[Plura-list] Michigan Supreme Court to review teenager's no-homework jail sentence; Grifters started the anti-mask movement; Strike for Black Lives

[Cory Doctorow]

Today's links

* Michigan Supreme Court to review teenager's no-homework jail sentence:
Justice for Grace?

* Grifters started the anti-mask movement: The Dorr brothers are Grand
Wizards of the Flu Klux Klan.

* Strike for Black Lives: Today's walkout.

* No mask, no entry: Civilian casualties of the mask wars.

* Dems vote to fund more DHS invasions of US cities: $50B for DHS with
no ban on urban invasions.

* This day in history: None

* Colophon: Recent publications, upcoming appearances, current writing
projects, current reading

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🎳 Michigan Supreme Court to review teenager's no-homework jail sentence

Grace is a 15-year-old Black kid with ADHD who was on parole for briefly
stealing a fellow student's phone when lockdown started. She failed to
turn in her distance-education homework, so she was jailed for violating
her parole. She's still in jail.

https://pluralistic.net/2020/07/15/3-frauds-in-a-trenchcoat/#judge-mary-ellen-brennan

Grace's story became a center of national outrage after a Propublica
story about it last week. The elected judge who put Grace in jail -
after an inexplicably in-person hearing that her lawyer wouldn't attend
due to safety concerns - has granted review of Grace's case.

That judge - Mary Ellen Brennan - refused to allow Grace to return home
pending review, saying that doing so would "interrupt...mental health
treatment."

(It's obvious that being imprisoned places a significant burden on a
child's mental health).

https://www.propublica.org/article/the-michigan-supreme-court-is-reviewing-the-case-of-a-teenager-incarcerated-after-not-doing-online-schoolwork-during-the-pandemic#979914

Brennan has been spinning her role in locking up a Black child for
failing to complete homework, saying that she had access to non-public
information about Grace that led her to calling the child a "threat to
the community."

But Jonathan Biernat, one of Grace's attorneys, points out that "the
record is entirely devoid of facts to support the actual threat of
harm...If there is additional information that has not been disclosed, I
look forward to reviewing that documentation."

Meanwhile, Brennan's statements are full of self-praise for her judicial
wisdom and kindness and dedication to justice - and awfully shy on
empathy for either the child she's locked away or that child's frantic
mother.

The local Board of Education unanimously passed a resolution asking for
review of Grace's case: "No harm should come to (Birmingham Public
Schools) students as a result of the sudden shift to online learning
caused by the COVID-19 global pandemic."

Meanwhile, the Michigan Supreme Court is "reviewing the circumstances"
of Grace's case.

Judge Brennan was ran unopposed in 2014. She is up for re-election this
year, with her term expiring on Dec 31.

https://ballotpedia.org/Mary_Ellen_Brennan

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🎳 Grifters started the anti-mask movement

Last March, there was a brief news blip when the NRA and various other
far-right organizations denounced a bunch of astroturf organizations
that claimed to be raising money for right-wing causes but were actually
just pocketing the money.

https://www.nraila.org/articles/20190318/florida-alert-look-out-alabama-here-comes-dj-partens-bait-switch

These organizations were founded by the Dorr brothers, a
multi-generational clan of paranoid, violent right-wing "activists." The
younger Dorrs have perfected the right-wing direct mail hustle invented
by the Goldwater campaign.

They send postal come-ons to frightened, vulnerable people, using a mix
of "petty insults, racist dog-whistling, and silly stunts" to scare them
into writing checks to the Dorrs' many "charities."

Their IRS filings reveal the other side of the hustle - their
"charities" are spending 90% of their donors' money on "fundraising."
The fundraisers who these dollars go to? The Dorrs. Naturally.

A year ago, the Dorrs were making big money running anti-abortion and
gun-rights hustles, but when the pandemic hit, they invented a new
grift: a network of astroturf organizations calling for states to "re-open."

That's right: the Dorrs founded the Flu Klux Klan.

As Mara Hvistendahlmara reports for The Intercept, the Dorrs run a
network of Facebook groups with hundreds of thousands of members
"fuel[ing] skepticism about health precautions and push[ing] for states
to open prematurely."

And while the Dorrs were denounced by actual right-wing activists for
pocketing money intended to further unfettered gun violence and
unlimited cruelty for women seeking abortions, they maintain close ties
to Tea Party figures like Ron Paul

https://theintercept.com/2020/07/17/dorr-brothers-coronavirus-protests/

But it's a mistake to dismiss the Dorrs as mere grifters. As far-right
tracker Devin Burghart says, "they have their finger on the pulse of
what’s happening in the conservative grassroots," and they are really
good at mobilizing frightened, angry people.

As the GOP steams towards a seemingly inevitable bloodbath at the polls
this November, mainstream party figures are looking for someone - anyone
- who can help bring energy back to the party.

As Hvistendahlmara says, the Dorrs are "the perfect people to stoke hate
in a Trump presidency during a global pandemic. And in true Trumpian
fashion, by paying themselves and promoting hate they may end up
spawning a movement."

The Dorrs' father started out as a Y2K grifter, then an antiabortion
extremist, then devoted himself to defunding public education (he called
homeschooling a "Biblical duty"), before going on to run Ron Paul's Iowa
campaign.

The Dorrs now run their own direct-mail operation, Midwest Freedom
Enterprises, which contracts with right-wing operators to send mail
solicitations; they contract with their own nonprofits, which violates
IRS conflict-of-interest rules for charities.

Their fraud careers have been punctuated at regular intervals by
denunciations from far-right fellow travelers who broke with them after
realizing that they were using rightist causes to enrich themselves.

See, for example, the Minnesota GOP's "Minnesota Scammers Exposed" website.

https://www.mnscammersexposed.com/

But this hasn't slowed the Dorrs, who use Facebook to secure mailing
addresses for direct mail operations; by keeping on the right side of
the FB rulebook in their online comms and confining their most
outrageous material to postal mail, they can remain on the platform.

“Facebook can’t censor it. Twitter can’t censor it. We’re not getting
shadow-banned. We’re not getting our posts hid because we’re talking
about American freedom." -Chris Dorr

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🎳 Strike for Black Lives

Today, July 20, is the Strike For Black Lives in which workers across
the country stage a one-day, wildcat walkout, demanding an end to
workplace racism, fair compensation, and better working conditions.

https://j20strikeforblacklives.org/

If you can't strike, you can take the 8:46 pledge:

Commit to:

 * Taking a knee for 8m 46s wherever you are on July 20 at noon, -OR-

* Holding 8m 46s of silence on July 20 at noon, -OR-

* Walking off your job for 8m 46s.

https://j20strikeforblacklives.org/846-pledge/

Here are the strike's demands:

https://j20strikeforblacklives.org/demands/

and here's a guide to strike actions near you:

https://j20strikeforblacklives.org/strike/

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🎳 No mask, no entry

"Essential, front-line workers" is 2020-speak for "low-waged,
economically precarious workers who risk their lives for us."

To all that, add "workers who are showered with abuse by right-wing
anti-mask bullies."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/07/18/covid-pandemic-store-clerk-north-carolina

In the Washington Post, this anonymous editorial from a 63 year old with
asthma who makes $10/h in a dockside convenience store in a 900-person
town in North Carolina where the sheriff refuses to enforce the state
mask rule because he "doesn't want to be the mask police."

She describes how she is subjected to physical intimidation, verbal
abuse -- and risk of death from coronavirus -- by customers, especially
weekenders from Raleigh and Charlotte who ignore the increasingly
desperate signs telling people that they can only shop with a mask on.

These bullies aren't mollified by offers to bring their orders to them
outside the store if they want to remain maskless, and certainly not by
the offer of a free mask. Instead, they do things like open the door and
scream "Fuck masks! Fuck you!" and storm off.

They tape handbills to the storefront with hoax information about the
ADA entitling people to shop without masks, call her an agent of sharia
law, or ask whether she's preparing to turn "mind control" on her.

She describes a life of fear and trauma, where every day at work is a
day of abuse and threats, where she and her co-worker sometimes have to
lock themselves in the storage room to sob because burly men have
screamed at them and threatened them.

She's resorted to keeping pepper spray behind the till in case she has
to fend off a physical assault.

The GOP politicized epidemiology. In some ways, it's baffling, like
branding ass-wiping a badge of effete liberalness and spending all day
with shit on your underwear.

On the other hand, it's standard death-cult shit, just a variation on
earlier hits like "Smoking is manly and only wimpy bleeding hearts
believe it causes cancer." One of the most vivid ways that the GOP gets
turkeys to vote for Christmas is pushing the embrace of the lethal.

Whether that's dismissing the risk of unhealthy food, or guns, or
highways without speed limits, or factories without health and safety or
pollution curbs, the death cult has a business model.

The thing that binds all these activities together is that they either
make money for a business, or save money for a business. By making the
embrace of self-destructive activities a culture war issue, the
financiers of the right line their own pockets.

Of course, the joke's on them. Runaway coronavirus won't just affect
$10/h cashiers, and climate change won't skip their beach homes.

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🎳 Dems vote to fund more DHS invasions of US cities

Hey, great news! The Democrats have finally done something about the
badgeless militarized fed cops prowling Portland, beating protesters and
shoving them into unmarked vans!

https://sirota.substack.com/p/dems-sternly-worded-letter-wont-stop

Wait, did I say good news?

Shit, no, sorry.

Here's what Dems did:

Voted to approve $80B for the DHS, who have explicitly announced that
they plan on expanding their urban invasions beyond PDX.

And while Dems had the chance to put riders on the appropriations bill
banning the DHS from using that money to violate protesters' rights and
invade American cities -- they did nothing of the sort.

Instead Congressional Dems who voted in favor of handing $80B to a
literal fascist snatch-squad have sent a sternly worded letter to the
DHS's inspector general.

The signatories on those letters are powerful Congressional committee
chairs. They can actually make stuff happen. But Reps. Carolyn Maloney,
Jerrold Nadler and Bennie Thompson voted in favor of the DHS budget,
even as they denounced DHS "fascism."

"These are chairs in a coequal branch of government who say they see an
imminent threat of fascism and could be issuing subpoenas and launching
hearings, but instead are sending sternly worded letters with no force
of law, publicly congratulating themselves." -David Sirota

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🎳 This day in history

#15yrsago New Potter was online in 24h
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?threadid=4501

#1yrago UK's mass surveillance bill is illegal
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jul/17/data-retention-and-surveillance-legislation-ruled-unlawful

#1yrago SAMBA versus SMB: Adversarial Interoperability is Judo for
Network Effects
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/07/samba-versus-smb-adversarial-interoperability-judo-network-effects

#1yrago Having burnished their reputations with extravagant promises,
the billionaires who pledged €600m. to rebuild Notre Dame are missing in
action
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jul/18/ruins-notre-dame-billionaires-french-philanthropy

#1yrago Equifax settles with FTC, CFPB, states, and consumer class
actions for $700m
https://nypost.com/2019/07/19/equifax-agrees-to-pay-700m-after-massive-data-breach/

#1yrago An Indian research university has assembled 73 million journal
articles (without permission) and is offering the archive for unfettered
scientific text-mining https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-02142-1

#1yrago Eminent psychologists condemn "emotion detection" systems as
being grounded in junk science
https://www.psychologicalscience.org/publications/emotional-expressions-reconsidered-challenges-to-inferring-emotion-from-human-facial-movements.html

#1yrago Thousands of elderly Hong Kongers march in solidarity with young
human rights activists
https://hongkongfp.com/2019/07/17/no-rioters-tyrannical-regime-thousands-hong-kong-seniors-march-support-young-extradition-law-protesters/

#1yrago After the Oliver Twist poorhouse became luxury housing with a
segregated playground, London bans segregated play-areas
https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2019/jul/19/london-officials-ban-segregated-play-areas-in-future-housing-developments

#1yrago Small town, independent and municipally owned ISPs offer
America's best connectivity
https://www.pcmag.com/news/the-fastest-isps-of-2019

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🎳 Colophon

Today's top sources: Naked Capitalism (https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/).

Currently writing:

* My next novel, "The Lost Cause," a post-GND novel about truth and
reconciliation. Thursday's progress: 529 words (37636 total).

Currently reading: Anger Is a Gift by Mark Oshiro

Latest podcast: Full Employment:
https://craphound.com/podcast/2020/07/13/full-employment-2/

Upcoming appearances:

"Working as Intended: Surveillance Capitalism is not a Rogue
Capitalism," Jul 21,
https://stanford.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_9AwAiQSmTj2ZjaIsIoTr5A

Latest book:

* "Little Brother/Homeland": A reissue omnibus edition with a new
introduction by Edward Snowden:
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250774583; personalized/signed copies
here:
https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1750/July%3A__Little_Brother_%26_Homeland.html

* "Poesy the Monster Slayer" a picture book about monsters, bedtime,
gender, and kicking ass. Order here:
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781626723627. Get a personalized, signed
copy here:
https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1562/_Poesy_the_Monster_Slayer.html.

Upcoming books:

* "Attack Surface": The third Little Brother book, Oct 20, 2020.
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250757531

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*When life gives you SARS, you make sarsaparilla* -Joey "Accordion Guy"
DeVilla

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