Gaythia Weis @Gaythia@qoto.org

Moms for Liberty pushes to remove Scholastic book fairs from Oklahoma schools. The organization said, in part, that "Scholastic is focused on indoctrinating youth with radical viewpoints and sexual ideologies"

https://www.koco.com/article/oklahoma-moms-for-liberty-scholastic-book-fairs-request-removed-schools/45846584

#ScholasticBookFairs #MomsForLiberty #Indoctrination #RadicalViewpoints #SexualIdeologies #OklahomaSchools #Politics #News

People of good heart and good character can actually want the same thing—peace on Earth, democracy for all, an end to terror—and still have very different ideas about how to achieve it. The sooner we realize that, the sooner we can understand each other and begin to move forward.

The World Food programme has suspended delivery of food aid to Gaza bc power and communications are down and there's no fuel for distribution. They say Gaza has received 10% of necessary food supplies and warn of imminent starvation and dehydration.

Siege warfare against civilians is a war crime, as is collective punishment.

#gaza #israel #warcrimes

2/ The Massachusetts governor signed a new reform into law that'll make prison phone calls, *and* other communications for incarcerated people, free.

A big milestone that took *a lot* of organizing. https://boltsmag.org/massachusetts-prison-jail-phone-calls/

Great water news. I argue in my new book, The Three Ages of Water, that we can move to a positive sustainable future for water that includes restoring rivers & aquatic systems.

Here is a new agreement to remove to two old, damaging dams on the Eel River, making the Eel California’s longest free-flowing river, reconnecting salmon and steelhead with almost 300 miles of cold-water habitat.

https://caltrout.org/news/pge-confirms-plan-to-begin-full-removal-of-eel-river-dams

Excited to share some bonkers maps I made for this @ProPublica story about Wisconsin's gerrymandered legislative districts: https://www.propublica.org/article/wisconsin-legislative-maps-bizarre-are-they-illegal

Measles rises globally amid vaccination crash; WHO and CDC sound the alarm https://arstechnica.com/?p=1984844

'So please – for the sake of Palestine and Israel, for the sake of the living and in the name of the dead, for the sake of the hostages being held by Hamas and the Palestinians in Israel’s prisons – for the sake of all of humanity – cease fire now.' - Arundhati Roy, speaking at the Munich Literature Festival

https://scroll.in/article/1059225/

#Ceasefire #Gaza

Contrary to what Republicans claim, the number of undocumented immigrants in the US was at its peak in 2007. Under Bush II.

Since then, it's fallen 14%, from 12.2 million down to only 10.5 million in 2021.

https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/republicans-undocumented-immigrants-report-rcna125447

#USpol #immigration #propaganda #FactCheck

#NorthDakota’s 2021 legislative redistricting plan violates the rights of two Native American tribes because it dilutes their voting strength, a federal judge ruled Friday. #legal #VotingRights
https://apnews.com/article/0faa6dc38763267d42af1b6c2ab301c0

The year I was born, there were 57,628 cases of polio in the United States. My childhood best friend was a polio victim who wore metal braces on his legs.

We lined up in the school gym to get polio vaccines -- first the Salk killed-virus version, then the Sabin weakened-virus dose.

Widespread vaccination works. The disease is now regarded as "eliminated" in the United States and indeed most of the world.

But it is not gone. It waits for us to be stupid.

Let's all support the REI union, which is suing the "coop" owners for violations of labor law.

https://www.reuters.com/business/retail-consumer/rei-accused-widespread-labor-law-violations-unionized-us-stores-2023-11-15/

The union wants publicity about this for now.

#union #retail #uspol #labor #lawfedi #lawsuit #nyc #stores

"Last year, the number of e-books the #BostonPublicLibrary [@bplboston] lent out…exceeded the number of physical books it circulated by more than five to one."
https://www.bostonmagazine.com/news/2023/11/12/public-libraries-boston/

#Books #CDL #Libraries

“The wreckage goes on for block after devastated block. The smell is sickening. Every day, hundreds of people claw through tons of rubble with shovels and iron bars and their bare hands.

“They are looking for the bodies of their children. Their parents. Their neighbors. All of them killed in Israeli missile strikes. The corpses are there, somewhere in the endless acres of destruction.” https://rb.gy/gso1x4 #palestine #gaza

@Teri_Kanefield
Someone made the point which I will paraphrase with "the jerks are the noisy ones." Wednesday I took M, a recently-arrived refugee from the war in Syria to take the drivers test. He passed; the tester was friendly, chatted w/me, told me what M needed to practice more. Then he thanked me for helping M.
I told M that, said the jerks are loud and the news talks about them a lot, but there are a lot more people like him not in the news.
Keep up the good work. We applaud quietly.

Incredible that such a statement needs to be said, and even more incredible that journalists saying risk the repercussions to their careers.
https://www.protect-journalists.com/

Jenna Ellis confirmed to prosecutors what many have said privately to reporters: That Trump never intended to leave office, no matter what the circumstances. Those are the words and actions of an authoritarian despot like Putin or Xi. No American president should ever be allowed to act that way.

According to The Daily Beast, not only did Speaker Mike Johnson fail to disclose any bank or investment account covering his many years in Congress, he also appears to have failed to disclose an all-expenses paid junket to speak at a conservative rally, or he used government funds to cover the expenses. Both are big no-nos. We need transparency. We need accountability.

Trump is telling his followers that immigrants are “poisoning the blood” of the country. This is straight out of the Hitler playbook. It’s an open nod to white supremacy, and it has no place in our society. And he has threatened to round up 11 million undocumented immigrants. That means attacks upon whole communities. Raids in the night. No due process. We can’t let it happen again.