Q Toon: Symbolic Gesture

Last week, Procter and Gamble, the parent company of the makers of Always sanitary pads, yielded to protests from transgender and non-gender-conforming people and promised to remove the "Venus" symbol (♀) from their packaging.

Hormone treatments prevent menstruation in many transgender men, but not all; others do not or cannot take the treatments for one reason or another. As for non-binary and gender-fluid (oh, let's avoid that terminology for the moment) people, some dictates of biology simply do not pay attention to what goes on inside one's head.

If one is embarrassed purchasing tampons or pads — let alone calling them by their name — at least there needn't be a reminder of one's "dead gender" every time one opens the box.

Professionally outraged anti-LGBTQ group "One Million Moms" might have been expected to condemn Procter & Gamble's latest move, except that they had already fired their shots last spring over P&G commercials for Head & Shoulders and Gillette. The shampoo commercial featured a girl meeting her female date at prom; the razor commercial showed a father teaching his transgender son how to shave.

The disappearance of the ♀ from Always packaging has so far barely raised a hackle in the Million Moms neck of the woods. It isn't as if those Moms were likely to be confused about the purpose of the product, whatever it's called and even if the packaging were covered with ⚧s.

And by the way, to anyone still waiting for Mom or Dad to sit them down for the Birds And Bees discussion: the "mens" part of "menstruation" comes from the Latin word for "month" and has nothing to do with "men."

Certain transgender and non-gender-conforming persons notwithstanding.

This Week's Sneak Peek

A raid kills ISIS caliph Abu Bupkis Al-Baghdaddio in Syria, so Trump gives a self-congratulatory address to the nation, stages an operations room photo, gets booed at the World Series Game V — and I'm drawing about Procter & Gamble?

Sure looks like it.

1919's Rash of Lynching

Mercurial President Donald Trump brought up the subject of lynching earlier this week, so Sweptback Saturday takes the occasion to travel just slightly over a century into history to a time when lynching was running rampant in the U.S.

The Chicago race riots that we discussed here in August were just one episode out of many that would lead to a resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan. The "Red Summer" continued well into the fall; the entire nation would be shocked by a mob riot in Omaha, Nebraska, on Sunday, September 28.

"Held Up!" by John H. Cassel in New York Evening World,  September 30, 1919

A white mob set fire to the Douglas County Courthouse and hanged Mayor Edward Smith from traffic light, demanding that he release to them one William Brown, a black man accused of attacking a white woman. Authorities released some hundred or so prisoners being held at the four-story courthouse onto the roof. According to some accounts, the mob pushed past Sheriff Clark and seized Brown in a corridor; Clark's own account to the press was that other prisoners pushed Brown off the roof into the mob below.

"Dawn in Omaha" by Daniel Fitzpatrick in St. Louis Post-Dispatch, October, 1919

Mayor Smith ended up in the hospital, and Brown ended up in the morgue, shot twice, hanged, and burned. (There are photographs, if you can stomach them, but I will neither include nor link to them here.) Army units under General Leonard Wood were sent to Omaha to restore order, effecting an undeclared martial law over the next two weeks.

But the most deadly riot of the Red Summer was in Elaine, Arkansas two days after the Omaha lynching, when whites panicked over a rumor that blacks were planning an armed insurrection. As many as 237 African-American residents of the small town may have been killed by the white mob. As a further injustice, 72 African-Americans were tried and convicted of murder, and twelve of them sentenced to death.

"Just a Nightmare" by Claude Shafer in Cincinnati Post,  October, 1919

What strikes me about the editorial cartoons I came across about these race riots and lynchings is that so many of them completely overlook the racial component central to the violence. Even John Cassel, whose cartoons praising African-American soldiers I've pointed out before, ignores the issue of race in his cartoon about the Omaha riot.

To some extent, that is because there were at the same time a number of workers' strikes beset by violence (largely blamed on the strikers, although the brutal tactics of law enforcement public and private certainly contributed to that mayhem). And the issues overlap: the official inquiry into the Elaine lynchings admitted no African-American testimony, but historians agree that there was no plot of armed revolt. Rather, black sharecroppers were attempting to organize union-style for more equitable terms from their white landowners. Elsewhere, employers brought in African-Americans as "scab" laborers during labor strikes, only exacerbating racial animosity.

Conflating a host of issues, Sidney Greene, below, cites "mob maniacs" as just the bottom-most of many things which might embarrass the U.S. in front of visiting royalty.

"Hide These 'Sights' from the Belgian King" by Sidney Greene in New York Evening Telegram, October 3, 1919

Not surprisingly, the one cartoon I've found specifying race as its topic was by an African-American cartoonist, Leslie Rogers of the Chicago Defender.

"Sightseeing" by Leslie Rogers in Chicago Defender, October, 1919

For what it's worth, not every lynch mob resulted in mass murder. On Hallowe'en, hundreds of white citizens of Corbin, Kentucky, sparked by a report of a robbery, forced every black resident they could find in town out of their homes and into a train bound for Knoxville.

Rattling off a list of other lynchings in a October 1, 1919 editorial, the Philadelphia Public Ledger gave this mealy-mouthed sort-of condemnation of one of them:

"In Mt. Holly, N.J., there is talk of lynching a negro who attacked a white woman. If anything justifies a lynching, it is the crime with which this negro is charged. But nothing justifies a lynching. Lynching may be too good for the criminal. It is the damnable effect that it has on the mob and the reaction on the country at large that make it wholly bad."

"Oh, Little Brother" by Gaar Williams in Indianapolis News, October, 1919

Sen. John Sharp Williams (D-MS) leapt to the defense of the lynch mobs, harrumphing,

"In all the debates we have had here over these race disturbances, no mention has been made of the fact that they had, in most instances, their inception in attempts by negro men to violate white women. I will go as far as any man along the path of peace, and I will arbitrate any dispute which I think can be settled by peaceful means, but when it comes to a man regardless of his color, violating women, I surrender him to the first crowd."

As shocking as Senator Williams's statement is today, I suspect that the "attempts by negro men to violate white women" that incensed him and his mobs would elicit from even the most hypersensitive of today's #MeToo warriors a hesitant "Is that all?"

"At the Other End of the Lynchers' Rope" by J. N. "Ding" Darling in New York Tribune, October 3, 1919

Consider also that, as a later grand jury in the Omaha case found, "Several reported assaults on white women had actually been perpetrated by whites in blackface," charging that figures in organized crime "premeditated and planned" the rioting. Their evidence included police reports that at least one white rioter was arrested wearing blackface.

Yet no white person was ever found guilty of participation in the riot.

Q Toon: Speaking of a Brexit

Chick-Fil-A opened its first shoppe in the United Kingdom earlier this month, but after protests over the company's support of antigay organizations and causes, the Oracle Mall where the restaurant is located shan't be renewing Chick-Fil-A's lease when it expires in April.

Straining credulity, the chicken chain claims that it never intended to extend the lease of its Reading restaurant beyond six months anyway. Opening a six-month pop-up seems a bizarre business model; one wonders how it's supposed to work. Perhaps after Reading, they open for six months out of a lorry in Ipswich, then for six months in a changing tent in Brighton, followed by six months in a shed in Hucknall Torkard.

✍

How to set a cartoon in England? A very wise cartoonist once counseled me that the best approach is to go there. Unfortunately, my only time in Blighty was an hour spent entirely in Heathrow Airport, which didn't strike me as a workable setting for this cartoon.

My view of England

So I set to imagining a British street scene. Mailbox? Check. Callbox? Check. Zebra crossing? Check. Extraneous "u" between the "o" and the "r"? Check. Double-decker bus? Must be behind the building.

But who can I cast in this cartoon? Characters from Monty Python, Fawlty Towers, Benny Hill, Absolutely Fabulous, or Dr. Who might work; but not Mr. Bean (doesn't speak) or Downton Abbey (would never be walking in this neighbourhood).

Since this is a cartoon, however, I decided to feature British cartoon characters. It was either Andy Capp or resurrecting the cast of the cartoons of Carl Giles (1916-1995) of the Daily Express. Opting for the latter makes for an obscure reference on this side of the pond to be sure, and perhaps to the current generation on the other side of it as well.

These are two members of the "Giles family," frequently recurring characters in his post-war cartoons. Grandma Giles is thought to be patterned after Giles himself (there is some resemblance); she appears here with her granddaughter-in-law Vera.

Now, to be a proper homage to Giles, I should have tossed in some naughty detail just to see if I could get it past my editors.

This Weex Sneek Peek

I don't have a secret Twitter account.

But if I did, its handle would be Houston O'Howe.

EnviroStewardship: For the Birds

My father writes a monthly column on caring for the environment for the newsletter at his church. The following is the November column by John Berge, PhD.

Last month, I discussed the ELCA’s Social Statement, "Caring for Creation: Vision, Hope and Justice," which lists principles of solidarity, sufficiency and sustainability in very general terms. Recent information on the severe decline in the bird population of North America would suggest we are not doing a very good job in caring for the avian portion of creation. The Bible tells us that God notes the death of a single sparrow, and yet there are nearly three billion fewer birds now in North America than there were in 1970.

The tendency has been for us to look at the decline or recovery of individual species rather than the overall picture. As ecologist Hillary Young of the University of California, Santa Barbara was quoted in Science News, “Individual birds play an important role in ecosystems, including pollinating plants, dispersing seeds and controlling pests. Often it’s the common, abundant birds that keep these ecosystems ticking.”

Three major sources of this decline are generally blamed for the die off, all of which we as individuals can make a significant contribution to reducing. There are differences of opinion on the order of these three, so this list is not intended to say which is worse.

Predation by cats is certainly one of the top three — and possibly the top — that we can influence. Our pet cats do not have to be put out every night to “do their thing”; cats will quite easily adapt to a litter box. If every cat owner would make sure their cats are never outside unsupervised, we could greatly reduce this predation.

Another one of the top three is collision with windows. We used to have a few such incidences at our house every year until I put some of those self sticking decals on the windows near the bird feeders. Bird fatalities due to their seeing their reflection or a possible route to the other side dropped to zero. I am sure that most of these fatalities involve high rise buildings and migrating birds, but our experience would say that single family homes, by their sheer number, also contribute.

The third top cause is loss of habitat. We can blame farmers for planting right up to the edge of the field rather than leaving wild strips and trees along those edges, but our yards can be designed for birds or not. The robin is one of the few birds that really appreciate the large expanse of lawns, especially if we don’t kill off the worms with excessive chemicals and pesticides. Plants with seeds and fruits that the birds like, trees and shrubs for protection and nesting can improve their habitat as well as ours.

An interesting study recently showed that small, non-lethal doses of an insecticide used on seeds and nursery plants (a neonicotinoid) caused weight loss and delayed the migration of these birds by several days, enough to put them at a disadvantage in breeding and possibly out of sync with their food supply. The most  given to each bird was only one tenth of that used to coat an individual corn seed.

The effect of climate change on bird populations is still to be determined. The Audubon Society has reported that 389 North American bird species are vulnerable to extinction from climate change. So all our efforts to reduce green house gas emissions are helpful to the birds.

A speaker I heard the other night on wind power admitted that birds and bats are susceptible to collisions with rotating turbine blades. (The tips can be going over 150 miles per hour.) But his company can install a device to temporarily stop the turbines when migrating birds are detected approaching by radar. Good stewardship from an industrial giant.

Out of Their League

It has been almost a month since Swipeback Saturday checked in on events of 100 years ago, so let's see how the Republican campaign to scuttle the League of Nations was going, shall we?

A Senate vote to scrap the Treaty of Versailles over its granting of China's Shantung peninsula to Japan failed by at 55 to 45 vote. The Republicans' next objection to the League of Nations was that Great Britain would get six votes to the United States' one.

"The Acid Test of Americanism" by John McCutcheon in Chicago Tribune, October 14, 1919

Senator Hiram Johnson (R-CA) introduced an amendment to ratification of the Treaty of Versailles, insisting that Great Britain, including all its colonies and dominions from Canada to Australia, get only one vote. The Republican Chicago Tribune editorialized:

"The British empire is a nation and acts as such, but it seeks to enter the league as six different nations. We might just as reasonably present a claim for a vote for each state in the American union."

"Let's Make It Seven" by Gustavo Bronstrup in San Francisco Chronicle, Oct., 1919

The British Empire would be the only member of the League of nations to enjoy separate membership for its dominions: the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada,  India, New Zealand, and South Africa. French, Portugese, Spanish and Belgian colonies in Asia and Africa were not members separately from their colonial overlords — indeed, independent Liberia was the one and only non-British African country in the League until Abyssinia (modern day Ethiopia and Eritrea) joined in 1923.

Regarding Bronstrup's cartoon above, Persia (modern-day Iran) was officially neutral during the war, but British and Ottoman forces fought for control of western Persia's oilfields. The Treaty of Versailles authorized British troops to take control of the region, where they remained until 1921. Britain established a "protectorate" and had a hand in helping Reza Shah Pahlavi overthrow Ahmad Shah Qajar in the coup d'état of that year.

"Getting Some Testimonials" by Albert Reid in Rutland Herald (?), ca. Oct., 1919

Meanwhile, President Wilson was sidelined by a serious stroke. That he was in poor health was well and widely known, even if the full extent of his condition was not public knowledge. Editorial cartoonists, for their part, continued to draw him making the case for the League — as well they might in the absence of any other prominent administration or congressional official stepping forward to hoist the president's standard.

"The Child Who Wanted to Play By Himself" by L. Ravenhall (?) in Punch, ca. Oct., 1919

Wilson was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in October, 1919 in recognition of his efforts to establish the League. He was, of course, not able to accept the prize until a year later.

"Hope" by W. Clyde Spencer in Omaha World-Herald, ca. Oct., 1919

So what was Germany making of this? Whether the U.S. ratified the peace treaty or not, there was no chance of the European victors of the Great War easing up the treaty's punitive measures toward the vanquished Central Powers.

If U.S. cartoonists were circumspect regarding the president's medical condition, however, at least one German cartoonist wasn't above a little schadenfreude.

"Der Nervenchoc Wilsons" by Arthur Johnson in Kladderadatsch, Berlin, October 12, 1919

(The reference being to Wilson's Fourteen Points.)

"Ding" Darling's cartoon mashing together ratification of the peace treaty and the beginning of the 1920 presidential campaign season, depicts Wilson as an active player, even though he had withdrawn from the race earlier in the year.

"They Do Say Game Is Unusually Plentiful This Year" by J. "Ding" Darling in New York Tribune, October 13, 1919

Sen. Hiram Johnson, whom we mentioned above, also appears in this cartoon as the one menacing-looking waterfowl attacking the GOP elephant. It's worth taking a moment to remember his career: he had been Teddy Roosevelt's running mate on the Progressive ticket in 1912, and was actively seeking the 1920 Republican nomination. He would be disappointed by Republicans who had backed the Bull Moose ticket; they coalesced around General Leonard Wood (one of the ducks in the water with Pershing and Hoover) instead. He could have had the Progressive Party's nomination for the asking, but he decided he wasn't interested.

He would go on to a lengthy career in the Senate, always in opposition to the U.S. getting involved in international affairs, including World War II. He died on the very day that the U.S. dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima.

Toon: As If There Had Been Any Doubt

The Corrupt Trump Administration hit the fan yesterday.

Energy Secretary Rick Perry announced his resignation. Mikes Pence and Pompeo scuttled off to Turkey to ratify Erdoǧan's ethnic cleansing of Kurdish Syria. Trump dealt himself a G-7 summit at his own $800-a-day Florida golf resort. And Acting White House Chief of Staff Slash Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney stood before the Washington press corps and admitted that the administration had demanded that the Ukrainian government dish up some dirt on Joe and Hunter Biden before it would release aid authorized by Congress.

"We do that all the time in foreign policy.... I have news for everybody. Get over it. There's going to be political influence in foreign policy.... That is going to happen. Elections have consequences. Foreign policy is going to change from the Obama administration to the Trump administration."

In arguing that there was no difference between Obama administration concern that aid to Ukraine not fatten the pocketbooks of Ukrainian officials and letting the Trump reelection campaign's opposition research squad run foreign policy, Mulvaney was admitting the quid pro quo that the Corrupt Trump Administration had up to then denied.

AWHCoSSOoM&BD Mulvaney has since been desperate to let us know that he didn't mean what he said, which hardly comes as a surprise. It's very difficult for the apparatchiks to keep their lies straight when the guy at the top can't get his lies straight, either.

Q Toon: LGBTQ Town Hall Highlights

 

CNN hosted a town hall event last week in which Democratic presidential candidates appeared on stage one by one to take questions from audience members and CNN news anchors.

Senator Elizabeth Warren had the viral moment of the evening, answering an audience member's question about how to respond to someone who believes in defining marriage as exclusively one man to one woman. "Well, I'm going to assume it's a guy who said that," she said. "And I'm going to say then just marry one woman, I'm cool with that — assuming you can find one."

Former Congressman Beto O'Rourke gave a firm answer to a question, sidestepped by Senator Cory Booker earlier in the event, about tax exempt status for religious institutions that oppose marriage equality:

"There can be no reward, no benefit, no tax break for anyone or any institution, any organization in America that denies the full human rights or the full civil rights of every single one of us, and so as president, we are going to make that a priority and we are going to stop those who are infringing upon the human rights of our fellow Americans.”

It was one of many moments of the evening that have been held up as examples of thumbing the party's nose at Middle America and kowtowing to the Gay Mafia.

Senator Kamala Harris echoed the new practice of introducing onesself by adding "My pronouns are she, her and hers," and I really can't fault her for that. It was host Chris Cuomo who stuck his foot in his mouth by quipping "Mine, too." (He has since apologized.)

Former Vice President Joe Biden should hardly have to prove his bonas fides on the issue of marriage equality; most of us remember him getting out ahead of the rest of the Obama administration in advocating the cause. Uncle Joe made a point of demonstrating how comfortable he is palling with The Gays, complimenting a questioner about his outfit, and joking about "coming out" by putting his arm around host Anderson Cooper. In this #metoo era, he probably would have caught hell if those had been a female questioner or Dana Bash.

Frankly, and predictably, none of the candidates said anything that put any daylight between themselves and the mainstream LGBTQ community at large. O'Rourke and Mayor Pete Buttigieg handled protesters with seriousness and respect, as did hosts Cooper and Don Lemon. Warren thoroughly disavowed her 2012 statement opposing taxpayer funding of gender reassignment surgery for prison inmates.

I should note that the Saturday Night Live parody of the forum did a serious disservice to Senator Cory Booker. I've read the 1992 op-ed he wrote for the Stanford Daily, which the SNL sketch characterized as demeaning to gays. It most certainly is not; it is instead a full-throated apology for having ever had any antigay animus.

Finally, I must apologize for not including Julian Castro in this cartoon. Lin-Manuel Miranda's father, however, has assured me that his son is available next time I draw any cartoon about the Democratic candidates for president.

This Week's Sneak Peek

We're still here!

Viva España

I'm still readjusting to being home after two weeks in Spain, and since today is Columbus Day and I started the week with a nod to Indigenous Peoples' Day, Snapback Saturday kicks off with a couple of holiday photos.

The statue of Christopher Columbus in Barcelona points not to the New World, but to Africa. That's the direction of the harbor there; to point toward the Americas, he'd have to point across the whole Iberian peninsula.

Columbus's tomb is in Seville Cathedral, majestically held above everyone's heads by this quartet of giant kings. The thing is, there's hardly any Christopher Columbus in there — just a few ounces of his remains.

Columbus died in the Spanish city of Valladolid in 1506 and was buried there until his son Diego decided to have his daddy moved to Seville. Fifty years after Christopher Columbus originally landed somewhere in the Bahamas, someone decided to dig him up again and ship him off to the Cathedral of Santa Maria la Menor in Santo Domingo in what is now the Dominican Republic.

There he rested until the French took over Hispaniola in 1795, whereupon his remains got to spend the next century in Cuba. He was sent packing yet again when the U.S. wrested Cuba from Spanish control in the Spanish-American War, and has been in that ornate tomb in Seville ever since.

Unless he's still in the Dominican Republic. Somebody found a box of bones in a box inscribed "El ilustre y excelente hombre, Don Colón, Almirante del Mar del Océano," which appeared to be a reference to Christopher Columbus; so they built a Columbus Lighthouse tomb for him there. Of course, Diego Columbus was also Almirante del Mar del Océano, so maybe that's a box of Junior's bones.

But this is supposed to be a blog about editorial cartoons, so I've got this one to share with you. The Casa Natal de Picasso in Málaga has a book open to this cartoon in a display case. "The Fat and the Skinny," appearing in El Pais de la Olla ("Land of the Saucepan") isn't a work by Picasso or of his father, whose paintings outnumber those of his more famous son in this museum. The cartoon dates from 1882 or '83 and satirizes the insensitivity of Málaga politicians to the plight of the poor.

This magazine cover, however, features a Pablo Picasso sketch on the cover of a Paris magazine among the master's artifacts.

From the sublime to the ridiculous: I have seldom had an excuse to draw editorial cartoons about Spanish politics. The above cartoon from 2008 mocks Queen Sofía for announcing her opposition to marriage equality. Queen Consort since the 2014 abdication of her husband, King Juan Carlos I, her opinion of marriage equality carries even less weight today than it did then.

The Spanish government legalized same-sex marriage in 2005, becoming only the third country in the world to do so (after Netherlands and Belgium). The cause was one of the very first priorities of the Socialist Party government of Prime Minister José Ruíz Rodríguez Zapatero, elected the previous year, and earned the support of 66% of the Spanish electorate over vociferous opposition from the Vatican.

Meanwhile, here in the U.S., marriage equality was the law of the land only in Massachusetts, whereas thirteen other states had passed referenda to amend their constitutions to define marriage as an exclusively different-sex privilege.

When I took a college class in Spanish history, the overarching theme was that violent resistance to progress has always won out since the days of Ferdinand and Isabella. Granted, I took that course a few short years after the death of Generalissimo Francisco Franco, but the prospect of Spain taking the lead in marriage equality is truly a stunning development in historical context.

Spain's Constitutional Court upheld marriage equality in 2012, which has remained unchallenged ever since.

Q Toon: About that U.N. Speech

Since I just got back home from a two-week vacation last weekend, I've got some catching up to do.

I don't know what the coverage of Donald Trump's speech at the United Nations on September 24 was like here in the states; in the reports I saw in Spain, whatever he said was overshadowed by Greta Thunberg's glare as he walked past her in the foyer.

I got the impression from European media that the topic du jour was climate change, but Trump (or his speech writers) never got the memo. Instead, he rattled on about what a great leader he is. Then he slipped in the sentence in panel one of this week's cartoon.

This idea of convincing antigay regimes around the world to stop persecuting their LGBTQ+ citizens has been credited to Trump's Ambassador to Germany, Ric Grenell. That Trump has taken up the cause while advocating against LGBTQ+ rights before our Supreme Court has baffled many observers.

Since the United Nations hadn't packed the room with knuckle-dragging maniacs from Trump campaign rallies, the audience failed to hoot and holler agreement with Mr. Stable Genius's great and unmatched wisdom. If he had had a more receptive audience, I have no doubt that Trump would have veered off his off-topic speech and let his id run wild and perhaps revealed that the true motivation behind his gay rights initiative had nothing whatsoever to do with concern for oppressed LGBTQ+ folks around the world.

This Week's Sneak Peek

Can it be that I am giving the Corrupt Trump Administration credit for a positive policy position?

Tune in later this week for the rest of the cartoon.

The Spearfishing Issue

I've just returned home from a two-week vacation in Spain, which is why Spearback Saturday falls on a Sunday this week. It also explains why my last two cartoons were curiously divorced from current events: they were drawn back when only moderate amounts of political shit were hitting the fan.

So anyway. In commemoration of Indigenous Americans Day this week, here are some of my cartoons about a local controversy coming to a head thirty years ago: spear fishing by members of the Ojibwe (Chippewa) Nation.

in the Journal Times, Racine, Wisconsin, May 1989

When the Ojibwe signed treaties with the United States federal government ceding away their land in 1837 and 1842, those treaties guaranteed the Ojibwes' continued right to hunt, fish, and gather wild rice and maple sap on those lands. In 1854, however, the state of Wisconsin began regulating hunting and fishing by both immigrant and Native Americans here. Ignoring federal precedent, the Wisconsin Supreme Court decided in 1908 that since those treaties signed before Wisconsin became a state in 1848, Wisconsin was not bound by either one.

in Journal Times, Racine, Wis., March 18, 1988. Note: The Ojibwe did not wear such headdresses.

In 1940, the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled that the Ojibwe were free to fish and hunt as they pleased, but only on their reservation. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1983 that Wisconsin had to abide by U.S. treaties with the Ojibwe and could not regulate their hunting and fishing rights on or off the reservation.

in NorthCountry Journal, Poynette, Wis., August, 1987

Groups calling themselves Protect Americans' Rights and Resources (PARR) and the more militant Stop Treaty Abuse (STA), fancying that the Ojibwe weren't leaving any fish for paleface sportsmen, protested against the Ojibwe practice of springtime spearfishing at night. Traditionally, the Ojibwe had used torches to attract walleye and other fish; the modern-day Ojibwe used flashlights.

Large crowds gathered at boat landings to shout obscenities and ethnic slurs, and to hurl rocks and bottles at Ojibwe fishermen. In some cases, shots were fired; some whites used large motor boats to capsize Ojibwe boats in their wake. 1989 would be the peak year for violent incidents.

in UW-M Post, Milwaukee, Wis., October 3, 1989

Republican Tommy Thompson had campaigned for Governor of Wisconsin in 1986 promising to abrogate Ojibwe Treaty rights; Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-WI; just announced his retirement this year) introduced legislation in Congress toward the same end. Neither the courts, congressional leadership, nor the Bush administration were open to the idea.

in Journal Times, Racine, Wis., November 8, 1989

Thirty years later, Ojibwe spearfishing continues. Leaders of the anti-spearfishing groups grouse that the opening day of hook-and-line season ain't what it used to be, but overall, the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources finds PARR-STA fears not to be supported by the facts.

“What we have seen over the last 20 years is that angler-catch rates, the number of walleye caught per hour fishing, have been stable,” said Joseph Hennessy, the DNR’s treaty fishing coordinator. “People have been as successful as they ever have been. Walleye populations remain strong in lakes with good natural reproduction.”

Q Toon: Take Your Boyfriend to Work Day

I'm a little early for National Coming Out Day, which will really suck if I can't come up with something to draw about next week.

National Coming Out Day (NCOD) is October 11. Founded in 1988, the only significance of the date is that it was when the National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights was held the year before.

31 years of emboldening LGs and eventually BTQs to come out has changed the landscape. By now, everyone knows that they know at least one LGBTQ person, probably including a relative, and that makes it hard for the antigay community to sell antigay hysteria.

So come out. The water's fine. You don't need to drape yourself in a rainbow flag 24/7 if that's not your style, but come out. The little things do count.

Even having your beau's picture on the desk in your home office.