Roseanne Reviews S

This is a set of reviews of Roseanne episodes. My general thoughts about that show are here. I will focus only on the political aspects and will mention what percent of lines spoken by non-family members are spoken by people of color.

“Wait ’Til Your Father Gets Home” Episode 16, Season 5. Wikipedia summary is here.

There are about 25 lines by non-family members and all of them are spoken by white people.

“First Cousin, Twice Removed” Episode 17, Season 5. Wikipedia summary is here.

There are about 15 lines by non-family members and about 1/3 of them are by people of color.

“Lose a Job, Winnebago” Episode 18, Season 5. Wikipedia summary is here.

Out of about 50 lines by non-family members, none are by people of color.

“It’s a Boy!” Episode 19, Season 5. See this for a plot summary.

There were 15-20 lines by non-family members and none were by people of color.

“Playing with Matches” Episode 21, Season 5. See this for a plot summary.

There are about 30 lines by non-family members and none of them are by people of color.

Law and Order: SVU Reviews LL

This is a set of reviews of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit episodes. My general thoughts about that show are here. I’ll often do no more than make brief notes about an episode, although occasionally I’ll go deeper. Also, often there are dissenting main characters on almost any political issue, but you can usually tell what the general position of the show is. All the rest of the reviews are available by clicking on the l&osvu label at the bottom.

“Silent Night, Hateful Night” Season 23. See this for a plot summary.

Overall there’s some good stuff about violent bigotry towards religious minorities, although it’s a bit muddled since they had one batch of hate crimes committed by one group (Black teens) and one batch carried out by white fascists. I have mixed feelings about this episode. I’m not saying it’s just generally bad for the show to include stuff about Black-Jewish tension in NYC, but I’m hoping they’ve only addressed it 1-2 other times on the show (out of 500+ episodes), since it should be an incredibly minor theme. In that spirit, there is one very valuable part of this episode. When the team of detectives that includes SVU learn that some of the hate crime violence was carried out by anti-Semitic Blacks, they are reluctant to act publicly on that (by involving the media in their effort to arrest someone) because they worry that it will increase tension between those two groups. They eventually go with pursuing the Black teens for the anti-semitic hate crimes (or at least some of them), but only after a little more investigation.

“Tommy Baker’s Hardest Fight” Season 23. See this for a plot summary.

This is about a boxing champ coming out of the closet, coming out as a gay man.

“Video Killed the Radio Star” Season 23. See this for a plot summary.

The rape survivor is in an inter-racial relationship.

“Promising Young Gentlemen” Season 23. See this for a plot summary.

One of the SVU detectives says that if the suspects were people of color, the investigation would be a lot more aggressive.

“Once Upon a Time in El Barrio” Season 23. See this for a plot summary. 

This episode includes some statements and actions reflecting the fact that NYC does not help the federal immigration authorities. It’s also about a corrupt NYPD Captain.

Possibly the most valuable part of it politically is when the head of SVU (UPDATE 11/21/22 for a couple days that erroneously said NYPD, but it's correct now) points out that the corrupt cop was saved at one point in the past by something called “qualified immunity.” It basically means that government employees can often avoid lawsuits that are about how they do their job. It’s often cited by campaigners against police brutality as part of the problem.

Law and Order: SVU Reviews KK

This is a set of reviews of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit episodes. My general thoughts about that show are here. I’ll often do no more than make brief notes about an episode, although occasionally I’ll go deeper. Also, often there are dissenting main characters on almost any political issue, but you can usually tell what the general position of the show is. All the rest of the reviews are available by clicking on the l&osvu label at the bottom.

“Our Words Will Not Be Heard” Season 22. See this for a plot summary.

This is another anti-racist episode, with some stuff about homophobia added as well. Some of that is:

1. The head of SVU acknowledges that police don’t do as much about missing women of color as they do about missing white women (the media are also mentioned).
2. The head of SVU also gives a man suing the NYPD for racism some tips on what kind of demands to make in settlement negotiations (her suggestions are pretty good) (it’s emphasized that the people behind such lawsuits are looking for justice and change, not money). Part of what she says is that the courts need to mandate that the NYPD start a program of anti-bias training.
3. The bad guys in this episode are white supremacists who go after an inter-racial lesbian couple.

“In the Year we all fell down” Season 22. See this for a plot summary.

This is a little complicated, but I think there is an anti-racist element to this episode. At the center of the episode is a Manhattan restaurant with a BLACK LIVES MATTER poster at the front entrance. When her business is in serious financial trouble the owner DOES freak out and take the head of SVU hostage, but she’s willing to be a hostage to try and keep the situation from becoming critical (she is friends with the owner and loves the restaurant; she doesn’t want the owner to be killed). Also, at the end, after the owner surrenders without harming anyone, it’s revealed that the restaurant’s customers and/or the neighborhood in general raised money to help keep the restaurant from going under.

“Wolves in Sheep’s Clothing” Season 22. See this for a plot summary.   

In this episode, a small part of it is about the immediate superior of the head of SVU. He’s a black man and seems willing to cooperate with legal efforts at reforming the NYPD and the rest of the NYPD leadership become incredibly hostile to him.

“Nightmares in Drill City” Season 23. See this for a plot summary.

The ADA working for SVU expresses opposition to prosecuting people for having some marijuana.

“The People vs. Richard Wheatley” Season 22. For a plot summary see this.

One minor character is a female detective married to another woman.

That character is a main character on the Law and Order spin-off “Organized Crime” and we are reminded that her wife’s family (both women are black) is suing the NYPD for excessive force.

Law and Order: SVU Reviews JJ

This is a set of reviews of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit episodes. My general thoughts about that show are here. I’ll often do no more than make brief notes about an episode, although occasionally I’ll go deeper. Also, often there are dissenting main characters on almost any political issue, but you can usually tell what the general position of the show is. All the rest of the reviews are available by clicking on the l&osvu label at the bottom.

“Guardians and Gladiators” Season 22. See this for a plot summary.  

I read somewhere in late 2020 that after the anti-police protests in response partly to the death of George Floyd, the creative people behind SVU were going to shift things closer to the anti-racist end of the spectrum. This is the first episode they made after that shift and it’s very obvious. I might not remember every anti-racist thing, but here’s a few items that I remember:

1) When SVU arrests a black man at the scene of an assault, the head of SVU has to be interviewed by Internal Affairs. The IA interviewer is a black woman who has some good thoughts about how even the relatively anti-racist white officers have a lot of room for improvement.
2) An attempt at getting an indictment of a white man for sexually assaulting an Asian-American man fails because of hostility among the grand jury towards NYPD.
3) A Black member of SVU who saw what happened to their ADA (see item 2) gets into a confrontation with the (white) ADA and says at one point that when NYPD was carrying out “stop and frisk” operations Black officers would try to avoid participating.
4) When the black man is arrested (item 1) it’s partly in connection with a white woman claiming that he was acting threateningly towards her son. At the end the head of SVU tells him that the woman is being investigated for false reporting.

Item 3 makes me think of something else. About 1-2 years after Ice-T’s heavy metal band Body Count recorded the song “Cop Killer,” there was a backlash from police and  conservative organizations, but the then-35,000-strong National Black Police Association didn’t join the boycott of the label BC was on and kind of sided with Ice-T- not just on first amendment grounds, but because they realized that the song was about the need to do something about police brutality.

“Ballad of Dwight and Irene” Season 22. See this for a plot summary.

A black member of SVU talks about how when he was growing up he didn’t trust cops.

“The Long Arm of the Witness” Season 22. Wikipedia summary is: “When a powerful judge (Josh Stamberg) dismisses a rape case and announces a run for New York Attorney General, Carisi investigates the judge's own history of sexual assault. However, he and the rest of the Special Victims Unit have difficulty getting some victims to come forward after their careers are threatened.”

First, a recurring character (another ADA) is identified as gay and bi-racial. Second, the defendant is incredibly classist. That doesn’t mean the episode is anti-capitalist, but it’s still pretty cool.

“Hunt, Trap, Rape and Release” Season 22. Wikipedia summary: “The Special Victims Unit team up with former Major Case Squad detective Carolyn Barek (Annabella Sciorra) who is now a lieutenant with the Bronx SVU on a serial rape case that crosses city lines. Their fraught collaboration is hampered by police malpractice and inconsistent modus operandi.”

This is about a cop that is a serial rapist.

“Welcome to the Pedo Motel” Season 22. For a plot summary see this.

Although this is less anti-racist than it could be because the people most directly responsible for the lynching of a black man are also people of color, it’s a fairly anti-racist episode overall. A young black man (18 yo) was arrested for sleeping with his 15-yo white girlfriend because her father is a racist, and then when he’s on parole and a suspect for another sex crime involving a white girl younger than him, he’s essentially lynched- something carried out by Latinos but inspired by a white gang in the same NYC neighborhood. It turns out that he was framed by his GF’s racist father.

Law and Order: SVU Reviews II

This is a set of reviews of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit episodes. My general thoughts about that show are here. I’ll often do no more than make brief notes about an episode, although occasionally I’ll go deeper. Also, often there are dissenting main characters on almost any political issue, but you can usually tell what the general position of the show is. All the rest of the reviews are available by clicking on the l&osvu label at the bottom.

“Townhouse Incident” Season 17. See this for a plot summary.

Two minor characters are in an inter-racial relationship.

“Collateral Damages” Season 17. See this for a plot summary.

This is about a senior NYPD official who gets caught with child porn.

“Manhattan Transfer” and “Unholiest Alliance” Season 17. See this and this for a plot summary. 

Although it’s obscured by other suspects, part of this is about two corrupt cops moonlighting for a crime ring that traffics teenage minor girls.

“Assaulting Reality” Season 17. For a plot summary see this.

It’s about a reality TV show and at one point a member of the crew (she seems like she’s senior) basically says that using a non-union crew makes it difficult to successfully complete episodes of a reality TV show.

“Intersecting Lives” and “Heartfelt Passages” Season 17. For a plot summary see this and this.

This is about SVU investigating a jail guard who is raping inmates and ex-inmates. He’s white and all the women he targets are black and that’s part of his theory that no one will believe them. It also kind of makes it worse, as there is a history of white men using black women for non-consensual sex. Also, practically all of the other guards passionately support him and automatically believe him.

(We also learn that the ADA working for SVU has been getting threats on a frequent basis since he got a grand jury to indict three cops who killed an unarmed black man)

(The ADA is threatened by a street gang member in connection with his prosecution of a prison guard; it’s implied that the union for prison guards is behind it)

My Position on Ukraine

As I’ll explain below, I basically support Ukraine. I don’t see a Nazi problem there any more serious than what most white countries have, I don’t see why it’s so important for Russia to intervene in support of the the Russia population in Ukraine, I find Putin offensive for various reasons, etc. However I am also concerned about a war starting between the US and Russia.

About 40% of my info for this is from CNN, about 40% is from NPR, and the rest is miscellaneous stuff including Dave Anderson’s column.

1. I have heard almost nothing about a current problem with Nazis in Ukraine. According to Dave Anderson in the Boulder Weekly, the Nazis are no longer politically significant. I DID read on CNN.com about a battalion of the Ukrainian military that is more right-wing than most military units. But I got the impression it was also not very significant. I have read that the President of Ukraine is Jewish, probably less than 100%. And although it’s not a good sign for him that I feel a need to say this, I get the impression he is okay with people of color (he recently addressed some body of the African Union and met with his counterpart from Indonesia). I have read of Putin making vague references to Nazism in Ukraine, but they’re incredibly vague. I have heard some stuff making me think that RUSSIA is the one with the Nazi problem.
2. I have heard almost nothing about Russian-speaking people being oppressed in Ukraine. I’m not sure what to think of what happened with Viktor Yanukovych. I don’t remember exactly what happened, but everything else I have read indicates that Ukraine is a healthy democracy and aside from the thing about Yanukovych I have not heard of anything about the Russian-speaking population of Ukraine being oppressed.
3. I don’t believe that NATO expansion explains what Putin is doing to Ukraine and I’m certain it doesn’t justify it. Putin has been acting like an imperialist- taking little bits here and there into his State or at least his spheres of influence- parts of Georgia, then a part of Ukraine and now more of Ukraine.
4. I cannot understand why anyone would blame the Ukrainian people for fighting back. At least some part of that population is going to be under the rule of a foreign nation, a foreign nation that has shown zero respect for the Ukrainian people (what Putin said shortly before the invasion, and what his forces have been doing as part of the invasion). I can only imagine how horrible that is.
5. I don’t like Putin. Last I heard, about 15-20 years ago, he made governors in Russia appointed instead of elected. He’s friendly with Trump. He’s incredibly homophobic. In general he seems pretty repulsive to me. My hope is that if the Ukraine invasion is too costly (in economic and military terms) it might weaken Putin.

6. Practically every European country that is not Russia is in NATO. And some of the exceptions are in the EU which is also supporting Ukraine. Critics of Biden’s Ukraine policy have been out-voted by almost all of Europe that is not Russia. They are worried about Russian aggression.

I realize what I just wrote might not change many minds. I’ve only been reading about 1,000 words a day about the conflict and related issues and in earlier years I am sure I missed a lot of relevant stuff. But I do support Ukraine.

I AM worried about the US getting into a war with Russia. In fact, in 2016 I told 1-3 people that Russia was the only issue where I preferred Trump over Clinton (I voted for Clinton (there were enough serious problems with Trump (i.e. he accepted support from David Duke) that I ignored the fact CO is not a swing state and failed to vote for a good 3rd party)). I can’t believe that Zelensky repeatedly asked for a no-fly zone and I’m really glad that Biden answered with a firm NO. I think the US can help Ukraine defend itself and at the same time avoid a conflict with Russia (Vietnam didn't become WWIII and neither did Afghanistan in the 1980s). Although I ended up looking a little stupid with that book review about nuclear war, the tension between the US and Russia is one of the reasons I am trying to promote the book and discussion about nuclear war.

Tom

Mutually Assured Destruction: My Review of David Mace's "Fire Lance"

 I somehow stumbled onto the sci-fi novel “Fire Lance” in High School. It may have played a small role in me moving towards the left during those years (when I was 16 I became a member of the Rocky Mountain Peace (and Justice) Center at least partly because of their position on nuclear weapons). I’ve read it 2-3 times since then, most recently a couple of weeks before this post was published.

It was written in 1986 by a British sci-fi writer named David Mace. I read one of his other books but I didn’t like it very much (Fire Lance is one of my favorite books). It’s one of my favorite books because it’s both politically progressive and reminds me of the centrist/centre-right author Tom Clancy who often wrote about the military (I might go into more detail about this in a future post, but between 1989 and 2009 about 70% of the fiction I read was by Clancy and people like him- since 2009 it has gone down to about 1/4 of the novels I read).

Fire Lance is about a nuclear war between the USSR and the US. It’s not clear when in the future it takes place, but I think maybe it’s supposed to be about 10-20 years in the future from the author’s perspective in 1986. It’s pretty vague about the political situation that became a shooting war. It started with satellites in space going down and then there was some conventional action in Europe, and then it went nuclear. Some large majority of each side’s nuclear arsenal is used before they stop.  Around the same time they stop, nuclear winter sets in. Although almost the entire book takes place on a US naval vessel where they have no idea what it’s like on land outside the underground American command centers (i.e. Cheyenne Mountain), at one point a soldier who spent weeks at the beginning of the war outside those command centers talks about what that was like in the aftermath of such a total nuclear war. The breakdown of society and the freezing conditions that would be part of a nuclear winter are well illustrated.

Both the President and Vice-President are killed and the “government” is made up of the military and national security bureaucrats, all unelected. After the conventional war is over and the nuclear war winds down, they spend their time debating whether or not to start things up again with the Soviets. Before the story starts the “soft-liners” or “‘no more war’ people” in the places like Cheyenne Mountain are eliminated and the debate shits to those who want to wait and see what the Soviets do, and on the other side those who want to start the war again immediately. One of the only significant military units still capable of attacking the USSR is the Vindicator, a futuristic surface ship with a small number of offensive jets and Anti-Submarine Warfare helicopters and the Fire Lance system- hundreds of nuclear armed cruise missiles.

One of the two main characters is David Drexel, a British national working for the US government on national security matters. Although he’s primarily a survivor and bounces between the two factions in the US “Government,” he also has some good progressive commentary about American politics and foreign policy. He criticizes us for supporting totalitarian anti-Communist governments and on a related note for enforcing a foreign policy that is pro-life when it comes to abortion.

The other main character is the Vindicator’s Commanding Officer Captain Richard Bedford. He’s pretty non-political and doesn’t side with either faction. But after learning that the Fire Lance attacks his ship is making on the USSR are not in response to recent nuclear attacks by  the Soviets, he tries to stop the series of missile launches after the first third are launched. A hardliner shoots him for this. The second in command takes over and finishes the three-part series of launches partly because he's a technocrat and partly because the hardliner brought a squad of elite Army soldiers with him and the new CO wants to avoid further bloodshed on the ship. Bedford has some good thoughts about the need to stop the nuclear war.

There’s some interesting scientific commentary about whether or not life on Earth will survive a nuclear winter. Drexel says that the radioactive dust in the atmosphere that blocks out the sun won’t go away but at some point will come down- which I assume means human survivors would be breathing it and it would get into our water. If what Mace has Drexel say is accurate, that can’t be good. I’m also uncertain of this next thing, but it might be true. Drexel says that the radioactive dust in the atmosphere will also destroy the Ozone Layer and that means that undiluted UV rays will get through and destroy almost all life on Earth.

At the end, the Vindicator, once thought to be unstoppable, is stopped by various Soviet attacks and is abandoned. At the very end, as the survivors use life rafts to get to a frozen island nearby, it’s clear that they’re all going to die. If what Drexel said about the ozone is right, everyone is going to die. Overall it’s meant as a very damning illustration of nuclear war.

Three other things I like about it:

1) As I sort of already said, I like the stuff about how the military works and how the Soviets try to stop them.
2) At one point the ship is very close to Ireland and the Captain considers as likely the idea that the Irish would be very hostile to his ship. He thinks- “It wasn’t Ireland’s war. It was Ireland’s planet.”
3) At one point when US military spending is described by the author, the defunding of social programs is mentioned as something that allowed that military spending to be increased.

It’s 314 pages long. I do recommend it for any progressive who enjoys stuff about the military.  You might be able to find it at a used book store but your best chance is probably a library or Amazon (if it becomes ethical to buy from Amazon).

**********

I wanted to offer some thoughts about nuclear war.

Although I believe that any movement towards a nuke-free world is positive, I DO focus mostly on the US. We started it, and I’m an American. For multiple reasons I would like to see the US change it’s foreign policy in a progressive way and gradually reduce it’s conventional military. It should, towards the very beginning of this process begin getting rid of it’s nukes. As that process is going on, they should negotiate with almost every country on Earth to form a new global alliance. This global alliance should be about a global response to any use of nuclear weapons, where the guilty party will be shunned. I would support getting rid of American nukes right away but I think it would be very difficult for a majority of politicians here to support that outside the context I just described.

Tom

 

************

 UPDATE 6/30/22

A friend suggested I read some stuff by a CU-Boulder scientist named Brian Toon. I read a CPR article about his work on nuclear winter and watched a TED Talk he did on the same topic. I then exchanged a few emails with him. I read another article about his work on nuclear winter.

The CPR article is here. The TED Talk is here.

 

As far as the ozone layer, here's what I read in the novel: "Now Ozone is particularly susceptible to chemical degradation, especially by nitrogen containing compounds- and there'll be an awful lot of those in the dust veil, because you get such nitrogen compounds in the smoke produced by combustion.”

Above I wrote: "I’m also uncertain of this next thing, but it might be true. Drexel says that the radioactive dust in the atmosphere will also destroy the Ozone Layer and that means that undiluted UV rays will get through and destroy almost all life on Earth."

I am not sure how much I screwed up (the "dust veil" is the radioactive dust in the atmosphere (actually, although I confirmed that the book says the veil is radioactive, Toon sounded less sure about that, like maybe it's not radioactive)).

Although I wasn't going to ignore that part of the book (the part about humans surviving nuclear winter), I also tried to make it clear that I and the book are not great sources of scientific information (some of what Toon wrote in his emails I didn't totally understand). But Brian Toon IS a great source of scientific information. If you read the two items above and want more, he forwarded to me two articles as attachments that I can forward to you. Let me know.

I'm not saying I have done a great job of this so far, but the more I think about it, the more I think we need to encourage awareness about this issue.

Tom

 **********

UPDATE 7/1/22

One last thing from Prof. Toon:

There are 4 sorts of radioactivity in a nuclear war.  There is prompt radiation released when the bomb goes off.  This would kill a lot of people near ground zero, but they likely die first from blast and fire.  Second if there is a ground burst radioactive isotopes will attach to dust lifted from the ground.  The dust is relatively large and so it falls out fast (hence the name fallout).  This fallout can make a  strip of radiation hundreds of miles long downwind of the explosion.  Anyone in that who doesn't shelter for a week or so is potentially in trouble.  Ground bursts go after things like missile silos so most bombs are air bursts.  The isotopes from these will not attach to large dust particles so they will float around in the air until they get rained out, likely in a week or two.  By the time they reach the ground the radioactivity level will have fallen and so exposure will not be very dangerous.  For instance this happened from a Nevada test, which resulted in a radiation dump in a rain storm in upstate New York.  No one has looked at the rainfall frequency and the deposition of the radiation on the ground so the odds of radiation poisoning are not clear.  Generally the military says don't worry, no one will be hurt.  The forth type of radiation is long lived isotopes that can take decades to decay.   These isotopes explain the 1963 nuclear test ban treaty.  Kids teeth and bones were picking up this radiation.  Generally however, it is believed that this radiation is not much above the natural levels.  So again the military says don't worry.

 

Law and Order: SVU Reviews HH

 This is a set of reviews of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit episodes. My general thoughts about that show are here. I’ll often do no more than make brief notes about an episode, although occasionally I’ll go deeper. Also, often there are dissenting main characters on almost any political issue, but you can usually tell what the general position of the show is. All the rest of the reviews are available by clicking on the l&osvu label at the bottom.

“Glasgowman’s Wrath” Season 16. See this for a plot summary.     

Two of the girls (sisters) have two gay moms.

“Forgiving Rollins” Season 16. See this for a plot summary.

This is about a senior police officer getting accused by SVU of rape.

“Agent Provocateur” Season 16. For a plot summary, see this. 

A minor character is gay. They show him in his bedroom with another man (who might be naked and is sleeping in the bed). I’m not sure this is as significant as I think it is. I’m also not sure it’s as unprecedented on this show as I think it is. But I think the average straight man is less comfortable with a scene like that than he is with a similar scene involving two women. I’m not sure how helpful that kind of thing is (occasionally, in non-porn contexts, emphasizing the SEXUAL aspect of same sex relationships (the first man I referred to said he met his friend in a “meat market” bar (where I assume they were both looking for sex))). But I think it’s helpful to do that occasionally. On a last note, the first man I referred to was white and his friend was black.

“Transgender Bridge” Season 17. For a plot summary see this. 

Transphobia is a big part of this episode.

“Patrimonial Burden” Season 17. For a plot summary see this.

I’m not sure how many times I have done a note for similar episodes, but I think this one deserves one. The rapist is a socially conservative clergyman.

Letter to the Editor on Early Voting

 A LTE I recently submitted to a local paper. I did a similar post here 2 years ago.

 

Editor,

It may have been better if I had written this letter about a year ago BEFORE Republicans in many states made large changes to their state’s election system. But I don’t think that those of us who believe in a democratic system are completely defeated and I want to comment on this.

I didn’t read about every change made by these Republicans but I was always relieved when I read that those Democratic state lawmakers standing up to this had succeeded in preserving early voting. I’m not saying the other stuff isn’t important, but I believe that early voting is incredibly important, partly because I don’t think the Republicans have even tried to suggest that it’s easier to commit voting fraud with early voting. I mean as important as voting by mail is, it IS a little more vulnerable to fraud than in-person voting. But not voting early in-person.

I frequently hear reports about long lines at polling places in certain areas. I haven’t seen it myself but I have always voted in Boulder and I’m not surprised that it doesn’t happen in a liberal, middle-class white area. It seems these long lines, which result in some people going home without voting, are in areas with a lot of working-class black and brown people.  I don’t know what happens to cause long lines at such polling places. My theory is that some mid-level employees and maybe some senior employees of county elections departments provide an insufficient number of working computers. However it’s done, it seems like a great solution is LOTS of early voting.

This is a serious problem when people leave the line without voting so that they can go home and sleep so they can get up for work the next morning. And it’s even more classist and racist than I have already suggested. To some extent a lot of voters who are middle-class and in that situation have some flexibility in their job and can make arrangements to skip the next day or part of the next day so they can sleep in a couple hours after staying up late to vote. And the white ones who get in that situation have to worry less about their white supervisor firing them for coming in a couple hours late than their black and brown co-workers do.

I think that some areas need MORE early voting and no areas needs less, and it’s also a good idea to either make election day a holiday or to have elections on Saturdays.

Tom Shelley
Boulder

A Brief Argument in Favor of the IRA During The Troubles

 In the last year I have written very little here about N. Ireland, which is one reason I am doing this post.

I spend a lot of time imagining political arguments I might get into with people. Some of that ends up being published on this blog but some of it doesn’t. I often initially don’t put all the arguments I come up with in a post- in the past I would initially leave some stuff out, saving it for when I get into an argument and my opponent says something I expect them to say. But then I started adding that stuff to the relevant posts- about 10% of the “UPDATES” I’ve done in the posts on my blog are just arguments that I was saving. I realized that readers might read the post, think it’s flawed in some way and that I’m wrong, and move on without giving me a chance to respond to their criticism of the post.

There is a very basic argument in favor the IRA’s campaign during The Troubles that I developed about 5-10 years ago but have been saving for an argument with someone. That someone is usually (in my daydreams) a citizen of the Republic of Ireland who opposes what the IRA did in The Troubles. They say something about how the presence of a pro-British voting majority in N. Ireland means that it was wrong for the IRA to try to force the British out. But I guarantee you that these same Irish people are glad that the “Old IRA” fought during the “War of Independence” (around 1920) and gained freedom for most of the Irish population.

The thing is, until they made compromises in the negotiations after fighting in the South stopped, that IRA was fighting for ALL of Ireland to be free, not just those parts with a Catholic majority. About half of the IRA felt so strongly about this that they rejected the Treaty which contributed to the beginning of a civil war. Michael Collins, the main leader of the pro-Treaty side continued sending arms to Northern units of the IRA even after he negotiated and promoted the Treaty.

(UPDATE 5/16/22 See this where I explain how I concluded that only .3% of the IRA's operations resulted in civilian death and this where I explain Provo strategy)

Tom

Comprehensive Post on Unions and Racism in the White Working-Class

At some point in early 2020 I was working on a post about Affirmative Action and although it was partly aimed at the Hard Left (anarchists, Leninists, etc.) I decided to include (towards the end) some thoughts that are more aimed at moderate and liberal Democrats than at progressives. They were about the role of unions in rolling back racism in the white working-class. I did the same sort of thing in a June 2020 post about Black Lives Matter and the Trump administration (that post was aimed at the general population).

In the first month after the George Floyd killing I read many articles about racism on Politico and on the CNN site. Although CNN is pretty corporate, their coverage of BLM stuff in that first month was pretty good and Politico has never seemed centrist to me. But in the articles I was reading about BLM from these sources there was nothing about unions. And when I have read stuff about unions (from progressive or liberal or centrist sources) I don’t think I have ever read anything about rolling back racism among white workers.

Soon I’ll explain why I believe unions help challenge racist views among white people, but I need to first explain why I believe that most or almost all of the leadership of the American labor movement is anti-racist.

About 27 years ago the late John Sweeney was elected President of the AFL-CIO. He became a member of the Democratic Socialists of America around the same time and DSA is an incredibly anti-racist organization. He was elected on the same slate as Linda Chavez-Thompson who became Executive Vice President and held that position until 2007. He also hired Bill Fletcher Jr. as Assistant to the President. Fletcher Jr. was "national organizer" for the Black Radical Congress and part of the coordinating committee from 1998-2003.  (The BRC was a coalition of Black people and organizations on the broad Left in America).

In a full statement below Fletcher Jr. says that unionization can spread anti-racist education and practices. I imagine that means that leaders at lower and/or higher levels push an anti-racist agenda. Fletcher Jr. and Fernando Gapasin wrote a 2008 book about the split in the labor movement that produced Change to Win. I am not incredibly well educated about the labor movement but one of the things  I HAVE read is that book and although it says that there is room for improvement when it comes to racial justice and organized labor, it gave me the impression that most or almost all leaders of organized labor in the last 27 years are anti-racist.

Why do I believe that unions will help roll back racism among the white working-class? I have known for decades that exit polls during American elections indicate that voters from union households are more likely to vote Democratic than other voters are. This is anecdotal, but in 2000, on the discussion list of the Young Democratic Socialists (now YDSA) a member who was organizing workers in Indiana said that his competition (for the hearts and minds of the workers) was the Ku Klux Klan.

Bill Fletcher Jr. sent me the following statement: “unionization has proven, time and again, to be a critical instrument in promoting democracy. Unionized workers tend to vote in a more progressive direction, though not uniformly.  And unions offer a unique opportunity to bring workers together across race, ethnic, religious and gender lines, to seek a common resolution to the challenges of economic injustice.  Through unionization anti-racist education and practices can be introduced to the broader workforce, often leading to the isolation of racists and rightwing populists.”

In a column included in a 1998 collection of his work in previous decades, Northern Ireland journalist Eamonn McCann wrote that the labor movement had the most potential to eradicate religious bigotry in N. Ireland. He wrote: “No other institution brings Catholic and Protestant workers together on a regular basis in pursuit of a common purpose which is antipathetic to sectarianism.” McCann’s columns have been published by an average of 1-2 publications (magazines or newspapers staffed by professionals, including the Irish Times (Ireland’s biggest newspaper)) at any given time in the last 40 years and he has held senior positions in Ireland’s labor movement for 2-4 decades and he was one of the main leaders of the N. Ireland civil rights movement in the late 1960s and early 1970s. In  2016 he was elected to the N. Ireland Assembly and in 2017 he would have been re-elected but they had reduced the number of Assembly members elected from each constituency from 6 to 5 and he was runner-up. He is an expert on fighting sectarianism in N. Ireland and believes that organized labor has a crucial role to play. Mark Langhammer, who was head of the N. Ireland part of the Irish Labour Party for several years around 2010 told me in 2005 that he agrees with McCann’s comment on the subject.



Many people believe that there are great similarities between the conflict in N. Ireland during The Troubles and the conflict over racism in this country. This includes people like Angela Y. Davis and in 1972 the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. For more about this, see posts on my blog here and here, And/or read the 1998 Brian Dooley book “Black and Green.”

Although I am not a psychologist or sociologist I believe that both academic fields are relevant to this. On a similar issue (the effect that anti-racist actions by American supporters of Sinn Fein can have on the racial attitudes of many Irish-American supporters of SF) I sought the opinion of a woman with a BA in both psychology and sociology from the University of Colorado at Boulder and a Masters in Social Work from the University of Denver and she agreed with me that if SF and it’s anti-racist American supporters would do more anti-racist stuff in America, many racist Irish-American supporters of SF would start questioning racism. I asked another psychologist with some background in sociology the same question and she agreed with me as well. That makes me confident that I am right about this theory I have about unions and racism.

I believe unions in America play a role in combatting racism and that that can be escalated when they return to the level of strength they were at before their decline began decades ago. If racist working-class whites see multi-cultural anti-racist unions negotiating collective bargaining agreements that they benefit from, many of them will start to question racism.

I think that if organized labor and it’s supporters talked about this that would help win over fiscally moderate and conservative Democrats. 

Unfortunately many such Democrats have declined to vote in favor of strengthening labor unions. I’m sure these same Democrats are alarmed at the rise of Donald Trump and at the existence of the Proud Boys. What’s more important to them- protecting capitalism, or fighting racism?

(Another version of this was published in the Boulder Weekly, a widely read alternative paper for all of Boulder County, here).

(I am much more of a Sinn Fein supporter than a supporter of Eamonn McCann, but McCann wrote that quote about trade-unions in N. Ireland)

Law and Order: SVU Reviews GG

This is a set of reviews of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit episodes. My general thoughts about that show are here. I’ll often do no more than make brief notes about an episode, although occasionally I’ll go deeper. Also, often there are dissenting main characters on almost any political issue, but you can usually tell what the general position of the show is. All the rest of the reviews are available by clicking on the l&osvu label at the bottom.

“Military Justice” Season 15. See this for a plot summary.          

Although it’s a pretty limited criticism of the Coast Guard, it does suggest that there are more than a few “bad apples” in the Coast Guard (and, significantly, one of them is a senior officer). It also illustrates how the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy of homophobia would have silenced any gay members of the military who were victims of hate crimes (a gay Coast Guard member who aided and abetted the rape was told to remain silent about it or he would be outed and expelled from the Coast Guard).

“Jersey Breakdown” Season 15. See this for a plot summary.         

There’s a lot about two aspects of private prisons. First, in this episode there’s a lot of corruption surrounding a private prison; there’s also a lot of stuff about how poorly in-mates at that private prison are treated.

“Betrayal’s Climax” Season 15. See this for a plot summary.  

The rape survivor is a white teenage girl in an inter-racial relationship with a Latino teenage boy.

“Girls Disappeared” Season 16. See this for a plot summary.   

There’s one bit that’s in conflict with anti-immigrant forces. Two detectives are talking about trafficked teenage minor girls and one says: “And these idiots in D.C. wanna send them back because they’re ‘terrorists bringing over Ebola’” (of the group that SVU freed in this episode at least one is an immigrant).

“American Disgrace” Season 16. See this for a plot summary.   

This is kind of about how a lot of white people react to black men hooking up with white women. Although the bad guy is identified as such only near the very end, he is a racist, so it is basically an anti-racist episode.