Our local marches are today, but I stayed home. Allergies are bad, mac would not let the dogs out enough, so I'd have a mess to clean up, and I feel like I might have an anxiety attack, so yeah, home.
I am actually being fairly productive, for me, this weekend, cleaning, so I need to stick with it.
- Washing all my bed linens, the day bed linens that the foster has been sleeping on (he likes to burrow so several loose throws were on it), guest room linens, and all the throws, pillow cover and furniture covers where the dogs and I sit.
- Took down the day bed in my bedroom which was really too much furniture in a small space. Put t away under other beds.
- Put clothes away in my room (found more to get rid of).
- Partially cleared off dresser top and nightstand (more to throw away, give away, recycle).
- Vacuumed hall, bedrooms, and front living room.
- Swept mudroom.
Today should be: dishes, back living room, mopping, and putting some seasonal items into storage bins and into the garage.
(If anyone's interested, one of my friends watched the full hour and 45 minute video of the Covington Catholic thing, and posted a timeline of what happened, with some commentary. I posted it on my Facebook page.)
Yeah, there's a lot going on in the confrontations, including the fact that the original House of Israel group is some weird racist/anti-semitic group on their own. But it's not a good look for that all-white Catholic boys school with its all-white faculty.
I walked the dogs with my sister in the rain, got soaked, and now I'm just huddled on the coach with a pot of tea and my sweatpants.
ncluding the fact that the original House of Israel group is some weird racist/anti-semitic group on their own
Basically, they believe that the ancient Israelites who went into exile went to Africa, and then were brought to the US as slaves, and so black people in the US are the true descendants of the biblical Israelites. There's a big range of groups, and some of them believe that the (white) people who call themselves Jews are frauds who've stolen the identity of the true Israelites. (Because identifying ourselves as Jewish has worked out so great for us?) Lots of intersection with the "the Jews controlled the slave trade" people. ("The Jews controlled the slave trade" is one of the points on which Louis Farrakhan and David Duke agree.) But I wouldn't expect Catholic teenagers to know any of this.
Ugh, before Mass this morning the acolyte in the sacristy went full-on "both sides" with the whole "If you watch the whole video you can see the man, who's an activist, provoking the kids." I wanted to yell at him, especially with the priest standing right there. THAT DOESN'T MAKE WHAT THEY DID OKAY. Turn the other cheek, do unto others as you would have them do to you, etc. Deep breaths, the discussion wasn't going to go anywhere productive. Just, ugh. So many MAGA-ites where I live.
Someone on my FB page is literally praying to St. Joan of Arc for the Saints to win this game.
Doesn't seem like her particular area of interest. I could be wrong.
I just watched the whole House of Israel video. My thoughts, in no particular order: I don't see Nathan Phillips provoking anyone. I do see him tying to prevent the event from being hijacked by other groups/issues. The smirky kid facing Mr. Phillips is less egregious than the kids who circled around the Native American group to surround them and the HoI group. I didn't see a single uniformed officer in the entire video. How does that happen? Were they all at the pro-life march? I am glad I've never stopped to listen to HoI dudes when I've seen them here. They were talking some shit. Most of the people who tried to engage with them realized the futility fairly quickly and walked away. There is no excuse for the MAGA kids to not have a chaperone who could do the same. The best person was the Native American guy picking up trash and I love that there was so little for him to pick up.
The smirky kid issued a statement (which was clearly edited by one of his parents and/or a lawyer). He says that, when the HoI guys started talking shit at them, he and his friends asked their chaperone for permission to start doing some of their school chants to drown them out, and the chaperone said it was OK. The HoI guys were specifically shouting at the one black kid in the school crowd, and the chaperones' first responsibility should have been to get that kid out of the way of their abuse, not to let the rest of the students escalate the confrontation, which is what the chanting would clearly do.
