#potentially putting themselves in danger from far right protestors

[destructo-range]

this makes me so happy and hopeful oh my fucking god

broke: ‘britain’s always gonna be racist, what else is new, what’s the point in caring?’

woke:

don’t ever forget, they’re the (shitty shitty) minority and they’re very easily outnumbered

[beardedmrbean]

SACRAMENTO — Jewish lawmakers in California whose legislative session was shut down by a cease-fire demonstration this week say this is an unprecedented moment in American political life where the far-right and far-left are aligned in dangerous, antisemitic beliefs about Jews.

Wednesday’s protest in the California statehouse, where singing and chanting brought the Assembly floor session to a halt, was the latest in a series of disruptions to Democratic events in Sacramento, San Francisco, Washington, D.C. and elsewhere over the Israel-Hamas war in an increasingly tense fight within the party. A number of Jewish organizations were behind Wednesday’s demonstration, including Jewish Voice for Peace, an anti-Zionist group.

The activism following the Oct. 7 Hamas attack and Israeli counteroffensive has put many Jewish lawmakers in an impossible position — trapped, as Assemblymember Jesse Gabriel described it, between political extremes and worried about their personal safety.

They say the dual attacks are unlike anything they’ve faced in decades.

“The one thing that they seem to agree on is that Jews are uniquely evil, and that we are responsible for the world's problems,” Gabriel, 42, said of the opposing groups.

Protesters have called for a halt to Israel attacks that have resulted in thousands of civilian deaths in Gaza. But Gabriel, and many American Jews, feel that demonstrators have largely ignored what sparked the war: The attack by Hamas militants on southern Israel that left 1,200 people dead, mostly civilians, in a horrific display of violence.

Rather than waiting for the temperature to drop, California's Legislative Jewish Caucus has decided to lean into the fallout, with bills aimed at stopping antisemitism in public schools and college campuses — policy debates that are likely to spur more protests at the statehouse.

Gabriel, a Democrat who represents parts of the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles, is the caucus' co-chair. He sat down with POLITICO to speak about the urgent need to crack down on antisemitism, and the caucus’ legislative game plan in 2024.

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

What was your first reaction when you heard the protestors in the Assembly on Wednesday?

I had a sense that it was coming when we walked over to the building and saw a bunch of folks, and it was much more crowded than usual and a lot of people in masks and everything else. We had a sense that potentially there would be some protest activity. And I thought that it might be on this. This is obviously a very contentious topic of conversation right now.

There were complaints about interrupting the democratic process, but how do you balance that with the right to free speech? 

The way I think about it is you have thousands of groups and Californians who come up to Sacramento every year who have passionately-held beliefs on a whole range of issues, and the overwhelming majority of them manage to express those beliefs without interrupting the democratic process.

So it can’t just be that some folks get to interrupt the democratic process and everybody else has to play by the rules.

What do you know about the protesters? They identified as Jewish groups, but it’s also clear that some of the Jewish caucus felt intimidated by what they were doing. 

I don’t know that I would say that we felt intimidated by it. I certainly didn't. I think it was upsetting for some folks and members of our caucus, but I don’t think anybody felt intimidated.

Let me say that some of these groups I know, I’ve heard of — others I know less about — it has sometimes rubbed me the wrong way that they describe themselves as Jews and quote unquote ‘allies,’ because I think many of the folks in these groups are not Jewish, and purporting to speak on behalf of the Jewish community.

While they are speaking on behalf of themselves, I would argue very strongly that they’re not speaking on behalf of the Jewish community.

I think the overwhelming majority of folks in the community feel a very, very strong emotional connection to Israel. Many of us have friends and family over there, people that we love, that we care about, that we are connected to. So a lot of this is not a theoretical war for us. This is something that we are experiencing through phone calls and emails and text messages with loved ones who are sitting in bomb shelters who are worried about the safety of their kids.

For us, it is a deeply personal issue. And that is both separate and very much intricately linked to this explosion in domestic antisemitism that we have experienced that, for reasons that I don't fully understand, seems to be going below the radar.

When you think about it, if there were 225 Black churches that have gotten bomb threats in the last week, I think we’d be reading about it all over the news.

There is an incredible sense of vulnerability in the community right now. Some of the rhetoric around this has been very dehumanizing of Jews. There seems to be this sense that we should believe victims of sexual assault, and yet there was so much pushback and continues to be so much pushback on the notion that Hamas committed mass rape and mass sexual violence on Oct. 7.

I think a lot of folks are able to hear opinions that we disagree with. And that’s OK. That’s part of democracy, that’s part of education, that’s part of the world we live in. But some of this rhetoric gets into a place where it becomes about longstanding stereotypes about our community, about dehumanizing Jews, that we have a long history, that our history teaches us this rhetoric leads to violence.

And we now find ourselves in this incredible situation, where we are trapped between the far-right and the far-left. Those two groups hate each other, see each other as a threat to everything that they love and believe is holy, and the one thing that they seem to agree on is that Jews are uniquely evil, and that we are responsible for the world's problems.

We know that in recent years, we know there’s a trend where the far-right and far-left are growing. Those are two segments of our society in the United States and around the world that are growing. And if one of the core ideologies that’s made its way into both of those groups is that Jews are bad and Jews are oppressors and Jews are evil, that’s a very problematic and scary thing for us, given how we’ve seen this unfold in history over and over again.

The Jewish caucus this week released a letter specifically lamenting a lack of support from labor and advocacy allies. Who does that refer to? 

I think part of the challenge is that there are people here who are not particularly well-informed about everything that is going on, that the challenges and the trauma that the Jewish community is experiencing are somewhat invisible to them.

That's part of what that letter was doing, is letting them understand how our community is feeling at this moment. And that we, frankly, would expect more of them and hope that they'll engage with us and take the time to learn.

What has been so interesting to me about recent weeks is a lot of Jews that I know that are very far-left, that are very critical of the Israeli government, are also deeply, deeply feeling the antisemitism in society right now, and have expressed that to me and to members of the caucus, in really emotional and evocative terms.

And the same thing is true of Jews on the right, and Jews in the middle and Jews whose politics I don't know, and Jews who are religious and walk around in ways that they're easily identifiable as being Jewish, and Jews who are not particularly observant.

So we're getting this feedback from all corners of our community: That people are feeling this in a way that they haven't felt. And I will tell you, I am feeling differently than I have felt at any moment in my life.

What would you like support from those groups to look like? 

Many and, maybe most, people in the Sacramento ecosystem have been incredible.

But we have also seen a number of folks who have put out some really reprehensible statements, and then others who just seem to be blind to facts and to Jewish suffering. I don’t have problems with people expressing sincerely-held beliefs. But they ought to think about, if you were silent on Oct. 7 and Oct. 8, if you had nothing to say about this, really unspeakable, act of brutality, and then you’re going to say things in a really one-sided way that doesn’t acknowledge Jewish pain, that doesn’t acknowledge the suffering that’s going on, that feels pretty rough.

Are there going to be consequences for that inaction or some of those statements, as far as damaging relationships? 

One hundred percent. And I’ll just say I’m always eager to have conversations with people and to learn from them and hopefully to have them learn from me.

Have you been specifically targeted at all? 

Not in a way that’s made me feel particularly threatened. My wife was freaking out [Wednesday] when everything was going on at the Capitol, and I was trying to calm her down.

Members of our caucus have been targeted, a number of them have not wanted to share that publicly, and this is something we’ve struggled with.

There are a number of members of our caucus that have been targeted in the most despicable personal terms at their homes, at their work. I think we have received stuff at the office and other things, and I think most Jews in elected office in publicly visible places right now have been targeted.

As a state lawmaker in this moment, do you bring the temperature down or stand up and call attention to the problem — knowing that it could continue to escalate these tensions?

I think there's been a lot of conversation as we've seen little incidents of antisemitism over the past number of years. How widespread is this belief? Is this just some misinformed person? Is that some crazy person that really doesn't understand this? Can we go have a conversation with them? Can we deescalate?

There's a sense now in the community that, given what we have seen in recent months, that we have to assert ourselves and we have to pull the fire alarm, because this is a moment that feels different than any other moment in our lifetimes.

[canmom]

re: the news from the states (abortion, assassination, state violence etc.)

apparently there has been only one attempted assassination of a sitting US Supreme Court Justice, of Stephen Johnson Field in 1859 over a personal matter (Field had ruled against the attempted assassin in a divorce case), which failed. the list of successful assassinations of US judges in general is pretty short. kind of surprises me honestly, given how many of their Presidents have been shot.

hard to imagine what would happen. the ruling party could presumably appoint a replacement, as with any death, so assassinating a judge belonging to the far-right faction would theoretically benefit the centre-right faction which is more permissive of things like abortion if they’re the ruling party.

but regardless of whether a hypothetical assassin was acting alone, and the fact that the US religious far-right has already frequently used terrorism against abortion providers, it would presumably function as an escalation towards outright civil war, right? i really don’t know what would happen but the possibility seems so obvious, and ‘die but secure abortion rights for potentially ~30 years’ seems like a sacrifice people might be prepared to make in a population the size of the US. of course the state machinery will know that full well, and have all those guys well-guarded. if there was a serious riot, though, and a justice got dragged out and beaten to death in the street? ...well, presumably the resulting crackdown would make the violence used to suppress Black Lives Matter look like nothing, but sometimes such an uprising is successful, at least at changing who’s in power and putting the shits up them.

i’m afraid this speculation is crass, compared to the very real danger that my American friends may be in as these attacks on bodily autonomy advance. i’m always drawn to expect more overt political violence than tends to happen in reality, i guess. in countries where affairs have settled into a long-term balance of power and the state has plenty of accepted legitimising narratives, the police don’t tend to massacre protestors, Peterloo-style, for fear of inciting further uprisings (not to mention, not wanting to kill the workers they depend on); using ‘less-lethal’ weapons like baton charges and tear gas allows them to clear the streets, and then they can quietly kill whoever they identify as a leader afterwards and cover it up if necessary.

in return, most protestors uphold our side of the bargain and don’t go to the protest with lethal weapons or attempt to kill policemen or politicians. escalation is unpredictable and risky for everyone involved. we even exploit the police’s reluctance to harm our bodies, with sacrificial tools like lock-ons where an activist may elaborately attach themselves to a car in the road with layers of concrete and metal, forcing the police to take hours carefully cutting them out without injury. arrest is inevitable, and we likely trade years of someone’s life in prison for just hours blocking a road. it seems like a battle of attrition rigged in the state’s favour.

but at some point the equilibrium will break, right? this seems like such a naked show of force by the ruling apparatus in the US, especially in conjunction with all the anti-trans bills being pushed at the same time, and it ought to be answered in kind. but I don’t really know how ‘normal’ people, who believe in the legitimacy of states, see it! every time i think “surely they’ve pushed it too far, surely people are gonna riot about this” in this country, i’m disappointed. and i have even less idea how things work in the weird ideological dimensions of the US political imagination.

[sinrau]

Since this article was published in the Tampa Bay Times ( 5/28/20 ), the average daily number of new Covid-19 cases in Florida has risen nearly tenfold.

In the second half of June, the story of the United States’ coronavirus pandemic began to shift dramatically, as a massive surge in new infections took hold, particularly across states in the South and West that had previously been spared the worst of the outbreak. Media reports abruptly switched gears from declaring that reopening was proceeding with few ill effects ( Reuters, 5/17/20; Tampa Bay Times, 5/28/20 ) to expressing alarm that health officials’ warnings against lifting social distancing restrictions too soon had been proven right—a cognitive dissonance perhaps most dramatically depicted in Oregon Public Broadcasting ’s headline, “Oregon’s COVID-19 Spike Surprises, Despite Predictions of Rising Caseloads” ( 6/10/20 ).

Increasingly, the big story has been the litany of state moves to halt or roll back reopenings: A typical roundup in the New York Times ( 6/26/20 ) included closing bars in Texas and Florida, a full stay-at-home order in California’s Imperial County, and putting beaches off-limits in Miami-Dade County for the July 4th weekend.

“This is a very dangerous time,” declared Gov. Mike DeWine of Ohio, where new cases began rising on June 15, just over a month after the state allowed stores and businesses to reopen. “I think what is happening in Texas and Florida and several other states should be a warning to everyone.”

But a warning of what? While the question of how quickly to reopen will affect potentially millions of lives, equally important is asking what science can tell us about how to reopen. Health experts point to many lessons we can learn from the pandemic experience, both in the US and elsewhere, that can help inform which activities are safest (and most necessary) to resume—a discussion that is more useful than the media’s inclination toward simple debates about whether reopening is good or bad ( LA Times, 5/14/20; New York Times, 5/20/20 ) .

Among the most important conclusions:

1. Types of reopenings matter

While the coronavirus that causes Covid-19 at first seemed like an all-powerful threat that could be carried by everything from cardboard boxes to cats, public health officials have long since determined that infection is overwhelmingly via person-to-person encounters. This means that reducing face-to-face interaction time—or ensuring that it’s at least conducted while wearing masks, or in outdoor or well-ventilated spaces—is key to reducing risk, as spelled out in a diagram by University of Massachusetts/Dartmouth infectious disease researcher and blogger Erin Bromage:

Infectious disease experts have attempted to reduce this equation to simple mnemonics that will be easy to remember; Tulane University epidemiologist Susan Hassig has cited “the three D’s: diversity, distance and duration” ( Business Insider, 6/8/20 ), while Ohio State’s William Miller created the rhyme “time, space, people, place” ( NPR, 6/23/20 ). These were featured in the increasingly common articles attempting to rank which activities were riskiest, including some that assigned weirdly specific point scales to behaviors for anyone wondering whether they should go bowling or for a pontoon boat ride ( MLive, 6/2/20 ).

A mass outbreak in a South Korean call center showed how easily the coronavirus can spread in an office environment; workspaces of infected employees are marked in blue (Business Insider, 4/28/20 ).

But most of those articles entirely ignored one of the most widespread reopening activities: going back to work in shared office spaces. Infectious disease experts say that offices can be the perfect petri dishes for viral spread, involving gatherings of a large number of people, indoors, for a long time, with recirculated air. As one study ( Business Insider, 4/28/20 ) of a coronavirus outbreak at a Seoul call center showed, the virus can quickly spread across an entire floor, especially in a modern open-plan office. In fact, the call center was doubly prone to viral spread, because its workers were all talking constantly, which previous studies have found to spread respiratory droplets just as effectively as coughing ( Better Humans, 4/20/20 )—a warning that was heavily noted in media’s coverage of the risks of chanting protestors ( Washington Post, 5/31/20; Politico, 6/8/20 ), but notably missing from articles on the reopening of workplaces.

“They’re pretty high-risk spaces,” Boston University School of Public Health epidemiologist Eleanor Murray tells FAIR. “What we would like to see with offices, if people have to be there for the function of the office to work, is to keep the minimum number of people in at any given time.” (She also urges consideration of the risk to office cleaning workers, who are seldom included in back-to-work safety debates.)

This is especially key, adds Tulane’s Hassig, in office environments where co-workers are breathing the same air. Workers can safely unmask if they’re in a private office where they can shut their door, she tells FAIR; however, “if you’re in an open office space with little four-foot cubicle walls, everybody needs to be wearing masks all the time.”

Yet most states have limited themselves to following CDC guidelines for reopening offices, which mandate wearing masks only when within six feet of a co-worker. But as Bromage ( 5/6/20 ) has pointed out, “Social distancing rules are really to protect you with brief exposures or outdoor exposures.”

In fact, former Arizona Department of Health Services director Will Humble told Newsweek ( 6/9/20 ) that one reason his state became the nation’s leader in new infections per capita was that local officials did not go beyond CDC mandates to impose “performance criteria such as required business mitigation measures, contact tracing capacity or mask-wearing.” Hassig worries that the CDC’s guidance may have been “far less prescriptive than they would like it to be from the scientific perspective,” noting that “we’ve got plenty of evidence that distance is not enough if you’re in a shared space with lots of people.”

All of this would have been good for US workers returning to their jobs to know, but very little of it has made it into media coverage of reopenings, whether before or after the recent virus spikes. And the rare exceptions often left much to be desired: When CBS News ( 5/28/20 ) devoted time to investigating the dangers of reopening offices, it was solely in terms of whether plumbing systems left stagnant during closures could lead to the spread of Legionnaires’ disease.

2. Let science, not political power, guide health decisions

Because it takes at least two to three weeks for case numbers to noticeably rise in response to a change in social distancing rules, Hassig says, states should start slowly, and wait to see if numbers rise before moving on to the next stage of reopening. “If your reopening timetable is preset, that’s somewhat of a folly,” she says. Ideally, she says, after each change in policy, states should “wait at least three weeks to make a decision before you move on, which would mean that probably you’re really looking at a month in each phase. And that is not what Texas did.”

Do you need to know whether independent health experts think this is a good idea? Apparently not (Austin American Statesman, 5/1/20 )

It’s also not how the Texas media presented reopening plans to the public. The Austin American Statesman ( 4/27/20, 5/1/20 ) dutifully listed types of businesses that would resume operations under Gov. Greg Abbott’s reopening order, but never cited any independent health officials on the risks each activity would entail. When the Dallas Morning News ( 4/30/20 ) ran answers to reader questions about the reopening, the only potential negative consequence it mentioned was whether Texans who refused to return to work could still get unemployment benefits. And the Houston Chronicle ( 4/30/20 ) declared, “No more stay-home. Just stay safe”—though the only “safety” measures it mentioned were those still being recommended by Abbott, such as wearing masks in public and limiting the size of gatherings.

The New York Times ( 5/1/20 ), meanwhile, chose to both-sides the issue with a story headlined “A Texas-Size Reopening Has Many Wondering: Too Much or Not Enough?”

In doing so, the media largely followed the lead of elected officials, who in many cases let concern over profit-and-loss statements take precedence over whether the data indicated it was safe to resume business as usual. In Ohio, state officials went so far as to allow guidelines to be written by the businesses seeking to reopen themselves ( Columbus Dispatch, 6/29/20 ), something health experts suspect helped lead to a tripling of daily new cases in the state between June 14 and June 25.

3. Learn from places that have done better

Some hard-hit European countries have had much more success with reopening than the United States, as a comparison of per capita average daily new cases shows (orange: Italy; green: Spain; red: Germany; blue: France; purple: US). (Chart: 91-VIDOC )

The Covid curves in many European and Asian nations that were hit the earliest and took the first and strongest action have remained low, despite reopenings in those nations: Italy, for example, once the world epicenter of the virus, currently has under three new cases per day per million residents, according to Johns Hopkins data —about half the infection rate for the least-hard-hit US state, Vermont.

Those nations, however, took very different approaches to reopening than the US. First off, they waited until case rates were much lower before reopening: When Italy first reopened restaurants on May 18, its daily new-case rate, averaged over the previous week, was 14.4 per million residents; when Florida did so on May 4, its average daily rate was 31.7 per million. “Where you start in terms of your case burden will probably wind up being one of the best predictors of how well your reopening went,” says Hassig.

In addition, the measures the European nations took to get cases down that low were much stricter than those ever implemented in the US—something that was largely overlooked in rundowns of nations imposing and lifting lockdowns ( New York Times, 6/10/20; CNBC, 6/25/20 ). “What we were doing in the US compared to what Europe was doing in terms of lockdown are completely different things,” says Murray:

I have friends in France, and you had to have a permit that said what time you were allowed to go to the grocery store. So even the places in the US that did a gradual opening were already starting from a much more open place than places in Europe.

US residents can also learn from areas of their own country that have done comparatively well under reopenings. Hassig notes that New Orleans and neighboring Jefferson Parish have provided an unintentional controlled experiment—albeit “a sample of one”—in the efficacy of wearing masks: “The mayor of New Orleans made masking mandatory in indoor spaces, which empowered businesses to put up signs like ‘No mask, no shoes, no shirt, no service.’”

The city, which had been an early Covid hotspot, also established a hotline to report violators, kept casinos closed longer, and kept tighter restrictions on such things as church gatherings—with the result, says Hassig, that Orleans Parish currently has less than half the new-case rate of the similarly sized Jefferson Parish. (On Monday, Jefferson Parish announced its own mandatory mask order— New Orleans Advocate, 6/29/20.)

4. Every reopening is a tradeoff

Even before most US states had shut down, Siva Vaidhyanathan (Guardian, 3/26/20 ) was warning that pitting health against the economy was a false choice.

When media outlets posit the decision facing states as balancing the economic needs with public-health needs, it not only ignores that an out-of-control pandemic would be an economic catastrophe ( Guardian, 3/26/20 ), but overlooks another important point: In reopening, governments have a limited amount of risk they can safely spread around without losing control of an outbreak. As a result, reopening decisions don’t just impact public health and the economy now—they also could end up undermining your ability to reopen other things down the road.

“It’s not ‘open’ or ‘shut’—there’s a whole spectrum in between,” says Murray. “We need to be thinking about what are the high-priority things that we need to reopen from a functioning point of view, and not an enjoyment point of view.”

If the goal is to prevent the kind of explosive surge in Covid cases that many states saw in March and April—and which are now being repeated in new hotspots in June and July—that means picking and choosing carefully, not just which activities are the safest, but which are the most urgent for a functioning society—which, it bears emphasizing, is not the same thing as what’s best for businesses’ bottom lines.

“We need to be getting dentists’ offices open and getting childcare open and getting elective medical treatment open; bars are not as important,” advises Murray. “It may be that we have to give up on some of those things to allow the risks that some of these other activities take.”

That’s a discussion that will require informed public debate on the conditions of reopening, from what should stay closed to whether to require masks. It’s a debate that will be much easier if the media spends less time on who is “winning” or “losing” in the struggle to reopen, and more on why people are getting infected—and how they could not be.

What mainstream media isn’t telling you about the risks of reopening

[idkmybffjillyy]

The Immigration Ban is a Headfake, and We’re Falling For It

From Medium.com, written by Jack Fuentes

“When I read about the incredibly active first week of the Trump administration, I struggle with two competing narratives about what’s really going on. The first story is simple: the administration is just doing what it said it would do, literally keeping its campaign promises. Lots of people won’t agree, but it’s playing to its base. They’re also not really good at this whole government thing yet, so implementation is shaky. The second is more sinister: the administration is deliberately testing the limits of governmental checks and balances to set up a self-serving, dangerous consolidation of power. A legitimate argument can be made for the former: a relatively extreme and inexperienced administration was just put in place, and they haven’t yet figured out the nuances of government. But a few of the events in the past 72 hours —the intentional inclusion of green card holders in the immigration order, the DHS defiance of a federal judge, and the timing of Trump’s shakeup of the National Security Council — have pointed to a larger story. Even worse, if that larger story is true, if the source of this week’s actions is a play to consolidate power, it’s going really well so far. And that’s because mostly everyone — including those in protests shutting down airports over the weekend— are playing right into the administration’s hand. I obviously can’t pretend to know the intentions of the new President, but let’s pretend the power consolidation move is what’s actually happening. In fact, let’s pretend we’re the Trump administration (not necessarily Trump himself, more likely his inner circle) for a second. Here’s our playbook: We launch a series of Executive Orders in the first week. Beforehand, we identify one that our opponents will complain loudly about and will dominate the news cycle. Immigration ban. Perfect. We craft the ban to be about 20% more extreme than we actually want it to be — say, let’s make the explicit decision to block green card holders from defined countries from entering the US, rather than just visa holders. We create some confusion so that we can walk back from that part later, but let’s make sure that it’s enforced to begin with. We watch our opposition pour out into the streets protesting the extremes of our public measure, exactly as we intended. The protests dominate the news, but our base doesn’t watch CNN anyway. The ACLU will file motions to oppose the most extreme parts of our measure, that’s actually going to be useful too. We don’t actually care if we win, that’s why we made it more extreme than it needed to be. But in doing so, the lawsuit process will test the loyalty of those enforcing what we say. While the nation’s attention is on our extreme EO, slip a few more nuanced moves through. For example, reconfigure the National Security Council so that it’s led by our inner circle. Or gut the State Department’s ability to resist more extreme moves. That will have massive benefits down the road — the NSC are the folks that authorize secret assassinations against enemies of the state, including American citizens. Almost nobody has time to analyze that move closely, and those that do can’t get coverage. When the lawsuits filed by the ACLU inevitably succeed, stay silent. Don’t tell the DHS to abide by the what the federal judge says, see what they do on their own. If they capitulate to the courts, we know our power with the DHS is limited and we need to staff it with more loyal people. But if they continue enforcing our EO until we tell them not to, we know that we can completely ignore the judicial branch later on and the DHS will have our back. Once the DHS has made their move, walk back from the 20% we didn’t want in the first place. Let the green card holders in, and pretend that’s what we meant all along. The protestors and the ACLU, both clamoring to display their efficacy, jump on the moment to declare a huge victory. The crowds dissipate, they have to go back to work. When the dust settles, we have 100% of the Executive Order we originally wanted, we’ve tested the loyalty of a department we’ll need later on, we’ve proven we can ignore an entire branch of government, and we’ve slipped in some subtle moves that will make the next test even easier. We’ve just tested the country’s willingness to capitulate to a fascist regime. Assuming this narrative is true (again, I have no idea what the administration intends), the “resistance” is playing right into Trump’s playbook. The most vocal politicians could be seen at rallies, close to the headlines. The protests themselves did exactly what they were intended to: dominate the news cycle and channel opposition anger towards a relatively insignificant piece of the puzzle. I’m not saying that green card holders should be stuck in airports — far from it. I’m saying there might be a much larger picture here, and the immigration ban is a distraction. So for those that believe that the power consolidation narrative is true and want to oppose it, how does that happen? First, stop believing that protests alone do much good. Protests galvanize groups and display strong opposition, but they’re not sufficient. Not only are they relatively ineffective at changing policy, they’re also falsely cathartic to those protesting. Protestors get all kinds of feel-good that they’re among fellow believers and standing up for what’s right, and they go home feeling like they’ve done their part. Even if protestors gain mild, symbolic concessions, the fact that their anger has an outlet is useful to the other side. Do protest, but be very wary of going home feeling like you’ve done your job. You haven’t. Second, pay journalists to watch for the head fake. That’s their job. Become a paying subscriber to news outlets, then actively ask them to more deeply cover moves like the NSC shakeup. We can no longer breathlessly focus media attention on easy stories like the immigration ban. The real story is much more nuanced and boring — until it’s not. Third, popular attention must focus less on whether we agree with what the government is doing, and more on whether the system of checks and balances we have in place is working. It is a much bigger deal that the DHS felt they could ignore a federal court than that Trump signed an EO blocking green card holders in the first place. It is a much bigger deal that Trump removed a permanent military presence from the NSC than that he issued a temporary stay on immigration. The immigration ban may be more viscerally upsetting, but the other moves are potentially far more dangerous. Once again, I’m desperately hoping that none of this narrative is actually true, and that we merely have a well-intentioned administration with some execution problems. I’m also hoping and praying that the structure of our democracy is resilient even to the most sophisticated attacks. I’m hoping that the better angels of our nature will prevail. But with each passing day, the evidence tilts more in the other direction.”

https://medium.com/@jakefuentes/the-immigration-ban-is-a-headfake-and-were-falling-for-it-b8910e78f0c5#.3873mvi5k

[entergamingxp]

Gamers for Freedom Interview — BlizzCon Protest and Politics in Games

December 28, 2019 1:27 PM EST

Gamers for Freedom’s Dayton Young spoke to DualShockers about how the organization took on censorship with the BlizzCon 2019 protest.

As we look back at 2019, one of the most shocking controversies (and DualShockers‘ 2019 Worst Moment of the Gaming Industry) involves Blizzard and their response to the ongoing Hong Kong protests. After Blizzard suspended Hearthstone player Blitzchung from competitive play for declaring his support for the protestors, much of the gaming community expressed their outrage online. This snafu became part of a larger national conversation where American businesses and bodies like the NBA were scrutinized for their ties to Chinese businesses. The saga also included another suspension for an American University Hearthstone team for similar reasons, a bipartisan letter from members of the United States Congress, and a highly-criticized official statement from Blizzard.

One of the louder groups amongst the uproar is Fight for the Future, which began the “Gamers for Freedom” movement. Gamers for Freedom was behind the protest during BlizzCon 2019, which featured an attempted apology from Blizzard president J. Allen Brack. Last month, DualShockers spoke to Dayton Young, the product director at Fight for the Future and Lead Campaigner for Gamers for Freedom, about how they approached one of the year’s hottest and most sensitive topics.

Chris Compendio: Let’s talk about Gamers for Freedom. Can you tell me a brief history of how Games for Freedom came to be? Specifically, how and when did they originate from Fight for the Future?

Dayton Young: Fight for the Future is a nonprofit organization that is dedicated to fighting for digital rights. I’m a gamer, and we have many other gamers within the organization. We’re a small team, but many of us are tech-savvy—we love playing video games, we’re into technology. When I heard the news that Blitzchung had been banned, it was something I was very passionate about. It was something I was upset about. And it was something that I saw had resonated with the entire gaming community. So it was something that I brought up to the team at Fight For the Future and we discussed it as a group.

They agreed this was a big deal, that people being censored online for expressing their political beliefs was something that was outrageous, and it was something that we should be taking a stand against. Working with the team, we were able to get up the website Gamers for Freedom. I believe the day after Blitzchung’s ban was announced, we reached out to the press. It was obviously something that everybody else cared about, at the same time with [Houston Rockets general manager] Daryl Morey was being censored, and when South Park was running an episode about censorship by the Chinese government, and it attracted a lot of attention. It took off from there, people want to participate, gamers were outraged and it was just a great opportunity of being in the right place at the right time.

CC: What are the tactics and strategies employed by the movement in the protest, specifically against Blizzard?

DY: The main tactic is to use the internet as a way to spread information and raise awareness about what happened. Once we had people aware of what happened, they were signing on to our open letter calling for Blizzard and other game companies to support freedom of expression on their platforms. We wanted to show game companies and Blizzard specifically that gamers—professional gamers, casual gamers, people within the games community—everybody cared about this issue, and to put the public pressure on them to do the right thing to support our rights to express ourselves on their platforms.

” think that the most important thing is being aware of what Activision-Blizzard and other game companies are doing on their platforms….”

CC: How far does the boycott against Blizzard actually go? I’ve seen people delete their accounts or try to like get people to stop playing Overwatch, for example. Does that include Activision, since Activision and Blizzard are one conglomerate? How far-reaching is this?

DY: Gamers for Freedom hasn’t made any sort of boycott on Blizzard or Activision-Blizzard games. On our website, we certainly do encourage people, if they’re fed up with Activision-Blizzard, we have a link to show people how to delete their accounts. We provide people with a suggested list of games that people can play instead of Activision-Blizzard games. It’s up to individual gamers to determine whether or not they want to participate in playing Activision-Blizzard games. I think that the most important thing is being aware of what Activision-Blizzard and other game companies are doing on their platforms, which game companies have publicly committed to supporting people’s free speech, and which game companies have made it clear that they will shut down speech that they find potentially offensive. And of course, they’re not being very transparent about what they may or may not find to be political or offensive, or not allowed on the platforms.

So what we’re encouraging people to do is to have an awareness that this issue is real. This issue affects us. Game companies have a lot of control over what people say, how people do, and what’s heard on their platforms. When they use it to silence people, they risk committing human rights atrocities. It’s actually part of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, that individuals have the right to hold opinions and express their beliefs on any media platform.

We certainly understand that companies like Blizzard have a responsibility to moderate content, that gamers can keep them safe. At the same time, when they censor people, when they declare themselves unilaterally judges of what is and isn’t political and what is and isn’t offensive, they risk committing actual human rights abuses. This isn’t some abstract concept. It isn’t something to be taken lightly. It’s a very real responsibility to the safety and the human rights of gamers who play on Blizzard’s platforms and we want them to take that responsibility as seriously as we do.

CC: So it’s more of a call for awareness and just being cognizant of what these companies, what these corporations are doing, not exactly like a call for “Hey, turn off the game systems” or something like that. It’s more like “hey, here’s how you can be a little more active. Here’s how you can be more educated.”

DY: Sure, awareness is definitely the first step into other actions. People are aware that this is an issue and how this issue affects them. There certainly are specific actions people can take. At the same time, I think when we have these institutional uses; sometimes we need institutional solutions to these problems. It isn’t always fair to say that individual gamers should be responsible for making sure that their basic human rights aren’t abused.

There are also other authorities and lawmakers and governing bodies that have a say in that and can help us more than any single individual gamer. We certainly do encourage individual gamers to take action, and events like the BlizzCon protest was a great opportunity for lots of different people to take a specific action, to make their voices heard, and to show how important their rights are to them. At the same time, we need the video game companies themselves to participate in these issues.

We saw lawmakers like Marco Rubio and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez co-authoring an open letter to Blizzard. As a community, we all need to come together and participate. There are things that we as individuals can and should be doing. But there are also things that these companies and our lawmakers need to be doing to help promote our safety and our human rights as well.

“…events like the BlizzCon protest was a great opportunity for lots of different people to take a specific action, to make their voices heard, and to show how important their rights are to them.”

CC: What do you think will appease the public? J. Allen Brack tried to go on stage and give an apology, so to say? Would it take like a reversal of the Blitzchung fiasco, or would it be a 100% cut off of ties from Tencent and other companies, or removing the “no political statements policy?” Is there a “mission complete” goal?

DY: I think you’re 100% correct to say that J. Allen Brack’s non-apology only served to anger many gamers even more. Saying that he’s sorry and committing to do better without telling us what he’s actually sorry for and what “doing better going forward” actually means? That’s a meaningless promise; it’s just corporate doublespeak. Gamers for Freedom has not been in touch with anybody from Activision, though we certainly have reached out. Many media organizations have reached out to Blizzard and have not heard back on this. We would love for Blizzard to, first of all, sit down at a table and talk to gamers: professional gamers, casual gamers, gamers for freedom, human rights lawyers. They have punished American University Hearthstone students, they’ve punished Blitzchung, they punish streamers; they should be sitting down in a room with many representatives from the gaming community, talk about this issue specifically to hear what our grievances are, so they can understand how what they have done is very dangerous, and subverting human rights.

So I think the first step that Blizzard should be doing is listening and participating in a conversation with the people who have been affected by their actions. Together, we can determine many different courses of action that can help make people feel safer and more comfortable playing games on Blizzard platforms. But it has to be a conversation. They have to be willing to listen to us. They have to be willing to take actions based on what’s in the best interests of their customers and gamers in the community, as opposed to just what’s in their best financial interests.

CC: So it’s not a protest making a list of demands or anything; it sounds like you want to start a two-way conversation. Am I characterizing that correctly?

DY: I think that would be a great start with Blizzard. Obviously want the ban on Blitzchung and the American University Hearthstone students and the live-streamers completely reversed. We think that’s only fair. But we certainly think that and there’s a lot more work to be done from there. But all of the work needs to start with a good big conversation.

CC: Let’s talk about trust in certain actors and trying to sift through motivations and agendas of anyone who elects to be a party in this whole conversation. Let’s start with Jeff Kaplan, director of Overwatch. I think he was saying that he disagreed with that whole Blitzchung decision of suspending him.

Number one, do you think that was a genuine thing he was saying or was that a coordinated PR move to save face? And number two: employees have been protesting internally, but with a name like Jeff Kaplan, do you visibly see an effort from someone like him to move the needle within Blizzard or, again, is it just to save face for PR, in your opinion?

DY: Justin Conroy was a coach for the Overwatch League and the general manager for Team Canada, and he was told to delete a tweet he had on his personal Twitter account that was in solidarity of Blitzchung and condemning the censorship and severity of the consequences enacted by Blizzard, and Blizzard censored that tweet. So Blizzard has censored a lot of people. They’ve punished a lot of people. And now we have Jeff Kaplan coming out and voicing his opinion that Blizzard didn’t handle this very well. I fully support that. I agree with it. I have no reason to believe that Jeff Kaplan isn’t being sincere. And I certainly hope that Blizzard listens to him.

But it’s important for Blizzard to listen to other people as well people and other positions within their organization: people who are affiliated with their company, gamers, coaches, everybody in the community. Again, there are lots of people telling Blizzard a very specific message. We have United States senators and representatives reaching out to Blizzard and saying, “You are wrong on this.” Blizzard needs to listen.

I have no reason to believe that anybody who’s speaking out is anything other than passionate about the rights of individuals to express themselves on video games. And I hope more Blizzard employees feel empowered to do the same now that Jeff Kaplan has spoken out. And I hope they feel protected and safe and speaking out because we’ve certainly seen that Blizzard has a track record of censoring and punishing those people who disagree with that public.

“I have no reason to believe that anybody who’s speaking out is anything other than passionate about the rights of individuals to express themselves on video games.”

CC: Let’s talk about those senators and congresspeople because that was a headline for sure. Marco Rubio and AOC, two very different kinds of politicians in Congress, being part of like this bipartisan letter, which sounds good on paper. I’m speaking from my own perspective at the moment, but it was hard to swallow that because when you talk about, China policy specifically in the United States government—I can’t imagine what it’s like to be a politician in Washington DC because there are so many interests, so many parties, so many lobbyists, so many things to keep track of, and they’re all playing to an audience and they all have a political agenda of some sort.

For a lot of the general public, it’s hard to trust politicians on really anything out of concern that they may be bought out or they may have some sort of motivation overseas, especially when it comes to China. This President has been very loud about China, let’s say. Is it fair to be skeptical of letters like that, to be skeptical of someone like Marco Rubio coming out in support? Or does everybody wins and say that this movement has more legitimacy because a United States senator has signed on on this. It is a straightforward win or is it nuanced and something that you think people should think about as they enter this whole conversation?

DY: I think it’s important for everyone to be skeptical of what corporations do, and what their motivations are. I think it’s very important for everybody to be skeptical about what politicians and lawmakers do and what their motivations are. I do think it’s important that when you see politicians who are so diametrically opposed on so many different issues such as AOC and Marco Rubio, and even they can find common ground on an issue–like free speech on video game platforms–that’s something that should really shake us out of our, you know, day-to-day skepticism.

And at the very least ask, “what’s going on here? Why is this so important that people fighting for very different visions of America, find common ground over this issue?” And in those areas where we see lawmakers crossing the aisle and agreeing on important values and issues, I think that speaks to the universal nature of how important it is to protect these basic human rights online.

CC: And that “unity,” let’s call it, is symbolic and indicative of a way where everyone goes, “Oh, wow, this actually is serious.” Is that kind of what you’re saying?

DY: I believe it is serious when it garnered the attention of the international media, when it gathers the attention of the lawmakers, and when it garners the attention of individual people all across America and around the world.

CC: The website for Gamers for Freedom describes a diverse coalition. Diverse in what way?

DY: We have a lot of different people from around the world who are participating in the movement. We have police officers from the south, we have activists, such professional activists such as myself, we had cosplayers from Canada flying in to attend the protests. We have people from Hong Kong and Mainland China, and people with ancestors over there wanting to sit and protest.

Some people are narrowly focused on Hong Kong, some people are focused on speech rights online. Some people are just gamers who were really upset that a gamer has been unfairly punished. So we have a lot of different people from a lot of different backgrounds participating in the protests for a lot of different purposes. But we all agree that it’s really important for all of us to be able to voice our opinions and things that are essential to our identity on games platforms.

“Some people are narrowly focused on Hong Kong, some people are focused on speech rights online. Some people are just gamers who were really upset that a gamer has been unfairly punished.”

CC: Would you say there’s any sort of line; because you’re right, a lot of different motivations, a lot of different reasoning for coming into the protest, but there may be some people who are joining in and co-opting the protest—let’s say, someone might be racist against Chinese people, or maybe they just hate Blizzard because of some Diablo mobile game that they announced last year.

Are those people welcome in that coalition? Is there like any line where it’s like, “you have bad faith reasons and you can’t participate with us.” Or have you not even run into that problem?

DY: Oh, we definitely run into similar issues, particularly in our Discord server. Free speech is very important to us, but we’re also very clear that game developers have a responsibility to moderate content on their platforms in order to keep people safe from harassment and institutional oppression. So we try to do the same within our movement.

Everybody is free to say what they want to say, and people are free to advocate for freedom online for a variety of different reasons and issues they care about. We expect that many people are going to have disagreements. But certainly, it’s really important that people don’t attack others, that people are debating ideas, that people are being respectful in their debates, that people are not calling for violence, that people are not using bigotry to harass or intimidate other people. We don’t stand for those sorts of things. So we moderate the content in our Discord server and find that overwhelmingly people are participating in good faith, and they understand what limits exist, and why those limits exist to keep everybody safe.

CC: How did that play in-person at the protest?

DY: Specifically at the BlizzCon protests, it was really amazing. We passed the microphone around. We had planned speakers, but some people want to speak from their hearts. Everybody was incredibly respectful. Everybody showed up to Blizzard out of love for games, out of love for fellow gamers, and an attempt to convince Blizzard to treat us with the love and respect and care that we feel like we deserve, and that should be protected by basic human rights laws.

So particularly in the physical protests, everybody understood that the people of China are people that we care about, the nation of China is our friend. We’re very upset at the Chinese government for the way they’ve exerted influence over companies like Blizzard, we’re very upset at Blizzard’s management decisions they’ve made to dissipate censorship, but we’re doing what we’re doing to keep people safe and to keep people free. So we had no issues at the protest that I heard of.

CC: There are a lot of gamers who are very against the idea of politics and video games, whether it be political content within the text video games, or how a video game company might be marketing something to invoke any political imagery or wording or whatever the case may be.

DY: I’m going to preempt this with the question of my own: what is political, and who gets to define what isn’t? I believe one of those statements Brack made was that he didn’t want people spitting in political conversations, that it didn’t matter whether Blitzching was pro Hong Kong or against Hong Kong, it was the fact that he was expressing a political viewpoint that could affect people. And the reality is that everything can and often is political.

If I wore an American flag on my t-shirt while I’m on a live stream playing video games, is that a political statement? Am I allowed to be proud of my country? Was that a political statement that should be prohibited? What if I’m wearing a flag of Taiwan on my t-shirt, or the Hong Kong flag, or gay pride flag? What issues are political? What issues aren’t political? Why are they political? Or why are they not political?”

There’s no transparency from companies like Blizzard on what is and isn’t political. So I think that it’s important for these companies to start having these conversations with gamers so they understand how many different gamers feel about these issues. It’s really important they understand they can’t be the ones unilaterally deciding what is and isn’t appropriate, because they’re going to get these things very wrong at times.

“If I wore an American flag on my t-shirt while I’m on a live stream playing video games, is that a political statement? Am I allowed to be proud of my country?”

CC: Going back to those specific people in comments sections who used to get angry [about politics in games]: why would you say these people are suddenly active in the conversation, specifically over the Hong Kong Blitzchung saga? Again, are you questioning motivation with those specific people if you’re talking about bad-faith actors and Gamergaters?

DY: Our Discord server attracted a lot of people who’ve been wanting to come in and make negative statements about our movement. And we allowed them to do that because we think it’s perfectly reasonable for people to come and say, “Hey, I’m here because the Hearthstone subreddit is filled with nothing but stuff about this and you’ve ruined my subreddit.”

I would say that I try to take everyone in good faith. And if people are upset that two games are becoming what they see as political, I would simply challenge the fact that they think games are now becoming political. And it goes back to the heart of the matter, which is “what is political and who determines what’s political.”

Kojima games have been political since the first Metal Gear game. There’s been different politics in games since games began. So for people say that games are now becoming political, I’d strongly disagree with that characterization. I think games have always been political. I think there have always been political messages in games. And I think as games become more popular, and they attract more people from different cultures, it’s only inevitable that we’re going to have more political conversations about the content of the games and the people who are playing those games.

CC: Do you feel like this event is a wake-up call for those people who had that opinion that games shouldn’t be political and yet are participating in this conversation and saying, “oh, wow, this is messed up. We should do something.” Because that is a shift that surprised me.

DY: The Gamers for Freedom, movement and the banning of Blitzchung represent a very important moment in gaming history, where people are understanding that the idea of politics isn’t something abstract that games simply allow them to escape from and be free from. Politics are an integral part of the games we play, and the gamers who play them.

Our lives, our identities, our religion, our government—these are things that are essential to our identities. They will come out when we are expressing ourselves while creating games, playing games, and while talking about games. So this is an inherently political media. And this moment in time has been inescapable. People cannot escape from the political nature of games at this moment. So I think it has been a very big moment and a coming-of-age for all gamers to understand how important politics are to the nature of gaming.

CC: At the BlizzCon protest, were there any reactions from outsiders and observers who maybe didn’t know what was going on? Or people who didn’t really stand with everyone on the issue? Or was it all positivity?

DY: I think that from my perspective, what I saw from the protesters was literally all positive. I was at the protests, I had a microphone and amplifier, and the number one thing I tried to do was spread positivity, spread love, and spread support for gamers because we wanted everybody to know that we are there supporting their rights and their freedoms.

Certainly, I saw that some people attending got a little bit nervous when they saw the crowds of protesters, particularly those with children, because they didn’t understand necessarily what our values were, what we were about, and they were unsure about what protests are like. But we waved to kids. We said hi. We made sure everybody know that we were friendly. And a lot of people stopped to take pictures with us. They shook hands. We handed out over 4000 t-shirts that were donated by Freedom Hong Kong and Hong Kong Forum Los Angeles.

So people attending BlizzCon were very eager to participate. And not everybody is that happy, but thousands of people are interested in hearing what we had to say and wanted to know more and took t-shirts and flyers and took the time to talk with us.

CC: Are there any plans for protests in the future? Or is it just online and direct action online?

DY: Yeah, we’re certainly working on organizing more actions both in real life and online. This is not an issue that’s going to go away. This is something that Blizzard still needs to make right. This is something that other video game companies need to address. So they’ll be a lot more opportunities to participate both online and in real-life protest activities.

“…the heart of this movement is to respect other people’s rights to express themselves, even if sometimes you disagree with those things.”

CC: Do you have any advice for any individuals or groups who might want to plan their own movements or protests to promote similar ideals?

DY: Certainly; I think that everybody should be raising their voice. Everybody should feel free to participate. Everybody should be respectful of the rights of others. That’s a very important part of the message we’re spreading, and the heart of this movement is to respect other people’s rights to express themselves, even if sometimes you disagree with those things.

So I think as long as people are acting in good faith, they should speak out and most importantly, they should continue to speak out. It can be very frustrating when you send a tweet or an email to the customer service of a company that you really like that makes games you care about, and you don’t hear back from them. And you think, “are they even listening to me?” And it’s very easy to get frustrated and not do anything else ever again.

But I think people have to realize that they have to continue to engage, they have to continue to speak up. It has to be something they do frequently. It’s something they have to do often. And sometimes they just can’t give up. These are really important values, and we need to continue to fight for them.

CC: This is more of a question regarding Fight for the Future rather than Games for Freedom, but do you feel like participation in this movement can help people specifically in the gaming community to be a little more cognizant of other international events and other human rights violations?

There are protests and like and conflicts going on all around the world. There are all these news stories going on in South America right now. Is that something that you think that this movement can help facilitate?

DY: 100 percent. So Gamers for Freedom; if you join our Discord, you’ll see that we have separate Discord channels for conversations about China in general, Hong Kong in specific things, things going on in Chile, things happening in Tibet, a Discord for LGBT-specific issues. So, certainly Gamers for Freedom is about issues that affect all of us.

What’s happened with Blitzchung affects everybody in Hong Kong. It also affects all of us. There will also be other issues that are affecting gamers all over the world in many different areas. There’s tons of civil unrest and protest going on in America right now. In your hometown, in my hometown. There are plenty of ways for gamers to get involved in politics, for gamers to see how these issues impacted their lives. And Gamers for Freedom is about those broader issues. And certainly when these individual incidents happen, that’s going to shine more light and draw a lot of attention. But these are symptoms of larger issues about digital rights and freedom online.

CC: My final question is more open-ended, so take this however you want to. Basically, how did we get here? How did American companies not realize that they were walking on eggshells in dealing with Chinese businesses? Why is this happening now?

DY: Oh, that’s a really tough question. I feel like I could write a Ph.D. dissertation on that. The easiest answer is that because executives at companies like Blizzard are prioritizing profits over human rights. It’s that simple and it won’t be simpler or easy to fix. But that’s what it boils down to.

These individuals at the head of corporations are placing business interests over the fundamental human rights of their customers, their employees, and the people in the communities in which they live and work. We need individuals to take responsibility for their actions. We need individuals to look out for the rights of others. We need businessmen to understand that conducting business has certain obligations for the general public. We are here in the position we’re at right now because people have not been respecting their obligations to the public.

You can find out more about Gamers for Freedom and their mission through their website.

December 28, 2019 1:27 PM EST

from EnterGamingXP https://entergamingxp.com/2019/12/gamers-for-freedom-interview-blizzcon-protest-and-politics-in-games/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=gamers-for-freedom-interview-blizzcon-protest-and-politics-in-games