While I was out on the road, another abortion provider was bombed, this time in Tacoma, near Seattle WA. Thankfully no-one was hurt. I urge everyone who supports reproductive choice to take this opportunity to send messages of support to the nearest abortion provider (you can find nearby providers through NAF‘s website) and to do what you can to help them — by volunteering as a clinic escort or legal observer, or even just by offering your moral support. Guerilla warfare against reproductive rights cannot be allowed to succeed.

The Washington state chapter of the Christian Coalition has come out in opposition to a proposed anti-bullying policy because it might–gasp–protect gay teenagers or children from being viciously harassed by classmates. God forbid. [Advocate.com]

The Nuremberg Files drama continues as a huge coalition of reproductive rights groups files an amicus brief asking the US 9th Circuit Court of appeals to reconsider its ruling of First Amendment protection for the NF‘s terrorism. [Choices Campus Community]

David Greenberg’s Riot Act – The last century’s racial disturbances have a common cause: police brutality [Slate.com] provides a good discussion of the past century of riots by black citizens and its links to the white supremacist corruption of the police department and justice system. On the other hand, it has a lingering problem: it attempts to cast all race riots as black people rioting and attacking white people. This neglects the truly vicious white supremacist assaults on blacks in towns such as Tulsa and St. Louis. The article even tries to lump the 1919 Chicago white supremacist riot as a black-initiated race riot similar to Watts, L.A., or Cincinatti.

Yes, I know the article is an attempt to show how the rioters were provoked by massive police brutality and that oppressive police treatment of blacks has got to stop if we want to end the violence. But it has a subtle effect in reinforcing a few dangerous premises. It reinforces the conviction that racial problems mean black problems, and don’t have anything to do with the active brutality of whites. And similarly, it makes it seem as though racial violence is something that blacks initiate, even if we see that initiation as justified. In the vicious race riots of the early 20th century, that simply was not the case. All of this leads to a continuing view of blacks as a problem to be solved, as the (Greenberg’s words) the violent and the lawless element of a race riot.; What about the white thugs in Tulsa who dropped dynamite on black ghettoes from airplanes? What about the white St. Louis rioters who raped and tortured black women and men by the thousands? Blacks are not the only racial troublemakersof the twentieth century.

The New York Times has an interesting-looking review of On Hostile Ground, a documentary which gives credit where credit is due, by showing the heroic actions of three abortion providers who put their lives on the line every day to make women’s reproductive rights a reality.