Teenagers Unimpressed With Dave Chappelle at High School Homecoming

It’s hard to know what Dave Chappelle expected when he made a surprise visit to his alma mater, the Duke Ellington School of the Arts in Washington, D.C. That he had a documentary film crew with him, as reported by Politico, suggests he felt the assembled 580 students would greet him with unbridled enthusiasm. This was not the case.

The Ellington visit, which happened on Tuesday, began with a mix of “cheers and some boos,” according to Politico. It also included a Q&A session that got testy. One student called Chappelle “a bigot” and added, “I’m 16, and I think you’re childish, you handled it like a child.”

…

Chappelle reportedly responded to the 16-year-old by saying, “my friend, with all due respect, I don’t believe you could make one of the decisions I have to make on a given day.” To a follow-up question described as “antagonistic,” the comic said, “I’m better than every instrumentalist, artist, no matter what art you do in this school, right now, I’m better than all of you. I’m sure that will change. I’m sure you’ll be household names soon.”

…

Chappelle’s spokesperson Carla Sims told Politico that he anticipated the students would greet him with forgiveness, but they failed to meet his expectations. She also said that Chappelle wanted to “give them some space to grow” and that “they are going to say things that are immature.”

Leonard Matlovich dot com

The AIDS activism of the past still has lessons for us today

The 700-some-page tome is a bracing addition to an ongoing field of research and testimony on AIDS history, a corrective to previous accounts that have elevated some perspectives over others and latched onto only a handful of figures.

Based on nearly two decades of interviews with almost 200 members of the AIDS-fighting organization ACT UP (the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power), "Let the Record Show" functions as an oral history and a memoir. Schulman herself was a rank-and-file ACT UP member from 1987 until 1992, a period during which, as she puts it, "a despised group of people" came together to "force our country to change against its will."

The book is also a blueprint. In fact, its primary purpose, Schulman writes, "is not to look back with nostalgia, but rather to help contemporary and future activists learn from the past so that they can do more effective organizing in the present."

ACT UP was successful in part because it used a variety of creative, eye-popping direct-action efforts -- like the legendary Stop the Church demonstration -- to demand the attention of a society that was failing people with AIDS.

After joining state and local vaccine notification services, an appointment search bot, a Facebook vaccine appointment search group — and a week’s worth of midnight appointment searches, I’m still unvaccinated and unscheduled. My eligibility began April 1st.

Would you please stop booking your appointments between the hours of 8am - 5pm this Friday? I’d like to get this off my “To do...” list. Many thanks!

-DG

These California counties are pushing the hardest for the Gavin Newsom recall (SF Gate: 3/22/21)

Organizers hoping to force California Gov. Gavin Newsom into a recall election have to really like their chances after the secretary of state's office released another batch of petition signature numbers on Friday.

The state now reports roughly 1.2 million valid signatures through March 11, a figure close to the 1.5 million needed to trigger a recall election. There are still roughly 660,000 signatures yet to be processed by county elections officials, meaning organizers need only 45-50% of the outstanding signatures to be deemed valid. Clearing that threshold seems to be a near-certainty as the current signature validity rate is 82%.

All of the state-released reports offer a breakdown of signatures by county, and when using that data in conjunction with state voter registration data, it is possible to see which counties are most enthusiastic about the recall.

Below is an interactive map that shows the percentage of registered voters in every California county who have submitted a recall petition that has been processed and deemed valid by county officials. The county that submitted the most signatures per registered voters is Amador County, where roughly one in six registered voters has submitted a valid signature.

This is a good behind-the-scenes analysis of the “who and how” of the recall effort against California Governor, Gavin Newsom. It reeks of trump, racism and conservative extremism. Will it succeed? Let’s hope not. If it does, republicans will have another avenue to rule rather than govern — as well as, leveraging the minority against the majority.

The Three Men Who Could Take Down Gavin Newsom (Politico: 3/19/21)
The homebrew Republican campaign to recall California's governor is either a triumph of grassroots democracy—or a sign that in politics, there are no rules anymore.

Heatlie, who filed the initial recall paperwork, was off work and laid up with a bad back when he said he became “engaged in social media and Facebook-ing and YouTube and all that stuff.” It was only when he came across a 2019 video of Newsom advising immigrants of their right to refuse to open their door to anyone without a warrant that he began researching the possibility of a recall. Netter, a former office product sales executive who now sells real estate, said he initially “got a hair up my ass” not because of Newsom, but because of then-Senator Kamala Harris, who he saw as rising too fast through politics. When he found out senators couldn’t be recalled, he volunteered instead with a previous, failed effort to recall Newsom.

...Williams, who often moderates the recall proponents’ virtual town hall meetings, suggested the recall was only part of a bigger fight against “anti-Americans.” “California’s the head of the snake,” he said. “The rest of the tail is Sleepy Joe, and we’ve got to take back our country.”

He added, “I’ll be damned if I’m going to sit back and watch this whole country go to hell.”

... Heatlie acknowledges the campaign is “not just about recalling” Newsom, but of reimagining the way politics is run in California... In their minds, their crusade is broader than just taking down one governor: It’s as much against the Republican political establishment as it is against the Democratic one. Heatlie and Netter chafed when consultants told them they needed to raise millions of dollars to qualify a recall initiative. And though professionals like Gilliard and Anne Dunsmore, a well-known Republican fundraiser, had helped Heatlie and Netter last year, the two groups eventually split – coordinating with each other, but with separate books.

Vatican says it will not bless same-sex unions, calling homosexuality a 'sin' and a 'choice'

The Vatican said Monday that the Catholic Church would not bless same-sex unions, in a combative statement approved by Pope Francis that threatens to widen the chasm between the church and much of the LGBTQ community.

Explaining their decision in a lengthy note on Monday, the Holy See referred to homosexuality as a "choice," described it as sinful and said it "cannot be recognized as objectively ordered" to God's plans. The stance is certain to disappoint millions of gay and lesbian Catholics around the world. "The blessing of homosexual unions cannot be considered licit," the Vatican's top doctrinal office, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, wrote in the statement. God "does not and cannot bless sin," the statement added.

Pope Francis, who has frequently been praised for his welcoming tone towards LGBTQ people both within and outside the Church, approved the note.

The decision is a setback for Catholics who had hoped the institution would modernize its approach to homosexuality. Dozens of countries, include many in western Europe, have legalized same-sex marriages, and the Church's reticence to embrace LGBTQ people has long held the potential to alienate it from younger followers.

(More bullshit from the church here.)

I don’t have anything nice to say about religious institutions and their oppression of lgbtqi+ lives. The sooner queer people understand that this is yet another source of abuse, the better. Free your mind, enjoy your life. Amen.