St. Louis Activist Events for Oct. 4 - 10

Reminder, there's a crucial election on November 2nd: here's how you can get involved.

This week's events:

Monday, October 4,, Sigma Nu at Washington University is hosting Pancakes for Parkinson's at the Edison Courtyard outside the Danforth University Center from 11 AM to 2 PM.

Also Monday, there will be a discussion of energy politics in the U.S. and Bolivia by Professor Bret Gustufson at Bowles Plaza from 1 to 2 PM.

Also Monday, NY Times Columnist Nicholas Kristof will be speaking at the Graham Chapel of Washington University about human rights from 4 to 5 PM.

Also Monday, Robyn Ochs, editor of Getting Bi: Voices of Bisexuals Around the World, will be at Washington University for a couple different discussions in Rebstock 215: at 4 PM there's Beyond Binaries: Identity and the Sexuality Spectrum and at 8 PM there's Bisexuality Myths and Realities.

Also Monday, the second meeting of the LGBTQIA Informational Network will be from 6:30 to 8 PM at the Wine Press (4436 Olive).

Also Monday, the Be You! The Real Girl Tour with Rachel Simmons will be at the mary Institute and St. Louis County Day School (101 N. Warson Rd) at 7 PM.

Also Monday, at 7 PM the Instead of War Coalition meets at the World Community Center (438 North Skinker) at 7 PM.

Also Monday, at Tips for Ta=Tas, the Drag Kings will be raising money for the Susan G Koman for the Cure at 8 PM at Novak's Bar and Grill.

Tuesday, October 5, the acclaimed movie War Dance will be shown at the Goldfarb Hall Student Commons at the George Warren Brown School of Social Work from 6 to 9 PM

Also Tuesday, the SLU Great Issues Committee hosts Eboo Patel, the founder and Executive Director of the Interfaith Youth Core, at the Wool Ballroom from 7 to 9 PM.

Also Tuesday, the Ethical Society (9001 Clayton Rd) hosts a Responsible Public Debate about tax cuts for the upper class at 7 PM.

Also Tuesday, also at the Ethical Society, there will be a Candidate Forum on Energy, Jobs and the Environment from 7 to 9 PM.

Also Tuesday, Fareed Zakaria, editor of Newsweek International and host of CNN's Fareed Zakaria GPS, will be speaking at the Powell Symphony Hall at 8 PM as part of the Maryville University St. Louis Speaker Series.

Wednesday, Oct. 6, the Inter-Faith Committee on Latin America is hosting Dignity Not Detention! protest outside the St. Louis Office for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) (1222 Spruce Street) from 4 to 6 PM.

Also Wednesday, the St. Louis Gender Youth Group will be meeting at 7 PM at the Spot Youth Center (4169 Laclede).

Also Wednesday, this month's Black and Green Forum at Legacy Books and Cafe (5429 Delmar) will focus on the topic of the St. Louis School Board at 7 PM.

Also Wednesday, there's a Lieber for Congress Town Hall Meeting at the Daniel Boone Library (300 Clarkson Rd) from 7 to 8:30 PM.

Also Wednesday, reporter Jim Merkel opines on the South Side of St. Louis at Left Bank Books 399 N. Euclid at 7 PM.

Also Wednesday, the Missouri History Museum shows Reel Injun: On the Trail of the Hollywood Indian at 7 PM followed by a panel discussion.

Thursday, October 7, SLU Women's Studies is taking over Cafe Ventura from 5 to 7 PM.

Also Thursday, Harriett's List is hosting 2010: Stepping Up to Power at the Regional Arts Commission (6128 Delmar) from 5 to 7 PM.

Also Thursday, the Human Rights Campaign of St. Louis is having a social from 6 to 8 PM at the Premium Lounge (4199 Manchester).

Also Thursday, SIUE Women's Studies is hosting Sexual Evolution to Erotica at Peck Hall 0304 from 6:30 to 11 PM.

Also Thursday, author Mark Bittman presents the Food Matters Cookbook, which offers ways to "reduce your carbon footprint and your waistline," at 7 PM at the St. Louis County Library (1640 S. Lindbergh).

Also Thursday, this month's City Affair will focus on the LBGTQ Community in St. Louis from 7:30 to 9 PM at Van Goghz Martini Bar and Bistro (3200 Shenandoah). Panelists include Shane Cohn, Robyn Mantague, Muriel Lynn Jones, Chris Andoe, Eric Kham, and Pamel Merrit (aka Shark Fu).

Also Thursday, Ali Abunimah, a Palestian American journalist and author of One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, will be speaking at the SLU Kelly Auditorium behind the Busch Student Center at 7 PM.

Also Thursday, former U.S. Ambassador Joe Wilson (husband of Valerie Plame) will be speaking at Principia College in the Cox Auditorium at 8 PM.

Also Thursday, there's a "It Gets Better Candlelight Vigil" from 8 to 9 PM at Trinity Lutheran Church at the corner of Washington and Euclid. At 8:30, a procession begins down Euclid.

Friday, Oct. 8, Missouri Votes Conservation is having their 4th Annual Cocktail Party at the Soulard Preservation Hall (1921 S. 9th Street) from 5:30 to 7:30 PM.

Saturday, Oct. 9, the Big Read festival for book lovers will be on Central Avenue in Downtown Clayton from 9 AM to 4 PM.

Also, Saturday is the 6th Annual Educating for Change Curriculum Fair from 9:30 AM to 1 PM at Roosevelt Hight School(3230 Hartford). More information, including the key note speech by Mia Henry and Asucena Lopez of the Chicago Freedom School, can be found here.

Also Saturday, Veterans for Peace is hosting a panel on Torture and International Law at the Eden Seminary from 10 AM to 1:30. Mozzam Begg, who was held as an "enemy combatant" for three years and never charged with a crime, will be joining the panel via webcast.

Also Saturday, there's a Grand Opening Celebration for the Curio Shoppe (2301 Cherokee) from 10 AM to 10 PM.

Also Saturday, Artica is back with Return of the Mound Builders from 11 AM to 8 PM at the Corner of Lewis and Dickson Streets on the North Riverfront.

Also Saturday, there' a benefit concert extravaganza for the LGBT Community Center at the Metropolitan Community Church of Greater St. Louis (1919 S. Broadway) from 6 to 8:30 PM.

Also Saturday, there's a North-South - Sur- Norte benefit for the Community Arts and Media Project (CAMP) at the Black Bear Bakery (2639 Cherokee) from 9 PM to 2 AM.

Sunday, Oct. 10, there's a forum on Safe, Clean Communities at the Grapevines Courtyard (105 Front Street, Labadie) in response to the propsal to build a giant coal ash dump in a flood plain from 11 AM to 2 PM.

Sunday, October 10, the NAACP Youth and College Division is holding a "Speaking Truth to Power" town hall meeting in response to youth related deaths due to violence at Harris-Stowe State University (3026 Laclede) from 3 to 5 PM. There's an amazing group of panelists including Chiefs Isom and Fitch, radio host Kenny Murdock, Charlie Dooley, and many others.

Also Sunday, there will be a fundraiser for a film crew from St. Louis travelling to Haiti to shoot a documentary at Lola's (14th and Washington) from 7 to 10 PM.

Also Sunday, and every Sunday, there will be a vigil for peace at the corner of Grand and Lindell at 7 PM.

St. Louis Media Fail: Still No Comments From O'Keefe's St. Louis Accomplice

Mediaite has posted some new details from James O'Keefe's plot to sexually humiliate a CNN reporter, including a video clip from CNN's Right on the Edge special (which, ironically, would have ended up being a complete puff piece were it not for O'Keefe's disgraceful plot). Emails forwarded to CNN show fairly conclusively that O'Keefe's claim that he wasn't aware of the plan was false.

Given that this is a story with national significance, it's amazing to me that the local St. Louis media, with the exception of Chad Garrison, has failed to report on the local connection or get a quote from O'Keefe's St. Louis tea party collaborator John Burns. The original CNN report indicated that John Burns was in on the planning emails, and was asked for advice about the plan by O'Keefe:

CNN was forwarded an e-mail, sent from O'Keefe's e-mail address, to the executive director of Project Veritas, Izzy Santa; and two conservative activists, Ben Wetmore of New Orleans and Jonathon Burns of St. Louis, Missouri, dated after the call with Boudreau.

"Getting Closer," the e-mail states. "Audio attached conversation with Abbie. What do you think of her reaction guys. She said she could do it Monday, Tuesday. Ben, you think I could get her on the boat?"

Burns and O'Keefe first collaborated in St. Louis by building a gulag on the Washington University campus and releasing highly edited video claiming that the Wash U administration was trying to shut them down because they were conservative. These claims were later proved false by a blog post from a student member of the Young Americans for Liberty. They later collaborated on an attempt to sabotage an LGBT rally, writing "Free Abortions" on signs according to several eyewitness reports and refusing to follow the instructions of the event organizers to comply with police requests.

I have a hard time understanding why local media would pass on the opportunity to contribute to a story of national significance. If they could get a quote from Burns about his role in the plot or about additional details, it would surely be picked up in future national reporting on this story. Furthermore, Burns is the St. Louis Field Representative for American Majority and was claimed to be the head of the St. Louis tea party's block captain program. St. Louis residents deserve to know what role, if any, John Burns played in this nefarious plot. And if those two appeals to the role of journalism in society aren't enough, this clearly is a juicy story, full of scandelous details. There really is no excuse for the local media to not be covering this.

Words Can Break Our Hearts

http://www.nami.org/

Today, I want to talk about hate speech.

No, not “nigger,” “tranny,” or “faggot.” Not “God hates fags and Lady Gaga”—though these are indeed hateful words to direct towards another, and we cannot stand idly by as the body count continues to rise.

I want to talk about “crazy,” “psycho,” and “crackpot.” Or “wackadoodle” and “damaged goods.”

But why stop at “crazy”? How about “crazy bitch”? Or maybe even “batshit crazy”?

Is this not what you had in mind when I said that I wanted to talk about hate speech?

Now I want to talk about stigma. Mental illness is highly stigmatized. Stigma ensures that people with mental illnesses remain second-class citizens even though “disability” is a protected status under current nondiscrimination laws.

For privacy reasons, I’m not going to describe in detail the situation that prompted this post. I’ll just say that the lack of response from the community was highly disappointing to me. People who would never tolerate hate speech being directed towards someone like them remained silent when a person with a mental illness was being targeted. Community leaders either didn't notice, or stood by and said nothing as a woman who had likely been through hell was verbally attacked many times over, and even had her existence dismissed by one particularly cruel comment: "[G]irls like this make me sick. There is no reason for them to exist."

In my opinion, if you say something like that, you have blood on your hands. Hateful statements like the one above fall just short of a call for violence, and may, in fact, encourage someone who has been teetering on the edge to finally step over it and attempt suicide.*

And if you say nothing after hearing such a statement, you're complicit. As much as we value our illusory independence, we are actually interdependent beings. In spite of the rampant individualism in the U.S., we have a social responsibility to treat one another with kindness and respect, and to step in when someone is being mistreated.

If you want allies, you must be an ally. You must speak out against all forms of hate speech. It is not censorship to tell someone you think that they are doing harm.

It does get better. But it's not enough to tell people to "tough it out." We need to stop the bullying, of and by kids and adults alike. Whatever prejudice it's driven by, and whomever it's directed towards, we must step in and intervene whenever we witness hatred in action.

Words matter. Words can kill. As Robert Fulghum aptly said, “Sticks and stones may break our bones, but words will break our hearts.”


* If you are thinking about suicide or you believe that someone you know may be at risk, you can get help by calling the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255).

Can't Help Themselves! Tea Party Again Floats Conspiracy Theories About Puppy Mill Cruelty Initiative

A recent blog post on the St. Louis Tea Party site repeated their conspiracy theory that Proposition B, the Puppy Mill Cruelty Prevention Act, is all a secret plot to "eliminate pet ownership:"

A select group of the "intellectual elite," who don't believe dogs showed be owned, are behind Prop. B.

This is a repetition of talking points handed down from the dog breeder defending group "Alliance for Truth," which said the following:

the Humane Society of the United States wants to eliminate animal ownership in America....They believe that animals are enslaved by humans,"

But, as pointed out by journalist Terry Ganey, in a special to the Beacon, this talking point is nonsense:

But Proposition B doesn't eliminate animal ownership. In fact, hobby breeders and dog breeders with fewer than 10 breeding animals are exempt from its provisions. And Proposition B makes a point of saying that nothing in the law "shall be construed to limit hunting or the ability to breed, raise or sell hunting dogs."

A different tea party blog claimed that the new measure wouldn't actually provide any new protections, since there were some standards already existing. However, missed in this brilliant analysis is the fact that the new law creates a misdemeanor for violating the law where none previously existed. In other words, the current system does not provide any strong incentives to treat the dogs humanely: if you are caught breaking the rules enough times you might not get to keep your license, but you don't really lose anything. With the new law, people caught keeping the dogs in inhumane conditions can be fined and charged with a misdemeanor. You'd think the self-proclaimed economic geniuses of the tea party would be able to figure out how that would work.

Prop A Is An Attempt to Shift Tax Burden to the Poor

Rebecca Rivas at the St. Louis American wrote a great article about the consequences for the poor of Proposition A passing:

For Missourians who make $17,000 or less, about six percent of their income goes towards sales taxes – and less than one percent goes towards income taxes, according to a November 2009 study by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy.

For those who make $412,000 or more, it’s almost completely opposite.

Less than one percent of their income goes towards paying sales taxes, and 4.4 percent goes towards income taxes.

If Missouri’s poor pay proportionately more sales tax and the rich pay proportionately more income tax, an important question for voters this November is: Why would a billionaire propose a ballot initiative that would result in getting rid of local income tax and replacing it with more sales taxes?

Read the whole article here. And then vote No on Prop A.

St. Louis Tea Party Defends O'Keefe Even After Breitbart Walks Away

Earlier in the week, a plot by right-wing icon James O'Keefe to "seduce" CNN reporter Abbie Boudreau on camera by isolating her on a boat full of sex toys and pornography was revealed and widely condemned. The plan involved O'Keefe hitting on Boudreau, who was there in a professional capacity to document the young conservative movement, while O'Keefe (and others?) were secretly videotaping the interactions. A plan for the event obtained by CNN had O'Keefe reading the following statement:

Instead, I've decided to have a little fun. Instead of giving her a serious interview, I'm going to punk CNN. Abbie has been trying to seduce me to use me, in order to spin a lie about me. So, I'm going to seduce her, on camera, to use her for a video. This bubble-headed-bleach-blonde who comes on at five will get a taste of her own medicine, she'll get seduced on camera and you'll get to see the awkwardness and the aftermath.

Please sit back and enjoy the show.

Amazingly, even James O'Keefe's former employer Andrew Breitbart, who in the past religiously stood by O'Keefe and even suggested that O'Keefe's arrest in New Orleans was a result of a "concerted effort" by the U.S. government to make O'Keefe look bad, has turned against his former employee. In a statement yesterday, Breitbart wrote the following:

... in my dealings with Ms. Boudreau, she and her producer, Scott Zamost, conducted themselves professionally, and I believe James owes them a candid and public explanation.

From what I’ve read about this script, though not executed, it is patently gross and offensive. It’s not his detractors to whom he also owes this public airing. It’s to his legion of supporters.

Yet, unbelievably, leaders of the St. Louis tea party movement are still defending O'Keefe's despicable plan, and are even blaming the victim! Check out some of the tweets from Jim Hoft (Gateway Pundit) and (Jim Durbin):





Particularly offensive is this quote from Durbin:

in CNN story, Boudreau says news business is sexist, and doesn't take her seriously. So why interview O'Keefe?

This sounds an awful lot like blaming the victim. What does interviewing O'Keefe have to do with the news business being sexist? Boudreau was interviewing him because she was doing a story on young conservative activists. Yet Durbin suggests there's something wrong with her doing that while being a woman?

Anyway, it's truly mind-boggling how willing the St. Louis tea party leaders are to throw all morals and decency out the window in their "war" against "the Left.' When you've gone far beyond even Andrew Breitbart's moral limits, you know you've got problems.

Tea Party Activist In On Plan to "Seduce" CNN Reporter To Speak At Rally Tomorrow

John Burns, the St. Louis Tea Party activist who was included in planning emails on Jame O'Keefe's plot to "seduce" CNN reporter Abbie Boudreau by isolating her on a boat full of sex toys and pornography, is scheduled to speak tomorrow at a Southern Illinois Tea Party rally in O'Fallon, Illinois.

According to the original CNN report, Burns (along with Ben Wetmore and Izzy Santa) was sent an email by O'Keefe asking if they thought he could lure Bordreau on to the boat:

"Getting Closer," the e-mail states. "Audio attached conversation with Abbie. What do you think of her reaction guys. She said she could do it Monday, Tuesday. Ben, you think I could get her on the boat?"

Izzy Santa, it turned out, had a conscience and warned Boudreau about the plot. Burns and Wetmore, obviously, did nothing to stop it.

The tea party rally is being organized by Gina Loudon, a self-proclaimed conservative Christian who previously called O'Keefe a "hero."

Sadly, no St. Louis media has yet gotten a quote from Burns about his role in O'Keefe's scheme, although Chad Garrison did write about it at the RFT.