INTERESTING TIMES

This documentary is well worth seeing.  It explains how the 13th Amendment did more than free the slaves, because it had an exception that said criminals could be imprisoned.  A massive cultural effort ensued to criminalize blacks, and our so-called "criminal justice" system was not sufficient to protect them from powerful white men determined to keep them down.

A Netflix documentary (called 13TH) shows us is just how easy it is to criminalize a previously enslaved population.  This history is ugly, and the present is not pretty either.  The percentage of our populace that is behind bars far exceeds that of any other nation, and the percentage of that imprisoned mass that is black or brown in skin color is also ridiculous.  There is definitely something wrong.

13TH was directed by Ana DuVernay who has quite a resume.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ava_DuVernay
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/13TH_(film)
( What I learned so far (we haven't finished watching the documentary) )

She's running for congress. I met her today. I was downtown with a friend to go shoe shopping, and stopped by the festival in Heritage Square. It a marijuana legalization event and it was was fairly dead. ( She was trying to get my vote. )

Actually, I obediently filled it out. I'm 44 years of age and I think that may be the first time I've been counted. Unless my parents counted me sometime and I didn't know it.

I do find it amusing how riled up people get about it. I mean sure, worry about it if you're an illegal alien. It's worth worrying about. Fill it out so that the census taker man doesn't come to your door? Or don't fill it out and hide when the man comes. There are a lot of people in the US who want to chase out aliens just like those rednecks chased off the census taker.

I hear that 2010 will be the first year that nonwhite births outnumber white births in the US.

As of this week, you cannot cross the Mexico-US or Canada-US border without a passport. There are many people who routinely cross the border who do not have passports. As of this week, those people have to choose a country, and stay there. Too bad if their family is on the other side from their job.
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And that is to Legalize Pot. She makes a good case for it here, in the Arizona Republic:
http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/viewpoints/articles/2009/03/14/20090314Valdez15-vip.html?&wired

I recently re-purchased a copy of a book that I have read before. It is called Watch For Me on the Mountain by Forrest Carter. It is a story about Geronimo. I just read the first two chapters out loud to Suzanne. I had forgotten that they said Geronimo was a War Shaman. He would chant and dance alone with the spirits of the mountains. He could not be captured but only allowed himself to be captured in order to infiltrated enemy camps. He spoke little and was able to operate outside the bounds of time and space. The stories are amazing.
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Just ran across a great collection of stats and a post byrinku that I had to share. I've been following his posts on the LJ community ronpaul2008.

Here's something interesting.

For those who know how statistics work, this shows the correlation between those states that contributed the most to Ron Paul in Q2 2007 compared with hundreds of other statistics. For everyone else and for those who don't want to go through the numbers I'll summarize:

The top correlation is alcohol consumption: those states which drink the most alcohol tended to donate to Ron Paul the most.

Next comes race: those states with the highest percentages of people who proclaim their race as "Other" tended to donate to Ron Paul the most.

Next comes years of school: those states that have the highest average number of years of completed school tended to donate to Ron Paul the most.

Other correlations with donations to Ron Paul: Hispanic population (perhaps due to increased anti-illegal sentiment in those areas), marijuana use, prisoner deaths, UFO reports per capita (!), and the cost of health care.

A fence along our southern shared border with Mexico..... The corporate milkers didn't get the "guest worker" program that they were going for (which would allow I'm sure a different standard for pay and hours worked than what is required for citizens).... But they are going to build the fence. Shrub signed the bill, it becoma law today. "Tough on Border Security" is the flag they're waving. I wonder which big contractor gets that gig. Haliburton?

And when I read about the fence I think of aegis1. He wrote (in a comment re: racism) that he grew up outrunning and outfighting natives intent on beating the snot out of him. He said he would run through bottlenecks like fences where he could then take them on one at a time.

Didn't I say, a month or two ago, that it was time to invest in security fencing? I didn't get on it fast enough. Blast, who's the contractor!?

Andre is a regular comentator on NPR, and his voice with the Romanian lilt is so familiar that we're on a first name basis, though we've never met. He is a poet, teaches creative writing in Louisiana, and lives in New Orleans. He spoke at Prochnow Auditorium on the NAU campus, and the venue was about 3/4 full. Inga the Gringa drew a bigger crowd. But Andre is funny, witty, and really intelligent. He brings the outsider's view to our culture, the appreciative perspective of a refugee from World War II. He brings the wild joy at our freedoms that artists feel.
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