Giving a voice to missing and murdered indigenous women
High school track star Rosalie Fish is a class act. During the recent Class 1B meet at Eastern Washington University, she ran not only to win but to share a message about the unacceptable violence that Native American women face every day.
She is a member of the Cowlitz Tribe.
During the meet, she quietly and respectfully brought attention to missing and murdered indigenous women (MMIW). She painted those initials on her leg and a red hand over her mouth symbolizing the inability of many victims to speak for themselves. And she won four medals in their honor.
Those might seem small things, but they were effective.
Her message is spreading.
Violence against indigenous women and girls has reached a crisis point. More than half of American Indian and Alaska Native women experience sexual violence during their lifetimes, and murder is the third-leading cause of death among them.
Yet the legislative response has been tepid.
In Congress, the Not Invisible Act of 2019 would require the Interior Department to hire someone to coordinate a federal response to the crisis. It also would create an advisory committee to study it.
A Washington state bill signed by Gov. Jay Inslee this year encourages better data collection and creates liaison positions for better relations between tribes and state police.
The federal bill remains stalled in committees, and the state bill is only small progress. Fish declared that’s not good enough.
What is most impressive about Fish’s act was the maturity with which she delivered her message. She didn’t grandstand. She didn’t disrupt the meet. And she didn’t make everything about her. To their credit, the organizers, coaches, fans and other competitors didn’t twist her statement into controversy.
Fish is headed to college in Iowa in the fall. We have no doubt she will well represent these women, her community and all of Washington as she continues to run and to lead.
— The Seattle Times
Losing our census
The Trump administration is engaged in a governmentwide cover-up of an urgent investigation into the abuse of foundational policy designed to ensure fair federal representation and provision of services: the national Census.
Last week, President Donald Trump, with an assist from Attorney General Bill Barr, asserted executive privilege to block congressional requests for Commerce Department documents related to including a citizenship question on next year’s Census form. The question seems designed to intimidate immigrants, regardless of their status, into declining to respond, thus causing undercounts.
Last year, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross lied under oath in testimony before Congress, claiming the question was required by the Justice Department, to ensure compliance with the Voting Rights Act. His own staff contradicted him.
House Democrats increased their pursuit in the past two weeks on the revelation that a recently deceased Republican redistricting expert shared research with high-ranking Trump officials that the citizenship question would reduce Latino numbers and enhance the electoral advantage of “Republicans and Non-Hispanic Whites.”
Executive privilege is supposed to cover sensitive counsel to a president in confidence. It can’t be a random shield to prevent the release of documents that might expose a cynical ploy to undermine a constitutional imperative.
— New York Daily News