It Is Deadly Out There For Us.

I will never ride the subway in New York.

For one thing I would be a tourist on the subway, I would be like a deer-in-the-headlights, ripe for pickings.

A trans woman is trying to make it safe for us.

This is how you stop violence against LGBTQ people, according to a prominent activist
USA TODAY
October 1, 2018

When Lala Zannell, a black queer transgender woman, takes the subway in New York City, she braces herself for harassment and heckling. She knows she could be killed for who she is, just as 21 other transgender Americans have been killed so far this year.


“It never gets any easier,” said Zannell, a prominent activist for transgender rights, of the recent violence against transgender women. “It doesn’t matter if I don’t personally know them at all. It affects me as if I personally knew them because I know that any given moment I know that could me, and that’s my reality.”

And she is a seasoned subway traveler.

For the past six years, Zannell has traveled around the country discussing ways to stop acts of hate because she wants LGBTQ people to be able to live their lives safely. As the lead organizer of the New York City Anti-Violence Project, an anti-LGBTQ violence organization, the 40-year-old speaks on issues from police violence against transgender people to the community's access to jobs. She organizes local forums on LGBTQ needs and develops policy recommendations for transgender housing. She has worked alongside celebrities and testified before Congress and at the White House about the traumas transgender people face.
[…]
For the New York City Anti-Violence Project's 24-hour crisis intervention hotline, she trains volunteers and helps record reports of violence against LGBTQ and HIV-affected people. The team provides safety planning and counseling, as well as legal resources in local incidents.

It sounds like she is doing a fantastic job!

But one thing that will help even more is for a change at the top. We need leadership that will speak up against violence, that condemns racism, and that promotes inclusion rather than exclusion. We need leadership that appoints judges who are unbiased and do not have political bias or ideology*.

We need to vote November 6^th

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*After the hearing last week some more facts are coming out about judge Kavanaugh.

Note this was written before the Dr. Ford’s testimony.

Our View: Kavanaugh’s credibility blown by earlier evasions
Not telling the whole truth about his politics makes his sexual assault denial harder to believe.
The Portland Press Herald
By The Editorial Board
September 19, 2018

 After watching Judge Brett Kavanaugh deftly maneuver around the truth for three days during his last appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee, it will be hard to believe anything he says if he winds up back there next week, fighting for his professional life.
Before that happens, the judge should do himself and his country a favor and withdraw his nomination for U.S. Supreme Court.

If that sounds unfair, blame Republican leadership in the U.S. Senate. Long before Christine Basey Ford came forward to report that she had been sexually assaulted by Kavanaugh when they were both teenagers, Republicans designed a politicized confirmation process in which the judge tried to hide his agenda.

The prize was a five-justice, right-wing majority that could scale back abortion rights, knock down gun control laws and whittle away environmental regulations. All they needed was a like-minded nominee to pretend he didn’t have an agenda. Using Kavanaugh in that role has damaged his credibility beyond repair.

Okay this is what struck me in the article…

He looked sincere when he said it, but nobody really believed he was telling the whole story. President Trump, who promised to appoint only anti-abortion rights judges, certainly didn’t believe him. And neither did the right-wing activists at the Federalist Society who have groomed Kavanaugh since his student days, putting his name on a list for Trump of judges who could be trusted to pursue their agenda. The far-right Judicial Crisis Network did not spend more than $5 million in dark money to confirm an unknown quantity. But Kavanaugh avoided saying what might have given his supporters so much confidence in him.

He is the handmaiden for the Federalist Society. The Southern Poverty Law Center wrote that,

Paulsen [Professor of law at St. Thomas University] is listed as an expert at the ultra-conservative Federalist Society, which promotes the idea that the Constitution should be interpreted using “originalism,” a doctrine that states that the basic meaning of the Constitution was set at the time of its original creation in the 18th century.

The New Yorker had this to say about the Federalist Society,

“The Federalist Society has for years been singularly focussed on building a farm team of judicial nominees who subscribe to a philosophy that is hostile to the advancement of social and economic progress in the country. Behind the scenes, during Republican Administrations, they are very engaged in identifying and recruiting for judges candidates who are ultra-conservatives—who are opposed to our rights and liberties across the board, whether it’s women, the environment, consumer protections, worker protections.”

Kavanaugh was number one on their list given to Trump.

Where does he stand in relation to the other Supreme Court justices?

Axios had this chart of the ideologies of the justices...