The following post was written by Jessica Beasley (she/they), a Senior Manager of User Experience Design at a tech company and longtime resident of Michigan. She lives in Ypsilanti Township with her spouse and an inadvisable number of cats, and mostly uses Twitter to tweet about trans stuff at @JessicleCats. The topic of Jessica’s essay is personal for me. My […]

By now you’ve likely read about Adrian Iraola’s confrontation with a Class A bigot during community meeting on diversity, equity, and inclusion in Saline. When Adrian stood up to talk about the impact bullying and racial slurs had on his teenaged son, a man named Tom Burtell asked him, “Why didn’t you stay in Mexico?” The moment was caught on […]

Betsy Devos has done it again. On August 29th, the Department of Education sent a letter to the Consortium for Middle East Studies departments at the University of North Carolina and Duke University, claiming that the program “disproportionately portrays ‘the positive aspects of Islam’”. They threatened that if the schools do not make amendments to the program by September 22nd, […]

There are a variety of definitions of “dehumanization” but this one is as succinct as I have seen: Dehumanization is the psychological process of demonizing the enemy, making them seem less than human and hence not worthy of humane treatment. This can lead to increased violence, human rights violations, war crimes, and genocide. History is rife with this demonizing of […]

Back in February, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Dr. Abdul El-Sayed accused unnamed “establishment Democrats” of using “birther-like tactics” to derail his primary campaign after Bridge magazine published an article raising questions about his eligibility to run due to residency requirements. I was hard on Dr. El-Sayed writing, “Publishing this article is not a “birther-like” tactic and the accusation is offensive. People […]

Most governors with a history of poisoning an entire city of Black people, an administration full of corruption and ineptitude, and with a laundry list of pro-corporate policies that have harmed the state in myriad ways would probably spend their final months in office being as non-controversial and quiet as possible. Not so with Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder. Despite his […]

One of the big questions of for today’s Americans is “What would you have done when the fascists were rising to power in the run-up to World War II?” We no longer need to ask that question because will now be able to see precisely what we WILL do. My grandfather knew. He enlisted in the Army and went off […]

Earlier this year, the City Council of Jackson, Michigan passed a non-discrimination ordinance (NDO) that prohibits discrimination against anyone for housing, employment, or public accommodation based on sexual orientation and gender identity. The vote was 5-2. Shortly thereafter, a local group of Jackson residents, supported by clergy in local Catholic churches, started to circulate petitions to rescind the NDO and […]

In early February of this year, the City Council in Jackson, Michigan approved a non-discrimination ordinance (NDO) that prohibits discrimination against anyone for housing, employment, or public accommodation based on sexual orientation and gender identity. It’s essentially a move that extends basic civil rights provided to most Michiganders under the Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act to Michigan citizens in the LGBTQ […]

Regular readers of Eclectablog know that I am a big fan of the political art of socio-political artist Michael D’Antuono. His often provocative artwork forces us to confront the sinister forces of racism, exclusion, and fascism that lurk in our country. Those forces have never been more powerful than they are now with the assent of the Bannon/Trump administration. D’Antuono […]

That t-shirt there on the right is available from the Michigan Republican Party website. It’s a clear admission that being deplorable – “racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic” – is part and parcel of what at least half of Republicans supporting Donald Trump are. They are so proud of their racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia, and Islamaphobia that they are willing to […]