A Dispatch From the Federal Government Shutdown

Today was the third annual Women’s March on Washington. Unlike 2017 and 2018, I decided to skip this march this year. I began to sour on the Women’s March last month when someone from the Anti-Defamation League spoke at my church about the rise in anti-semitism under the Trump Administration. The speaker not only mentioned the shooting of the synagogue in Pittsburgh just a few months ago but also mentioned the fact that the original leadership of the Women’s March had faced accusations of anti-semitism along with one of its co-presidents being tied to Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, who has notoriously made remarks against Jews and LGBTQ people.

This, in turn, has alienated local chapters of the Women’s March. In fact, the Washington state chapter decided to disband in protest of the link with Farrakhan. The Democratic National Committee decided to drop its sponsorship of the Women’s March.

Even on the local level I haven’t heard much talk about people wanting to take the Metro to DC so they could participate in the march. There were also no sign making or art making events in my area prior to this year’s march, unlike last year when there were several such events that were held, such as the one I attended that was a workshop on screenprinting signs and t-shirts.

The week leading up to today’s march was overshadowed by the news that Donald Trump had decided to host the NCAA champion Clemson Tigers at the White House for dinner. The cooks were furloughed due to the government shutdown. Trump claims to be a billionaire and he could’ve ordered food from any of the number of locally-owned DC restaurants that are currently dealing with fewer people dining out due to the shutdown. He could’ve had French food, Italian food, seafood, steak, or something classy. But, instead, he ended up ordering fast food from McDonald’s, Wendy’s, Burger King, and Domino’s, which led to a total riot on social media. Good Morning America co-host Michael Strahan found what Trump offered to the Clemson players to be so underwhelming that he has invited the same players to come over to his place where he will provide a lobster dinner.

I started to waffle a bit on whether to go to the Women’s March for a third year in a row. I originally participated in the first two marches because I was against Donald Trump and what he stood for. Louis Farrakhan had absolutely nothing to do with my decision. (In fact, I’m definitely no fan of Farrakhan.) I had thought about going despite the controversy because I also wanted to protest the fact that the Federal Government Shutdown is still continuing and I know so many people around me who are literally hurting financially because they have been furloughed from their jobs.

I ultimately decided against it for two reasons. One was the bad weather. Last weekend it snowed for most of the weekend and there is still snow on the ground as of today. In addition it was cloudy outside and there were calls for rain. (It started to mist in the late afternoon. Right now it’s raining heavy outside while I’m typing this.) Another reason why I didn’t go was because I was tired. I spent most of this past week learning the ropes at my new day job. After spending the last few years alternating between being unemployed and underemployed (while the jobs I did get lasted no more than three hours or so per day and there were days when I didn’t work), I have to get used to working six hours per day, four to five days per week. I was tired by today so I slept in and I ended up being lazy.

It was just as well that I didn’t go. Unlike the last two marches, which began at the Mall, this march began at Freedom Plaza, which is a smaller venue. The crowds were also much smaller than in previous years.

In addition that march was overshadowed by a video that was shot at a different march in Washington, DC the day before that literally blew up on social media. The basic gist was this: The annual anti-abortion March for Life was held the day before the Women’s March. On the same day an unrelated march known as the Indigenous People’s March was also held in DC and people from the two marches ultimately faced each other on the Mall near the Lincoln Memorial. The video showed a contingent of anti-abortion protesters who were all teenagers who attend the Covington Catholic High School in Kentucky actually jeer and make racist remarks towards one of the Native American protesters while wearing the red “Make America Great Again” hats that indicated their support for Donald Trump.

On the surface it might seem strange for a group of teenage boys who marched in an anti-abortion march and claimed to be pro-life while, at the same time, they were actively denigrating a Native American man for not being white. I learned a long time ago that there is a certain contingent of pro-lifers who want to outlaw abortion not because they think life begins at conception but because they simply want more white babies to be born. I first began to realize this when right wing evangelical activist Ralph Reed was actively fighting for the U.S. to reflect the values of evangelical Christians including a ban on abortion. But then he was involved with this incident where he lobbied on behalf of this factory in the Marianas against reforms that would outlaw certain practices that this factory engaged in—including forcing its predominantly female Chinese workers to undergo abortions. Basically Ralph Reed seemed to be more concerned about white women freely choosing to abort what would’ve been white babies while not giving a damn about Chinese women being forced to have abortions against their own will because those babies would’ve been non-white.

More recently someone from the Americans United for Separation of Church and State spoke at a lay service at my Unitarian Universalist church a few months ago where she said there are pro-life groups are also white supremacists. These groups want to outlaw abortion—especially for white women—because, with a rise in the population of non-whites, the Census Bureau has predicted that white people will become a minority by 2045. If abortion is made illegal, then there’s a chance of an increase in white babies being born. It’s also the same reason why many of these same groups want to severely restrict birth control.

While I’m not saying that everyone who opposes abortion is racist, there are a number of abortion opponents who are only concerned with increasing the birth rate of white babies. With white supremacist attitudes like that, it’s no wonder that these white teens were caught on video attacking and jeering at that Native American because they don’t think he is human at all.

So far my new day job is working out. However the place that I’m working at is a federal contractor and the woman who owns the business is doing everything possible—including maxing out on credit cards—to keep afloat since it’s currently not making any money. The company is currently setting up classes on how to make documents accessible for people with disabilities for the general public in an effort to raise some money. This week I helped with setting up MailChimp in an effort to spread the word about these upcoming classes along with working on some documents from the National Park Service that the company received shortly before the shutdown.

So I’m in this position where I have work but it could soon dry up for me the longer this shutdown lasts (unless the classes are a huge success and raise a lot of money). Today Donald Trump has offered a compromise to end the shutdown that doesn’t sound like much of a compromise and the Democrats have already rejected it. And Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is still refusing any vote on the floor to reopen the government.

Meanwhile I’m seeing local businesses giving away freebies and discounts for furloughed federal government employees and contractors ranging from free food and drinks to a plastic surgeon offering discounted facial fillers.

Sometimes I’m wondering if Trump is trying to crash the U.S. economy on purpose. There are the frequent rumors that Trump has gotten money from the Russian mafia and maybe even Vladimir Putin himself. The U.S. and Russia have long been rivals ever since the end of World War II. Putin would probably be happy if the U.S. somehow became weakened and neutered so Russia would be free to pursue its own interests without those pesky Americans around to possibly interfere and ruin everything. It would make sense for Putin to give Trump so much money that Trump would be obligated to do whatever Putin asks him to do. As Wired magazine puts it:

THE PATTERN OF his pro-Putin, pro-Russia, anti-FBI, anti-intelligence community actions are so one-sided, and the lies and obfuscation surrounding every single Russian meeting and conversation are so consistent, that if this president isn’t actually hiding a massive conspiracy, it means the alternative is worse: America elected a chief executive so oblivious to geopolitics, so self-centered and personally insecure, so naturally predisposed to undermine democratic institutions and coddle authoritarians, and so terrible a manager and leader, that he cluelessly surrounded himself with crooks, grifters, and agents of foreign powers, compromising the national security of the US government and undermining 75 years of critical foreign alliances, just to satiate his own ego.

In short, we’ve reached a point in the Mueller probe where there are only two scenarios left: Either the president is compromised by the Russian government and has been working covertly to cooperate with Vladimir Putin after Russia helped win him the 2016 election—or Trump will go down in history as the world’s most famous “useful idiot,” as communists used to call those who could be co-opted to the cause without realizing it.

At least the former scenario—that the president of the United States is actively working to advance the interests of our country’s foremost, long-standing, traditional foreign adversary—would make him seem smarter and wilier. The latter scenario is simply a tragic farce for everyone involved.

If Trump is deliberately keeping the government shut in the hopes of tanking the U.S. economy and making Putin happy, then this country is in more trouble than before. I’m dreading what could happen the longer people are forced to go without their paychecks. Right now there are some federal employees, such as TSA and Secret Service agents, who are currently working without pay. There are calls for all federal employees to go on a total strike until the government is reopened. I don’t know if this will happen or not but I fear that something drastic is going to happen soon the longer the government remains shut down.

In the meantime I have to keep on doing what I’ve been doing and get myself back on my feet. In fact, this Monday I have to go to work on Martin Luther King Day. I’m okay with working on the holiday since I’ve been out of work for so long. So I won’t be able to do any service projects on the holiday (like I did in 2015 when I did some work at a local park) but that’s no big deal since my current job deals with making various government documents accessible to people with disabilities so, in a way, it’s like doing a service project every single day. The only thing I’ll miss is taking advantage of the annual MLK free admission day at the American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore (like I did in 2017 and 2018). But if this job really works out for me, then maybe I’ll be able to go to the museum at any other time and I’ll be able to afford to pay the $15 admission fee.

But right now I have to hope that this government shutdown somehow ends soon and this new day job works out for me in the long-run or else I’ll be back to square one regarding my ability to financially support myself.

UPDATE (January 20, 2019): The day after that video of the Covington Catholic High School boys jeering and confronting that Native American man went viral, the mother of one of the boys publicly blamed “black Muslims” for her son and his fellow students harassing that Native American man (who’s a Vietnam War veteran) and seemed to have absolved her boy of all responsibility for that incident on his part.

It’s like I wrote earlier, while not all people who are against legalized abortion are also white supremacists, most white supremacists are against abortion simply because they want to see more white babies born. It’s obvious that the teens who harassed that Native American man are in the white supremacist category and are only concerned about banning abortion because they want to see more white babies being born so they can outnumber the non-whites whom they show contempt for.

Meanwhile, I highly recommend that you read this essay written by a Native American titled The Smile is What Stays With You.

Greenbelt Labor Day Parade and the Greenbelt Labor Day Festival, September 7, 2015

Last year I participated in the annual Greenbelt Labor Day Parade for the first time and I still remembered that it was a very hot and humid day. I did it on behalf of the Greenbelt Cooperative Initiative, which is trying to start a few worker-owned cooperatives. (At the time I was tasked with potentially starting a thrift store. When I had problems with finding affordable space, the group suggested that I try running a flea market instead. I not only found difficulty with finding an open space that people can easily access by car or bike or walking, but I would’ve had to deal with two layers of bureaucracy–mainly filling out tons of paperwork on both the local and county levels. I was working on my own to begin with and starting a weekly flea market was way too daunting a task to do alone. Plus I’m dealing with other issues in my life so I decided to resign.)

So this year I didn’t have any parade-related responsibilities. There were a few groups who invited me to march with them but I ended up declining because the memories of the high heat and high humidity were still too fresh in my mind. So this year I brought a folding chair to the parade route and set it up in a shaded area. It wasn’t too bad in the shade at first but, by the end of the parade, the heat had shot up (it ultimately climbed to the high 80’s) so I was very happy that I didn’t participate this year.

The parade consisted of different types of participants. There’s, Solange Hess, who was named as this year’s Greenbelt’s Outstanding Citizen.

There are the police, firefighters, and military units (including ROTC). Some of them march carrying flags, some march playing musical instruments (like bagpipes), and some ride in the latest vehicles.

Then there were the beauty pageant winners. Not only were there people from the Miss Greenbelt pageant but there were also others from another pageant that took place in nearby College Park.

Then there are the various local businesses and community groups, such as the Greenbelt Elementary School PTA.

Greenbelt chapter of the Toastmasters.

Greenbelt Animal Control.

Local Girl Scouts troop.

Local Cub Scouts troop.

Greenbelt Boys and Girls Club.

The Eleanor Roosevelt Democratic Club.

The Greenbelt Interfaith Leaders Association.

The Mishkan Torah congregation.

Radio Communications.

The New Deal Cafe, which is currently celebrating its 20th anniversary.

The Greenbelt Theater and the Greenbelt Museum marched together.

The Greenbelt Food Bank.

The Greenbelt Arts Center

Wells Ice Rink, located in nearby College Park.

Members of the Greenbelt Climate Action Network (GCAN) and the Chesapeake Education, Arts, and Research Society (CHEARS) dressed up as butterflies and bees in order to raise awareness on the importance of pollinators. Other participants held signs announcing the various programs that GCAN and CHEARS run on a regular basis, such as the Greenbelt Time Bank, the Reel and Meal movie series, and various recycling programs.

There were even a fleet of electric cars in the parade, who were there to demonstrate green transportation.

There was a robot demonstration by members of the Eleanor Roosevelt High School Robotics Club.

Makerspace 125 had a float shaped like a steam engine in order to show its commitment to the STEAM movement.

St. George’s Episcopal Church of Glenn Dale, Maryland marched in the parade.

There was an anti-abortion group.

The local anti-poverty activist group RESULTS participated.

The Communication Workers of America made a statement about its ongoing negotiations with Verizon.

The National Park Service participated.

Even the local Sunoco gas station participated.

The local realtors, Town Center Realty & Associates, Inc.

Then there were the various performers who were intent on putting on a good show all along the parade route.

Since next year is an election year, the candidates running for public office were out in full force. There was Donna Edwards, who is running for Senator.

There was Chris Van Hollen, who is also running for Senator.

There was Paul Pinsky’s re-election campaign as Maryland State Senator.

There’s Brian Frosh, who’s running for Maryland State Attorney General.

There’s U.S. Congressman Steny Hoyer, who’s running for re-election.

There’s Congressman Hoyer’s rival, Kristin Beck, who hopes to unseat him in the Democratic Primaries next year.

There’s Maryland House Delegate Anne Healey, who’s running for re-election.

There’s Maryland House Delegate Alonzo T. Washington, who’s also running for re-election.

There’s Sydney J. Harrison, who’s running for re-election to the Prince George’s County’s Clerk of the Circuit Court.

There’s Angela Alsobrooks, who’s running for re-election as State’s Attorney for Prince George’s County.

There’s Todd M. Turner, who’s running for re-election to the Prince George’s County Council.

This trio of cars signified the end of the Greenbelt Labor Day Parade.

Once the parade ended at noon, the last day of the Greenbelt Labor Day Festival started. I hung around the festival grounds after the parade ended because I needed to pick up my watercolor that I submitted to the Art Show but I had to wait until that show formally ended at 4 p.m. So I basically ate lunch, did some web surfing with the laptop that I brought with me, and uploaded a bunch of photos on my various social media account. A craft show was held on that final day so I browsed that as well while I took these photos.

Greetings From Williamstown, Massachusetts

I’m typing this on my final night in the Berkshires. I haven’t gotten a chance to write this sooner because my time was really filled up.

Yesterday we met my sister-in-law and three long-time friends of my late mother-in-law at a local tavern for breakfast. Then we split up as we all went to different places. My husband and I opted to go to the Susan B. Anthony Birthplace Museum where we got to see the tiny home where the famous sufragette was born and spent the first five years of her life before her family moved to Upstate New York. It was an interesting tour of the tiny home full of memorabilia until I came to the end of the exhibit, which claimed that Susan B. Anthony and other early feminists were anti-abortion. I had never heard of that before. I did a brief Google search of that place and found the following links that refuted the claim of that museum:

http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/reader-diaries/2010/03/12/susananthony-birthplace-museum-exposedfront-group-national-antichoice-organizations

http://susanbanthonymuseum.com/

http://susanbanthonymuseum.com/userPage_20_An%20Open%20Letter%20to%20Kelly%20Vincent-Brunacini.htm

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=106×33905

I first learned about that museum from a tourist brochure that I picked up and it never mentioned abortion. I’ll admit that it was jarring to see some books published by a group called "Feminists for Life" on sale in the gift shop. It was also jarring to see the claims that Susan B. Anthony was anti-abortion. Fortunately the controversial stuff was placed on only one wall so people who are offended by this can simply pass by it. There was plenty of vintage sufragette signs and pamphlets on display as well as signs and displays that came from a group of wealthy women opposed to women getting the vote. (The tour guide explained that wealthy people didn’t want woment to have that vote because more poor women would be enfranchised and could possibly threaten the dominance of those with wealth and power.)

The museum was pretty small and we spent only an hour there. We went on to downtown Williamstown where we stopped at this interesting store called Where Did You Get That?!? that was mostly sold toys, games, and novelties.

Williamstown has a small yet very cute looking downtown area but we had to cut our visit short because my sister-in-law had organized this whole pre-dinner wine and cheese outdoor picnic near her hotel room. (She actually purchased perishable food at a local Wegman’s near her home in Pennsylvania and carted it all the way to Massachusetts.) Except that when we arrived at the hotel, she wasn’t there. We got this message she left at the front desk saying that she’s running late. My husband had this idea of checking out the hotel’s pub and I went along with it. We began drinking Woodchuck Cider and we started to relax. Time began to pass and we drank more and more. In the meantime the sun began to set and we thought that my sister-in-law would probably nix the idea of having the outdoor pre-dinner wine and cheese outdoor picnic since it’s fall after all.

Well after drinking in the pub for a while, my husband decided to try looking for her again while I stayed behind at the pub drinking some more. He eventually fetched me and led me outside. Even though the sun was setting and it was getting increasingly cold outside, my sister-in-law was determined to have her pre-dinner wine and cheese outdoor picnic using the cheeses and other perishable food that she purchased at a local Wegman’s near her home and she actually hauled it from Pennsylvania to Massachusetts. I was totally plowed at that point so I didn’t really feel the cold air. I drank more wine and ate some cheese, veggies, and other snacks.

It eventually got so dark that one of the friends had suggested carting the wine and snacks to one of the hotel rooms so we did so. We drank and ate while my husband, sister-in-law, and my mother-in-law’s old friends began to reminice about the good old days. I kept silent and continued to eat and get further drunk because, to be honest, I wasn’t there back in the 1960’s and 1970’s and I never hung around them as a child simply because they were all living in New York and I grew up outside of Baltimore. I didn’t met my future husband until he was just a couple of weeks away from turning 24. (I was 20 at the time.) I eventually began to lay on one of the beds and started to go to sleep.

My husband shook me awake because my sister-in-law felt that we should go out to dinner despite the fact that she had carted lots of snacks for this pre-dinner picnic and I was pretty much drunk and I wasn’t hungry at all. Fortunately one of the friends said she felt too tired to go out to dinner and she offered me a ride back to the hotel. So I rested there while my husband went out to dinner. (He later told me that it was a good thing I didn’t go because they ended up at a restaurant that had inredibly slow service.)

Today was the actual memorial service for my late mother-in-law. My husband and I ate dinner at out motel and rested a bit. We met up with my sister-in-law and one of my mother-in-law’s old friends and we went out to lunch at the Sushi Thai Garden Restaurant. Afterwards, there was a little bit of time to kill before the scheduled 3 p.m. memorial service so my husband and I walked over to the nearby Williams College Museum of Art. Our tour guide at the Susan B. Anthony Birthplace Museum the day before had recommended this special exhibition on the original printed copies of such important documents as the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution that were originally printed soon after they were written and signed. I’ve seen the original at the National Archives in Washington, DC but that building is so heavily fortified that it can be intimidating at times. In contrast, we saw copies of the same documents that were printed in the 1700’s in a more intimate setting. We also saw printed copies of the Emancipation Proclamation and other historical documents.

It was a short exhibit so we also checked out a few other exhibits. However we had to cut our visit to the museum short because of the memorial service. The service was well done. Even though it was originally organized for the East Coast friends and family who couldn’t fly out to Phoenix for the funeral back in March, a total of 12 people (including myself) attended. I guess that what happens when a funeral is held in a part of the country my mother-in-law had never lived in. (She basically spent her adult life living in just three states–Ohio, New York, and Arizona. She may have visited Massachusetts on various trips but she had never lived there.)

After the service ended, we went out to dinner at a local restaurant where we reminisced about my mother-in-law. We all had a good time eating fine food and drinking fine wine.

I’ll admit that I wasn’t thrilled with the idea of going to Western Massachusetts, especially since I learned that we would be far away from one of my favorite cities in the United States–Boston. But we did arrive in time for the start of the fall foliage season and I took photos of some leaves turning excellent shades of red, yellow, and orange.

Tonight is my last full night in the Berkshires. Tomorrow is the start of the return trip back to Washington, DC.