Read. Think. Act.

Catherine Read

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Gay Rights Movement with Dale Brumfield

(January 23, 2019) Catherine Read sits down with Cultural Archeologist Dale Brumfield, to talk about the history of the Gay Rights Movement. Looking back to the administration of Dwight D. Eisenhower, Brunfield outlines the struggle faced by so many LGBTQ individuals, and the ongoing fight for equality.

This year will mark the 10th year in a row that the Virginia General Assembly will introduce bills to protect LGBTQ people from housing and employment discrimination. These bills do not ask for special treatment for LGBTQ individuals, only equal protection under the law. In years past, these bills have made their way out of the Senate, but failed to gain passage through the House of Delegates. This year, there are two bills regarding employment non-discrimination (SB 998 and HB 2067), and four bills about fair housing non-discrimination (SB 1109, SB 1232, HB 2677 and HB 1823) that are being introduced.  These bills are working their way through committee and will hopefully make it to the floor for a full floor vote in both chambers.

Looking back to 1953 when President Dwight D. Eisenhower issued Executive Order 10450, our history shows that it was commonplace to be able to fire someone for being gay.  There was systemic discrimination throughout the federal workforce, and society in general, against homosexuals.   Gay people were labeled as sexual deviants, and thus regularly shunned. FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover was notorious for investigating those suspected of being gay, and formulating memos on people that dated back to the 1920’s. This was also during the time of McCarthyism, when many Americans were wrongly accused of being communists, and the two issues were often conflated. Many people who were even suspected of being gay were singled out and fired from government jobs, or shamed to the point of committing suicide.

There was one government astronomer name Frank Kameny who, instead of giving up when he was fired, decided to fight the injustice. He joined forces with Jack Nichols to form the Mattachine Society in Washington, D.C. In addition to acting as a support group for gay people, the Mattachine Society worked to raise awareness and fight for civil rights. Kameny was no stranger to Washington, as his father was an FBI agent, so he changed his name to Warren Adkins to avoid putting his father’s career in danger.

The gay rights movement began to churn forward, and chapters of the Mattachine Society began popping up in other large American cities, such as New York and Los Angeles. Mike Wallace of CBS News hosted the first mainstream documentary about the movement in 1967 entitled “The Homosexuals”, and Walter Adkins was interviewed for the show.

Dale Brumfield WLAt the same time, gay publications were beginning to flourish. The first gay magazine was called One: The Homosexual Magazine, which mostly existed as an underground publication. Interestingly enough, it was rolled off the presses at the same time as the first Playboy magazine. Ironically, ONE was considered to be obscene, and the US Postal Service refused to allow the magazine to be sent through the mail, even though it contained no pictures or imagery. The irony was that Playboy could be sent through the mail, even though it contained nude photos. The publishers of One took the case to the Supreme Court and won, and the magazine survived and thrived for another 25 years.

The first widely circulated newspaper to serve the gay community was the Gay Blade (now called the Washington Blade), first published in Washington DC in 1969. The newspaper brought the gay community together, and chronicled LGBTQ news locally, nationally and internationally. In 1968, the Stonewall Riots in NYC were considered the first big act of the gay rights movement that gained national attention. These events were a jumping point for activists who were looking to gain civil right protections.

To this day, the LGBTQ community are still looking for equal protections under the law. Even after marriage equality was passed in the Supreme Court in 2015 with the Obergefell vs. Hodges case, and the federal workforce is protected with nondiscrimination, states like Virginia still lag behind in offering protections for LGBTQ individuals in regards to housing and employment.

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OneVirginia2021 with Brian Cannon – Inside Scoop

(Nov. 20, 2017) Catherine Read talks with Brian Cannon, Executive Director of OneVirginia2021, a non-profit that came together four years ago to address the issue of political gerrymandering in the Commonwealth of Virginia. While “gerrymandering” is named after Massachusetts Governor Elbridge Gerry, the first documented evidence of redrawing lines for political gain was actually done in Virginia. Patrick Henry pushed to redraw lines in the 5th Congressional District that would pit James Madison against James Monroe. This historical fact and many other aspects of political gerrymandering are detailed in the documentary “GerryRIGGED.”

Brian Cannon details the many aspects of gerrymandering and how it has subverted the very idea of representative government. It’s mandated by law that voting districts be redrawn every 10 years based on U.S. Census data. This is to ensure that districts have similar numbers of voters within each one. Those include Congressional Districts, Senate Districts and House Districts. (It also applies at the county and city level as well.) The idea is that each district represents a roughly equal number of voters. The Virginia Constitution also stipulates that these districts must be “compact and contiguous.” The interpretation of “contiguous” might mean a single road, or a connection across water. And “compact” is not specifically defined at all. Over the centuries, and in the last several decades, legislators have taken a creative license – in both parties – to draw lines that protect incumbency.

Both Republicans and Democrats have engaged in incumbency protection. Efforts to promote “non-partisan redistricting” in modern times goes back to a bill introduced by Delegate Ken Plum, the most senior member of the House of Delegates, in 1982 when Democrats controlled the House. Regardless of which party controlled the two chambers of the General Assembly, there has been a resistance to fair redistricting based on the idea of “compactness.”

OneVirginia2021 is challenging this failure to meet the compactness test with a federal lawsuit that involves 11 Virginia Districts: 6 Senate districts and 5 House districts. The short term goal is to seek legal relief for these specific districts – and ultimately those districts that border them – for a possible total of 31 affected districts. The long term goal is to work toward the establishment of a non-partisan commission to redraw these lines every 10 years and NOT legislators. Asking the people directly affected by the outcome of redistricting to set aside their personal considerations in drawing these maps is like asking foxes to guard the hen house.

Other states are already pursuing non-partisan redistricting: California, Ohio & Arizona among them. It’s not a perfect science, but it’s goal worth pursuing. Political gerrymandering is corrupting the concept of a representative democracy. The Wisconsin case of Gill v. Whitford before the United State Supreme Court will be an important Constitutional test of the legitimacy of partisan “cracking” and “packing.”

SCOTUS ProtestIn 2016, the U.S. Supreme Court decided a case that redrew the third and fourth Congressional Districts to “unpack” the African-American voters in the 3rd CD and put some of them in the 4th CD. That resulted in the election of A. Donald McEachin, an African-American Democrat, to Congress in 2016. Although the voters in Virginia were split nearly evenly in their votes in 2012 for Democrats and Republicans, the resulting Virginia Congressional Delegation was 8 Republicans and only 3 Democrats. THAT is gerrymandering. Representatives are selecting their voters – not voters selecting their representatives.

Brian also points out that Virginia has 224 split precincts. There are two precincts in Newport News that are split 3 ways. This has led to a critical issue in the 2017 election in 28th House District where approximately 88 voters may were given the wrong ballots. The mix-up involves voters on two streets in Fredericksburg and may end up in court or with a special election to determine who will win the seat.. The political control of the House of Delegates may well hang in the balance. This particular crisis serves to highlight why we need to have a better system of redistricting PRIOR to the lines being redrawn in 2021.

OneVirginia2021 is using the power of grassroots organizing as part of their effort to activate Virginia voters. They had more than 600 volunteers at the polls across Virginia for the June 2017 primaries asking voters to sign a petition demanding non-partisan redistricting by 2021. Those volunteers were at the polls again on Nov. 7, 2017, for the record voter turnout in the statewide elections asking voters to make their voices heard.

For more information about the work of OneVirginia2021, visit them at www.OneVirginia2021.org, follow them on Twitter at @1VA2021 or connect on Facebook.

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Virginians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty – Inside Scoop

(Dec. 26, 2016) Catherine Read is joined by three members of the Board of Directors of Virginians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty: Paul O’Shea, attorney Kristina Leslie, and Nicholas Cote. The impending execution of death row inmate Ricky Gray on January 18, 2017, has brought the issue of capital punishment back into the headlines in Virginia.

VADP is a non-profit that has been working to abolish the death penalty in Virginia since 1991. With over 140 death row exonerations in recent years, there is no doubt that innocent people have been both wrongly convicted and wrongly executed by state governments.

Some states have abolished use of the death penalty legislatively and others have found ways to avoid executions through commuting death sentences to life without parole. In December 2016, the Delaware Supreme Court ruled that everyone currently on death row in that state will be re-sentenced to life without parole. That ruling stems from their August decision which found the death penalty law is unconstitutional.

Recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions have weighed in on the issue of capital punishment as it is applied to juveniles and those who are intellectually disabled. There is still great disparity in how each of the 50 states has structured laws around who may be put to death and how.

Most recently, there has been controversy over the method of execution that uses injectable drugs. There have been issues with the performance of these drugs that have prolonged the actual termination of life and that is being challenged as a cruel and unusual punishment.

Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe could commute the sentence of Ricky Gray prior to his execution date on January 18, but there has been no indication that he is considering such a move. Virginia in third in the nation for the number of people executed since 1976. The Death Penalty Information Center has charted those number in the U.S. here.

You can find more information on the work of Virginians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty at http://vadp.org

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Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg

Notorious RBGYou can’t spell truth without Ruth.

Just phenomenal! I love the format of the book with its photos, flowcharts, margin notes, and chapter titles inspired by the lyrics of the Notorious B.I.G.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg’s life mirrors the cultural journey our country has taken when it comes to the issue of women’s rights and equality in this country. She has lived it. And her lived experience informs many of her searing dissents on issues we are still battling today such as reproductive choice and equal pay.

As an attorney, RBG won 5 out of the 6 women’s rights cases she argued before the Supreme Court and she works to this day to protect the gains made for women over the last 40 years. To understand her life is to glimpse where her passion comes from and why she remains committed to the fight for equality for women – as well as men. Her husband Marty Ginsberg was her “life partner” and they enjoyed 56 years of marriage before he passed away in 2010. He was committed to her career success while being a successful attorney in his own right. Despite her own battles with cancer and Marty’s death, she did not slow down or step down.

RBG is determined to use what she has to improve this world while she is still in it. In that regard, she is inspirational . . . quite literally. I highly recommend this book to everyone. It’s a “must read.”