Tag Archives: grimm

It’s Not Every Day That a Federal Judge Pens a Tribute to a Transgender Teen

by AnalisaNaumann Posted on April 7, 2017

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Gavin Grimm, a 17-year-old transgender boy from Virginia, has had a rough few months. He’s suing for access to the boys’ bathroom at his high school, and in March the Supreme Court announced that it was kicking this landmark transgender rights case back to a federal appeals court.

Today, that appeals court rejected his request to expedite his case, which means it won’t be heard until after he graduates. But along with today’s order, Judge Andre Davis of the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals penned a remarkable, must-read tribute to the teen, calling him a “brave individual” and quoting Dr. Martin Luther King:

Our country has a long and ignominious history of discriminating against our most vulnerable and powerless. We have an equally long history, however, of brave individuals—Dred Scott, Fred Korematsu, Linda Brown, Mildred and Richard Loving, Edie Windsor, and Jim Obergefell, to name just a few—who refused to accept quietly the injustices that were perpetuated against them. It is unsurprising, of course, that the burden of confronting and remedying injustice falls on the shoulders of the oppressed. These individuals looked to the federal courts to vindicate their claims to human dignity, but as the names listed above make clear, the judiciary’s response has been decidedly mixed. Today, G.G. adds his name to the list of plaintiffs whose struggle for justice has been delayed and rebuffed; as Dr. King reminded us, however, “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” G.G.’s journey is delayed but not finished.

The tribute ends with a footnote of a poem by Naomi Shihab Nye. Read the whole thing here.

Original article – 

It’s Not Every Day That a Federal Judge Pens a Tribute to a Transgender Teen

Posted in alo, FF, GE, LAI, Landmark, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on It’s Not Every Day That a Federal Judge Pens a Tribute to a Transgender Teen

"The Most Dangerous Justice Department in Decades"

by RoxanneSands Posted on April 6, 2017

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

On a rainy Thursday morning, several members of Congress joined civil rights activists, policy experts, and former Obama administration officials for a forum on the future of civil rights in the Trump era. In the room typically occupied by the House Judiciary Committee, a common refrain quickly emerged. “The backstop that has been the civil rights enforcement of the federal government is no more,” said Catherine Lhamon, chair of the US Commission on Civil Rights.

In a wide-ranging discussion, panelists noted that the Trump administration is pulling back on the federal government’s interest in influencing a number of civil rights’ issues; transgender rights, immigration policy, voting rights, and fair housing were all discussed. But with a recent Justice Department memo calling for a review of all Obama-era police reform agreements or “consent decrees,” police reform received the most attention of any subject.

The memo, which was issued last week, but wasn’t made public until Monday, reveals a Justice Department highly skeptical of the importance of police oversight and reluctant to conduct further reviews of police departments. “The misdeeds of individual bad actors should not impugn or undermine the legitimate and honorable work that law enforcement agencies perform in keeping American communities safe,” it states.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions has been a frequent critic of consent decrees in the past. In February, Sessions, admitting that he hadn’t read the full reports after reviews of police departments in Ferguson and Chicago revealed widespread abuses disproportionately targeted at black residents, described them as “pretty anecdotal.” Earlier this week, the Justice Department asked a US District court to delay its hearing of the proposed consent decree between the DOJ and the Baltimore Police Department. (The request was refused and the hearing was held on Thursday.)

Ron Davis, the former director of the DOJ’s Office of Community Oriented Policing Services during the Obama administration, noted that the Justice Department was “going back to the 1990s to fight a war that we have already lost.”

“We have advanced policing to a science; to go back to practices that we know are ineffective is outright ridiculous,” Davis added. Other panelists pointed out that the Justice Department could not unilaterally end reform agreements already in place, saying that the recent memo reflected a deep misunderstanding of how the process works.

Hassan Aden, a member of Law Enforcement Leaders to Reduce Crime and Incarceration and former chief of the Greenville, North Carolina, Police Department, addressed the administration’s approach to immigration enforcement, recalling his personal experience with Trump’s controversial “Muslim Ban.” Last month, US Customs and Border Patrol detained Aden as he returned to the US from a trip to Paris to celebrate his mother’s birthday. “My detention was 90 minutes,” he said, adding he never had any issues with customs before this year. “But there are others where their detention is significantly longer.”

The panelists’ concerns about the DOJ extended beyond the role it plays in law enforcement. Gavin Grimm, a transgender teen who has become a prominent transgender rights advocate after suing his local school board for limiting his access to school restrooms, spoke of the DOJ’s recent decision to back away from an Obama-era guidance requiring schools to let children to use the facility that matched their gender identity. Grimm’s case was scheduled to go to the Supreme Court but was removed from the court’s calendar shortly after the DOJ changed its position on transgender student guidance. “The decision to withdraw the guidance sent a terrible message to some of the most vulnerable people,” Grimm said. Despite President Trump’s campaign trail promises to protect the LGBT community, his administration was doing the opposite. “Actions speak louder than words,” Grimm said.

The congressional forum was officially hosted by Rep. John Conyers (D-MI), the ranking member on the House Judiciary Committee. But unofficially, it was an event led by the Congressional Black Caucus, with several members—including caucus chair Rep. Cedric Richmond (D-La.)—speaking. Since Trump assumed office, CBC members have become some of the president’s loudest critics, and, comprising nearly one quarter of Democrats in Congress, a powerful voice for the party, particularly regarding civil rights.

Last month, members of the CBC executive leadership met with the president, sharing a policy document that outlined its vision for black America. After the meeting, Richmond said that the caucus would continue to remain in contact with the president and planned to hold meetings with several members of the Cabinet, including with Attorney General Sessions.

If today’s forum is any indication, that meeting will not be a pleasant one. “We may be seeing the most dangerous Department of Justice that we have seen in decades,” said Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas). “We will continue to fight.”

Continue at source – 

"The Most Dangerous Justice Department in Decades"

Posted in FF, GE, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on "The Most Dangerous Justice Department in Decades"

We Finally Found a GOP Congressman Who Believes in Science. Too Bad He’s a Felon.

by Myrna Posted on January 6, 2015

Michael Grimm pleaded guilty to tax evasion. As the new Congress is sworn in today, New York’s 11th district, comprising Staten Island and parts of Brooklyn, has been left without a lawmaker in the House of Representatives. The missing member: Republican Michael Grimm. The disgraced politician announced his resignation last month after pleading guilty to tax evasion—a federal felony. He officially left Congress yesterday and will be sentenced in June. If New York’s tabloid headline writers are anything to go by (“Good Riddance!” said the Daily News), the city won’t muster much sympathy for a man who cheated on his taxes when he ran a restaurant (before running for Congress). Nor will it miss his aggressive style: “I’ll break you in half. Like a boy,” he once told a television reporter. Oh yeah, and there was that time he allegedly waved a gun around at a nightclub in Queens when he was an F.B.I. agent. (Grimm has denied doing this.) But there is one lesser known fact about Michael Grimm worth taking a moment to mourn as he leaves office: He was one of a precious few Republican politicians who actually accepted the science of climate change. That wasn’t always the case. During a campaign debate in 2010, Grimm told the audience that “the jury is obviously still out on it. We see nothing but conflicting reports from across the globe.” He added, “I’m not sure, I’m not a scientist”—that now-familiar line deployed by a number of Republican politicians. But then Grimm had his come-to-science moment, which was documented in last year’s award-winning Showtime docu-series, Years of Living Dangerously. In a segment exploring the impacts of Superstorm Sandy on Grimm’s New York district (you can watch part of it above), the congressman recounted how his thinking had changed. Here’s a transcript (via The Huffington Post), featuring interviewer Chris Hayes, from MSNBC: HAYES: Last time you and I spoke, you said the jury was still out on climate science. Do you still feel that way? GRIMM: After speaking with Bob Inglis, it made me do some of my own research, you know, I looked at some of the stuff that he sent over, my staff looked at it. But the vast majority of respected scientists say that it’s conclusive, the evidence is clear. So I don’t think the jury is out. HAYES: The basic story of—we’re putting carbon in the atmosphere, the planet’s getting warmer, that’s gonna make the sea levels rise—like, the basic story of that, you pretty much agree with, right? GRIMM: Sure, I mean there’s no question that, um, you know, the oceans have risen, right? And the climate change part is, is a real part of it. The problem that we’re gonna have right now—there’s no oxygen left in the room in Washington for another big debate, that’s the reality. It’s an otherwise pretty depressing interview, in which Grimm says that science is “irrelevant” when it comes to politics on the Hill. In a separate segment below, Grimm elaborated on the intractable political divides that prevent lawmakers from discussing climate change. He’s speaking here to former GOP Rep. Bob Inglis, who experienced first-hand the negative impact that believing in science can have on a Republican’s career: Inglis lost his seat in South Carolina after a tea party revolt in 2010, in part because he wouldn’t publicly deny that humans were causing the globe to warm. This exchange is representative of what Years of Living Dangerously did so well in this episode. It revealed something that you or I rarely see: a frank discussion between politicians about the risk on taking on the establishment: Republicans now control both houses of Congress for the first time since 2007, and incoming GOP lawmakers largely fall into the climate skeptic camp, as my Climate Desk colleague Tim McDonnell recently illustrated. James Inhofe, the party’s climate denial standard barer from Oklahoma, will likely be the chair of the Senate’s Environment and Public Works committee, for example. In the House, there are a few Republicans who provide a modicum of hope, including Chris Gibson (R-NY), who assumed office in 2013, and who said last month that he plans to introduce a resolution to rally Congress to “recognize the reality” of climate change. But for the moment, what Grimm tells Inglis in the clip above seems to be the rule among Republicans on Capitol Hill: “Let’s say that they did agree with the science, and they were bold enough, and had the political courage…and then they lose?” he said. “They’re not all lemmings. Okay? They’re not just going to go right off that cliff. So the political constraints I think are a lot bigger than most people would understand, and they’re very real.” Source: We Finally Found a GOP Congressman Who Believes in Science. Too Bad He’s a Felon. ; ; ;

Original post:

We Finally Found a GOP Congressman Who Believes in Science. Too Bad He’s a Felon.

Posted in alo, eco-friendly, Everyone, FF, G & F, GE, LAI, Monterey, ONA, oven, OXO, solar, solar power, Ultima, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on We Finally Found a GOP Congressman Who Believes in Science. Too Bad He’s a Felon.

Rep. Michael Grimm’s Challenger Weighs In: "A Shameful Abuse of Power"

by jjhhhjz Posted on January 29, 2014

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

New York GOP Rep. Michael Grimm’s outburst after last night’s State of the Union was problematic because members of Congress (or anyone, really) aren’t supposed to threaten to throw reporters off balconies—at least not when a camera is rolling. But Grimm’s aggressive confrontation with NY1’s Michael Scotto also complicates an already difficult re-election campaign. Although the 11th district is New York City’s most conservative, it still voted for President Barack Obama by a 51–47 margin in 2012, making Grimm one of just a handful of Republicans representing blue-leaning districts. To that end, he was already one of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s top targets heading into 2014, even before he threatened to “break” Scotto “in half. Like a boy.” And unlike last cycle, when the Democratic nominee was dismissed as a former actor who lived with his dad, Grimm is facing a viable challenger in the form of former New York City council member Domenic Recchia Jr.

On Wednesday, Recchia was quick to pounce, issuing a statement blasting the incumbent:

Michael Grimm’s behavior last night was disgraceful, completely unacceptable, and unbefitting of a United States Congressman. Using threats of physical violence to intimidate the press from doing their jobs is against everything our country—and our government—stands for, and is a shameful abuse of power.

Michael Grimm owes Michael Scotto and the NY1 team an apology. He also owes the people of Staten Island and South Brooklyn an apology. The people of this district deserve leadership that in the wake of the President’s State of the Union is focused and committed to restoring the promise of the American Dream for all Americans. They deserve leadership that is focused on creating jobs, stimulating the economy, investing in transportation alternatives, and strengthening the middle class. Instead they’ve got Michael Grimm, who is clearly part of the distractions plaguing Congress, not the solutions. It’s time the people of this district had a representative focused on working for them.

Grimm already delivered on one of those apologies—on Wednesday he called Scotto to apologize.

Continued – 

Rep. Michael Grimm’s Challenger Weighs In: "A Shameful Abuse of Power"

Posted in FF, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Rep. Michael Grimm’s Challenger Weighs In: "A Shameful Abuse of Power"