#UC Davis Police Department

[petnews2day]

Officer Robert Sotelo introduces Cali, UC Davis's first specialized therapy dog

New Post has been published on https://petn.ws/YXh5D

Officer Robert Sotelo introduces Cali, UC Davis's first specialized therapy dog

UC Davis CORE Officer Robert Sotelo with Cali, a service dog who specializes in assisting with mental health and crises. By Shreya Kumar, UC Davis With her natural warmth, Cali is out to make friends for herself — and for the UC Davis Police Department. At just 14 months old, the Labrador retriever is the […]

See full article at https://petn.ws/YXh5D #DogNews #CampusPolice, #UcDavis, #UCDavisPoliceDepartment

[clustxr]

hi y'all. i know i don't make a lot of original posts here. however, on may 31st, i watched as my friends and peers were brutalized at the hands of cops from departments across california.

edit 6/12/24: students for justice in palestine at uc santa cruz has published a press release. it is easily the best way to understand what happened that night. please take a few minutes to read it.

uc santa cruz police made a statewide call for mutual aid in order to disband the gaza solidarity encampment located at the main entrance of the campus - initially established at the quarry in the center of campus on may 1, it moved to the entrance on may 20 in solidarity with the UAW strike. on tuesday, may 28, protesters barricaded the main entrance, cutting off the primary way of getting on campus; though the western entrance to UCSC was left unblocked (except for a few hours on tuesday), the main entrance remained obstructed until the raid began late on thursday night. this road blockage is what admin cited as the reason for the raid, along with "campus safety" and "academic freedom".

it's important to note that prior to blocking the road, students had been encamped for 28 days, and had been holding peaceful, law-abiding rallies since october. nothing worked. months of following the guidelines that admin had set, and of course student voices were dismissed and ignored by chancellor cynthia larive and cpevc lori kletzer (the latter of whom, by the way, showed up at 6 am "walking her dog" and smiled while watching her students get suffocated and beaten). the escalation would never have happened if student demands had been met at the very beginning.

hundreds of cops in riot gear from as far out as uc davis showed up to abuse students. over 115 arrests were made, including 3 ucsc professors, transported off by buses that were fifteen years past their intended end-of-use date and had also been servicing the campus prior. is this "campus safety"? is this "academic freedom"?

from just before midnight until approximately 9am on friday, cops kettled, suffocated, shoved, yanked, beat, and bruised students. one got a battery charge for writhing and bumping a cop after another slammed him in the head with a baton. another had a bag placed over their head, leading to suffocation, vomiting, and loss of consciousness. at least two protesters were confirmed to go to the ER that morning; many more have had to seek medical attention for lasting injuries.

arrestees were given a 14-day campus ban, including those who live on-campus (functionally evicting them & preventing access to their belongings), not to mention subjected to horrifyingly inhumane conditions:

you can find more information on various instagram accounts such as ucscsjp, ucscdivest, fjpucsc, ucsc_encampment, & jawsucsc. there's plenty of other organizations and people posting about this, too. please, don't let ucsc brush this under the rug. demand amnesty for the arrestees and protesters. contact any ucsc admin you can find. the uc has been utilizing police brutality to repress student voices across their institution, with ucla and uc irvine also being victims of this violence. do not let them get away with it.

free palestine, from the river to the sea. if seeing this violence sickens you, remember that this is not even a fraction of what the people of palestine have been enduring for decades. we will not let the university silence us, no matter what.

[eretzyisrael]

by Adam Kredo

President Joe Biden's Department of Education reached an agreement with the University of California system to settle civil rights complaints that alleged widespread discrimination against Jewish students. To do so, the university system agreed to develop voluntary campus "climate surveys" and take other underwhelming measures.FreeBeaconBob Menendez's Lawyers Say Senator Hoarded Cash, Gold Because of 'Intergenerational Trauma'Read more

In the agreement, released Friday, university leaders made no admission of wrongdoing. Instead, they agreed to "provide training" to campus police officers and "employees responsible for investigating complaints and other reports of discrimination." They also agreed to "create a plan to work with respective campuses to develop climate surveys" meant to evaluate "the extent to which students are subjected to or witness discrimination, including harassment, based on actual or perceived race, color, and/or national origin."

The settlement comes in the wake of shocking scenes that played out at the University of California, Los Angeles, in the spring. Anti-Semitic radicals at the school physically prevented Jews from accessing portions of campus if they didn't denounce their religious beliefs. 

Three Jewish students subsequently sued the school in June, arguing that UCLA officials "routinely turned their backs on Jewish students, aiding and abetting a culture that has allowed calls for the annihilation of the Jewish people, Nazi symbolism, and religious slurs to go unchecked." Judge Mark Scarsi agreed, issuing a scathing ruling that ordered the school to ensure its Jewish students had equal access to campus.

"Jewish students were excluded from portions of the UCLA campus because they refused to denounce their faith," Scarsi wrote. "The fact is so unimaginable and abhorrent to our constitutional guarantee of religious freedom that it bears repeating."

In a Friday statement, the University of California said it was "pleased to share that it has entered a voluntary resolution agreement … furthering UC's commitment to cultivate a respectful and welcoming environment free from discrimination and harassment based on national origin." In addition to UCLA, schools impacted by the agreement include the University of California, Santa Barbara, the University of California, San Diego, the University of California, Davis, and the University of California, Santa Cruz.

"The University of California unequivocally rejects anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, and all forms of harassment and discrimination," the statement read. "Ensuring an inclusive University environment requires sustained focus and action."

Under Biden, the Department of Education has opened dozens of investigations into schools accused of discriminating against Jewish students. While many are unresolved, settled cases have resulted in insignificant changes like the employee training and anti-discrimination statements seen in the University of California agreement.

[mariacallous]

The U.S. Department of Education announced it had resolved nine antisemitism- and Islamophobia-related civil rights complaints made against five campuses inside the University of California system on Friday, including some involving a prominent pro-Palestinian encampment in Los Angeles that had descended into violence in the spring.

The sweeping resolution comes in the final weeks of President Biden’s term, and as President-elect Donald Trump has threatened to eliminate the department altogether, which could potentially move antisemitism investigations under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act to the Justice Department.

The Education Department’s Office of Civil Rights, which handles Title VI cases, wrote in an open letter to Michael Drake, president of the UC system, that it had “identified compliance concerns that the Universities appear not to have responded promptly or effectively” to allegations of harassment. In addition, OCR said, three of the schools “appear to have engaged in different treatment of students based on actual or perceived national origin.”

Four of the resolved cases involved the University of California, Los Angeles, where an unruly spring encampment — and pro-Israel counterdemonstrations — ended in violence and arrests. UCLA received complaints on behalf of both Jewish and pro-Palestinian students that the school had failed to protect them during the encampments, which also recently earned the campus a legal rebuke based on accusations that protesters blocked Jewish students’ access to parts of campus. (An internal antisemitism task force at UCLA also recently found that the school had fostered an antisemitic environment, including as a result of the encampments.)

Two more complaints involved UC Davis, where a faculty member in October 2023 posted threats to “Zionist journalists” on social media, and where Muslim and Palestinian students alleged they had been doxxed and stalked.

The other three cases involved the targeting of a Jewish student body president at UC Santa Barbara; allegations of “anti-Zionist propaganda” posted in the Critical Race and Ethnic Studies department of UC Santa Cruz; and UC San Diego’s alleged failure to respond to harmful activity from its Students for Justice in Palestine chapter.

In a statement to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, the UC system said it was “pleased” with the resolution agreement and that it “unequivocally rejects anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, and all forms of harassment and discrimination.” The statement pointed to other steps the school said it had taken lately to address the issue, including establishing its own office of civil rights, an anti-discrimination policy, and new limits on protests and other activities.

As part of the resolution agreement, the UC system agreed to annual Title VI training for staff and campus police, to report more information to OCR about how its campuses will respond to harassment complaints, and annual audits and regular campus climate assessments for the five campuses mentioned in the complaint.

Six of the nine complaints involved harassment against Jewish and Israeli students; OCR said it dismissed one of those complaints, involving a Jewish UCLA student who said SJP had blocked her from joining the group, due to lack of evidence. The other three complaints involved harassment against Muslim, Arab or Palestinian students.

Justin Samuels, a non-Jewish conservative legal activist whose complaint triggered one of the UC Davis investigations, told JTA he was “happy to have helped” in their resolution. Samuels has been active in filing Title VI complaints related to campus antisemitism in the wake of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks.

He added, “I expect the Trump administration to be a lot more proactive on shared ancestry discrimination.”

OCR has continued to resolve antisemitism-related Title VI cases since the election, though dozens more remain active in its system. A separate resolution agreement, also announced Friday, ruled that the University of Cincinnati did not appropriately respond to complaints of discrimination against Jewish students related to a “Spooky Zionist” student gathering.

The university similarly agreed to regularly report its handling of discrimination cases to the office, and to additional employee training and campus climate assessments.

“The university appeared to operate under the mistaken understanding that if a complainant could not identify a perpetrator by name; the conduct was not directed at a specific individual; the conduct involved multiple perpetrators or a registered student organization; or the conduct occurred off campus, the university did not have an obligation to address alleged harassment,” the office determined in a statement.

[howwelldoyouknowyourmoon]

New York City judge issued a warrant for the arrest of a Sun Myung Moon disciple who tried to prevent a girl from leaving

“Would-be Moonie says Church plans to kill”

The Reporter Dispatch White Plains, N.Y., Saturday, March 27, 1976

By Barbara Ross, Staff Writer

A New York City judge issued a warrant Thursday for the arrest of a Sun Myung Moon disciple who is accused of trying to physically bar a Hicksville, Long Island, girl from leaving a Unification Church center in Brooklyn.

Judge Jerome Vail acted after the Hicksville girl, Helayne Ordover, 18, and Dr. George Swope of Port Chester told him “there is more involved here than just a case of harassment.”

Miss Ordover said she decided to leave the Brooklyn center alter Elizabeth Williams (the woman charged with criminal harassment) allegedly told the recruit that Moon’s Unification Church will start issuing guns next year for members to “kill” opponents of the cult.

Miss Williams did not appear in court Thursday and repeated efforts to reach her failed.

In an interview, Miss Ordover said she was attracted to Unification after reading about it in Long Island newspapers.

“I LIKED the idea of a bunch of young people living together,” she recalled. Miss Ordover said she was living at home, working “odd jobs,” and studying hard to take an equivalency exam to get a high school diploma.

Miss Ordover said she attended several lectures at Unification’s Hempstead center before deciding to participate in one of the group’s weekend workshops.

On Thursday, Feb. 19, she said she spent three hours selling candy “to help retarded kids” for an interlocking Moon group called One World Crusade. The girl said she collected almost enough money to pay the $15 fee charged her for participating in the weekend seminar.

Friday evening, Miss Ordover left home against the advice of her parents and Rabbi Maurice Davis of White Plains whom the girl had contacted earlier.

The young woman said she was taken to Unification’s Brooklyn center, at 3235 Nostrand Ave. and attended long hours of lectures by group leaders.

“By Saturday afternoon, I was really starting to believe it. They have answers for everything,” she said.

Sunday morning, however, Miss Ordover said she was “shocked” when her team leader, Miss Williams, said that starting next year, “We would have to be prepared to kill anyone not a believer of the Rev. Moon.

“I REALLY couldn’t believe it, she said. “It really scared me.”

Soon after that. Miss Ordover said, she quickly departed leaving her suitcase behind.

A few hundred feet from the center, Miss Ordover continued, she met Miss Williams who she said “held onto my coat and told me to go back now and repent for my sins.”

‘‘I told her I didn’t believe in her religion and that Rev. Moon is full of crap, but she wouldn’t leave me alone. For four blocks she walked with me, holding onto my sleeve.

“Then,” Miss Ordover continued, “she pushed me against the wall of a building, held my arm and asked how dare I walk away. I punched her in the face and ran for the police.”

At the 61st Precinct house, Miss Ordover filed a complaint. She also persuaded the police and her father who had been called in from Hicksville to return to the center to retrieve another weekend recruit who had wanted to leave Saturday but had been persuaded to stay longer.

Miss Ordover said she has received several threatening phone calls since pressing charges against Miss Williams.

“They said I’d be a ‘sorry girl’ if I went through with it,” she declared, adding:

“THEY PREACH love and goodness but they just want to take over the world and they don’t care who they hurt in the process.”

_________________________________

Physically restrained against his will at Barrytown

UC leaders stole passports from guests at California workshops

[cletusthurstonbeauregard]

Five University of California campuses to get more military equipment

by: Rhea Caoile

Posted: Sep 23, 2024 / 12:11 PM PDT

Updated: Sep 23, 2024 / 12:11 PM PDT

SAN DIEGO (FOX 5/KUSI) — The University of California board of regents Thursday approved the purchases of additional military equipment after receiving requests from five campuses.

Each year, the board of regents approves the funding, acquisition and use of military equipment by UC police departments in compliance with Assembly Bill 481 which passed in 2021.

These new requests followed after an eventful spring, when many campuses — including UCSD, UC Riverside and UCLA, among others — saw encampments and protests in response to the Israel-Palestine conflict.

Inventory that fell under the protection of the statute included breaching rounds used to gain access to locked doors in the case of an emergency, which were used by police during a building takeover during the spring encampments, according to the board.

Accepted inventory also included a bomb robot used by UC Berkeley, distraction devices, a portable speaker called a “long range acoustic device,” and other tools including kinetic energy, pepper spray and tear gas.

According to the board, “all these tools are meant to provide officers with the ability to de-escalate or overcome self-destructive, dangerous or combative individuals without having to resort to deadly force.”

The equipment under the statute is meant to provide UCPD with “less lethal alternatives” to standard-issue firearms, the board said.

Additionally, the board said it recognizes that “the mere possession of any equipment does not warrant its use for every incident.”

The 2024 annual report presented to the board by UCPD revealed there were no complaints related to the use of military equipment nor violation with the policy.

Each year, the board also requires a report on how the specified equipment was used plus any complaints or violations of the use policy, cost, quantities and requests for additional equipment.

In the time period of the annual report, UC Davis was the only one out of the 10 UC campuses where university police did not use any military equipment.

Meanwhile, UC San Diego police used 330 40mm eXact iMpact munitions for annual training, according to the report.

The five campuses requesting new equipment were UC Berkeley, UCLA, UC Santa Cruz, UC San Francisco and UC Merced.

Four campuses — UCB, UCLA, UCSC and UCSF — requested more drones. Currently, UCB has 4, UCLA and UCSF have 3, and UCSC has 2, according to the UCPD’s report.

Other requests include a kinetic breaching tool and a second hazardous devices robot for UCB, as well as launchers and more munitions for UCLA and UCM.

UCSD did not request any new military equipment for the upcoming fiscal year.

[all-socialism-is-democratic]

The shocking truth about the crackdown on Occupy

Naomi Wolf

The violent police assaults across the US are no coincidence. Occupy has touched the third rail of our political class's venality

Fri 25 Nov 2011 12.25 EST

US citizens of all political persuasions are still reeling from images of unparallelled police brutality in a coordinated crackdown against peaceful OWS protesters in cities across the nation this past week. An elderly woman was pepper-sprayed in the face; the scene of unresisting, supine students at UC Davis being pepper-sprayed by phalanxes of riot police went viral online; images proliferated of young women – targeted seemingly for their gender – screaming, dragged by the hair by police in riot gear; and the pictures of a young man, stunned and bleeding profusely from the head, emerged in the record of the middle-of-the-night clearing of Zuccotti Park.

But just when Americans thought we had the picture – was this crazy police and mayoral overkill, on a municipal level, in many different cities? – the picture darkened. The National Union of Journalists issued a Freedom of Information Act request to investigate possible federal involvement with law enforcement practices that appeared to target journalists. The New York Times reported that "New York cops have arrested, punched, whacked, shoved to the ground and tossed a barrier at reporters and photographers" covering protests. Reporters were asked by NYPD to raise their hands to prove they had credentials: when many dutifully did so, they were taken, upon threat of arrest, away from the story they were covering, and penned far from the site in which the news was unfolding. Other reporters wearing press passes were arrested and roughed up by cops, after being – falsely – informed by police that "It is illegal to take pictures on the sidewalk."

In New York, a state supreme court justice and a New York City council member were beaten up; in Berkeley, California, one of our greatest national poets, Robert Hass, was beaten with batons. The picture darkened still further when Wonkette and Washingtonsblog.com reported that the Mayor of Oakland acknowledged that the Department of Homeland Security had participated in an 18-city mayor conference call advising mayors on "how to suppress" Occupy protests.

To Europeans, the enormity of this breach may not be obvious at first. Our system of government prohibits the creation of a federalised police force, and forbids federal or militarised involvement in municipal peacekeeping.

I noticed that rightwing pundits and politicians on the TV shows on which I was appearing were all on-message against OWS. Journalist Chris Hayes reported on a leaked memo that revealed lobbyists vying for an $850,000 contract to smear Occupy. Message coordination of this kind is impossible without a full-court press at the top. This was clearly not simply a case of a freaked-out mayors', city-by-city municipal overreaction against mess in the parks and cranky campers. As the puzzle pieces fit together, they began to show coordination against OWS at the highest national levels.

Why this massive mobilisation against these not-yet-fully-articulated, unarmed, inchoate people? After all, protesters against the war in Iraq, Tea Party rallies and others have all proceeded without this coordinated crackdown. Is it really the camping? As I write, two hundred young people, with sleeping bags, suitcases and even folding chairs, are still camping out all night and day outside of NBC on public sidewalks – under the benevolent eye of an NYPD cop – awaiting Saturday Night Live tickets, so surely the camping is not the issue. I was still deeply puzzled as to why OWS, this hapless, hopeful band, would call out a violent federal response.

That is, until I found out what it was that OWS actually wanted.

The mainstream media was declaring continually "OWS has no message". Frustrated, I simply asked them. I began soliciting online "What is it you want?" answers from Occupy. In the first 15 minutes, I received 100 answers. These were truly eye-opening.

The No 1 agenda item: get the money out of politics. Most often cited was legislation to blunt the effect of the Citizens United ruling, which lets boundless sums enter the campaign process. No 2: reform the banking system to prevent fraud and manipulation, with the most frequent item being to restore the Glass-Steagall Act – the Depression-era law, done away with by President Clinton, that separates investment banks from commercial banks. This law would correct the conditions for the recent crisis, as investment banks could not take risks for profit that create fake derivatives out of thin air, and wipe out the commercial and savings banks.

No 3 was the most clarifying: draft laws against the little-known loophole that currently allows members of Congress to pass legislation affecting Delaware-based corporations in which they themselves are investors.

When I saw this list – and especially the last agenda item – the scales fell from my eyes. Of course, these unarmed people would be having the shit kicked out of them.

For the terrible insight to take away from news that the Department of Homeland Security coordinated a violent crackdown is that the DHS does not freelance. The DHS cannot say, on its own initiative, "we are going after these scruffy hippies". Rather, DHS is answerable up a chain of command: first, to New York Representative Peter King, head of the House homeland security subcommittee, who naturally is influenced by his fellow congressmen and women's wishes and interests. And the DHS answers directly, above King, to the president (who was conveniently in Australia at the time).

In other words, for the DHS to be on a call with mayors, the logic of its chain of command and accountability implies that congressional overseers, with the blessing of the White House, told the DHS to authorise mayors to order their police forces – pumped up with millions of dollars of hardware and training from the DHS – to make war on peaceful citizens.

But wait: why on earth would Congress advise violent militarised reactions against its own peaceful constituents? The answer is straightforward: in recent years, members of Congress have started entering the system as members of the middle class (or upper middle class) – but they are leaving DC privy to vast personal wealth, as we see from the "scandal" of presidential contender Newt Gingrich's having been paid $1.8m for a few hours' "consulting" to special interests. The inflated fees to lawmakers who turn lobbyists are common knowledge, but the notion that congressmen and women are legislating their own companies' profitsis less widely known – and if the books were to be opened, they would surely reveal corruption on a Wall Street spectrum. Indeed, we do already know that congresspeople are massively profiting from trading on non-public information they have on companies about which they are legislating – a form of insider trading that sent Martha Stewart to jail.

Since Occupy is heavily surveilled and infiltrated, it is likely that the DHS and police informers are aware, before Occupy itself is, what its emerging agenda is going to look like. If legislating away lobbyists' privileges to earn boundless fees once they are close to the legislative process, reforming the banks so they can't suck money out of fake derivatives products, and, most critically, opening the books on a system that allowed members of Congress to profit personally – and immensely – from their own legislation, are two beats away from the grasp of an electorally organised Occupy movement … well, you will call out the troops on stopping that advance.

So, when you connect the dots, properly understood, what happened this week is the first battle in a civil war; a civil war in which, for now, only one side is choosing violence. It is a battle in which members of Congress, with the collusion of the American president, sent violent, organised suppression against the people they are supposed to represent. Occupy has touched the third rail: personal congressional profits streams. Even though they are, as yet, unaware of what the implications of their movement are, those threatened by the stirrings of their dreams of reform are not.

Sadly, Americans this week have come one step closer to being true brothers and sisters of the protesters in Tahrir Square. Like them, our own national leaders, who likely see their own personal wealth under threat from transparency and reform, are now making war upon us.

[allthingsfern]

In order, my responses to comments in Reply of my COVID19 era post that was my answer to my question “My answer to my questions: Has the era of COVID19 changed your photography? How? And perhaps also, why?“ I am so confused now...

adventuresofalgy

Algy thinks you are lucky and - certainly if compared with Europeans - perhaps quite unusual in not having experienced a more profound effect on your creative outlets and expression. Many of Algy's creative friends have experienced wide-ranging and often severe impacts on their creativity and associated motivation - and therefore on their mental health as well.

themazette

As @adventuresofalgy Jenny said.... you are lucky...

I am indeed very lucky, or as I think of it, blessed. However, it is no way a US thing, nor even a California thing. I add California, because I know many in the US and around the world think of the Golden State as a haven, a progressive, hippie filled state that is all about peace and love and marijuana. However, that is far from the truth. California is like Germany in the 1920s and 30s. There was Berlin, where there was a wildness in the city that was not shared, and was often looked-down on, by those in the majority of the country, who lived in more conservative areas and who, often, economically could not afford the grand life of partying Berliners. In California it is the same. Except for a few urban areas, the state is full of very conservative folks, and for them, like for those in the cities (and in the rest of the world) this COVID19 era has been devastating. Well, and the fires for Californians have been too.

Even in this cool college town where I live, which is lovely and quiet and inspiring, the painfully empty streets, movie theaters, restaurants, shops (think of all those unemployed people) is (still) staggering. In mid-March last year, right after lockdown, I took several phone videos of the deserted street in our town and the campus, but I could not bring myself to share them, since I knew that so many others here on Tumblr were experiencing the same desolation in many different ways. (I figured: “Why add to the sorrow we are living, almost globally?”) I was overwhelmed by the emptiness of the major (well, major for a small town of around 65,000 people) street where I live and the empty bicycle trails and street on campus. And by empty, I mean that even now, I see maybe 3 cyclists per hour, and very little car traffic. Remember, this is a bicycle town; I do not own a car, doing most all my errands on my bike with its 2 fordable baskets in the rear.

And now, over a year later, that same heavy, oppressive emptiness persists. And no, I am not used to it. And yes, I traveled over the last year, but I found the same suffocating blanket of emptiness in each city I visited, even in Las Vegas. It was unnerving. As a matter of fact, last year when I drove to San Francisco 2 months after lockdown for my birthday, I wound up getting depressed and disoriented, in a city where I lived for almost 7 years. Driving back home across the Golden Gate Bridge with tears of sadness in my eyes on my birthday was not what I expected. However, I did get some solid photos of the malaise that hung thick in the air, a malaise that physically took up the space that once was taken up by crowds of people.

Now, I am also very aware that my situation is unique. (Not a fan of the word exceptional, since it can mean both unique and special, and I do not see my situation as special.) My life situation is very unique in that I have a job I love and I work with a great team of characters. We get work done and we have fun, share about our lives. My job is often, especially since COVID19 first got noticed in early 2020, stressful and demands my colleagues and I learn (and sometimes then teach) lots of new technology and that we adapt to the vagaries of the technology gods, which are sometimes unfriendly and unresponsive. And a big part of my job is trying to figure out how to get the technology gods to like us again and grace us with their gifts. (I never realized, until now, with this discussion, that the troubleshooting that is a big part of my job is creative and probably fuels my photographic creativity. Who knew?) Yet, as a group, my colleagues and I support each other. And I am fortunate to count my closest colleague, Steve, as a friend. We have been a great emotional support to each other over the years and now through this COVID19 era. And I recently was reminded (as if I needed reminding) just how unique my work situation is because I participated in a committee that was going over responses to a UC Davis-wide survey exploring levels of employee satisfaction. My 2 colleagues who were also on that committee and I did not have the complaints that others from other departments shared. We work well together, have supportive management that share what is going on and include us (as mush as possible) in the decision making process. And as a department, we get stuff done.

Possibly the best example of how blessedly unique my situation is is what happened this morning when I was talking (yes, on ZOOM) with my immediate supervisor. We discussed the work related stuff, including how at around 10:30 pm the night before I figured something out about an online tool integration I had never done before that I knew was easy but I did not see as easy until I reread the overly complicated instructions a couple of times and just figured out how and where to cut and paste the lines of code (it was that easy, just fucking cut and paste some lines of JSON code) that got the fucking thing to work. Then we talked about his dealing with his young children returning to school and how “normal” now is not “normal” from before and how disruptive the whole thing has been, yet since we work in a supportive atmosphere (and are both salaried), he was able to deal and keep living.

Then, and you are gonna love this, I shared about my original COVID19 question post and the responses and pretty much said to him what I am sharing here.

We talked for a little over an hour. That kind of rapport is rare, for any job, anywhere.

And then there is another way my situation is unique. In some ways, previous “bad things” were actually a preparation for this era of physical distance and uncertainty. In mid-2019, from July to August, first because of my work related bowling concussion and then an antibiotic resistant infection, I was bedridden for about 5 weeks and then had several absences because of concussion issues, like sudden and extreme anger flare ups, nausea, headaches. But however bad I thought that concussion and infection were, the concussion induced forgetfulness and my desire to sharpen my mind and nurture and nourish it have lead me to become, in my old age, organized. I now often take notes of important stuff, add work and personal dates and notes to my Outlook calendar, and even know what day it is, which bugs my colleagues who often find they have no idea what day and/or date it is. Yep, unique, but the bad concussion shit got me to be organized in ways that I was never able to be before, no matter what I tried. This time, I just fucking get organized, without thinking about it too much. And if I fuck up with my being organized, like I did the other day for work, I admit it, fix it, and move on.

Preparation for isolation (and unexpected natural threats) came by way of the 2018 Northern California (the region where I live) fires that year, which caused the campus to shut down for about a week. (As my friend Steve called it, the smoking break.) And for work, my colleagues and I faced a couple of long term, emergency technical outages that impacted all of the UC Davis faculty, one of them for over a month. Pretty much on a professional and personal level, I was, if not ready, at least getting used to the WTF of whatever life decides to surprise me with. (And lets not forget the really bad fire last September, seen in this video I posted of ash “snow” falling. We did not have to shut down the campus because there was no one there anyway.)

Another aspect of this last year, and one that has been present in my life for a few years now, is the BLM movement and the brutal police violence against Black people in this country. As someone who was a teaching assistant and taught in African American Studies and worked closely with students of color on campus in a student run organization, I was and am still devastated, in part because I know, from hearing so many personal accounts, the pain many of my friends, former colleagues, and former students, are still facing and how overwhelmed they felt and still feel. I understand, if as an outsider, their emotional exhaustion. This has been going on for a while, plus add the years of anti-immigrant hate against the Latinx in the US and the rising tide of violent hate against Asians, and yes, it has been sorrowful. Heartbreaking. And I have, in several ways, including my photography, tried to capture the sorrow and resilience of US people of color. It hurts, almost physically, that many people of color are just tired of talking and dealing with the hate.

So, yes, my situation is unique, but with its own emotionally draining weight. And yes, I am extremely grateful. This leads to the other 2 comments in Reply:

kkomppa

Thank you for sharing, Fern. Very interesting. Like you, I would say my output hasn’t changed much. However, I have sought locations deeper in the wilderness. This has been fulfilling.

schwarzkaeppchen

Really interesting thoughts. We live in strange times, but creativity and motivation comes and goes for so many different reasons. My photography has changed a lot. I used to work as a photographer at events and took portraits for fun... Now I'm officially a portrait photographer.

Both of these comments point to another unique aspect of my life situation: For some of us, our photography and how we do it, has not changed much, and if it has, that has been a part of our overall experience with this art form we love so much.

For me, because of my depressive tendencies, the Zen of photography, at least the way I do it, is therapeutic. And I do not use the  term “Zen” lightly here, because my spiritual life has helped me come to terms with the WTF surprises that are pretty much life, if at times the WTF of it is more impactful, as it is during this COVID19 era. And that is part of what I was trying to share with my original post: Before this period of isolation and disorientation, I was already coming to grips with the gospel truth that “creativity and motivation comes and goes for so many different reasons.” as @schwarzkaeppchen​ said. In no way do I diminish the anguish flared up by these bleak times that impact so many around the world. And really, when you think about it, bleak times have been a norm, at least here in the US, since late 2016, though, of course, lockdowns and physical distance make it all worse. But, at least for me, I try to learn from the bleak times, even if I abhor going through them. And when dealing with the highs and lows of creative energy, at least for me, I have a calm certainty that photography is part of my life and I do not have to worry, since I only love it more each day. And the other side to my certainty is that if someday my love of photography fades, some other treasure of creativity will replace it.

Let’s be real, because of photography. I think about stuff like this and get to have discussions with so many great Tumblr original photographers.

And I am grateful for it, and no, this is not unique to my life situation. I know many of us love being here and sharing the good, the bad, the confounding.

Please think about joining @tvoom and me for InConverversation this month. It has been a long time since we talked, and this COVID19 era will be our topic.

I am grateful for all y’all.

[racingtoaredlight]

Opening Bell: July 28th, 2020

A very good girl named Daisy needed a little bit of help getting down the English mountain peak she’d climbed. It happens to the best of us, Daisy. No need to be embarrassed. 

Some of the nation’s largest fossil-fuel companies, financial institutions, and utility companies are dumping shitloads of money into police departments through non-profit entities known as “police foundations.”

The U.S. Commerce Department has added 11 Chinese companies to an economic blacklist for their roles in China’s ongoing human rights abuses, specifically those against their Uighur population. 

In other China-related news, people in the United States are receiving weird packets of seeds in the mail that appear to be coming from China. 

Scientists at UC-Davis have altered the genome of a bull calf in order to ensure that the bull’s future offspring will develop as males. This shit is going to result in minotaurs, book it.

Finally, Russia appears to have tested an anti-satellite weapon in space last week. LEAVE MY SIRIUSXM ALONE, YOU RUSSKI BASTARDS!

[fishdavidson]

Dream Journal 2019-06-30: Hidden Villages, Boxing, and Star Wars Collectibles

Lots of stuff going on in this entry, so let’s get started with some

Dream Fragments

Muhammad Ali had recently been elected Messianic Senator of the World for 2018. This is the truth, as revealed to me in an issue of People magazine that I read in the back of a friend’s car in the fading rays of sunlight. Also, he wasn’t dead in this reality, just old.

Disney announced that there was going to be a product recall for the first pressing of Star Wars IX DVD/BluRays due to the inclusion of an unintentionally hilarious deleted scene in the middle of an otherwise serious sequence. Someone included a snippet of Darth Vader saying “Kick them in the ninety-nines!” and one of his underlings interpreted this to mean “testicles” and thus kicked one of the protagonists in the nuts. I drove to Wal-Mart as quickly as I could to snag several copies of this film before our capitalist overlords destroyed it for good.

The Main Dream: Life After Getting Stuck In An Otherwise Inaccessible Village

Our tale begins late at night, both in real life and in the dream. I’m in a cabin in the middle of a dense forest. There are friends inside the cabin, though I never see them. Everyone is asleep after a night of drinking and camaraderie, and I really need to pee, but I also don’t want to wake the entire house by turning on lights and flushing an absurdly loud toilet.

So I do the manly thing and walk into the dark forest to pee. Well, “walk” is a bit of an overstatement of my abilities. It was more of a stumble and wobble to find a safe spot because I didn’t bring a flashlight and it even after my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I still couldn’t see anything.

My watering of the flowers completes uneventfully. And in case you were wondering, no, I did not pee in my real life bed. I’ve gotten pretty good at avoiding that in dreams after childhood.

I stumble back toward the house, but I’m not terribly familiar with these woods and quickly get lost. I wander aimlessly until just before dawn, which is when I find a dirt trail that abruptly leads into what looks to be a 1950s suburban street. All the shops along the street are closed at the moment, due to it being the middle of the night and all, but I keep walking along its light-lined boulevards.

There is a loud squeal of tires and a motorcycle roars past. Another person from the party is riding the motorcycle. I do not know anything about this guy other than that he is a Jerkface McDoucheNozzle, and apparently has stolen a motorcycle from this quiet town.

A police officer chases after him. “Stop!” he says. “Watch out for the--”

It is too late. The motorcycle crashes into an invisible and impenetrable barrier, though the dense forest I came out of is still visible on the other side. Neither the motorcycle nor its rider survive the crash.

The police officer notices me wandering around and lets me know a few things. They don’t get very many visitors out here because it’s basically impossible to come here. And if you do somehow make it to this town, there’s no way back to the world you left behind. The invisible force field makes sure of it.

Once I learn that I’m stuck here for the rest of my days, the police officer introduces me to a foster family who will be taking care of me until I can properly establish myself in the community.

My foster family is nice. The woman is a doctor, and the man is a teacher. Despite speaking English in this town, they do not write it as we do. They use combinations of intricate glyphs that aren’t quite ideograms. One of the first things I have to learn is how to read this new way.

According to my foster dad, the reason the written language is like this is because there is something in the sky that communicates with the town by forming clouds into these characters. The town teaches everyone to read this way so no one misses any important announcements.

I miss my old life, but I do not mind the new one. In time, I grow up to become an avocado farmer. Food production is important because we can only eat what we can grow here.

This is where I grow old, tending to my avocados and watching for messages in the sky from whatever is out there.

-------------------

Header image from the UC Davis Department of Chemistry

[reportwire]

Man, woman found dead at UC Irvine in apparent murder-suicide

Man, woman found dead at UC Irvine in apparent murder-suicide

Two people were found dead Tuesday at UC Irvine in what is believed to be a murder-suicide. University police were called around 3:52 p.m. for a report of a man and a woman on the ground outside the School of Social Sciences, said Sgt. Karie Davies, an Irvine Police Department spokesperson. Campus police called Irvine police, who took over the investigation, Davies said. The two people, who were…

[petnews2day]

Officer Robert Sotelo introduces Cali, UC Davis's first specialized therapy dog

New Post has been published on https://petn.ws/6DMFM

Officer Robert Sotelo introduces Cali, UC Davis's first specialized therapy dog

UC Davis CORE Officer Robert Sotelo with Cali, a service dog who specializes in assisting with mental health and crises. By Shreya Kumar, UC Davis With her natural warmth, Cali is out to make friends for herself — and for the UC Davis Police Department. At just 14 months old, the Labrador retriever is the […]

See full article at https://petn.ws/6DMFM #DogNews

[mycreativitysblog]

Healthy foods you should be consuming

It appears like on a daily basis we awaken to a brand-new "superfood" that will certainly change your life. With the wealth of information readily available, just how do you know what's in fact good for you? Below are the top 15 foods you need to be consuming according to our specialists:

1. Fish

Eat a lot of fish, which are high in healthy omega 3 fatty acids, as well as smaller sections of red meat to minimize your danger of conditions like stroke, heart disease as well as cancer."-- Bob Canter, professor of surgical treatment at UC Davis Department of Surgical Oncology

2. Broccoli or any one of the cruciferous veggies

These foods are rich in nutrients consisting of glucosinolates, which are type in cleansing procedures. These are best served raw or quick-steamed for five to 10 minutes."-- Alex Nella, pediatric signed up dietitian

3. Beets

Despite which color-- red, yellow, gold-- or which component-- root or eco-friendlies-- they have a terrific range of safety carotenoids. Proof recommends their nutritional nitrates can be transformed to nitric oxide and improve endurance exercise."-- Alex Nella, pediatric registered dietitian

4. Spinach and other leafy eco-friendly vegetables

These are packed with lutein and zeaxanthin: nutrients that can aid protect versus macular deterioration."-- Jeffrey Caspar, teacher of ophthalmology at the UC Davis Eye Facility

5. Kale

It's an eco-friendly leafy veggie that I enjoy cut in salad or prepared with onion and also garlic. It is nutrition thick, has lots of anti-oxidants and also can aid reduced cholesterol."-- Brandee Waite, director of the UC Davis Sports Medication fellowship

6. Peanut butter

My preferred food is peanut butter. It has healthy protein, carbohydrates and also sugars. It's an excellent recuperation food and also my youngsters enjoy it!"-- Brian Davis, clinical professor of the UC Davis Division of Physical Medicine as well as Rehabilitation

7. Almonds

Almonds have a great deal of vitamin E, which shields versus macular deterioration along with cataracts. I suggest eating just a handful a day."-- Jeffrey Caspar, teacher of ophthalmology at the UC Davis Eye Center

8. Mangos

They are low calorie, high in fiber and also vitamins An and C. They also have other vitamins, minerals and also anti-oxidants and have actually been linked with several wellness advantages. Plus, all my kids like them, so it is something we can all agree on."-- Bob Canter, teacher of surgical treatment at UC Davis Department of Surgical Oncology

9. Blueberries

Blueberries are exceptional frozen because they will certainly cool off your oat meal with bonus fiber and also anti-oxidants. They contain resveratrol, like red wine without the alcohol, hangover or additional calories."-- Alex Nella, pediatric registered dietitian

10. Mediterranean Diet plan

We know that fitness aids your mental health, so generally, eat throughout the day and do not miss out on meals or depend upon treats excessive. Ideally, eat a Mediterranean-style diet with lean meat and great deals of vegetables and also make certain you maintain your weight within a healthy variety."-- Peter Yellowlees, professor of basic psychiatry as well as chief wellness officer at UC Davis Health And Wellness

11. Delicious chocolate

There is nothing wrong with a periodic nutritional benefit, which is why chocolate is so often taken a 'health food' as long as you do not get involved in the habit of convenience consuming!"-- Peter Yellowlees, professor of basic psychiatry as well as principal wellness police officer at UC Davis Wellness

12. Quinoa

It is a delicious grain you can cook in mouthwatering or sweet recipes. It is high in fiber and healthy protein and also has a low glycemic index compared to a few other carbs."-- Brandee Waite, supervisor of the UC Davis Sports Medication fellowship

13. Legumes

Legumes such as chickpeas (garbanzo beans) are a fantastic healthy snack thing that can actually give a lot of flavor depending on how you prepare them. I such as making jalapeño-cilantro hummus or perhaps toasting whatever peppers remain in season and also including those into a hummus.

Using the hummus as merely a healthy and balanced dip or to include a taste profile to any kind of cover or sandwich instead of a mayonnaise-based spread can lead to a healthy, tasty meal."-- Santana Diaz, UC Davis Health and wellness exec chef

14. Pickled veggies

Pickling vegetables like cucumbers is pretty traditional however stepping out of the box and also pickling carrots can be various as well as tasty! Spicing up your treat world with some chipotle-pickled carrots is one more method to provide a tasty account to a vegetable that can get boring every so often."-- Santana Diaz, UC Davis Health executive cook

15. Chocolate milk

It's the greatest healing beverage."-- Brian Davis, professional professor of the UC Davis Department of Physical Medication and also Rehab.

[livinginlandmarketing]

Ke Chieh Meng was friendly to everyone she met.

Meng would prepare meals for visitors and load up relatives and neighbors with the apples, pears, mangos, lemons and vegetables that she grew in the backyard of her Riverside home. She was often photographed doting on strangers’ pets. And Meng would dole out food and cash to the homeless people she met while walking her dogs.

“She finds enjoyment in giving. What makes her happy is seeing everybody else happy,” said her son, James “Yi” Bai.

But Riverside police say a transient turned against Meng, 64, stabbing her to death on April 3 as she walked her dogs on Golden Avenue close to home. Darlene Stephanie Montoya, 23, of Monterey Park, has been charged with murder.

Montoya is due to enter a plea on April 22. She is being held in lieu of $1 million bail.

That sum stands in contrast to the bail Montoya was required to pay — $0 — under the state’s emergency COVID-19 bail schedule for misdemeanors and less-serious felonies after she was arrested March 30 after police said she used a skateboard to assault a woman a couple of miles away. Montoya was cited and released that day.

A person accused of assault with a deadly weapon other than a firearm, as was Montoya, can be sentenced to up to four years in state prison if convicted. That length of confinement is within the threshold for the $0 bail schedule enacted in April 2020 by the state Judicial Council at the urging of California Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye.

Cantil-Sakauye sought to reduce the jail population in order to limit the spread of the virus in lockups and prevent court employees from catching the disease. Although the Judicial Council rescinded that bail schedule in June, Riverside was among counties that took advantage of the option to retain it.

Bai, 31, said he spoke to the victim of the skateboard attack and found what she said to be unnerving.

The victim said Montoya told her, in the presence of police, “The next time I try to kill you, it will be with a knife. I will stab you to death.”

To Bai, the safety of the public from Montoya should have outweighed concerns about COVID-19.

“I don’t believe she should have been out so quickly because of that. If this person is dangerous to society, you do not let them out.”

Police determined that Montoya was most likely under the influence of illegal drugs and arrested her for that, along with murder, said Officer Ryan Railsback, a department spokesman. Police could have confined her on a mental-health hold only if they believed she was unable to care for herself because of mental illness and posed an immediate danger to herself or others for that reason, Railsback said.

Riverside County could be ending its use of the $0 bail, which would require a vote of county judges.

“As the circumstances surrounding the pandemic have changed, both for the better and worse, we have continually re-evaluated our COVID-19 related orders and procedures,” Riverside County Superior Court Presiding Judge John M. Monterosso said in a written statement.  “Now that the situation is improving, we will be discussing additional changes in the future, including to the emergency bail schedule, but will be cautious as COVID-19 has been very unpredictable.”

Riverside resident Ke Chieh Meng, 64, was stabbed to death while walking her dogs near her home on April 3, 2021. (Courtesy of James “Yi” Bai)

That change can’t come soon enough for Bai.

In 1998, when he was 8, he and his mother immigrated from China to the United States, initially settling in Garden Grove. Meng’s brother and sister already lived in Orange County.

“She spoke three words: Yes, no and OK, same three words I knew,” Bai said. She chose Garden Grove because it had few Chinese speakers who would prompt him to converse mostly in his native tongue, Bai said. “She wanted me to be able to learn English.”

Meng worked for 22 years as a waitress, putting her son through UC Davis. She moved to Riverside in 2009.

“She really sacrificed the second part of her life. She wanted a better education for me. She didn’t come here for anybody else,” he said.

Bai now lives in Dallas and owns a telecom company. He said he was proud when he was able to pay off his mother’s mortgage and car. Bai established a GoFundMe page in her name.

Meng was walking her dogs Xiao Bao (“Little treasure” in English, Bai said) and MiMi when she was assaulted.

Her last act after being mortally wounded, he said after reviewing surveillance video, was to pull on the leash to keep them away from her attacker.

“She was scared in that moment that her two dogs were going to try to go after that person and get killed as a result. That’s the kind of woman she really was. … I wonder if she could have been a little more selfish, let loose of the leash and call for help right away,” he said.

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Man’s body found in Sage, homicide detectives called in to investigate

-on April 09, 2021 at 11:19AM by Brian Rokos

[sciencespies]

Meet Barbara Dane and Her Proud Tradition of Singing Truth to Power

https://sciencespies.com/history/meet-barbara-dane-and-her-proud-tradition-of-singing-truth-to-power/

Meet Barbara Dane and Her Proud Tradition of Singing Truth to Power

Smithsonian Voices Smithsonian Center For Folklife & Cultural Heritage

How Barbara Dane Carries a Proud Tradition of Singing Truth to Power

March 8th, 2021, 12:00AM / BY Theodore S. Gonzalves

Barbara Dane with the Chambers Brothers at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival. (Photo by Diana Davies, Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives)

There are times when a songwriter, a song, and a moment come together to make an impact beyond anyone’s expectations. That’s precisely what happened when Los Angeles-based songwriter Connie Kim (on stage, she’s MILCK) performed “Quiet” during the Women’s March in Washington, D.C, on January 21, 2017.

Originally written a year before the march with Adrian Gonzalez to address Kim’s personal trauma from an abusive relationship, they turned pain into power: “I can’t keep quiet / A one-woman riot.” A year later, the song served a wider purpose and a much larger audience.

Starting with smaller groups of women singing a cappella in different locations throughout the country, and without the benefit of in-person, live rehearsals, Kim found herself on the National Mall. She’s heard of choirs in Ghana, Sweden, Australia, Philadelphia, New York City, and Los Angeles singing “Quiet.” Her “one-woman riot” grew to millions: “Let it out now / There’ll be someone who understands.”

Kim concedes, “It’s not my song. It’s our song.”

Today on International Women’s Day, it’s time to connect the newest generation of songwriters like MILCK to a long and proud tradition of singing truth to power.

Since the 2016 presidential election, millions of people have found themselves in the streets, holding signs, chanting, singing, occasionally braving inclement weather, and probably meeting others they never expected to know. “I never thought I’d be out here, for hours,” many have said, some taking to protest for the first time in their lives. Maybe it was what was said on the campaign trail, how it was said, or simply who was saying it. For all the first-timers out there, no matter how they feel about the politics of the day, people finding connection in the streets should know that singer-agitator Barbara Dane has been connecting audiences and marchers for years, decades even.

Barbara Dane (left) at the 1966 Newport Folk Festival. (Photo by Diana Davies, Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives)

As a teen, Dane sang for striking autoworkers in her hometown of Detroit. She attended the Prague Youth Festival in 1947 and connected local protest with stories of young people from around the world. With a natural gift for swinging and singing the blues, she launched a career in jazz that caught the attention of some of the greatest on the scene, like Louis Armstrong. By the end of the 1950s, Dane was featured in Ebony magazine, the first white woman to be featured in those pages and photographed with blues greats.

Forget about the sublime images of suburban life on TV from the 1950s. The postwar years saw millions taking up the banner of decolonization and national liberation. Americans couldn’t ignore those tides and neither could Barbara Dane. Her protest music took her to Mississippi Freedom Schools, free speech rallies at UC Berkeley, and in the coffeehouses where active-duty men and women steered clear of military police and regulations forbidding protests on bases. Dane was seemingly everywhere, leading chants, reinterpreting songs by Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, and Sara Ogan Gunning.

By the late 1960s, Dane took up an invitation to visit Cuba, where she was greeted warmly. Did she care about the U.S. State Department’s admonition against making the visit? Her response was sharp and clear: “We’re a country that promotes freedom, so why can’t this free person go where she wants to go?”

It’s no accident that Dane found kindred spirits among the ranks of singers and songwriters working in the nueva canción genre. This was a popular music that celebrated a constellation of impulses and influences, ranging from local, indigenous, folk, and ethnic instrumentation, stylizing, and vocalizing, to lyrics that were political, socially aware, defiant, or even comedic at times. Her Havana trip not only gave her a strong anchor in nueva canción for reference, but she also found singer-songwriters from Europe and Asia who shared those passions and interests.

Album art from Paredon Records (Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives)

These connections formed the basis of Paredon Records, the recording label she founded with Irwin Silber, a skilled critic and record producer. From 1970 to 1985, Dane and Silber released fifty albums that documented protest music from around the world. The musical messages reflected the stakes and the hopeful dreams of millions trying to make sense of a world dominated by superpowers with world-ending weaponry.

The songs and the writers came from every corner: students from Thailand and the Dominican Republic. Activists from Chile. Mass-party workers from the Philippines and Italy. Working-class rock by Brooklynite Bev Grant, anti-imperialist folk by Berkeley’s Red Star Singers, and anti-patriarchal songs by the New Harmony Sisterhood Band. But don’t think you can reduce Dane’s Paredon collection to merely strident messaging.

Throughout the catalog, you feel Dane’s attention to what it can mean to link the songwriter, the song, and the moment into something soulful and personal. Many of the musicians featured on Paredon trusted Dane because she was also an experienced singer in addition to being the label’s co-founder, writer of dozens of liner notes, and producer. She had the practical experience of knowing life as a working musician in an industry and in social movements dominated by men. She more than held her own. Audiences trusted her politics and attitude. And fellow musicians heard in Dane’s voice the hard life of singing for your living.

Getting out on the road and performing kept her vital and engaged. For Dane, as she explained in the liner notes to Barbara Dane Sings the Blues, the road taught her

what it means to be alive, to value life above anything and rage like a tiger to keep it… to spend it with care instead of trading it for a new car or a fur coat… to treasure the moments that are real between human beings without counting the cost or trying to bargain, because there’s no price on that beauty. The only thing we have, really, is our time alive, and I don’t think they’ve printed enough to buy mine. How about yours?

Folk musician Len Chandler talks with Barbara Dane at a major rally for the Poor People’s Campaign in Washington, D.C., 1968. (Photo by Diana Davies, Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives)

It’s not too late for MILCK to meet up with Dane. I had the chance to catch Dane’s eighty-fifth birthday concert, where she sold out the Freight and Salvage in Berkeley, California. For the first set, her quintet backed her as she delivered a slate of jazz and blues standards. After the intermission, members of her family performed—her daughter, Nina, singing flamenco; her two sons, Jesse and Pablo, and her grandson on guitar. Toward the very end of the evening, she brought up her entire family, spanning four generations, and had her great-granddaughter step up to the mic to sing.

It was getting late into the evening, and I was going to miss my train back into the city. I left just as Dane led the crowd through chorus after rousing chorus of “We Shall Not Be Moved.” I could hear her strong voice fade as I hit the street and descended into the subway station.

I hope MILCK gets a chance to see Dane, now ninety, perform live. Or maybe they could teach each other their favorite songs. Both of them, so much more than a one-woman riot.

Above, watch Barbara Dane sing and share stories during the 2020 Smithsonian Folklife Festival’s Sisterfire SongTalk.

Find the two-disc retrospective of Barbara Dane’s recordings, Hot Jazz, Cool Blues & Hard-Hitting Songs, and a vinyl reissue of Barbara Dane and the Chambers Brothers for sale from Smithsonian Folkways Recordings. You can also explore the history, messages, and art of Paredon Records in a new online exhibition.

Theodore S. Gonzalves is curator of Asian Pacific American history at Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History. He is currently writing a cultural history of Paredon Records.

#History