Columnists

When we were little, our parents probably said to us, "Eat your vegetables!" We probably didn't want to eat the vegetables on our plates at dinner, because perhaps they didn't appeal to our young taste buds. Or, we may have been affected by the way our parents said that--as though it was a chore that we had to do, something we wouldn't want to do but had to do. When we were little, mom or dad may have said, "clean up your room!" And we didn't want to do that. But we had to, or we were in for the ire of our parents. Thus, we were taught at a young age that doing things we don't want to do is part of life. -more-

Americans are not lacking for things to worry about: mass shootings, extreme weather, insurrectionists, and, of course, inflation. On June 10th, the Bureau of Labor Statistics announced (https://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.nr0.htm ) that the consumer price index had increased 8.6 percent in twelve months, the largest yearly increase since December 1981. Americans are very upset by the rising costs. The Washington Post (https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/07/pessimism-about-economy-is-about-both-partisanship-prices/) noted: "Polling from YouGov conducted for The Economist found last month that 58 percent of Americans think the economy is getting worse."

There is some positive economic news: unemployment is low (3.6 percent) and real hourly wages have increased (5.2 percent). The economy is growing (3.5 percent annually) -- although it dipped slightly in the first quarter of 2022. Nonetheless, concerns about inflation dominate the mainstream media. -more-

Our Modern Watergate

On June 17, the 50^th anniversary of the Watergate scandal that drove Richard Nixon from power, our country found itself facing a new and potentially graver threat—from an imperial grifter, scam-artist, buffoonish bully, serial liar, consummate crook, infantile autocrat, and flat-out sociopath named Donald Trump.

Thinking back to 1972, I remembered how important the single word "Watergate" became in the months following the arrest of the White House burglars for their bungled attempt to break into the Democrat National Committee HQ in the Watergate complex.

Speaking of "complex": It was a challenge just to remember all the secretive players, daunting to assess all the mind-boggling revelations, a chore to keep all the numbers in mind as investigators struggled to "follow the money." -more-

Heather Cox Richardson in her Letters from an American June 19, 2022 edition gives a full description of Juneteenth including General Order No. 3 in full. https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/june-19-2022?utm_source=email

When I think back on all the things I never learned in school or even college and how much I’ve learned through the political book club Barbara Ruffner and I formed over coffee at the “sanity café” in 2014, I wish I had that set of encyclopedias my father bought for my sister and me. I’d like to go back and look through them with fresh eyes for how much of our history was left out to paint a different kind of picture of this country.

Jeffery Robinson, former ACLU Deputy Legal Director, in the documentary, “This Is Who We Are” describes the same kind of revelation in the opening of the film. He describes himself as having had one of the best educations in America, and that even as a Black man there is so much he didn’t learn, until suddenly he became the parent of his 13 year old nephew, struggling what to tell his Black son about racism in America.

The City of Berkeley offices were closed on Monday in observation of the Juneteenth holiday, though the celebrations really did start on Sunday. AB 1655, to officially recognize Juneteenth as a State of California, holiday is still pending.

When I was writing the description of Juneteenth for the Activist’s Calendar, I found on June 17, 2021, the same day President Biden signed into law Juneteenth as a national holiday, Governor Carney of Delaware signed House Bill 198, mandating teaching Black history, the significance of enslavement, the contributions of Black people to American life, the impact of racial trauma and the responsibilities of all citizens to combat racism.

Some weeks later, on August 6, 2021, Governor Newsom signed the requirement for California high schoolers to complete a semester course of Ethnic Studies, beginning with the 2025-2026 academic year, to earn a high school diploma. That puts Delaware ahead with a 2022-2023 implementation and tighter definition of content.

It isn’t just the South where parents are showing up at school boards declaring critical race theory must be banned and books removed from school libraries. California is not immune to White Supremacy and white parents pushing back on what can be taught about racism. In one of the articles I found it mentions Ramona Unified in San Diego County adopting a course that promotes patriotism while tightly restricting what can be taught about racism. We have a long way to go. -more-