Men are still using the label "witch" to kill women

How is it possible that women are still being killed by men claiming they are witches?

Read this report in the Daily Mail on December 5.

A Boko Haram commander in northern Nigeria claimed that witches caused the deaths of his children.

Women were rounded up.  On November 15, about 26 of them were murdered.

This kind of murder is common enough that a citizens' group in Nigeria has been founded: Advocacy for Alleged Witches (AfAW).  The group called on Nigeria's president to do more to protect women.

On the website SaharaReporters.com, AfAW explains that

accusations happen when people attribute misfortunes to occult or supernatural causes or when people are not satisfied with ordinary, natural, or commonsensical explanations of ailments and deaths.

These murders occurred just two weeks after our American holiday of Halloween, when we dress up ourselves or our children as witches; we display pumpkins and witches in our yards.

Perhaps it's time to stop making fun of a serious problem, both in the present and in history.

Until men around the world stop using superstition to kill women, jokes about witches should be just as off-limits on Halloween as nooses hanging from trees.

To make things worse, some people are using religion to promote ideas about demon possession and witchcraft.  One such person in Nigeria is Helen Ukpabio, "widely accused of causing large-scale harassment and violence against children accused of witchcraft," according to a Wikipedia report.

Dr. Leo Igwe is a founder of AfAW.  His book Saving Child Witches: A Nigerian Perspective was published in 2008.

He writes:

In particular, we need to check the activities of our so called pastors and other self styled men and women of God who use the Bible or Holy books to perpetrate and justify atrocious acts and human right abuses. These religious charlatans continue to act and preach in ways that reinforce the belief in witches and provoke acts of witch accusation, persecution and killing.

Thank you to Andre Berthou in Sevres, France, for calling my attention to this problem.

Defeat Lauren Boebert!

My kids say I'm sexist, that I hate men--but they don't get it.

Projections still favor GOP to take House

I favor women until a woman proves herself against women, against democracy, against loving your neighbor.  Or until a man turns out to be sympatico, a kindred spirit, as many men are.

My commitment to Jesus requires me to vote against a hater and liar, whatever the gender, so I oppose Lauren Boebert in the 2022 election.  I support Adam Frisch.

This week is a nail biter, as last week was.  The Colorado Secretary of State's Office reports today that by Wednesday (or Friday at the latest), the 1,100 remaining votes--military and overseas--will be counted and reported.

Meanwhile Boebert has 50.17 percent of the vote, while Frisch has 49.83 percent, reports Gilbert Ortiz, Pueblo County Clerk and Recorder.

My daughter Marie in San Miguel County voted for Adam Frisch.  She majored in Gender Studies in college and is an ardent feminist.

My mother's cousin Morrison Brown, a Democrat for all of his 89 years, explained to me that Colorado requires a recount if two candidates are separated by .5% or less.  He lives in Cortez, where most of my family voted Democrat, and he refuses to give up hope.

"Colorado has a Blue Ribbon voting system," he continued.  "Every registered voter gets a ballot by mail, and afterward you get a text that says your vote's been counted."

"What really burns my tail is that 3,000 voters didn't vote for either one.  They couldn't stand to vote for Boebert, but they didn't want to vote blue.  If they had voted in this race, Frisch wouldn't be 974 votes short."

Adam Frisch had the lead on election night, Nov. 8, and we all thought he would win.

"Now Jayson Boebert won't be able to ride around on his tractor shooting mailboxes without getting arrested!" shouted my daughter Roz, coming home from her election day's evening shift at Starbucks.  She soothes the nerves of anxious Santa Monica voters with caffeine and sugar.

"Anyone who votes for Boebert isn't the brightest light in the room," commented Morrison.  

Roz, Marie and I all agree with him.   

In Memoriam: Barbara Abercrombie (1939-2022)

 

Barbara Abercrombie with Joe Morganstern
July 11, 2021

Barbara Abercrombie was tiny, 

slim, and graceful, almost always

 

dressed in black and white, 

which accented her white fluff 

of stylishly cut short hair and 

black-framed glasses.

The most memorable thing about Barbara was her million-dollar smile.  She liked happy, insisted that our memoirs not be polemic or despairing.  Even when writing about loss, she balanced grieving with celebrating.   

Born Barbara Louise Mattes on April 6, 1939, in Illinois, she attended Briarcliff College just north of New York City and then did some acting on Broadway and in television.  She married a Naval officer and stockbroker, Gordon E. Abercrombie, in 1964 and had two daughters.  

Barbara wrote five children's books published  1979-2002 after editing a collection of poems for children in 1977.  Her three novels include Good Riddance (Harper, 1979), about a woman whose husband flagrantly betrays her.  

I first met Barbara in spring of 2000, when I took her famous course Courage and Craft I & II, followed by The Art of the Personal Essay that fall.  She was 61 then, kind and encouraging, living in a wonderful home right on the beach in Santa Monica.  In 2007 she made that course accessible to anyone, publishing Courage and Craft: Writing Your Life into Story, followed by A Year of Writing Dangerously in 2012 and Kicking in the Wall in 2013.  

Her warmth and generosity were 

proverbial.  She always invited 

students to her home for the last 

meeting of the class, and later 

she began her Lit Salon, a 

monthly gathering of writers 

and readers at which ten 

people each read a five-minute 

piece.

I studied with other writers for 

fifteen years and then began 

taking Barbara’s advanced seminars in creative nonfiction in 2016.  I noticed that the students in her classes of twelve bonded with each other as well as with her; we became adept at asking questions that would improve the writing and at saying, “Maybe you could make this line into a scene.”

The next to last class she taught was an experiment, a year-long course for advanced students writing memoirs.  We had all published essays of various sorts or done work in screen writing, maybe written a book.

The usual ten-week classes offered by UCLA Extension were a piecemeal approach to the kind of long-term work we were doing.  Barbara designed a curriculum and shepherded us each from haphazard chapters to a complete manuscript worthy of submission to an agent. 

We were a neurotic bunch, anxious about our projects and skeptical that they would ever see the light of day.  Four of us had been taking Barbara’s creative nonfiction classes for years; four had worked with other instructors and were meeting her for the first time—or almost meeting her.  The course began in September, 2020, and Covid-19 transformed it into a Zoom.

Starting with us where we were, lost in pages and pages of our stories, Barbara cheerfully planned out the three quarters, which would end in June, 2021, with a real agent committed to reading our first thirty pages.  It was a great year, but when June came, none of us had completed a presentable first draft. 

Barbara negotiated with the Extension and offered us another three months of her guidance in the fall.  Then in January, 2022, we each submitted our opening pages to an agent but continued working as a group.

In May when she told us that her new cough was lung cancer, it didn’t seem possible that we could lose her in only three months.  

Barbara was irrepressible.  She gleaned friendship from the end of a marriage and remarried at 58.    Though she lost her soulmate after 18 years, she lived to love again.  

Beginning in 1997 she wrote her way out of breast cancer, adding to her own story the poems and quotations of others; the result was Writing Out the Storm: Reading and Writing Your Way through Serious Illness or Injury (2002).  Then, in response to the death of her second husband, Robert V. Adams in 2015, she collected poems and paragraphs for her sixteenth book, The Language of Loss: Poetry and Prose for Grieving and Celebrating the Love of Your Life (2020).  

In her final days she was still a wordsmith, describing her dying as “a blessed slide into not feeling.”  She died in the early hours of August 24, 2022.

We were fortunate to have the opportunity to work with you, Barbara.  Thank you.

GOP Senators who voted NO on gun control

 

A month after 19 kids and 2 teachers were killed in Uvalde, 13 US Senators voted against Senate Bill 2938, the plan to support the gun control bill just passed by the House of Representatives.

The Senate had already removed from the bill a ban on assault-style rifles and a ban on high-capacity magazines, but 13 Senators still couldn't support what was left:

• a background checks on buyers convicted of domestic violence
• a background check on buyers convicted of crimes when they were under 18 yrs. old. 

The bill still passed in the Senate because 50 Democrats, 13 Republicans, and 2 Independents all voted for it.  

33 US Senators voted against it, and 2 did not vote at all.

13 of those 33 anti-safety US Senators are running for re-election this coming November, 2022.

Remember the children and adults murdered in Buffalo, Uvalde, Highland Park, and the Indiana mall.

Remember the names of the 13 US Senators who couldn't even vote for background checks on gun buyers --though the buyers could be potential killers.  

John Boozman - Arkanas

Mike Crapo - Idaho

 Chuck Grassley - Iowa

John Hoeven - North Dakota

Ron Johnson - Wisconsin

John Kennedy - Louisiana

James Lankford - Oklahoma

Mike Lee - Utah

Jerry Moran - Kansas

Rand Paul - Kentucky

Marco Rubio - Florida

Tim Scott - South Carolina

John Thune - South Dakota.

Notice that ALL of these 13 US Senators without compassion are male and Republican.

Notice that out of 24 women US Senators, only 4 voted against the gun control bill (Lummis, Blackburn, Hyde-Smith, and Fischer). Twenty women Senators voted for the bill.

The Republican women Senators who had the courage to vote for these modest gun control laws are:

Joni Ernst (Iowa),  Shelley Moore-Capito (West Virginia),  Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), and Susan Collins (Maine).  Thank you!

Out of 76 men in the US Senate, 29 voted against modest, commonsense gun control laws. 

Thus only 1 out of every 3 male US Senators wants laws to prevent shootings.

Women US Senators are more likely to value human lives more highly than gun rights.

Republican US Senators are less likely to prioritize human lives over gun rights.

The bottom line?

We need more women in the US Senate.  We need fewer Republican men.  

What I'm Celebrating on July 4, 2022

  

In 2022, celebration of the Fourth of July was  difficult.

7 people went to a town parade in Highland Park, Illinois, and were shot dead by a sniper with an assault rifle.

 35 or so others were shot but survived.  Hundreds of others escaped with psychological wounds only.

The rest of us tried to carry on, but how do you enjoy a barbecue or parade or fireworks while your cell phone and television are reporting on the manhunt in Illinois for a killer still on the loose?

Between updates on the parade massacre, we watched newly-released video of the murder of Jayland Walker, a Black man being chased by police in Akron, Ohio, for having a broken taillight. 

To have a happy Fourth this year, you had to be deaf, dumb, and blind. 

Also you had to avoid thinking about the Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade.  

You had to block out the latest revelations that ex-president Trump had wrestled with his Secret Service officers in an SUV, demanding to go to the Capitol building and take part in the overthrow of the government.

It wasn't your average lazy, beer-drinking day of illegal fireworks and patriotic platitudes.

But "Still I Rise," as Maya Angelou would say.

On this desperate July 4th, I'm celebrating that Trump is no longer president.  His plot to gain a second term by selling us a bunch of lies failed.

I'm celebrating that the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6 Attack has been doing its work for a year now, and the DOJ may even indict Trump for a few of his many crimes.  That's worth cheering about.

I'm rejoicing that we still have a democracy of sorts.  It's not a direct democracy (where the popular vote determines the president), but at least our representatives on Jan. 6, 2021, didn't quite dare to overthrow the election results and ram another four years of  Donald down our throats.  

We're only four years away from celebrating that the Constitution has lasted 250 years.  The Civil War 1861-1865 was not successful in splitting this country into two halves, and the first attempted coup in our history failed in 2021.

The flimsy scheme of replacing a king, lords, and "commoners" with a president, congress, and judiciary has held up, more or less.  That's worth celebrating, even when the Supreme Court is packed with three Trump appointees and seems bent on overturning all decisions since Brown v. Board of Education, which ended racial segregation in public schools.  

Within the guidelines of the Constitution, it's perfectly legal to add several justices to the Supreme Court.  All we need is a Congress and president who will make that happen.

On this July 4th, I'm celebrating that most of us still have the right to vote and have our votes counted fairly.  We don't live in a nation like China or Russia, where elections are a total sham.

It's true that corporations and wealthy men in the USA try to buy our votes with huge financial donations, unleashing television ads that manipulate our fears and our desires.  

It's true that Republicans control most of our state legislatures and are trying to keep poor people, minorities, and working people from voting.  They restrict mail-in voting, limit polling locations, and fight early voting opportunities.  They hope that long lines in bad weather will reduce the number of voters.  In Georgia they made it illegal to give water bottles to people waiting hours to cast their votes.  They use gerrymandering to create districts where Dem voters are outnumbered by GOP voters.

But as of mid-2022, votes still count.  

1)  We each need to vote... all of us.

2)  We also need to defend the voting rights of others as we approach November 8, 2022.

3)  We need to work for local, state, and national candidates who reflect our values.

4)  We need to vote out Republicans who are still claiming that Trump won the 2020 election.  

5)  We need to throw out US Senators who won't vote to ban assault rifles--who value guns more than children's lives.  We need to elect Senators who will eliminate the filibuster and pass legislation to restore our right to make our own decision about an unplanned pregnancy.

Many Black people consider July 4th to be a holiday for White folks only.  Their African ancestors were captured, transported, and held in slavery while White Americans celebrated the day their forefathers had declared independence from Great Britain and started fighting for freedom. For nearly one hundred years, Independence Day was a hypocritical mess.  

In some ways, July 4 still is a day that highlights unequal levels of rights and freedoms based on race.  Kyle J. Howard issued a six-part tweet today pointing out that this year, the historical split-vision still exists.  Most whites are celebrating freedom while Blacks are enraged over the police shooting of Jayland Walker in Akron, Ohio, after a mere traffic stop.  Jayland was denied the most basic of freedoms--life and liberty--after being chased for a broken tail light.  

For the record, I'm not celebrating America's independence from George III today.  

I'm rejoicing that King Donald is no longer our boss, and he may go to jail.  I'm grateful that we still have a democracy and that votes here still count.

So I bought some decorations and began making cupcakes...  John and I are having a party here with friends.

March for Our Lives, Los Angeles 2022

LA's March for Our Lives today filled 10-15 blocks.

Speakers before the march included survivors of mass shootings and people who had lost a parent or friend to gun violence.

Like the march in 2018, today's marches around the nation were student-led, and many of those doing the planning and speaking were high school students.

Four years ago, one month after the mass shooting at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, students led the first March for Our Lives.

After the Buffalo NY and Uvalde TX massacres, students organized another #MarchforOurLives.

Play a slide show of sights and signs from today's march in Los Angeles by clicking on this link:

https://photos.app.goo.gl/LpWe57oweVpzKqBx5

Here are some of my favorite slogans on placards carried by today's marchers:

~~We are not anti-gun, we are pro-life.

~~GOP senators kill children.

~~GOP = Guns Over People, so don't vote GOP.

And of course, the central slogan from four years ago:

~~Protect Kids, Not Guns!

Kids' right to life--to staying alive--is more important than anybody's so-called right to own guns.

The men of 1783 never envisioned rifles that could shoot so fast with so much force and speed that a bullet could decapitate or pulverize a human being.

Ban assault rifles--no citizen has any right to carry this horrific weapon. Only soldiers in the US Armed Forces.

When the marchers go home, the streets of Los Angeles will still cry out against guns.

The benches at many bus stops carry messages about the number of persons killed daily in the US by guns.

How the French see US after Uvalde

My friend Andre Berthou in France sent me this political cartoon.

It changes a "Masks required" sign near a school to "Helmets required." The kid is wearing a helmet and a backpack.

I'm not sure what's sticking out of the backpack--a slide rule? I hope it's not a gun.

Andre reminds me that from 110 to 119 people die every day from guns in the US.

"It's enormous... So many painful deaths," he writes. "We are very sad looking at pictures of children who have died."

This is the USA that people around the world are seeing. They can't believe we don't have basic gun laws.

He adds, "Countries with 'free' guns aren't democracies. Look at the Taliban."

I googled "guns in Afghanistan" and learned that the nation has a problem with too many guns in everyone's hands. A gun culture--no surprise. The US supplied Afghanistan with a huge number of assault rifles, mortars, and grenades.

In an effort to cut back on the number of guns, the Taliban government is now making gun owners pay for permits.

Ashamed to be an American

Mallory McMorrow, Michigan Senate member

 I feel so ashamed of my country.

We allow assault weapons, guns, and rifles to continue to ravage schools, churches, grocery stores, music performances, and bars--anywhere people are gathered.

We have a long history of racism, worshipping guns, empowering the wealthy, oppressing workers, and not caring about the poor.  We don't have health care access for everyone.

We are not a democracy.  The majority voted against Trump in 2016, but the minority's choice was empowered by the Electoral College.  

The majority want assault weapons banned.  The majority want background checks and other commonsense gun control laws. But Republicans in the US Senate are blocking all these needed laws. 

Spreadsheet compiled by Daily Kos

The 50 Republican senators represent only 43%  of Americans.  The 50 Democratic senators represent 56% of Americans. Yet the Republicans can veto gun laws because of how the Senate was designed.

North and South Dakota have only 1.6 million people, yet those people get four senators.  California has 40 million people, but they have just two senators to speak for them.  The US is not a democracy.  The Senate and all elections are rigged in favor of rural minorities.

Here's how Sabrina Siddiqui summarized the problem in The Guardian in 2018:

What that means is that California, which has a population of just under 40 million, holds the same representation in the Senate as Wyoming, which at roughly 579,000 is the least populous state in the country.

“That’s a radically undemocratic principle, and it gives rise to what we see,” said David Golove, a professor at the New York University School of Law, “which is that the minority populations are going to have a disproportionate impact in the United States. That tends to mean conservatives have a disproportionate influence over the Senate.”

"The Senate is inherently anti-majoritarian,” said Erwin Chemerinsky, the dean of Berkeley Law at the University of California. 

Australia banned assault weapons in 1996 after the massacre of 35 people in Port Arthur, Tasmania.  There have been almost no mass shootings since then, according to international arms control advocate Rebecca Peters speaking on Democracy Now.  Thank you to my friend Almut in Hennef, Germany, near Bonn, for this information.

I'm ashamed as I message her online, ashamed before my friends Catherine and Andre Berthou in Sevres, France, and Katharina Gursoy in Berlin.  

I fear what my third-generation cousins in Denmark think about the US.  We elected a horrible president in 2016 and we are impotent as our Senate blocks gun control.

New Zealand banned assault weapons after a shooter murdered 51 people in 2019.  There have been no mass shootings since then. Vice reports:

After the Christchurch mosque shootings in 2019, legislation to restrict semi-automatic firearms and magazines with a capacity of more than 10 rounds, and provide an amnesty and buyback of such weapons was introduced and passed by the New Zealand parliament 119 to 1.

Steve Kerr of NBA speaks out on Uvalde

Both Republicans and Democrats are throwing up their hands and saying nothing can be done right away.  Republican senators fear losing their jobs. Dems fear losing the House in the November 2022 election; if they still control the House and maybe the Senate, they will try to pass gun control laws in 2023.

BUT STILL, WE CAN WORK TO MAKE SURE THE GOP IS DEFEATED ON NOVEMBER 8, 2022.  

WE CAN ALSO MARCH AND PROTEST AND TURN TO NONVIOLENT DISOBEDIENCE. 

The last big March for Our Lives drew 1.6 million people on March 26, 2018.  

WE WILL MARCH AGAIN ON JUNE 11, 2022.  March and/or donate. 

Remember the great majority supporting common sense gun control as demonstrated in the Politico/Morning Consult poll conducted after Uvalde:

Rep. Abigail Spanberger (VA)
with Lawrence O'Donnell
on The Last Word, MSNBC
March 26, 2022

• Requiring background checks on all gun sales: Eighty-eight percent strongly or somewhat support; 8% strongly or somewhat oppose. Net approval: +80

• Banning assault-style weapons: Sixty-seven percent strongly or somewhat support; 25% strongly or somewhat oppose. Net approval: +42

• Preventing sales of all firearms to people reported as dangerous to law enforcement by a mental health provider: Eighty-four percent strongly or somewhat support; 9% strongly or somewhat oppose. Net approval: +75

See also:

"Democrats got millions more votes--so how did Republicans win the Senate?" The Guardian, 2018.

"How minority rule plagues the Senate: Republicans last won more support than Democrats two decades ago," Daily Kos, 2021.

"Why Republicans won't budge on guns," New York Times, May 26, 2022.

"After Uvalde, Democrats need to stop posturing and start acting," WBUR Boston. 

"Australia's 1996 gun law reforms," Injury Prevention, BMJ.com.

"Gun control: New Zealand shows the way," International Bar Association, 2019.

"Gun law in New Zealand," Wikipedia.

March for Our Lives, June 11, 2022, marchforourlives.com.

Rosemary Radford Ruether (1936-2022)

Rosemary Radford Ruether in 2016
with Elizabeth Moore (on right)

Rosemary Radford Ruether, one of the first and foremost Catholic feminists, died on May 21 in Pomona, California, east of Los Angeles. 

On Sunday I received the notice below from a friend in Claremont, CA, who sent it to all members of our Women-Church Convergence group. We met for worship monthly for twenty years on the campus of Pilgrim Place, a retirement community, but were unable to gather during the Covid-19 lockdown. 

Rosemary attended and shared in our liturgies after she retired and moved to Pilgrim Place. Her book Women-Church: Theology and Practice of Feminist Liturgical Communities (1986) started the Women-Church movement. 

The announcement below (slightly edited) was spoken by Mary Fry to retired Christians gathered for Sunday dinner at Pilgrim Place on May 22.  

Today it is my honor to announce the death of Rosemary Ruether. She died yesterday afternoon surrounded by her family. As a member of the Spiritual Care Team at the Health Services Center of Pilgrim Place, I shared in ministering to her during these last years. 

Rosemary and her husband Herman moved to Pilgrim Place in 2002 after building their own home on Eighth Street. 

She was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, on November 2, 1936, going to grade school and high school both in Washington, D. C., and in La Jolla, California. She earned her B.A. at Scripps College. She went on to get her M.A. and Ph.D. at Claremont Graduate School and at the Claremont School of Theology, studying classics and early Church history. 

Rosemary taught at Immaculate Heart College from 1963 to 1965 and then moved on to Howard University School of Theology from 1965 to 1976. She was the Georgia Harkness Professor of Applied Theology at Garrett Evangelical Theological Seminary and a member of the graduate faculty of Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, from 1976 to 2002. From 2002 to 2005 she held the post of Carpenter Professor of Feminist Theology at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California.

Rosemary Ruether was the author or editor of thirty-six books in the areas of theology, feminism, ecology, and social justice. Two of those she wrote are Gia and God: An Ecofeminist Theology of Earth Healing (1992) and Christianity and the Making of the Modern Family (2002). She also held twelve honorary doctorates, the most recent from Edinburgh University and from Uppsala University in Sweden. 

Rosemary lectured at many universities and Church conferences throughout the United States and worldwide. Many residents here at Pilgrim Place remember taking her classes here in Claremont or at other colleges. 

Herman Ruether still resides in the Health Services Center here. They have three children Becky, David, and Mimi as well as two grandchildren. Herman and Rosemary together wrote The Wrath of Jonah: The Crisis of Religious Nationalism in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict (1989). 

Rosemary was an advocate of women's ordination in the Roman Catholic Church, affirming women's capacity to serve as priests. She participated in liturgies in which women were ordained despite official sanction. 

Although she lost both speech and mobility after her stroke in 2016, her warmth and cheerful outlook continued. On a personal note, I will remember that Rosemary always had a wonderful smile and a twinkle in her eyes that warmed my heart every time I saw her and made me feel that she was glad I was there. 

Let us now have a moment of silence to remember a wonderful lady, Rosemary Radford Ruether. 

--In memory of Rosemary, offered by Mary Fry on Sunday, May 22, 2022

Violence Prevention with Jasmine and Angelina

Angelina Rivas, Class of 2022

Violence makes headlines.  Violence prevention doesn't usually reach the front page or the television screen.  

Let's take a moment to turn away from the horror of an 18-year-old murdering ten innocent people in a supermarket because he was a hate-filled racist.

Instead, let's remember the 3.7 million students who are graduating from high school this year in the USA.  They are hard-working and ambitious.  Most of them sat in classrooms and played sports with students of many races and nationalities.

Many of them marched in bands or participated in clubs made up of Black, Asian, Latinx, White, and Indigenous students.  They worked together to do community service.  About 60% of these graduates have earned college admittance and plan to start another 4-5 years of academic work this coming fall.

Today I want to honor two hard-working students who are not only graduating from high school but working to prevent violence.

Jasmine Lopez and Angelina Rivas were among the 200 or more seniors honored last night in a Scholarship and Honors Program for outstanding students graduating from Santa Monica High School.  

They were also chosen for this year's Kathy McTaggart Scholarship for Violence Prevention. 

Jasmine commuted into Santa Monica from a neighborhood that used to be plagued with drugs, gangs, and violence.  

"The only thing that made me feel safer were the bars on all our windows," she wrote in her application essay.

But then her family started a local Neighborhood Watch, got the Next Door app, and began hosting a monthly meeting in their house.  They targeted a corner shop that appeared to be selling drugs.

Anne Linstatter with Jasmine Lopez

"We called the police so much and put that corner shop on their radar," Jasmine recalls.  "Sure enough, it was a human trafficking shop that laundered money as well as a warehouse for illegal drugs." 

After a SWAT raid, the owner was arrested, the shop was sold, and the neighborhood became calm and safe.

At Santa Monica High School, Jasmine became active in student government, cheerleading, and the Latinx Leaders Club (president during her senior year).

When she was presented with an award for leadership in student government, another student leader described her as "not afraid to speak her opinion."  

She plans to attend Mount St. Mary's University in west Los Angeles, majoring in business. 

Angelina Rivas is the other winner of this year's scholarship for violence prevention.  She lives in the Pico neighborhood of Santa Monica.  Both she and Jasmine held part-time jobs during three of their four years of high school.  

Angelina received the McTaggart scholarship because of her work to combat domestic abuse and teen dating violence.  She has been a peer leader for Margaret's Place, an intervention program to provide mental health services for students who have been impacted by violence in their home, school, or community. 

She helped coordinate campus organizations on teen violence, sexual assault awareness, and mental health awareness, making flyers, announcements, and wristbands.

Angelina will be attending Stanford University, and she wants to work for the Human Rights Council of the UN. 

Have you found ways to counteract the violence we hear about so often in the news?

Perhaps you are focusing on gun control or better understanding among people of various races, but don't forget the graduates bravely moving on to build the future.

One small way to help them is to contribute to the Katherine McTaggart Scholarship for Violence Prevention at Santa Monica High School. 

Kathy

Dr. Antonio Shelton, Principal of SMHS,
with college counselor Julie Honda
and Samohi Alumni donor
Evelyn Lauchenauer

 was a licensed therapist who worked with at-risk teens and their families for 16 years as a school-community partnership coordinator in the Santa Monica-Malibu School District.  She died in 2012. 

Send your check to:

Santa Monica Education Foundation 

c/o Samohi Scholarships

1645 - 16th Street 

Santa Monica CA 90404.  

Make it payable to Samohi Scholarship Fund, specifying McTaggart Violence Prevention for 2023 seniors.

Thank you for joining with Jasmine and Angelina to promote awareness of mental health and nonviolent solutions to problems.

For more photos, see https://photos.app.goo.gl/w4aGMjQNg7dSvshJ6

Missing you, Namhee

Dr. Namhee Han, organist

The spirit of Namhee Han lingers in the sanctuary of Westwood Presbyterian Church two years after this talented organist took her last breath.  

As we return to live worship and hear organ music echo against the stone walls, many of us think of her.

She died on March 27, 2020, from sudden complications in a two-year battle with cancer.

Watch her play Bach's Third Intermezzo on this Youtube post from June 2010 at St. Cyril of Jerusalem Church in Encino.

Find a tribute and links to more of her music on this Facebook Post by Stan's Music Parlor.

A native of Seoul, South Korea, she performed nationally and internationally.  Katherine Crosier, an organist in Hawaii, wrote this blog post, which includes Namhee's obituary in The American Organist, July 2020.

Here is Namhee Han: A Remembrance written by Xavier Quintana, her fiance, on December 20, 2020, and published on the website of Classical Crossroads, Inc., whose mission is to make live classical music available to the public on a free or low-cost basis in southern California. 

We're thinking of you, Namhee, and we miss you.

From Constance Baker Motley to KBJ

 

It's been a stressful week watching the disrespectful confirmation hearings of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson--not to mention continued slaughter in Ukraine.

But let's talk for a moment about Judge Jackson's heroine and role model, Constance Baker Motley.  

Judge Jackson cited this prominent Black female judge during her acceptance speech after President Biden nominated her to be the next justice added to the Supreme Court.

"She was the first African American woman to argue a case before the Supreme Court, and the first to serve as a federal judge," according to this article on uscourts.gov.  

Judge Motley would have been an excellent nominee to the Supreme Court, but the nation wasn't there yet.  She wrote much of the 1954 decision Brown v. Board of Education.

Terry Gross featured an interview with Constance Baker Motley's biographer Tomiko Brown-Nagin on NPR's Fresh Air, Feb. 16.   

Brown-Nagin mentions that Motley knew civil rights activist Medgar Evers and mourned deeply when he was murdered.

Here's an article about her on Politico.  And an NAACP article.  

I also heard this report on NPR's Code Switch, which mentions that Judge Motley avoided the term "feminist" in the 1970s and '80s, but she argued cases that were very important for women's equality.

"Despite the Ludtke v Kuhn case, and other efforts to provide equal consideration for women in the workplace, Motley rejected the label feminist—even though some famous feminists, like Shirley Chisolm and Bella Abzug—were friends and colleagues", the report says.

Civil Rights Queen: Constance Baker Motley and the Struggle for Equality is the title of Brown-Nagin's biography, which came out in January, 2022.  Judge Motley also wrote her own autobiography.  

Here's a historical note to ponder: there were no confirmation hearings for the first 127 years of the Supreme Court.  White men were just nominated and debated a little in the Senate; then the vote took place on whether to confirm them.

In 1916 when a Jewish man was nominated, the Senate decided to hold a hearing to thoroughly vet this alarming new kind of nominee. See the history explained in the Insider.