Toon: Followed

The stable genius in the White House insists that kids pile onto the bus and crowd into the classroom this fall, whether or not this COVID-19 thing happens to be ravaging through their community.

What could possibly go wrong?

Q Toon: Left Unsaid

Nearly all LGBTQ Pride festivals were canceled in June because of the COVID-19 pandemic; but in the wake of George Floyd's murder and subsequent protests, many local LGBTQ groups reorganized their pride parades into protests in support of the Black Lives Matter movement.

"Black Trans Lives Matter" protesters have figured prominently among the LGBTQ contingent. Many LGBTQ communities have been shaken by murders of transgender persons — 18 so far this year — and those victims are disproportionately Black.

Transgender and gender non-conforming people face a heightened risk of fatal violence, and Black transgender women are especially vulnerable because of a "a toxic mix of transphobia, racism and misogyny," according to the Human Rights Campaign. Most transgender people who are killed are victims of gun violence, according to an analysis by research and advocacy group Everytown for Gun Safety.

Black transgender persons who wind up in the criminal justice system face discrimination, harsh treatment and worse, often being incarcerated according to their dead gender or else put in solitary confinement. They complain of not having their complaints taken seriously, either when they report a crime, or when they are behind bars.

In spite of this, Black transgender persons have long been overlooked by the White LGBTQ community and shunned by Black justice advocates. But things seem to be different this year.

Take, for example, a recent protest march in Raleigh, North Carolina:

“In many ways, for the LGBTQ community, this is going back to our roots,” said Kendra Johnson, executive director of Equality North Carolina, which has pushed for decades for rights and protections for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer people. ...
Johnson sees it as only natural to join forces, because of the overlap of issues but also the layering of identities that lead to multiple forms of discrimination. Johnson is a Black lesbian and says she has experienced prejudice based on her race, her gender and her sexual orientation.
“We’ve been creating space where we try to look at how multiple oppressions affect our lives, and the LGBTQ community is a part of every community,” she said. “And we can’t do our work without also considering how race plays a role in the lives of people in our community.”
...
[Kerwin] Pittman, who helped organize the Raleigh Demands Justice coalition to help push for police reform, said he has learned recently that LGBTQ people of all races continue to be victims of police harassment.
“As a straight Black male, I wanted other straight Black males to see that it’s OK to support these individuals fighting against police brutality,” he said.
Pittman, who plans to attend UNC Greensboro in the fall, said he helped organize the first protest in Raleigh that followed Floyd’s killing. While his group is not affiliated with the national Black Lives Matter organization, he said he wanted to give everyone — Blacks, LGBTQ people and allies of all races and ethnicity — a chance to show they agree with the sentiment that Black lives matter.
“When it comes to brutality, and especially police brutality, we are all the same,” Pittman said. “If you are LGBTQ and injustice is being done to you, I’m going to be there to push as hard for you as if you are someone who is straight. Because at the end of the day, I’m a part of your community and you’re a part of mine.
“When we say Black lives matter, we’re not saying only straight Black lives matter. We’re saying Black lives matter.”

This Week's Sneak Peek

We're still in the world of protests this week. White cartoonists putting words in the mouths of black characters put themselves in peril — one might even end up getting a witch's curse put on one's manhood — so I'm stocking up on witches bane, horseshoes and dream catchers.

Census Sensibility

Happy Fourth of July, everyone! The parades and fireworks may be subdued or scattered this year, so step back with us to the thrilling days of yesteryear to see what the U.S. was like a century ago.

"Hold Tight, Feller" by Archibald Chapin in St. Louis Star, ca. February, 1920

1920 was a year for the decennial census, mandated by the Constitution as part of keeping our Congress as representative of the people as possible. Crowded onto Archibald Chapin's sled are the seven most populous cities in the United States, none of which were in the west (Los Angeles came in tenth), or the south (unless you count Chapin's hometown of St. Louis, sixth).

"Census Reports" by John T. McCutcheon in Chicago Tribune, April 18, 1920

The results of the 1920 census revealed a major and continuing shift of the population of the United States from rural to urban areas. Cities' growth came from rural-to-urban migration as well as from overseas immigration, the newcomers attracted by the jobs in the industrial sector. The most striking example was automobile maker Detroit, whose population had doubled since 1910.

Beginning in 1910, the minimum population threshold to be categorized as an urban place was set at 2,500. 'Urban' was defined as including all territory, persons, and housing units within an incorporated area that met the population threshold. The 1920 census marked the first time in which over 50 percent of the U.S. population was defined as urban.

Having just won Congressional majorities in 1918, Republicans realized that going ahead with the constitutionally required reapportionment process would increase the political influence of urban areas where Democratic machines tended to dominate. Reapportionment legislation would stall again and again as rural interests tried to devise mechanisms to blunt the impact of the population shift. Congress would not pass a reapportionment bill until 1929.

"Just Another 'Bumper Crop'..." by Leo Thiele in Sioux City Tribune, ca. June, 1920

Not being able to see that far into their future, editorial cartoonists largely ignored the political ramifications and instead worried that the decrease in farm labor in rural areas would not be able to feed increasing urban populations.

"Help" by Bob Satterfield for Newspaper Enterprise Assn., ca. June, 1920

U.S. Agriculture Department statistics do show that the number of farm workers began a gradual slide around 1920, even as the total U.S. population kept growing. There were well over 13,000 farm workers in the U.S. that year, working on somewhere around 6,500 farms. Those numbers really head downward after 1940, and are now down around 3,000 and 2,000, respectively.

"Two Viewpoints" by Burt Thomas in Detroit News, June, 1920

Detroit cartoonist Burt Thomas did take note of the mutual resentment between rural and urban citizens. His farmer sees all the benefits of prosperity going to those city slickers, while his urban laborer finds his wages depressed by the hicks in the sticks.

"How Times Have Changed for 'The Poor Working Girl'" by Leo Bushnell for Central Press Assn., May, 1920

Leo Bushnell's take on working women is pretty idealized, but it is true that urbanization and the recently ended war had opened up new roles for women. The Nineteenth Amendment was still a state short of ratification when this cartoon was drawn

"Now, John, When I Was a Young Codger..." by George W. Rehse in New York World, June/July, 1920

The industry behind the population boom in Detroit had effects nationwide, as shown in this George Rehse cartoon and the popularity of "Gasoline Alley" and its imitators.

"Improving the Scenery" by Gustavo Bronstrup in San Francisco Chronicle, July, 1920

Advertisers certainly had taken note of all those people riding around in their automobiles. Within cities, advertisements attached to or painted on the sides of buildings were common; out in the countryside, freestanding billboards proliferated as more and more people took to the roads.

The earliest recorded billboards actually date back to 1867, followed five years later by the founding of the advertisers' lobbying group, the International Bill Posters Association (since renamed the Outdoor Advertising Association of America).

While I appreciate the point he's making about uglifying the scenery, I have some qualms about resurrecting Mr. Bronstrup's cartoon because of its superfluous use of an African-American stereotype on the smokeless tobacco ad — the only face visible anywhere in the cartoon. I can't tell whether he's reflecting a common trope or making a criticism of it; but the thoughtless racism of the day would have rendered such a rude caricature completely unremarkable. Nearly all white cartoonists drew Black people in this way (John Cassel is a notable exception).

Coming around full circle, I'll close with this from Magnus Kettner:

"The Joyriders" by Magnus Kettner for Western Newspaper Union, ca. July 13, 1920

The scarf of the woman in the front seat reads "Extravagance," and I can understand why the farmer might resent her "hollering about the high cost of food stuff." If he feels the same way about the back seat passengers, "High Production" and "Shorter Hours," I guess he must be raising sour grapes.

Q Toon: Assault in the Wounds

Statues were not the only things laid low during last Tuesday's Black Lives Matter protest in Madison.

Tim Carpenter has represented Milwaukee in the state legislature since 1984. He's a progressive Democrat, openly gay, and from what I've read, reasonably well liked and respected among his peers.

Tuesday night, he started to take a video of the protests when two protesters charged at him, punching him to the ground and began kicking him in the head and ribs. After the assault, he started to walk away but collapsed and was taken to a hospital.

As it happened, Donald Berzelius Trump happened to have a Fox News town hall scheduled in Green Bay two days later, and a member of the audience asked him about the incident. Trump ... well, proceeded to be Trump.

AUDIENCE MEMBER:  Great to have you with us.  My question for you is: With all the unrest we’ve seen across the country, and right here in the state of Wisconsin last night, in our capital city —

THE PRESIDENT:  Yes.

AUDIENCE MEMBER:  — a senator was beaten.  Lady Forward was ripped off her pedestal.  We lost some other statues.  What steps is the administration taking to give us back our streets?

THE PRESIDENT:  So, very strong.  You happen to have a Democrat governor right now.  If you would have had Governor Walker, that wouldn’t have happened.

AUDIENCE MEMBER:  That’s right.

THE PRESIDENT:  Wouldn’t have happened.  (Applause.)  I mean, I’m not saying it.  If Scott were your governor, that would not have happened.  But it did happen, and it was a shame.  And the person they beat up was a Democrat who happened to be gay.  And he was probably out there rooting them on or something, because Democrats think it’s wonderful that they’re destroying our country.  It’s a very sick thing going on.  Nobody has ever seen it.

The rest of his lengthy answer had nothing whatsoever to do with the question, so let's just move on.

"I don't know what's worse, the beating or having someone turn something so personal that happened to you and weaponize it against you," Carpenter told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel after their reporter relayed Trump's comments.

If you ask me, the beating ought to be worse. When Donald Joffrey Trump trash-talks you, you're in pretty interesting company.

Toon: Said the Cat, We're All Mad Here

This week's cartoons comprise a triptych of sorts.

Black Lives Matter Protests in Madison turned violent last week after the arrest of a Black male who brought a bullhorn and a baseball bat into a downtown restaurant and allegedly demanded free food. This was not an arrest in which a Black man was killed; but force was used, and video was shared on social media and tempers flared.

The protesters engaged in quite a lot of destruction of property — and there was absolutely no incidence of boogaloo droogs this time — windows broken at the capitol, molotov cocktails thrown into buildings, and two statues were torn down.

Protesters removed two Capitol statues from their pedestals, WPR reported: “the Forward statue, located on the west entrance of the Capitol at the end of State Street, and a statue of Col. Hans Christian Heg, located on the east entrance of the Capitol at the King Street corner of the square…. Protesters took the Heg statue and dumped it in Lake Monona, almost a half-mile from where it was toppled. And the Forward statue “as of early Wednesday morning, was about a block from the state Capitol in the middle of the street.”

We don't have monuments to Confederate generals in this state. "Forward" was a replica of an 1895 statue by Jean Pond Miner Stoneman of a woman gesturing in the direction of the state motto. The original was purchased by women's suffrage organizations and "presented to the state of Wisconsin on behalf of the women's suffrage movement." The copper statue was replaced in 1996 with a bronze one and moved to a museum. The replica was a frequent rallying spot for protests during the Scott Walker administration.

Far from being a slave-owner, Hans Christian Heg was a leader of a citizen militia that worked to thwart slave catchers. When the Civil War broke out, he was appointed colonel in charge of the largely Scandinavian 15th Wisconsin infantry, seeing action in Kentucky and Tennessee. After pursuing a retreating Confederate unit to Chickamauga, Georgia in September, 1863, he was fatally wounded by a shot to the abdomen.

But perhaps more to the interests of the spokesperson for the protesters, Heg was State Prison Commissioner in 1859, pushing for vocational training rather than the punishment of prisoners. I think that's actually one of the demands of this week's protesters. Too bad they never bothered to learn the history of the statue before tearing it down, beheading it, and dumping it in Lake Monona.

The protesters' spokesperson apparently had little to say about the Heg statue, which was a gift from the Norwegian Society of America in 1925, around the time that Confederate statues were spreading across Dixie like kudzu. Instead, she focused her contempt on Ms. Forward:

“We’re not moving forward, we’re moving backwards,” said Ebony Anderson-Carter. “This (statue) doesn’t need to be here until we’re ready to move forward.”
Anderson-Carter says she and the other protesters want to see something done about racial injustice in the state, and speak with the state’s Black youth.
“The Capitol is where we solve problems, and nobody’s coming here to solve problems,” said Anderson-Carter.

Statues can be repaired and replaced. But not all of the damage Tuesday night was to inanimate objects. I'll have more on that on Thursday.

This Week's Sneak Peek

For this week's sneak peek, here's a pencil sketch from the rough drafts for my Q Syndicate cartoon.

It won't be the only cartoon I'm posting this week. Check in tomorrow to see if I can manage to crank out another one by tonight.