In Asheville today...
Showing posts with label Resist. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Resist. Show all posts
Tuesday, January 20, 2026
Tuesday, January 6, 2026
Resist and persist
The January 6, 2021 Insurrection was live on TV, on all channels.
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Today:
"The deepest wound is knowing that they know, and that it doesn’t matter.
January 6th was a coordinated attempt to kidnap members of Congress, overturn a free and fair election by its people, and install a president whose criminality is simply unprecedented and whose involvement was complete.
It was a threat to our sovereignty.
It was a rejection of our Constitution.
It was antithetical to the teachings of Jesus.
It was an historic act of treason.
It was a vicious attack on democracy.
It was a partisan act of domestic terrorism.
It was a violent insurrection.
All Americans know this.
All of them.
Only decent ones care."
-John Pavlovich
His whole article may be found HERE
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Hang onto your own sense of reality.
Don't miss John Pavlovich's post "The Insurrection Didn't Fail, it Just Took 5 years"
Another excellent article was just published (Jan 6) by NPR "This is Not A Peaceful Protest"
"In response to NPR’s questions about Trump’s pardons, White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said, "President Trump exercised his constitutional authority to issue pardons to individuals who were abused by the Biden justice system and aggressively over prosecuted for political purposes."
Part of the Women's March of 2020 in Black Mountain NC
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Today's goddess:
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Catch-and-release, that's like running down pedestrians in your car and then, when they get up and limp away, saying -- Off you go! That's fine. I just wanted to see if I could hit you. -Ellen DeGeneres, comedian, television host, and actress (b. 26 Jan 1958)
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My vase which shows some protesters, and the sign "Persist." More than resistance, we must persist in what is right.
Today we are dealing with a new illegal war on Venezuela. Who knows what tomorrow will bring from the autocratic orange one.
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Celebrate This! 
Tennessee launched the first registry in the US to track repeat domestic violence offenders.
California is officially drought free and reservoirs are at 120% of average levels.
The Central Hillsborough Healthy Start program, which serves a cluster of Florida ZIP codes with roughly 177,000 residents, reduced preterm births by 30%.
A rare jaguar sighting in Arizona is giving conservationists hope for the species’ recovery.
Assisted fertilization is helping revive and restore disappearing coral reefs in the Dominican Republic.
Nineteen U.S. states raised their minimum wage on January 1, with most of them reaching $15 per hour or higher. Another 49 cities and counties are also raising their minimum wage at the start of the new year.
Trump announced that he would abandon for now his efforts to deploy the National Guard in Chicago, Los Angeles and Portland, OR.
Paul Weiss’ ex-pro bono chief Steve Banks, who left after the firm’s deal with Trump, will lead the New York City Law Department for Mayor Mamdani, putting a longtime liberal advocate in the city government’s top legal position.
After six months in detention, a Connecticut teenager returned home to a standing ovation from community members. Local activists were a HUGE part of this win—as were Kevin’s schoolmates, local officials, several Connecticut lawmakers and a host of leaders from various faiths. AMAZING!
A group of Buddhist monks have been walking from Ft. Worth, TX to Washington DC “for peace.” Their journey is inspiring millions. If you’re not following them on social media please consider doing so!
The Kennedy Center is ending the year with a new round of artists saying they are canceling scheduled performances after Trump's name was added to the facility. Stephen Schwartz, the composer of “Wicked,” also announced that he would no longer host a gala there.
Thanks to conservation efforts and government funding, Coho salmon are making a comeback in Northern California.
A Georgia judge tossed racketeering charges against dozens of defendants accused of a yearslong conspiracy to halt the construction of a police and firefighter training facility that critics call “Cop City.”
Renewable energy produced a record amount of electricity in Great Britain in 2025
Just days before a year-end foreclosure deadline, the Museum of the Earth in Ithaca, NY has paid off its mortgage following a wide fundraising campaign that rescued the beloved landmark.
Scientists have discovered two new subtypes of multiple sclerosis with the aid of artificial intelligence, paving the way for personalised treatments and better outcomes for patients.
Pope Leo XIV immediately ousted a traditionalist priest after his anti-gay slur was caught on a hot mic.
Less than two hours after his inauguration ceremony, Zohran Mamdani signed three executive orders designed to put pressure on landlords and fast-track housing development.
In Colorado, immigration activist Jeanette Vizguerra was released after spending nine months in detention while her years-long deportation case continues.
Tesla is officially no longer the leader in global EV sales! They have fallen to the second place spot as their sales continue to fall over Elon Musk’s politics.
NY Governor Kathy Hochul signed legislation requiring social media platforms with infinite scroll, auto-play and algorithmic feeds to display warnings to young users.
Thanks to decades of investment in recycling, landfill bans, and efficient waste processing, less than 1% of Swedish household waste now ends up in landfills. Instead, waste generates about 1% of the country’s electricity and 25% of its district heating to homes. ¹
Zohran Mamdani is officially the Mayor of New York City! His inauguration was a joyous occasion, attended by tens of thousands of New Yorkers, as well as AOC, Bernie Sanders, and Mandy Patinkin, among others.
Ratings for the 2025 Kennedy Center Honors sunk to their lowest numbers ever—worse even than during Covid— as Trump hosted the once-prestigious event from the illegally renamed Washington, D.C. performing arts center.
Democrat Renee Hardman won a state Senate seat in Iowa, denying Republicans the opportunity to reclaim their supermajority. It was the final election of 2025, bringing our total record of wins and overperformances in key elections to 228 out of 256 in 2025 — a rate of nearly 90%.
A newly announced sanctuary in Texas will help protect the whooping crane, one of the rarest birds in North America.
A study shows that, over the past year, a slew of new expanded tax credits in Colorado helped cut child poverty there by 40.5%.
Thanks Jess Craven for your newsletter Chop Wood Carry Water.
Sunday, January 4, 2026
Maybe the Angry Women - 5
art by Aaron Paquette,
Following the overturning of Roe v. Wade in June 2022...
"Anger is an assertion of rights and worth. It is communication, equality, and knowledge. It is intimacy, acceptance, fearlessness, embodiment, revolt, and reconciliation. Anger is memory and rage. It is rational thought and irrational pain. Anger is freedom, independence, expansiveness, and entitlement. It is justice, passion, clarity, and motivation. Anger is instrumental, thoughtful, complicated, and resolved. In anger, whether you like it or not, there is truth.
Anger is the demand of accountability. It is evaluation, judgment, and refutation. It is reflective, visionary, and participatory. It’s a speech act, a social statement, an intention, and a purpose. It’s a risk and a threat. A confirmation and a wish. It is both powerlessness and power, palliative and a provocation. In anger, you will find both ferocity and comfort, vulnerability and hurt. Anger is the expression of hope.
How much anger is too much? Certainly not the anger that, for many of us, is a remembering of a self we learned to hide and quiet. It is willful and disobedient. It is survival, liberation, creativity, urgency, and vibrancy. It is a statement of need. An insistence of acknowledgment. Anger is a boundary. Anger is boundless. An opportunity for contemplation and self-awareness. It is commitment. Empathy. Self-love. Social responsibility. If it is poison, it is also the antidote. The anger we have as women is an act of radical imagination. Angry women burn brighter than the sun.
In the coming years, we will hear, again, that anger is a destructive force, to be controlled. Watch carefully, because not everyone is asked to do this in equal measure. Women, especially, will be told to set our anger aside in favor of a kinder, gentler approach to change. This is a false juxtaposition. Reenvisioned, anger can be the most feminine of virtues: compassionate, fierce, wise, and powerful.
The women I admire most—those who have looked to themselves and the limitations and adversities that come with our bodies and the expectations that come with them—have all found ways to transform their anger into meaningful change. In them, anger has moved from debilitation to liberation. Your anger is a gift you give to yourself and the world that is yours. In anger, I have lived more fully, freely, intensely, sensitively, and politically. If ever there was a time not to silence yourself, to channel your anger into healthy places and choices, this is it."
~ Soraya Chemaly, "Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women's Anger"
Angela Yarber of Tehom Center, "Protest Goddess"
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And in 2024 many women (and many men) did put efforts to elect Kamala Harris to the presidency of the US.
We are members of the 8 billion humans alive today...
But did you know this?
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Today's Goddess:
800 BC, Aomori prefecture Japan. Dogū
We tend to look for greatness
always in somebody else
rather than yourself.
Go inside and
get your sound.
always in somebody else
rather than yourself.
Go inside and
get your sound.
Carlos Santana
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Saturday, June 14, 2025
A political post for Flag Day
Don't miss Heather Cox Richardson's Letters from an American this morning...great history of the beginnings of the armed forces of America! (**see below)
I share the following editorial poss for the newest information about ICE and tRump.
My regular Saturday post is still up Saturday's Critters.
From Facebook this morning...
New meaning to Flag Day!
** The text for Heather Cox Richardson today:
Two hundred and fifty years ago, on June 14, 1775, the Second Continental Congress resolved “That six companies of expert riflemen, be immediately raised in Pennsylvania, two in Maryland, and two in Virginia; that each company consist of a captain, three lieutenants, four serjeants, four corporals, a drummer or trumpeter, and sixty-eight privates…[and that] each company, as soon as completed, shall march and join the army near Boston, to be there employed as light infantry, under the command of the chief Officer in that army.”And thus Congress established the Continental Army.The First Continental Congress, which met in 1774, refused to establish a standing army, afraid that a bad government could use an army against its people. The Congress met in response to the British Parliament’s closing of the port of Boston and imposition of martial law there, but its members hoped they could repair their relationship with King George III and simply sent entreaties to the king to end what were known as the “Intolerable Acts.”In 1775 the Battles of Lexington and Concord changed the equation. On April 19, British soldiers opened fire on colonists just as Patriot leaders feared they might. In the aftermath of that deadly day, about 15,000 untrained Massachusetts militiamen converged on Boston and laid siege to the town, where they bottled up about 6,500 British Regulars.The Battles of Lexington and Concord made it clear the British government endangered American liberties. The Second Continental Congress met in what is now called Independence Hall in Philadelphia on May 10, 1775, to address the crisis in Boston. The delegates overcame their suspicions of a standing army to conclude they must bring the various state militias into a continental organization to stand against King George III.With the establishment of the Continental Army, a British officer, General Charles Lee, resigned his commission in the British Army and published a public letter explaining that the king’s overreach had turned him away from service in His Majesty’s army and toward the Patriots:“[W]henever it shall please his Majesty to call me forth to any honourable service against the natural hereditary enemies of our country, or in defence of his just rights and dignity, no man will obey the righteous summons with more zeal and alacrity than myself,” he wrote, “but the present measures seem to me so absolutely subversive of the rights and liberties of every individual subject, so destructive to the whole empire at large, and ultimately so ruinous to his Majesty's own person, dignity and family, that I think myself obliged in conscience as a Citizen, Englishman, and Soldier of a free state, to exert my utmost to defeat them.”After they established a Continental Army, the next thing Congress members did was to name a French and Indian War veteran, Virginia planter George Washington, commander-in-chief. To Washington fell the challenge of establishing an army to defend the nation without creating a military a tyrant could use to repress the people.It was not an easy project. The Continental Army was made up of volunteers who were loyal primarily to the officers they had chosen, and because Congress still feared a standing army, their enlistments initially were short. Different units trained with different field manuals, making it hard to turn them into a unified fighting force. Women came to the camps with their men, often bringing their children. The women worked for the half-rations the government provided, washing, cooking, hauling water, and tending the wounded.After an initial bout of enthusiasm at the start of the war, men stopped enlisting, and in 1777 Congress increased the times of enlistment to three years or “for the duration” of the conflict. That meant that the men in the army were more often poor than wealthy, enlisting for the bounties offered, and Congress found it easy to overlook those 12,000 people encamped about 18 miles to the northwest of Philadelphia in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, for six months in the hard winter of 1777–1778. The Congress had no way to compel the states to provide money, food, or supplies for the army, and the army almost fell apart for lack of support.Supply chains broke as the British captured food or it spoiled in transit to the soldiers, and wartime inflation meant Congress did not appropriate enough money for food. Hunger and disease stalked the camp, but even worse was the lack of clothing. More than 1,000 soldiers died, and about eight or ten deserted every day. Washington warned the president of the Continental Congress that the men were close to mutiny, even as a group of army officers were working with congressmen to replace Washington, complaining about how he was prosecuting the war.By February 1778 a delegation from the Continental Congress had visited Valley Forge and, understanding that the lack of supplies made the army, and thus the country, truly vulnerable, set out to reform the supply department. Then a newly arrived Prussian officer, Baron Friedrich von Steuben, drilled the soldiers into unity and better morale. And then, in May, the soldiers learned that France had signed a treaty with the American states in February, lending money, matériel, and men to the cause of American independence. The army survived.By the end of 1778, the main theater of the war had shifted to the South, where British officers hoped to recruit Loyalists to their side. Instead, guerrilla bands helped General Nathanael Greene bait the British into a war of endurance that finally ended on October 19, 1781, at the Battle of Yorktown in Virginia, where British general Charles Cornwallis surrendered to General Washington and French commander Jean-Baptiste-Donatien de Vimeur, Comte de Rochambeau.The Continental Army had defeated the army of the king and established a nation based on the principle that all men were created equal and had a right to have a say in the government under which they lived.In September 1783, negotiators concluded the Treaty of Paris that formally ended the war, and Congress discharged most of the troops still in service. In his November 2 farewell address to his men, Washington noted that their victory against such a formidable power was “little short of a standing Miracle.” “[W]ho has before seen a disciplined Army formed at once from such raw materials?” Washington wrote. “Who that was not a witness could imagine, that the most violent local prejudices would cease so soon, and that Men who came from the different parts of the Continent, strongly disposed by the habits of education, to despise and quarrel with each other, would instantly become but one patriotic band of Brothers?”With the army disbanded, General Washington himself stepped away from military leadership. On December 23, Washington addressed Congress, saying: “Having now finished the work assigned me, I retire from the great theatre of action, and bidding an affectionate farewell to this august body, under whose orders I have so long acted, I here offer my commission, and take my leave of all the employments of public life.”In 1817, given the choice of subjects to paint for the Rotunda in the U.S. Capitol, being rebuilt after the British had burned it during the War of 1812, fine artist John Trumbull picked the moment of Washington’s resignation from the army. As he discussed the project with President James Madison, Trumbull told the president: “I have thought that one of the highest moral lessons ever given to the world, was that presented by the conduct of the commander-in-chief, in resigning his power and commission as he did, when the army, perhaps, would have been unanimously with him, and few of the people disposed to resist his retaining the power which he had used with such happy success, and such irreproachable moderation.”Madison agreed, and the painting of a man voluntarily walking away from the leadership of a powerful army rather than becoming a dictator hangs today in the Capitol Rotunda.It is the story of this Army, 250 years old tomorrow, that President Donald J. Trump says he is honoring with a military parade in Washington, D.C., although it also happens to be his 79th birthday.But the celebration of ordinary people who fought against tyranny will be happening not just in the nation’s capital but all across the country, as Americans participating in at least 2,000 planned No Kings protests recall the principles American patriots championed 250 years ago.
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