The Lede
GOP legislators continue to push book bans
The latest chapter in right-wing culture involves a new wave of book bannings. While many of these prohibitions have been concentrated in the South, a recent bill in Iowa supported by Gov. Kim Reynolds (R) could see the removal of books from public school libraries across the Hawkeye State’s 327 school districts.
Books included in the ban would include Tony Morrison’s literary classic “The Bluest Eye,” prominent YA novels like “Me, Earl, and the Dying Girl” and “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian” and books with LGBTQ themes and characters.
The bill would also demand all students to take a citizenship test before finishing primary education and slash a requirement that middle and high schoolers receive education related to the human papillomavirus (HPV).
Reynold’s bill is being supported by conservative activists like “Moms for Liberty” and other advocacy groups — a part of a broader ecosystem of reactionary non-profits, NGOs and parent organizations fueled by recent backlash to rising consciousness surrounding LGBTQ, feminist, and racial politics.
Public education support staff in Los Angeles launch strike
On Tuesday, SEIU Local 99 and the 30,000 workers who provide support to Los Angeles public schools announced a three-day strike after negotiations with Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) and LAUSD Superintendent Alberto Carvalho fell through. Local 99 has received encouragement from United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA) — which initiated a similar strike for six days in 2019. A 2022 survey by UTLA found that 70% of teachers are “seriously considering leaving the profession altogether” and more than a quarter were working a second job.
The union has also claimed in a statement that LAUSD has “subjected [SEIU] workers to surveillance, intimidation and harassment” throughout the initial bargaining process.
Local 99, which represents bus drivers, special education aids, custodians and cafeteria staff is demanding a 30 percent raise. The mean salary for an SEIU worker in Los Angeles public schools is around $25,000. Such wages, which range from around $16.91 to $23.85 an hour, fall below the necessary income for a family of three living in Los Angeles county.
Policy Corner
Immigration activists speaking out against Biden administration’s potential family detention policy
A coalition of almost 400 human rights groups is pushing back against speculation that the Biden administration may renew the family detention policy that was initially ended when President Joe Biden took office. This announcement comes as the controversial, Trump-evoked Title 42 policy — which allowed Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Border Patrol agents to turn migrants away on the grounds that they could be spreading the COVID-19 virus — comes to an end on May 11.
In a statement, Vicki B. Gaubeca, associate director of U.S. Immigration and Border Policy at Human Rights Watch, explained that “such detention policies would continue to subject children to serious, deliberate harm, in violation of their basic rights.”
Even for healthy, young men, detention centers can prove deadly.
Since the start of the new year, “Illegal” border crossings have fallen precipitously. Meanwhile, a record 2.3 million migrant detentions occurred in 2022. Of such cases, many were young people under the age of 18. From 2017 to 2021, more than 650,000 children were detained by ICE. A third of those were held for longer than 72 hours, which violates the threshold set by federal courts.
Silky Shah, the executive director of Detention Watch Network and a member of the coalition, called the potential renewal “a blow” to their efforts to permanently end family detention.
“Nobody wants this,” Shah told “Democracy Now!” host Amy Goodman. “In fact, so many people even in the administration don’t want this, within ICE. Nobody wants to do family detention, and a lot of it is just them playing politics and saying, ‘We’re going to do this,’ because they’re worried about people seeking asylum.”
“They don’t want to offer support to people seeking asylum. And this is their way of saying, ‘Okay, we’re just going to treat families horribly and tell people not to come.’”
New California bill would strengthen eviction protections
A bill making its way through the California legislature could provide much-needed relief to tenants in the most expensive rental market in the country. State Sen. Maria Elena Durazo (D), who represents Central and East Los Angeles in the California legislature, announced Senate Bill 567 earlier this month, but the bill is now officially being put into consideration.
While the California Tenant Protection Act of 2019 was certainly a step forward, housing activists have articulated that the law still has loopholes that landlords can manipulate — such as justifying an eviction in the name of renovations. Furthermore, while that piece of legislation did limit rent increases to 10% of the previous leases’ amount, that’s still proven unaffordable for many low-income families and workers.
Even just a $100 increase in the median rent of an area creates a 9% uptick in homelessness, according to a 2020 U.S. Government Accountability Office study.
SB 567, or the Homelessness Prevention Act, would remedy this problem by closing so-called “renoviction” loopholes, broadening the types of units which receive protections, lowering the rent increase cap to 5% and creating new means for tenants to defend themselves from abusive landlords.
In 2022, California led the nation in unhoused individuals with 161,548, and the state trailed only New York in terms of homelessness rate with 40.6 per 100,000.
Person of Interest: George W. Bush
This Monday marked the 20th anniversary of the disastrous, murderous invasion of Iraq. Lost in many of the heartless retrospectives and bold attempts at retroactive continuity was any meaningful critique of the face of the invasion. When George W. Bush stood aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln on May 1, 2003, he claimed that the US had “prevailed” in Iraq.
One million dead Iraqis, millions more displaced, and trillions of dollars later, Bush’s hubris would be comical if it wasn’t so blood-soaked.
Bush and his cabinet openly lied about the threat Saddam Hussein posed to the West. He had neither connections to al-Qaeda nor a single weapon of mass destruction to share with the supposed terror network he was backing.
But this seems to have been sent down the memory hole in the American consciousness, most notably since the rise of Donald Trump. During Trump’s presidency, Bush received a more than friendly reevaluation: He appeared on “The Ellen Degeneres Show,” took cute pictures with Michelle Obama and was defended by liberal comedian Bill Maher.
This reimagining of Bush is astonishing. Under this leadership, the United States created an international torture ring, conducted mass surveillance on American citizens, inaugurated a new era of deadly drone warfare and destroyed an entire subcontinent with two reckless wars of aggression that resulted in the deaths of many innocent lives — not to mention maimed and traumatized countless more.
Bush’s brutish politics were so inhumane that he once had to forgo a trip to Switzerland because a criminal investigation could have potentially been opened against him.
It is frankly embarrassing that Mr. Bush has faced no consequences, especially when one considers the unfathomable amount of human suffering he caused and the political fallout we continue to live with, all because of his choices.
The most crucial co-author of one of America’s darkest chapters should feel nothing but shame as this anniversary passes. And we would be wise — to borrow a phrase — to never forget.