January brings too much ICE

I have a technical issue for your consideration this week. It has to do with equipment for Constitutional Observers. (If you missed the news, Minnesota is now the base for almost 2,500 ICE and Border Patrol enforcers.) To be most useful, Observer digital recordings should identify both the location where and the date and time when recorded. As far as I know, my iPhone captures both items automatically. My non-phone digital cameras record the date and time but not the location. Cautionary guidance suggests leaving cell phones at home if at a protest so the federal government can't track you to your home or work place. So the question becomes, how to best incorporate accurate locational information into digital videos or photos? I don't have a good answer at the moment. Please feel free to offer suggestions in the comments.

January brings snow jobs and ICE coverups

Photo by J. Harrington

Please, if you haven't already, mark your calendar for the Free America Walkout on January 20, a week from this coming Tuesday. According to the 50501 web site:

A walkout is a form of nonviolent noncooperation. That sounds academic, but the idea is that modern power depends on people showing up, complying, producing, and buying as if everything is fine. Noncooperation is what it looks like when people stop doing that together, on purpose, without violence.

 Because the Better Half and I are aware that our adult son is deeply concerned about what's been going on, and going wrong, in the world and this country, and not just because several of the regime's attacks may affect and reduce the supports he relies on as a person with disabilities, I started to look for ways he might be able to participate in the Walkout from his wheelchair. In the process of poking around the internet, I came across a book that may be relevant to him. Here's a link to the Kirkus review of Disability Visibility, Alice Wong, editor. It may be relevant to some of you in these troubled times since "The editor notes that, according to the most recent U.S. census, 20% of citizens in the country live with a disability."

Our troubled times are making me think about the history I learned in school about the capitalists siccing their hired guns (Pinkertons) on union organizers, much like ICE attacks on the persons in Minnesota and the rest of US. That made me think of today's "poem," the lyrics of a song by Pete Seeger, who's been known to speak truth to power a number of times.

Which Side Are You On 

[Verse 1]
Come all of you good workers
Good news to you I'll tell
Of how the good ol' union
Has come in here to dwell

[Chorus]
Which side are you on?
Which side are you on?

[Verse 2]
My daddy was a miner
And I'm a miner's son
And I'll stick with the union
'Til every battle's won

[Chorus]
Which side are you on?
Which side are you on?

[Verse 3]
They say in Harlan County
There are no neutrals there
You'll either be a union man
Or a thug for J. H. Blair

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[Chorus]
Which side are you on?
Which side are you on?

[Verse 4]
Oh, workers can you stand it?
Oh, tell me how you can
Will you be a lousy scab
Or will you be a man?

[Chorus]
Which side are you on?
Which side are you on?

[Verse 5]
Don't scab for the bosses
Don't listen to their lies
Us poor folks haven't got a chance
Unless we organize

[Chorus]
Which side are you on?
Which side are you on?
Which side are you on?
Which side are you on?

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