Monthly Archives: February 2017

Every Kiss Begins With Unwanted Touching and Threats

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Did you guys see this story, in the Washington Post yesterday, about the pervasive culture of sexual harassment and gender discrimination at Sterling Jewelers, parent company of Kay and Jared Galleria? Apparently a class-action lawsuit involving SIXTY-NINE THOUSAND female workers has been going on for years but the documents involved, which had previously been in confidential arbitration, were just released last weekend.

If you thought the corporate culture in Mad Men was television hyperbole, check out this article for depictions of a culture of no-holds-barred sexual predation by upper management of young saleswomen.

Routine sexual “preying” at company events “was done out in the open and appeared to be encouraged, or at least condoned, by the company,” Melissa Corey, a manager of Sterling stores in Massachusetts and Florida between 2002 and 2008, said in her declaration.  Continue reading →

Keith Ellison, Allan Dershowitz, and the American Left

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After a crisis of authority–who am I to have a hiphop blog?–I’m back, trying to find my public voice again, trying to reclaim it from the din of Facebook where I’ve produced what I’m sure is a very detailed data profile of my political opinions without ever having to write them out for myself.

But I have a lot of opinions. Let me state some of them here. I might not cite everything. If you don’t believe me, get googling. Now let’s talk about the DNC electing Tom Perez as chair on Saturday.

For going on forty years, Israeli apartheid has poisoned the coalition-building of the American Left. As far back as the 1970s, as soon as U.S. Black folks started standing in solidarity with dispossessed Palestinians, the Black-Jewish cooperation of the Civil Rights era was over.

[Update 2/28: If you haven’t yet, read Bernie Sanders’s speech to progressive Jewish American PAC J-Street now.]

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Stokely Carmichael speaking at Berkeley in 1966. Image via Radio Open Source.

Writing for The Hill last week, criminal lawyer and pro-Israel hawk Allan Dershowitz said that he would leave the Democratic Party if Keith Ellison was elected DNC chair, arguing that Ellison’s affiliation with folks like Louis Farrakhan and Stokely Carmichael made him an unrepentant anti-Semite.  Continue reading →

Whither My Blogging Habit

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placard at Sunnyvale’s Baylands Park, pictured below

Last night, as I lay falling asleep, I had this crazy notion that I needed to start blogging again, like, right now, like, at least tomorrow, because if I put it off until Monday, it wouldn’t happen, and my beautiful blog would just keep sitting here, unused, embarrassing me with its aging.

Yes, it’s been since August. You know the feeling when you’ve been meaning to call someone, and the longer you put it off, the more ashamed you feel at how long it’s been, and the less likely you are every day to call, until that person sees you’re in their city on Facebook and THEY call YOU? Or, like, you just stop being friends with them?

Continue reading →