncovered” the panoramic range of Indian slavery. Shouldn’t we know more of the history of those Indian-on-Indian slavery systems that Columbus witnessed and that became essential for delivering workers to Mexican mines, New Mexican households, or their own native villages? Throughout the pre-Columbian Americas, underage and female captives from intertribal warfare were routinely turned into domestic workers who performed menial tasks. Through recapture or ransom payment some were repatriated, while many remained indentured their entire lives. But a number were absorbed into their host settlement through forms of fictive kinship, such as ceremonial adoption or most commonly through intermarriage.

Among the eleventh-century mound-building Indian cultures of the Mississippi Bottoms, such war prisoners made up a serf-like underclass. This civilization collapsed in the thirteenth century and the succeeding tribes we know as Choctaw, Cherokee, Creek, and others perpetuated the practice of serfdom; Cherokee war parties added to each town’s stock of atsi nahsa’i, or “one who is owned.” The custom continued across indigenous America, with child-bearing women and prepubescent males generally preferred. Their husbands and fathers were more commonly killed. Reséndez hardly mentions the subsequent participation of those same tribes in the white man’s race-based “peculiar institution.” They bought and sold African-American slaves to work their Indian-owned plantations. Once the Civil War broke out there was a painfully divisive splitting of southern Indian nations into Confederate and Union allies.

As with Carib predation upon the Taíno, it was not uncommon for stronger tribes to focus on perennial victims. In the Southeast, the Chickasaw regularly took slaves from the Choctaw; in the Great Basin, the Utes stole women and children from the Paiute (and then traded them to Mormon households that were happy to pay for them); in California, the northeastern Modoc regularly preyed upon nearby Atsugewi, while the Colorado River–dwelling Mojave routinely raided the local Chemehuevi. These relationships between prey and predator might extend over generations. Only among the hierarchical social orders of the northwest coast, apparently, were slaves traditionally treated more like commodities, to be purchased, traded, or given as gifts.

Indirectly, the Spanish helped to instigate the next upsurge in human trafficking across the American West. Their horses—bred in northern New Mexico, then rustled or traded northward after the late seventeenth century—made possible an equestrian revolution across the plains. In short order the relationships between a few dozen Indian tribes shifted dramatically, as the pedestrian hunter-and-gatherer peoples were transformed by horses into fast-moving nomads who became dependent on buffalo and preyed on their neighbors. In white American popular culture the new-born horse cultures would be presented as the war bonnet–wearing, teepee-dwelling, war-whooping stereotypes of Wild West shows and movie screens. Among them were the Comanches of the southern plains and the Utes of the Great Basin borderlands.

By the mid-eighteenth century, the Comanche military machine had put a damper on Spanish expansionism. Their cavalry regiments of five hundred or more disciplined horsemen undertook eight-hundred-mile journeys northward as far as the Arkansas River and southward to within a few hundred miles of Mexico City. The slaves they plucked from Apaches, Pueblos, and Navajos became their prime currency in business deals with Mexicans, New Mexicans, and Americans. At impromptu auctions and established crossroads, Native American, Mexican, and Anglo slaves were being sold, some undergoing a succession of new masters. Until the US government conquered them, the Comanches held sway over a quarter-million square miles of the American and Mexican borderlands.

Reséndez argues for continuities in this inhuman traffic right down to the present day. But his abrupt transition to the present after the defeat of the Comanches only reinforces our sense that his effort has been overly ambitious and weakly conceived, as if achieving the promised synthesis for so complex and persistent a topic has simply (and understandably) overwhelmed him. His treatment of the multinational practices of Colonial-period slavery is spotty, and the ubiquitous traditions of native-on-native enslavement seem soft-pedaled.

Reséndez loosely estimates that between some 2.5 to five million Indians were trapped in this “other slavery,” in which overwork and physical abuse doubtlessly contributed to the drop of 90 percent in the North American Indian population between Columbus’s day and 1900. But somehow little of all that torment comes across vividly in The Other Slavery. We are told that Navajos called the 1860s, when their entire tribe was hounded for incarceration in southern New Mexico, “the Fearing Time.” Aside from that hint of the collective emotional impact from the victims’ side, we get few testimonies that reflect the anxiety and terror behind Reséndez’s many summaries of human suffering, tribal dislocations, furtive lives on the run, and birthrights lost forever.

A more convincing sense of the racial discrimination and hatred that bolstered and perpetuated the slavery systems discussed in Reséndez’s book comes from even a melodramatic film like John Ford’s The Searchers (1956), while the terrors of surviving in the late-eighteenth-century West amid roving bands of merciless slave raiders are better evoked in Cormac McCarthy’s Grand Guignol masterpiece Blood Meridian(1985). Reading Reséndez’s account one hopes in vain for something similar to Rebecca West’s quiet comment in Black Lamb and Grey Falcon (1941), her chronicle of Yugoslavian multiethnic animosities: “It is sometimes very hard to tell the difference between history and the smell of a skunk.”

2.

Indian slavery becomes a contributing factor in An American Genocide, the UCLAhistorian Benjamin Madley’s extensive argument that genocide is the only appropriate term for what happened to native peoples in north-central California between 1846 and 1873. For American Indians, slavery in the New World took many forms that persevered over four centuries while changing according to local conditions, global pressures, and maneuvers to evade abolitionist crusades. Genocide—the elimination of entire groups—might seem easier to evaluate. Yet which historical episodes of mass Indian murder qualify as genocide has become a matter of debate.

Madley shies away from the hyperbolic accusations of genocide or holocaust often made in simplistic discussions of American Indian history. The definition that he invokes with prosecutorial ferocity is the one produced by the United Nations Genocide Convention of 1948, which defines genocide as, first, demonstrating an intent to destroy, “in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group,” and, second, committing any of the following acts: killing members of a group; causing them serious bodily or mental harm; inflicting conditions that are intended to cause their destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures to prevent births within the group; and transferring children of the group to another group. Whereas the large unspecified “group” referred to in this post–World War II statement was, of course, defined by the Nazis, Madley’s is smaller and, even then, it is composed of many hundreds of indigenous units, each an autonomous, small-scale cultural world that was decimated or destroyed.

Madley has documented his charge of genocide by years of scrolling through local newspapers, histories, personal diaries, memoirs, and official letters and reports. These revealed what many indigenous groups endured at the hands of US military campaigns, state militia expeditions, impromptu small-town posses, and gold miners, as well as ordinary citizens who hunted natives on weekends. Most western historians and demographers could agree that genocidal behavior toward a North American Indian population occurred during the nineteenth century. But Madley has concentrated on the killing in California during the bloody years between 1846 and 1873.

Edward S. Curtis: Mosa—Mohave, 1903/1907; from Edward S. Curtis: One Hundred Masterworks. The book is by Christopher Cardozo, with contributions by A. D. Coleman, Louise Erdrich, and others. It is published by Delmonico/Prestel and the Foundation for the Exhibition of Photography.

The factors that led to this American tragedy are worth recalling. Many Indian communities had already been defeated in their resistance to servitude during the Spanish Mission and Mexican Rancho years. The United States victory over Mexico in early 1848 opened the way to the last great American land rush. Until California became the nation’s thirty-first state in 1850, there were two years of lawlessness. The Anglo-American settlers whose wagons began rolling into the region carried anti-Indian attitudes imported from colonial times. The discovery of gold in early 1848 multiplied that immigration and aggressive settler colonialism. There was pervasive racism toward the state’s diverse and generally peaceful native population. They were denigrated as animal-like “Diggers”—a pejorative term based on their food-gathering customs. Political, military, journalistic, and civic leaders favored creating a de facto open season on its native peoples.

When the state’s first legislature convened, it passed a number of orders that, according to Madley, “largely shut Indians out of participation in and protection by the state legal system” and granted “impunity to those who attacked them.” The legislature funded, with $1.51 million, state vigilantism coupled with exhortations from top officials, including two state governors, to war against Native Americans. Near the beginning of this campaign, California’s first governor, Peter Burnett, pledged that “a war of extermination will continue to be waged…until the Indian race becomes extinct.”

At the time of first contact with whites, the native California population amounted to some 350,000, perhaps the densest concentration of Indians in the country. But they were divided into at least sixty major tribes that, in turn, were made up of scores of small, independent, autonomous villages that spoke upward of a hundred separate languages. After the epidemics, mission programs, land losses, and peonage of the Spanish period, about 150,000 Indians remained on the eve of the US takeover. By 1870 the number of California Indians had been cut to under 30,000, a population loss that would continue until it bottomed out at under 17,000 by the turn of the century.

When gold was struck near present-day Sacramento in January 1848, Indians were occupying some of the most desirable natural environments in North America. The size of these Indian groups ranged widely. The proximity of so many autonomous villages made bi- or even trilingualism not uncommon. But especially in the north-central region—with its abundant acorn groves, salmon-rich rivers, valleys plentiful in fruits, roots, and seeds, foothills teeming with game, plentiful marine life, wildfowl and associated plants along the sea coast and wetlands—their small, self-governing and self-sufficient villagers could thrive in their homelands. However, the combination of Spanish and American invasions would cost the Indians and their fragile ecologies dearly. Meadows bearing life-giving nutritious seeds and roots were put to the torch for conversion into agricultural fields and cattle pastures, streams were poisoned by the sludge from mining, and forests were cut for lumber.

To characterize these fairly self-contained worlds, the dean of California Indian studies, anthropologist Alfred L. Kroeber, coined the term “tribelet.” But when it came to describing the sufferings of these California tribelets during the Gold Rush, Kroeber wrote dismissively of their “little history of pitiful events,” which, as an ethnographer drawn to “millennial sweeps and grand contours,” he felt unable to comment upon.

That did not stop one of his colleagues, the anthropologist Robert Heizer, from doing so. Heizer’s revelatory They Were Only Diggers (1974), along with his other anthologies, compiled newspaper clippings and reports on the myriad killings and other brutalities experienced by the region’s Indians. Together with a state demographer, Sherburne Cooke, he began documenting the unpublicized story of the California Indian catastrophe. Now Benjamin Madley, building upon the ethnohistorical work of Heizer and Cooke, has delved more systematically into the outrages of the period.

His chronicle opens with accounts by Thomas Martin and Thomas Breckenridge, members of John C. Frémont’s early expedition, which invaded what was still Mexican-held territory. In April 1846, along the Sacramento River near the present-day city of Redding, Frémont’s troops encountered a large group of local Wintu Indians. With the command “to ask no quarter and to give none,” his troops encircled the Indians and began firing at everyone in sight. Breckenridge wrote: “Some escaped but as near as I could learn from those that were engaged in the butchery, I can’t call it anything else, there was from 120 to 150 Indians killed that day.” Martin estimated that “in less than 3 hours we had killed over 175 of them.” A third eyewitness account found by Madley raised that estimate to between six hundred and seven hundred dead on land, not counting those, possibly an additional three hundred, slaughtered in the river. “The Sacramento River Massacre,” he writes, may have been one of the least-reported mass killings in US history, and “was the prelude to hundreds of similar massacres.”

So begins Madley’s calm, somber indictment. One after another he describes the cultures and the histories of tribes that were victimized, and he profiles the victimizers. Many of the atrocities were committed not only by US soldiers and their auxiliaries but also by motley companies of militiamen that murdered young and old, male and female indiscriminately—and often with an undisguised glee that comes through in Madley’s abundant selection of quotes.

Rape was rampant, and natives were intentionally starved, tortured, and whipped. Under the new California Legislature’s Government and Protection of the Indians Act of 1850, any nonworking, publicly drunk, or orphaned and underage Indians could become commodities in an unfree labor system that was tantamount to slave auctions. The act’s impact on the young meant that ten years after its passage, thousands of California Indian children were serving as unpaid “apprentices” in white households.

For over a quarter-century, Madley shows how the region became a quilt of many killing fields. Of the estimated 80 percent decline in the California Indian population during these years, around 40 percent has been attributed to outright “extermination killings” alone. Yet each of these tribes and tribelets functioned as an independent cultural world. Each was knit together by strands of kinship and deep attachments to place, as well as oral traditions about both that were passed on from generation to generation. Strewn across California were not only human bodies, but entire worldviews.

At the start of the Gold Rush, the Yuki Indians who lived at the heart of the region had well over three thousand members; they were reduced to less than two hundred by its end. The same decline occurred among the Tolowa Indians to the northwest, while the Yahi people were practically wiped out altogether.

In the hateful rhetoric of many nineteenth-century military, religious, and bureaucratic hard-liners quoted by Madley, the word “extermination” was often used. Yet this outcome was considered no great tragedy for an entire people who were uniformly and irredeemably defined as savage and subhuman.

Madley’s nearly two hundred pages of appendices are the most complete incident-by-incident tally ever compiled of Indian lives lost during this terrible period. Asking for names would have been impossible; instead we get numbers of deceased and places where they perished—one or two with brains smashed on rocks on a particular day over here, thirty to a hundred shot to death and left floating in a river over there. This scrupulously detailed epilogue is the equivalent of a memorial wall that we are visiting for the first time.

[newstfionline]

Monday, March 18, 2024

Trump Says Some Migrants Are ‘Not People’ and Predicts a ‘Blood Bath’ if He Loses (NYT) Former President Donald J. Trump, at an event on Saturday ostensibly meant to boost his preferred candidate in Ohio’s Republican Senate primary race, gave a freewheeling speech in which he used dehumanizing language to describe immigrants, maintained a steady stream of insults and vulgarities and predicted that the United States would never have another election if he did not win in November. While discussing the U.S. economy and its auto industry, Mr. Trump promised to place tariffs on cars manufactured abroad if he won in November. He added: “Now, if I don’t get elected, it’s going to be a blood bath for the whole—that’s going to be the least of it. It’s going to be a blood bath for the country.”

A Shooter’s Parents Were Convicted of Manslaughter. What Happens Next? (NYT) When the prosecutor Karen McDonald decided to press criminal charges against the parents of the teenager who carried out the deadliest school shooting in Michigan’s history, even some members of her own staff expressed doubts, fearing the case was too ambitious to win. “It seemed a huge reach to try to hold the parents responsible,” said Linda C. Fentiman, a professor emerita at Pace University who is an expert in health law and criminal law. “This was new legal territory.” But in the end, prosecutors were able to convince two separate juries that they had met their burden of proof. Now the question is whether the cases will affect the legal terrain around criminal law, parental responsibility and gun legislation.

Musk’s SpaceX is building spy satellite network for US intelligence agency, sources say (Reuters) SpaceX is building a network of hundreds of spy satellites under a classified contract with a U.S. intelligence agency, five sources familiar with the program said, demonstrating deepening ties between billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk’s space company and national security agencies. The network is being built by SpaceX’s Starshield business unit under a $1.8 billion contract signed in 2021 with the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), an intelligence agency that manages spy satellites, the sources said. The plans show the extent of SpaceX’s involvement in U.S. intelligence and military projects and illustrate a deeper Pentagon investment into vast, low-Earth orbiting satellite systems aimed at supporting ground forces. If successful, the sources said the program would significantly advance the ability of the U.S. government and military to quickly spot potential targets almost anywhere on the globe.

Driving With Mr. Gil: A Retiree Teaches Afghan Women the Rules of the Road (NYT) Bibifatima Akhundzada wove a white Chevy Spark through downtown Modesto, Calif., on a recent morning, practicing turns, braking and navigating intersections. “Go, go, go” said her driving instructor, as she slowed down through an open intersection. “Don’t stop. Don’t stop.” Her teacher was Gil Howard, an 82-year-old retired professor who happened upon a second career as a driving instructor. And no ordinary instructor. In Modesto, Calif., he is the go-to teacher for women from Afghanistan, where driving is off limits for virtually all of them. In recent years, Mr. Howard has taught some 400 women in the 5,000-strong Afghan community in this part of California’s Central Valley. According to local lore, thanks to “Mr. Gil,” as he is known in Modesto, more Afghan women likely drive in and around the city of about 220,000 than in all Afghanistan. For many Americans, learning to drive is a rite of passage, a skill associated with freedom. For Afghan immigrants it can be a lifeline, especially in cities where distances are vast and public transportation limited. So when Mr. Howard realized the difference driving made to the Afghan women, teaching them became a calling, the instruction provided free of charge.

Looting is on the rise in Haiti (AP) As Haiti once again spirals into chaos with another wave of gang violence, a number of government and aid agencies reported Saturday that their facilities and aid supplies have been looted. Gangs have raged through Haiti in recent weeks, attacking key institutions and shutting down the main international airport. The chaos has pushed many Haitians to the brink of famine and left many more in increasingly desperate conditions. On Saturday, UNICEF said one of its containers containing “essential items for maternal, neonatal, and child survival, including resuscitators and related equipment” were looted in the capital of Port-au-Prince’s main port, which was breached by gangs last week. That same day, the Guatemala’s Foreign Ministry said that the offices of its honorary consul in Haiti was ransacked.

Russian exiles bring banyas and blinis to Buenos Aires (Reuters) When Ilia Gafarov and Nadia Gafarova host the grand opening of their “banya”, a traditional Russian sauna, in April, they hope it will help make a permanent home of their adopted city of Buenos Aires. The couple, a former banker and recruiter from Russia’s eastern port city of Vladivostok, moved to Argentina with their two daughters nine months ago, part of a wave of migration from Russia to Latin America since the 2022 invasion of Ukraine. As Russia’s war in Ukraine enters its third year, a growing number of Russian families are putting down roots around Latin America, according to previously unreported residency visa approval data from five countries and interviews with a dozen exiles and experts. Argentina, Mexico, Brazil, Uruguay and Paraguay, granted temporary or permanent residence last year to a total of almost 9,000 Russians, the data show, up from just over 1,000 in 2020.

A volcano in Iceland is erupting for the fourth time in 3 months, sending plumes of lava skywards (AP) A volcano in Iceland erupted Saturday evening for the fourth time in three months, sending orange jets of lava into the night sky. Iceland’s Meteorological Office said the eruption opened a fissure in the earth about 3 kilometers (almost 2 miles) long between Stóra-Skógfell and Hagafell mountains on the Reykjanes Peninsula. The Met Office had warned for weeks that magma—semi-molten rock—was accumulating under the ground, making an eruption likely. Hundreds of people were evacuated from the Blue Lagoon thermal spa, one of Iceland’s top tourist attractions, when the eruption began, national broadcaster RUV said.

Millions Battle Long Covid Aftermath (Spiegel) International Long Covid Awareness Day marks the focus on the plight of individuals with Long Covid and the lack of effective treatments. An estimated 2.5 million patients in Germany suffer from Long Covid, experiencing symptoms that last over four weeks post-infection, including breathing difficulties, fatigue, and neurological issues. The German government has earmarked up to 81 million euros for Long Covid research and patient care services between 2024 and 2028, but no treatments for Long Covid have been approved, highlighting an urgent need for more specialized care and support for those affected.

Putin is poised to rule Russia for 6 more years (AP/WSJ) Russian President Vladimir Putin is poised to extend nearly a quarter century of rule for six more years on Sunday. The three-day election that began Friday has taken place in a tightly controlled environment where no public criticism of Putin or his war in Ukraine is allowed. The 71-year-old Russian leader faces three token rivals from Kremlin-friendly parties who have refrained from any criticism of his 24-year rule or his full-scale invasion of Ukraine two years ago. Analysts who follow the country’s politics say Putin needs to win big if he wants a free hand in reviving what he says are Russia’s conservative Orthodox traditions and, ultimately, prevailing in Ukraine and in his broader confrontation with the West.

U.N. Documents More Than Two Dozen Attacks on Gazans Waiting for Aid Since January (NYT) The United Nations human rights office has documented more than two dozen attacks on Gazans waiting for desperately needed aid since January, with hunger spreading as a result of Israel’s near complete siege, preventing most food and water from entering the tiny enclave. In a number of U.N. reports and statements, the office has documented at least 26 such attacks since mid-January. They include Thursday night’s attack on hundreds of Palestinians who were waiting at the Kuwait traffic circle in Gaza City for an expected convoy of aid trucks. Gazan health officials accused Israeli forces of carrying out a “targeted” attack on the crowd that killed 20, and three witnesses described shelling at the scene. The Israeli military blamed Palestinian gunmen for the bloodshed and said that it was continuing to review the episode.

As Gaza war rages, U.S. military footprint expands across Middle East (Washington Post) Lt. Col. Jeremy Anderson tilted up the nose of his U.S. Air Force C-130 and tipped 16 pallets of emergency food aid out of the cargo bay and into the sky above northern Gaza. Thousands of miles away, off the coast of Yemen, U.S. fighter jets and attack helicopters roared off the flight deck of the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower, often just minutes apart, to combat Houthi fighters attacking ships in and around the Red Sea. In both places, U.S. service members said their missions were unexpected, changing as the White House has moved rapidly to contain wider fallout from the Israel-Gaza war. But now, along with a U.S. Army crew on its way to Gaza to build a floating pier, they are firmly part of the U.S. military’s expanding footprint in the Middle East. It’s a region President Biden had hoped to de-emphasize—and one where American involvement has often been devastating and costly. The war in Gaza and worsening humanitarian crisis there have taught Biden a lesson many presidents have learned before: It’s not so easy to quit the Middle East.

Niger junta announces end to military relationship with United States (Washington Post) The military junta ruling Niger—which until last year was seen as a major ally of the United States in West Africa—announced Saturday on state television that it was ending its military relationship with the United States. The announcement by a spokesman for the junta government, which overthrew Niger’s democratically elected president last year, came directly on the heels of a visit to the capital Niamey by U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Molly Phee, the State Department’s top official for African affairs, and Gen. Michael E. Langley, who heads U.S. military operations in Africa. That mission was among diplomatic efforts by the United States to find ways to work with military governments in the region. But in the statement read on television, Amadou Abdramane, the junta’s spokesman, said the Nigerien government “denounced with force the condescending attitude” of the head of the recent U.S. delegation, which he said had undermined the long relationship between the two countries.

South Sudan shutters all schools as it prepares for an extreme heat wave (AP) South Sudan’s government is closing down all schools starting Monday as the country prepares for a wave of extreme heat expected to last two weeks. The health and education ministries advised parents to keep all children indoors as temperatures are expected to soar to 45 degrees Celsius (113 Fahrenheit), in a statement late Saturday, They warned that any school found open during that time would have its registration withdrawn, but didn’t specify how long the schools would remain shuttered. Civil conflict has plagued the east African country which also suffered from drought and flooding, making living conditions difficult for residents.

[dwellordream]

“When war broke out, women rapidly entered jobs in war-related industries. Many of these women had been employed before the war, mostly in low-paying, nonunion jobs in laundries, department stores, restaurants, and hotels, where they earned an average of $24.50 a week, compared to $40.35 a week for wartime manufacturing jobs. During the war, 300,000 women worked in the aircraft industry alone. Many assembled B-29 bombers, the mainstay of the U.S. air force.

Others--welders, draftswomen, and machinists--built tanks and warships and made ammunition. Women also worked in nondefense industries such as machine shops, steel mills, oil refineries, railroad roundhouses, and lumber mills, as replacements for the men who had gone overseas. In all, women comprised half of this work force. The office of War Information noted that war production work had “disproved the old bugaboo that women have no mechanical ability and that they are a distracting influence in industry.”

…In spite of the harassment, teasing, and unwanted sexual advances women war workers faced, they enjoyed their new jobs, and most wanted to keep them after the war. Unlike the depression, the war emergency opened the way for a new labor force that would no longer be divided into “men’s jobs” and “women’s jobs,” but would instead bring men and women into the same jobs, working side by side. In addition, because so many men went into the armed forces, and so many women went to work, young Americans might have postponed marriage and childbearing, just as they had in the depression. But that did not happen. Instead, ironically, wartime encouraged family formation. The return of prosperity made it easier for young men and women to marry and have children.

Young married women, those most likely to have children at home, made the smallest gains in the labor force. Young mothers were encouraged to stay home. Although the Federal Works Agency invested nearly $50 million in day care centers to accommodate employed mothers during the war, such centers were generally considered harmful to a child’s development. In all, only three thousand day care centers were established by the federal government, and even these were not filled to capacity. Older married women who did not have young children at home were the fastest growing group in the paid labor force. By the end of the war fully 25 percent of all married women were employed--a huge gain from 15 percent at the end of the 1930s. But they worked for low wages. In 1939, the median annual income for women was $568, compared to $962 by men--and for black women it was a mere $246.

…New opportunities emerged for African-American women not only in the factories, but in the growing black communities as well. In Richmond, California, for example, black migration contributed to the transformation of a small town into a bustling metropolis. Before the war, there were only 270 blacks in Richmond. But when the city became a war production center, African Americans from the South came there to work in the shipyards. By 1943 the black population had increased by 5,000 percent. Slightly more than half of the southern black migrants to Richmond during the war were women.

The presence of blacks was apparent not only in the factories, but in the social and cultural life of the city, most notably in the blues clubs that began to proliferate. Many of these clubs were owned and operated by African-American women who had migrated to Richmond from Arkansas. One such female entrepreneur was Margaret Starks, manager of Tappers Inn, the most popular club in North Richmond. Starks also served as a talent booking agent for a number of local clubs and published the city’s first black newspaper on the premises of the Tappers Inn.

…Throughout the war, although the boundaries continued to shift as new definitions of “women’s work” were required, the automobile industry maintained women in certain jobs and men in others. Despite the dramatic upswing in women’s participation in the workforce, unions had not developed strategies that included a place for women’s concerns in their negotiations with the companies, nor had a strong feminist movement come together to assert women’s needs, such as such child care and equal access to good jobs. As a result, gender division of labor survived the war. In spite of women’s dramatic contributions to the war effort, they were not able to achieve equal pay or working conditions. Their unequal treatment led to a campaign for equal rights.

The Republicans in 1940 and the Democrats in 1944 supported the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), but the two major union federations, the American Federation of Labor (AFL) and the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), opposed it. Even Frances Perkins, secretary of labor, and Eleanor Roosevelt, first lady--two activists on behalf of women’s rights--refused to support the legislation because they feared that women workers would lose legal protections against long hours and health hazards. In 1945, Congress considered a bill that would have required equal pay for women. But even with a fair amount of bipartisan support, and some union backing, that measure failed.”

- Elaine Tyler May, “World War II: The Chance for Change.” in Pushing the Limits: American Women, 1940-1961

[wwfshow]

NWSL to the Bay: An Interview with Leslie Osborne 

As you know Women's World Football Show is the premier podcast on women's soccer, featuring interviews with top players and personalities from the sport.

In episode 215, I was honored to interview former USWNT midfielder Leslie Osborne about her soccer journey and her new venture as co-owner and co-founder of the newest National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL) team taking flight in the Bay Area in 2024.

Leslie, who played for the Boston Breakers and the Chicago Red Stars in the NWSL, discussed her experience of being part of the first professional women's soccer league in the United States. She talked about the positive aspects of the league, such as the high level of competition, the camaraderie between the players, and the support of the fans. 

It’s so interesting to hear Leslie touch on some of the challenges that the league faced in its early years, such as a lack of financial stability, and how the NWSL has grown. As women’s soccer fans, it’s definitely a journey we’ve all lived through together. 

Leslie’s energy is contagious! Listening back to this interview got me all pumped up again! I’m excited to see how Leslie’s past experiences in the SIX leagues she’s played for, as well as her experiences as a businesswoman and current role as Director of Coaching at the San Jose Earthquakes youth academy, will serve her in her next journey as co-owner of an NWSL team.

In this absolutely killer episode, Leslie talked about the unique opportunities that the Bay Area has to offer, such as the high level of competition, the great weather, and the passionate soccer fans. Osborne also discussed her how her career-altering injury helped prepare her for her next role as an entrepreneur and sports broadcaster, as well as her work in the Earthquakes academy, where she has helped develop the next generation of soccer players.

Throughout the interview, Leslie is so open and transparent, sharing valuable insight into the NWSL and the Bay Area. She spoke about the importance of having a professional soccer team in Northern California and how it will be different than the two Southern California teams (Angel City FC and San Diego Wave FC), and how it will help to raise the level of competition for women's soccer. 

Along with co-founders and former USWNT stars, Brandi Chastain, Aly Wagner, and Danielle Slaton, Leslie shares invaluable insight into their new Bay Area team’s mission and expectations.

Women's World Football Show podcast continues to be a great source of information on women's soccer, and this episode with Leslie Osborne is another entertaining addition to our library. Take a listen and share with your friends! 

[longlistshort]

Pictured above- Call Me Mrs. Mary E. Pleasant: The Midas Touch by L'Merchie Frazier- a portrait of entrepreneur, civil rights activist and benefactor, Mary Ellen Pleasant who made a name and a fortune for herself in Gold Rush era San Francisco. Her timeline from 1814 to 1904 begins in racial slavery as an indentured servant girl with no formal education. She ascended to a self-made millionaire, amassing a fortune in her lifetime of over $30 million, ($900 million today).

The second image is A Good Soldier: Thomas C. Fleming, America's Longest Serving Black Journalist by Rosy Petri- At the time of his retirement in 1997, California journalist Thomas C. Fleming was the nation's oldest Black journalist with the longest consecutive period of publication.

Both of these quilts are from Black Pioneers: Legacy in the American West at The James Museum of Western and Wildlife Art. Organized by historian, artist, and curator Dr. Carolyn Mazloomi, it includes 50 pictorial quilts created by members of Women of Color Quilters Network, a group founded by Mazloomi in 1985.

Mazloomi's statement at the exhibition entrance-

American history is incomplete without the stories of African American men and women, from our enslaved ancestors to our societal challenges. The role of African Americans in the movement toward westward expansion has been largely overlooked. This exhibition of original pictorial quilts brings into focus the rich and diverse stories and achievements of Blacks in American western history. The timeline begins with Esteban's 1528 arrival in the West and continues through the Civil Rights Movement.

At the end of Reconstruction in the South, discrimination and segregation caused African Americans to seek opportunities where there was less prejudice. In the 1800s, they moved by the thousands to the American West. Some went West as slaves, while free African American men joined the United States Army or became ranch hands, fur traders, cowboys, or miners.

Why quilts? Quilts and quilt making are important to American, and Black culture in particular. The art form was historically one of the few mediums accessible to marginalized groups to tell their own story, to provide warmth for their families, and to empower them with a voice through cloth. Using quilts to tell these stories accentuates the intersections of African Americans in the Western frontier while at once informing about the art form and its role in Black history. It is this often unknown and underappreciated shared reality that must be voiced if we are ever to truly value the unique contributions diverse groups make to the fabric of our nation.

The impressive quilts on view educate viewers with stories of individuals and events in African American history that may not have previously been familiar, and present new perspectives on those that are. It's a wonderful way to utilize a visual medium to captivate, inform, and often inspire.

This exhibition closes on 1/8/2023.

[elxctrics]

"i only call you when it's half past five, the only time that i'll be by your side. i only love it when you touch me, not feel me, when i'm fucked up, that's the real me."

(—) ★ spotted!! peroz ‘phoenix’ balik on the cover of this week’s most recent tabloid! many say that the 32 year old looks like can yaman but i don’t really see it. while dj/club owner is known for being magnetic my inside sources say that they have a tendency to be conniving i swear, every time i think of them, i hear the hills by the weeknd {he/him / cismale} - penned by CANDICE, 26, CISFEMALE, SHE/HER

  ˗ˏˋ ＊ ‣ 𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐤𝐬    :  

connections || musings || instagram || headcanons

name: peroz ‘phoenix’ amir balik

age: thirty two

nicknames: nix, wolf

date of birth: october 30th, 1992

astrological sign: scorpio

place of birth: bel air, california

occupation: dj / club owner

label: the casanova

positive traits: focused, determined, charming, diligent

negative traits: manipulative, selfish, apathetic, conniving

characters/celebrities he’s like: dennis reynolds from it’s always sunny in philadelphia, chuck bass from gossip girl, klaus mikaelson from the vampire diaries,  john mayer

career claim : calvin harris

𝓫𝓲𝓸𝓰𝓻𝓪𝓹𝓱𝔂

born and raised in las vegas, nevada to a restauranter for a father and a celebrity party planner for a mother, it’s safe to say that peroz’s life has been nothing but one, big giant party.

with his father having a chain of luxury restaurants on the vegas strip in all of the most luxurious hotels and his mother rubbing elbows with the rich and famous, peroz fell in love with the night life far earlier than he probably should have.

workaholics and always working on their latest big project left peroz to his own devices more often than not - and a kid with money and nothing but time on his hands was a dangerous thing in sin city.

wickedly smart, but never applying himself in school, he used those smarts for other things - selling drugs on the low, making fake ids for his friends, bribing his way into the hottest nightclubs when he was underage, always with a knack to scheme and lie his way into whatever he wanted.

he’s always had laser focus, liking to turn the mundane into something extraordinary, and when he wasn’t running around the vegas strip causing trouble, he was in his room, headphones in, making remake mixes to some of the world’s most popular songs.

he began making youtube videos of his music when he realized that college wasn’t an option for him, considering he was rarely in school, and his videos and remixes garnished millions and millions of views

using his mother’s connections, he began to get djing gigs at all the most popular nightclubs on the vegas strip, eventually being a headliner himself.

partying and hanging out with celebrities every single night was exactly the life he wanted for himself. he craved a constant good time, forever wanting to be a peter pan boy that never grew up, and he soon realized that this career path was it.

instead of just making mixes, he began producing songs for popular artists and every time he did, they ended up at the top of the charts, which caused him to move to los angeles and take on a celebrity status, under his stage name, ‘phoenix’

never wanting anyone to tell him what to do, he started his own record label - that literally only produces his music and collaborations with other artists called ‘fly guy records.’

now, not only is he one of the biggest djs in the world, but he’s also an entrepreneur, and has opened two nightclubs - sound nightclub in downtown los angeles & hakkasan in los vegas.

there’s not a humble bone in his body, a true nepo baby who’s gotten nothing but praise for doing the bare minimum his entire life, he’s used his clout and fame to get him anything, and anyone he wants.

he’s a non-committal kind of man, bored easily and treats women like they’re disposable, but will put on the charming act to get what he wants out of them.

sickly sweet to get what he wants, once he does, a switch flips and he can become the most cold person you’ve ever met, but he simply doesn’t care - the world is his chessboard and everyone is merely a pawn to him in this game that he calls life.

[rockislandadultreads]

Nonfiction Thursday: Asian American & Pacific Islander (AAPI) Biographies 

Both/And by Huma Abedin

The daughter of Indian and Pakistani intellectuals and advocates, Abedin grew up in the United States and Saudi Arabia and traveled widely. Both/And grapples with family, legacy, identity, faith, marriage, motherhood—and work—with wisdom, sophistication, grace, and clarity.

Abedin launched full steam into a college internship in the office of the First Lady in 1996, never imagining that her work at the White House would blossom into a career in public service, nor that her career would become an all-consuming way of life. She thrived in rooms with diplomats and sovereigns, entrepreneurs and artists, philanthropists and activists, and witnessed many crucial moments in 21st-century American history—Camp David for urgent efforts at Middle East peace in the waning months of the Clinton administration, Ground Zero in the days after the September 11 attacks, the inauguration of the first African American president of the United States, and the convention floor when America nominated its first female presidential candidate.

Abedin’s relationship with Hillary Clinton has seen both women through extraordinary personal and professional highs, as well as unimaginable lows. Here, for the first time, is a deeply personal account of Clinton as mentor, confidante, and role model. Abedin cuts through caricature, rumor, and misinformation to reveal a crystal-clear portrait of Clinton as a brilliant and caring leader, a steadfast friend, generous, funny, hardworking, and dedicated.

Eat a Peach by David Chang

In 2004, David Chang opened a noodle restaurant named Momofuku in Manhattan's East Village, not expecting the business to survive its first year. In 2018, he was the owner and chef of his own restaurant empire, with 15 locations from New York to Australia, the star of his own hit Netflix show and podcast, was named one of the most influential people of the 21st century and had a following of over 1.2 million. In this inspiring, honest and heartfelt memoir, Chang shares the extraordinary story of his culinary coming-of-age.

Growing up in Virginia, the son of Korean immigrant parents, Chang struggled with feelings of abandonment, isolation and loneliness throughout his childhood. After failing to find a job after graduating, he convinced his father to loan him money to open a restaurant. Momofuku's unpretentious air and great-tasting simple staples - ramen bowls and pork buns - earned it rave reviews, culinary awards and before long, Chang had a cult following.

Chang's love of food and cooking remained a constant in his life, despite the adversities he had to overcome. Over the course of his career, the chef struggled with suicidal thoughts, depression and anxiety. He shied away from praise and begged not to be given awards. In Eat a Peach, Chang opens up about his feelings of paranoia, self-confidence and pulls back the curtain on his struggles, failures and learned lessons.

Stay True by Hua Hsu

In the eyes of eighteen-year-old Hua Hsu, the problem with Ken--with his passion for Dave Matthews, Abercrombie & Fitch, and his fraternity--is that he is exactly like everyone else. Ken, whose Japanese American family has been in the United States for generations, is mainstream; for Hua, the son of Taiwanese immigrants, who makes 'zines and haunts Bay Area record shops, Ken represents all that he defines himself in opposition to. The only thing Hua and Ken have in common is that, however they engage with it, American culture doesn't seem to have a place for either of them.

But despite his first impressions, Hua and Ken become friends, a friendship built on late-night conversations over cigarettes, long drives along the California coast, and the textbook successes and humiliations of everyday college life. And then violently, senselessly, Ken is gone, killed in a carjacking, not even three years after the day they first meet.

Determined to hold on to all that was left of one of his closest friends--his memories--Hua turned to writing. Stay True is the book he's been working on ever since. A coming-of-age story that details both the ordinary and extraordinary, Stay True is a bracing memoir about growing up, and about moving through the world in search of meaning and belonging.

The Stories We Tell by Joanna Gaines

"The only way to break free was to rewrite my story. Because something would happen every time my pen stopped: it was like my soul was coming back to my body. Like the deepest parts of me that got knocked around and drowned out by all the crap I let the world convince me about who I was came back to the surface. And what was left was only what was real and true. I was, finally, standing in the fullness of my story. I felt hopeful. I felt full. Our story may crack us open, but it also pieces us back together.

We all have a story to tell. This happens to be mine--every chapter a window into who I am, the journey I'm on, and the season I'm in right now. Because this is my story, maybe you won't always relate, or maybe it will feel like you're looking in a mirror. Whatever we have in common and whatever differences lie between us, I only hope my story can help shine a light on the beauty of yours. That my own soul work will stir something of your own. And that by the time you get to the end of my story, you're also holding the beautiful beginnings of your own.

A story only you can tell. And I hope that you will."

- Joanna Gaines

[eug3n362]

Allyson Felix’s old stomping grounds at University of Southern California will be renamed in her honor, USC News reports. The Olympic sprinter has long ties with USC; being a California native and watching her brother graduate from the university inspired her to follow in his footsteps.  Holding the title of the most decorated athlete in World Athletics Championships history, male or female, the track star decided to hang up her running shoes last year. She received an honorary doctorate from USC and delivered the commencement speech for the graduating class of 2022. This spring, the university will hold a dedication ceremony to rename a field in her honor called the Allyson Felix Field.  “When Allyson and I spoke about naming the field after her, she responded with the grace and humility she has shown throughout her life. The Allyson Felix Field will recognize her immense achievements as a sports legend and Trojan while also showing our admiration for her role as an entrepreneur, advocate, and champion for women,” USC President Carol L. Folt said. Felix is not only a champion on the track, but a champion for advocacy as well. She uses her platform to create opportunities for women of color in sports, and as a new mom, she also advocates for maternal health. She’s been deemed “the ultimate Trojan.” It’s only right she receives this honor.  “For me to be born and raised%...

[ballplayersxo]

Some slight old but stale 70s-80s Magic Johnson tea on his house parties

Johnson fancied himself not merely an entertainer, but a maestro. "If you ever die and go to heaven, you want heaven to be Magic's house parties," said Frank Brickowski, a future Lakers teammate. "He would have the finest girls in L.A. there. The absolute finest. And at midnight you had to get busy with somebody or you had to get the fukk out. So if you were a guy, at midnight you'd get as close as you could to the hottest possible woman. Magic went around in this freaky voyeuristic way. He'd check on you. He'd go throughout the house, the pool. He'd order people to start doing things. All you had to be was near a chick. There were guys who would yell, 'Magic, she's not getting busy! She's not!' He'd run over and she'd get busy. Celebrity is seductive in L.A. Girls have this desperation about them, like moths to a flame. It's sad. But when you're young and single, fame matters."

Just because one was a Laker didn't mean sexual conquests always came easily. Yet Johnson wasn't merely the most eligible bachelor in Los Angeles—he was the most eligible bachelor in California. He once wrote of his rendezvous: "Some were secretaries. Some were lawyers. Quite a few were actresses or models. Others were teachers, editors, accountants, or entrepreneurs. There were bimbos, too, but not that many. Most of these women were college-educated professionals. Some were black, some were white, some were Hispanic, or Asian. Some of these women were very open about what they were doing, and some were more discreet. A few would even brag about all the players they had slept with. For others, this was all a part of a very secret life.

"Most of them were in their mid-20s. Every now and then you'd come across a teenager, but if you were smart you stayed away from her. These kids were simply too young—not only legally, but emotionally, too."

Why was the 70s-80s so wild tho?😬

this is insane 😭 lmao i need to watch the show about this era

[melbellelove]

In the 1970s, research began to expose the gender bias in school textbooks and the impact it had on women and girls in America. Studies showed that the fewer historical narratives students encountered about women, the easier it became to perpetuate stereotypes that women are fragile, vulnerable, and in need of male protection—attitudes rooted more in social bias and power dynamics than in fact.

The thing that is to know is that when students are exposed to the stories of women, LGBTQ+ individuals, people of color, and other underrepresented groups, engagement in the classroom rises, appreciation for civics grows, and the likelihood of voting at 18 increases. Representation, therefore, has a tangible, measurable effect on students’ civic and social development.

Decades later, however, school curricula remain heavily imbalanced, often overlooking the achievements of women in fields like science, art, politics, and history. A recent analysis of popular textbooks found that only 15% of historical figures mentioned are women.

According to the National Women’s History Museum, while over three-fourths of Americans can name figures like Frederick Douglass and Paul Revere, only a quarter can identify the accomplishments of notable women like Ida B. Wells and Sybil Ludington.

A 2015 Slate study analyzed popular history books and found that male authors wrote 75.8% of these works. Among books classified as biographies, 71.7% were about men. Moreover, while 69% of female biographers wrote about women, only 9% of male biographers chose to focus on female subjects.

Also a bit of context for one of our favorite feminist phrases that were plastered on many of a women's march sign:

The phrase "well-behaved women seldom make history" was originally a critique of how traditional historical scholarship often overlooked the lives and contributions of "well-behaved women" because their activities were deemed insignificant or unworthy of study.

But what does it truly mean to "make history"? Historian Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, the author of the quote, challenges the common understanding that to "make history" one must be a trailblazer, leader, or rule-breaker. Instead, Ulrich argues that history should also recognize and remember the contributions of ordinary women—those who lived within the traditional roles of mothers, wives, and caretakers.

“Make history” is often understood as “change history”—especially to change how things have been for women in the past compared to men. But if we only look at the first women to do something or the women who “changed history” by taking on traditionally male roles/occupations, we miss the women in the domestic sphere, mothers and wives and caregivers etc. and how they contributed to society, economy, and culture. Their roles are historically significant.

But I still haven't answered the question have I? Who are some badass women to lift up our spirits?

Clara Shortridge Foltz, an advocate for the women's voting rights movement, was not only the first female lawyer on the west coast, but the first woman in the United States to become deputy attorney of the public defenders office and the first woman to run for governor of California. Foltz helped author the Women's Vote Amendment in California, wrote the Woman Lawyer's Bill and published columns in San Diego newspapers until her death.

Mary Ellen Pleasant, "The Mother of Civil Rights in California" was born a slave in Georgia yet worked to bring enslaved people to freedom through the Underground Railroad. Pleasant eventually moved to San Francisco where she passed as white in order to earn money that she used to fight discriminatory laws against former slaves. As a brilliant entrepreneur she used her fortune to obtain jobs and rights for African Americans giving her the nickname, "The Black City Hall."

Charlotta Spears Bass, an African American newspaper editor and civil rights activist, ran "The California Eagle," an African American newspaper that focused on political activism and civil rights. Bass was the first African American woman to be nominated as the Vice President of the Progressive Party in 1952 and openly oppossed the California Ku Klux Klan and the New Deal.

Victoria Woodhull, a publisher, editor, and women's rights activist who challenged the strict gender roles of her time. Woodhull and her sister were the first women to run a stock brokerage company. Woodhull expressed many ideas that were considered radical at the time. such as socialism, women's suffrage, birth control, and free love. In 1872 Victoria Woodhull became the first woman to run for President of the United States, running on the ticket of the Equal Rights Party, a party which she established.

Jeannette Rankin, in 1916 Jeannette Rankin became the first woman elected to serve in Congress, which is particularly impressive considering this was before the 19th Amendment granted women the right to vote nationwide. Before being elected to the House of Representatives, Rankin was essential to the success of the women's suffrage movements in Washingston State and Montana. She also helped pass the 19th Amendment while in Congress. Rankin was also a prominent pacifist, voting against both World War I and II.

Shirley Chisholm, In 1968 Shirley Chisholm became the first black woman elected to the United States Congress, serving until 1983. Before being elected to Congress, Chisholm also served in the New York State Assembly. Chisholm was also active in the Civil Rights Movement, the anti-war movement, and the Women's Liberation Movement. In 1971 Chisholm ran for the Democratic Party's nomination for President of the United States, and although she did not win the nomination, she did receive 10% of the party's vote. Chisholm was also a cofounder of the National Political Congress of Black Women.

Patsy Mink, In 1956 Patsy Mink became the first Asian-American woman elected to serve in the Hawaii House of Representatives. Mink founded the Oahu Young Democrats and the Hawaii Young Democrats, and in 1957 was elected as Vice President of the National Young Democrats of America. In 1962 Mink won her bid for Hawaii State Senate and in 1964 won a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. One of Mink's greatest achievements during her twelve years in the House was authoring the Equal Opportunity in Education Act, also known as Title IX of the Higher Education Act Amendments, which enabled the dramatic growth of athletic programs for girls in schools and universities throughout the country.

Luisa Moreno was vital to organizing labor unions in the United States. Her first major role with activism was during the Great Depression, when she worked as a seamstress to support her family: she organized her fellow workers into a garment workers union. In 1935, Moreno was hired as a professional organizer by the American Federation of Labor (AFL). Soon after, she moved to Florida where she unionized African Americans and Latina cigar workers. Moreno also organized the pecan-shelling plants in San Antonio Texas and the cannery workers throughout California. While living in San Diego, she protested legislation that prevented Mexican Americans from working in jobs that would help the war effort for World War II. Luisa Moreno also advocated against police brutality. These actions created enemies and a prominent target for deportation, a movement by the United State government focused on forcibly deporting Mexican Americans.

I remember sitting in every history class thinking “I wonder when a woman will show up. I wonder when we’ll learn about a woman in history. I wonder when we’ll hear about a woman.” There are many important female historical figures. We don’t hear about them because men don’t want us to. Men are not the only ones who shaped this world; but they like to pretend they are.

[jollyinfluencersweets]

The Growth of Startups in San Jose, California

Introduction

San Jose, California, is famous for its thriving startup ecosystem. With its proximity to Silicon Valley and a supportive trade ambiance, the city has changed into a hub for innovation and entrepreneurship. In this newsletter, we are going to explore the factors contributing to the development of startups in San Jose and delve into the picks and worrying situations that marketers face in the region.

The Importance of San Jose's Startup Scene

San Jose's startup scene plays a critical operate in making use of fiscal increase and job advent within the sector. As startups emerge and develop, they convey new concepts, models, and abilities to the industry. This innovation no longer only draws funding nonetheless it in addition creates employment chances for local citizens. Furthermore, successful startups by and widespread act as catalysts for financial sample as a result of attracting expertise and fostering collaboration within the friends group.

Key Factors Driving Startup Growth in San Jose Proximity to Silicon Valley

One of the famous formulation contributing to the improve of startups in San Jose is its proximity to Silicon Valley. Located surely south of San Francisco, Silicon Valley is popular as a world midsection for innovation and know-how. The point of interest of obstacle capital prone, company experts, and frequent tech vendors in Silicon Valley creates an setting that click here supports entrepreneurial endeavors. Entrepreneurs in San Jose can faucet into this neighborhood for investment, mentorship, and strategic partnerships.

Supportive Business Environment

San Jose supplies a supportive trade environment that encourages startup growth. The the city executive has completed regulations and responsibilities aimed toward attracting and maintaining startups. These include tax incentives, streamlined regulatory approaches, and get admission to to factors akin to coworking areas and incubators. Additionally, corporations identical to the Silicon Valley Organization grant aid services adapted without doubt for startups.

Access to Talent Pool

Another needed thing contributing to startup development in San Jose is get right to use to a numerous advantage pool. The region is residence to prestigious universities like Stanford University and UC Berkeley, which produce a relaxed circulate of particularly skilled graduates. Moreover, the presence of universal tech establishments in Silicon Valley draws authorities from round the sector, developing a wealthy skills pool for startups to attract upon.

Strong Networking Opportunities

Networking plays a priceless position inside the success of startups, and San Jose promises considerable opportunities for marketers to glue and collaborate. The urban hosts a considerable number of commercial enterprise pursuits, meetups, and meetings where marketers can convey off their alternatives, read from trade experts, and forge fundamental connections. Additionally, groups like Startup Grind and Women Who Code provide networking programs primarily tailored for startups.

Overcoming Challenges in San Jose's Startup Ecosystem

Although San Jose gives you a favorable putting for startups, marketers still face difficult circumstances along their event. Let's realize a number of those irritating conditions and the method entrepreneurs can overcome them.

High Cost of Living

One