Thursday, July 20, 2023
In bed at 9, awake at 4:10, up at 4:21, unable to sleep, let Lilly out, upper right rib cage pain, tender to touch. thoughts of people sleeping in tent village next to Repairers, Andre House in Phoenix, Kitty. 64℉ in Bayside, 94℉ now in Phoenix in the middle of the night. High here of 79. mostly sunny day, AQI=38, Good, the wind is WSW at 9 mph, 6-15/25, no rain expected next 10 days. 😦 The sun will rise at 5:29 and set at 8:25, 14+55.
Life in our Dystopia. The headline in this morning's newspaper: "3 consecutive days that a child age 5 and under has been shot in Milwaukee, police say." Children continue to be caught in gunfire at increased levels in recent years, including a span in June when seven children were shot over four days. This year, 12 children have died in homicides in Milwaukee, including 11 shootings. From 2016 to 2019, no more than 10 children 17 and younger died by homicide in Milwaukee, but 20 or more have been killed in each of the three years since then, according to police and the city's Homicide Review Commission. Last year, 27 children died in homicides. Baruch dayan ha'emet?
LTMW At 5:45, I see the first birds to show up at Clausen's Corner Feed Station - all chickadees, some on the niger tube and some on the sunflower tube, which needs filling. A gray squirrel also arrives for some ground-level scavenging. And now a gorgeous male goldfinch arrives and OMG a gorgeous oriole looking not-so-sure at a dessicated orange and then he is chased away by a red-bellied woodpecker. .The oranges need replacing, and I struggle with whether to fill the suet basket. . . . . I refilled the sunflower tube and put out fresh orange halves at 6:15, hoping to attract that beautiful oriole, or at least to provide fresh treats to the red finches who feast on the oranges. Business picked up. A neighbor drove by coming home at this hour from where? what? Probably one of our doctor neighbors returning from very early rounds? or a surgery? Perhaps the anesthesiologist? But this early??? By 6:45, there are several neighbors out walking their dogs, including our good next-door neighbor John with their new puppy, "Dorothy." At 6:54, the sun breaks through the clouds over Lake Michigan and sunbeams fall on the glider, the sun slowly on the way south, interior sunbeams on the way north. Tomorrow the sun will rise at 5:30 at 61 degrees E, 5 degrees further south than on the June 21 solstice.
Pregnancy termination is for the 2020s what slavery was for the 1850s. I've been thinking more about how similar the abortion issue is in our era to what slavery was in the period anticipating the War Between the States (to use the preferred Confederate term, which seems more apt.) By the 1850s, the Northern States were all Free States and were all opposed to the slave-based economy moving into the Western territories which were slated to become new states. The Southern States were all Slave States and all in favor of allowing slavery to be legal in newly-admitted states. For the enslaved humans, the only realistic hope for freedom was to escape to the North and hope not to be captured by a federal marshall, a bounty hunter, or even a local official who might favor slavery or simply be a racist. For the abolitionists and Free Labor/Free Soil people in the Free States, the Fugitive Slave Act(s) created tremendous hostility, demonstrated in Milwaukee, for example, by the Joshua Glover case in 1854.
Now we are faced again with a predominantly North-South issue. "Red States" controlled by Republicans ban or severely restrict abortion. Nineteen Republican state AGs are seeking to be able to obtain otherwise private information from "Blue State" abortion providers about Red State residents who 'flee North' to legally terminate their pregnancies. They also seek to prevent out-of-state medical and pharmaceutical providers from mailing abortion medications into their states and presumably to criminalize behavior that is legal in the state where the behavior occurs. Much like the chattel slave status followed fugitive slaves even into states where slavery was illegal, like Wisconsin, a woman who is a citizen (or resident?) of Alabama would be bound by that state's domestic law no matter where she went to terminate her pregnancy. This morning's WaPo has a story with this headline: "Blue-state doctors launch abortion pill pipeline into states with bans: At least 3,500 doses have been shipped to antiabortion states since mid-June, a process enabled by new shield laws." A new procedure adopted in mid-June by one of the largest abortion pill suppliers, Europe-based Aid Access, now allows U.S. medical professionals in certain Democrat-led states that have passed abortion “shield” laws to prescribe and mail pills directly to patients in antiabortion states. The telemedicine shield laws, enacted over the past year in New York, Massachusetts, Washington, Vermont, and Colorado, explicitly protect abortion providers who mail pills to restricted states from inside their borders. We are living through a new War Between the States, not a conflict of arms, but a conflict of laws directly or indirectly impact conduct in other states. Is this not at least akin to the situation in the U.S. under the Fugitive Slave laws? Aren't women seeking to legally terminate their pregnancies the new slaves? How will the Full Faith and Credit Clause of the Constitution factor into this mess? What should we expect from this Bush/Trump Supreme Court?
Haaland v. Brackeen and the Indian Child Welfare Act. By serendipity, I came across a blog by Professor Peter d'Errico on Indian law, the Indian Child Welfare Act, and the Haaland v. Brackeen decision that I find so troubling, and about which I wrote a while back. He writes: "The celebration of Haaland v. Brackeen as “a significant victory for federal Indian law and the rights of tribes and Native children across the nation” is an oxymoron, because ‘federal Indian law’ is actually federal anti-Indian law. It is a structure of US domination, not ‘protection’ (unless we want to see ‘protection racket’ as the real meaning of the system). The outpouring of liberal “relief” in response to Haaland v. Brackeen is thus wholly misplaced. It misses the fundamental domination that the decision affirmed when it rejected challenges to the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA). The Brackeen majority opinion, penned by Justice Amy Barrett, opens with the statement, “Congress’s power to legislate concerning the Indian tribes [is] ‘plenary and exclusive.’” Lest there be any doubt about the extent of the claim of a right of domination inherent in ‘plenary and exclusive’ power, the opinion adds: Congress has plenary authority to limit, modify or eliminate the powers of local self-government which the tribes otherwise possess. An alert reader, not mired in superficial discussions about ‘liberal’ and ‘conservative’ members of the court, will immediately see that Haaland v. Brackeen is a “significant victory for federal Indian law”, but not for “the rights of tribes”. Brackeen is neither more nor less than a standard affirmation of the system of domination baked into US ‘Indian law’ from the outset. To celebrate Brackeen is to celebrate the entrenchment of the US claim of domination over Indigenous peoples."
My concern with ICWA and Haaland is that "the best interest of" Indian children are subordinated to political interests, i.e., so-called tribal sovereignty. Isn't this a form of invidious racial discrimination? All other children are entitled to have judicial adoption and foster care decisions decided on the basis of the judicially-determined best interests of" the child. Not Indian children, regardless of what the child herself, or her biological parent(s), or a state court might wish. Professor d'Errico points out how anomalous this is. "If the doctrine of domination were revoked and Indigenous nations acknowledged as the free and independent nations they rightfully are, questions of adoption would be handled exactly as they are for all other “intercountry adoptions” under the 1993 Hague Convention on Protection of Children and Co-operation in Respect of Intercountry Adoption. The Hague Convention does not invoke any claim of domination by one country over another. The adoption framework it provides meets all the concerns stated by the parties and amici in Haaland v. Brackeen. The Convention preamble reads: Recognising that the child, for the full and harmonious development of his or her personality, should grow up in a family environment, in an atmosphere of happiness, love and understanding, Recalling that each State should take, as a matter of priority, appropriate measures to enable the child to remain in the care of his or her family of origin, Recognising that intercountry adoption may offer the advantage of a permanent family to a child for whom a suitable family cannot be found in his or her State of origin, Convinced of the necessity to take measures to ensure that intercountry adoptions are made in the best interests of the child and with respect for his or her fundamental rights, and to prevent the abduction, the sale of, or traffic in children, Desiring to establish common provisions to this effect, taking into account the principles set forth in international instruments, in particular the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, of 20 November 1989, and the United Nations Declaration on Social and Legal Principles relating to the Protection and Welfare of Children, with Special Reference to Foster Placement and Adoption Nationally and Internationally (General Assembly Resolution 41/85, of 3 December 1986)….
Nothing more would be needed; certainly, no US ‘protection’."
Poland, A Green Land. I am enjoying Aharon Appelfeld's novel, although 'enjoying' isn't quite the right work for a book about the Holocaust and its effect on a descendent of survivors. The chapters are very short, which makes it easier for me to read. I just read chapter 17 in which Yaakov, the protagonist, visits Nikolai, the Pole who provided a hiding space for Yaakov's parents - only for a while and only for a price. Nikolai spouts a lot of anti-Jewish prejudices to Yaakov about Jews denying God and his Messiah and about Jews being responsible for Communism. It reminds me of a conversation I had perhaps 20 years ago or more with one of my father's next-door neighbors, a snowbird Canadian immigrant from some Central or Eastern country, I can't remember which one. He believed the same thing about Jews being responsible for Communism and the Soviet takeover of the countries behind the Iron Curtain because so many Jews were communists. The Jews can't win. They secretly control the entire world's economy to enrich themselves and they're communists. Go figure.
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