Hannah is following the protests tonight: If you’re off the street for some reason, follow. At 5 p.m. today, the Women’s March gathers downtown at the Federal Building, Rise Up 4 Abortion Rights hits Westlake, and Shout Your Abortion organizers will gather at Yesler Terrace Park. The downtown events will attract the most people.
HUGE crowd outside Federal Building in response to Supreme Court ruling pic.twitter.com/H6UuvX24GP
— Hannah Krieg (@hannahkrieg) June 25, 2022
Nine abortion bans now fully in effect: The New York Times’ tracker shows that “7.2 million women of childbearing age” in the Midwest and South no longer have access to abortion. Twelve more states will soon ban or restrict the treatment, affecting an estimated 20.1 million women. At the end of it all, only 21 states (including DC) will provide abortion care to the nation.
Clinics are closing across the country: Tears outside an abortion clinic in Arkansas. Anger at a clinic in New Orleans. The BBC has the details.
The DOJ says states cannot ban the abortion pill: Attorney General Merrick Garland said the FDA has approved mifepristone so states can’t remove it from shelves, although many have already tried it, according to Axios. Need a pill? Find it here.
Bartenders, unite!
One day, bowls of condoms started appearing in every gay bar – in the toilets, in the locker room, right there on the bar. Bowls of Plan B, Mifepristone, and Misoprostol should begin to appear in each straight bar.
— Dan Savage (@fakedansavage) June 24, 2022
Washington’s response to the end of federal abortion protections: State and local leaders have pledged to fund abortions at the city and county level. Washington, Oregon and California have formed a small club to protect access to abortion. Seattle City Councilman Kshama Sawant has proposed legislation to make Seattle a “sanctuary city” for abortion doctors and people seeking their services. Hannah has the full rundown here.
Just a reminder to donate to the North West Abortion Access Fund: If you can swing it, here’s the link.
In 2021, @nwaafund helped cover travel costs for 321 people to have abortions. By May of this year, they had already supported 195 people with travel allowances, including from states as far apart as Texas.
—Casey Parks (@caseyparks) June 24, 2022
Local newspapers silenced journalists to speak out on court decisions that have a direct impact on their lives and livelihoods. Today, the Seattle Times, Gannett and other media companies distributed emails to staff reminding them not to appear to take a position on the “political” issue of monsters in robes granting governors the right to force people to give birth. These emails tend not to go out whenever reporters talk openly about Trump’s election lies, the deaths of politicians like John McCain or Bob Dole, the war in Ukraine, or any political issue. American foreigners in general. Nor do they deploy when those same reporters publish weak-source stories that assume public safety comes only from the cops — the only government agency that has never lied, except of course the military. . The selective enforcement of these rules belies the void of the “objectivity” standard that these newspapers seek to enforce, and seems particularly infuriating in everyday today.
The @seattletimes policy reminder that was sent today: https://t.co/zgQymrI4wW
— Hanaa’ Tameez (@HanaaTameez) June 24, 2022
If you work for one of these “objective” outlets, know your rights:
KNOW YOUR RIGHTS pic.twitter.com/r1bHSuiwuA
— Rebekah Sanders 🌵 (@RebekahLSanders) June 24, 2022
Democrats had at least a month, if not years, to prepare for the end of Deer, and here they are reading poems:
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi reads a poem in reaction to SCOTUS’s quashing of Roe v. Wade. pic.twitter.com/tEFDbgR04M
— The recount (@therecount) June 24, 2022
And chanting “God Bless America” on the steps of the Capitol as protesters vent their righteous rage:
As protesters can be heard in the back chanting outside SCOTUS, House Democrats chant ‘God Bless America’. pic.twitter.com/MjW0cSZ6nY
— Farnoush Amiri (@FarnoushAmiri) June 24, 2022
And tell people to vote louder: While it’s true that the only way to fix this mess is to create large pro-choice majorities in the U.S. House and Senate — majorities that don’t currently exist — those same Democrats have seen democracy s erode in their hands over the past decade and haven’t done anything to stop it.
It is worth saying that the idea that this will be determined by the democratic process is a cruel joke since this Court has also systematically dismantled the federal protection of the right to vote and the fair representation of state lawmakers who seek to limit both. https://t.co/oOJhAGVRIF
— b-boy bouiebaisse (@jbouie) June 24, 2022
It should be like this every day:
The scene at the Supreme Court this afternoon pic.twitter.com/DvUQbCc51s
— Kirsten Appleton (@kirstenappleton) June 24, 2022
HOWEVER, Happy Pride: If you want to have fun this weekend, do what Jas and Matt tell you to do.
Happy Gay City Pridewho has a new home on Capitol Hill, according to the neighborhood blawg.
Good Heat Notice: As Charles mentioned in AM, the National Weather Service warns of high temperatures from noon Saturday through noon Sunday. “Sustained hot temperatures will pose ‘moderate risk of heat-related illness’ KING 5 reports. A gallon of water and plenty of shade in the afternoon should put that risk to bed, which shouldn’t be lacking this weekend.
If it gets hotter than that, the county will have a plan…eventually: The county’s public health department is still working on a plan to prevent deaths from extreme heat like the one we experienced last summer. According by KIRO Brief overview, so far the agency has updated some protocols and translated useful information into a bunch of different languages.
It might be worth walking to the water at some point this weekend: Residents of West Seattle can expect to see a whole slew of schooners passing through Alki late Saturday morning. These boats will sail as part of the Captain Reynaud International Schooner Race, which will take place over the next three days, according to the West Seattle Blog.
Pee Poems at Elliott Bay Book Company tonight at 7 p.m.: Fortunately (or unfortunately), by Lao Yang Pee Poems (Circumference Books) has less to do with golden showers and more with the existential predicament writers face in countries that deny freedom to large swathes of their populations. “Until we secure our rights, we cannot practice art, cannot live with art, cannot think artistically or observe this world with an artistic eye,” the Chinese poet said. contemporary during an interview after protesting the disappearance of a music store he ran. Beijing for many years. His laconic, meditative, funny, often profound “pee poems” emerge from this degraded state. “When even the right to cry is denied / Incontinence is one of the few remaining freedoms / See leaders erect walls in the eyes of the people / I reinvent the act of pissing,” he wrote in the opening. from the collection, “Pissing Poems: 36 verses.”
The poets who transported Yang to the English-speaking world, Joshua Edwards and Lynn Xu will read his poems at Elliott Bay Book Company tonight at 7 p.m.. A great way to re-channel your demonstrative energies, in my opinion. Xu will read an excerpt from his new book from Wave Books in Seattle/New York: And these heaps of ash this cantilevered vase of moonlight. Edwards will also read excerpts from his new book, The Double Lamp of Solitude, out now from Rising Tide Projects. Xu is a visionary, and a first read of her book feels like watching a mother-daughter super-being deliver a dream baby at the center of multiple universes at once. Edwards is a pilgrim through and through, and his meditative works include “Five Plans for Walking Around a Mountain,” a series of prose poems and photos from when he hiked the Wonderland Trail from Mount Rainier to Fall 2018. The best poem in the book for my money is “The Lamp of Belief”.
Let’s end PM on a louder note: