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July 25, 2019
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The Russian music and performance collective Pussy Riot will receive this year's Woody Guthrie prize honoring art for social change, award organizers announced Thursday.
Past recipients of the prize named for the US folk revolutionary Guthrie include Bruce Springsteen, Chuck D, Joan Baez, Pete Seeger and John Mellencamp.
"It feels fitting to be awarded in the spirit of Woody, I think he would love Pussy Riot's anti-fascist message," said collective creator Nadya Tolokonnikova, in a statement sent to AFP by the artist's publicist.
"Usually, when Pussy Riot gets added to lists, it's not always a good thing, but we are honored to be on this one," she continued. "We don't really do folk, but we don't really do punk either, we simply scream and protest as loud as we can, and hope we can show others they can do the same."
Tolokonnikova along with Maria "Masha" Alyokhina will accept the prize on behalf of the group on May 6, organizers said, during a three-day weekend celebrating the 10th anniversary of the Woody Guthrie Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Following the ceremony Pussy Riot is slated to perform.
"As artists who, like Woody Guthrie, have the courage of their convictions, there are no contemporary artists more worthy of this recognition than Pussy Riot," said Cady Shaw, director of the Woody Guthrie Center, in a statement.
"They have paid a very personal price for speaking their minds on the most serious issues of our time, yet they continue to fight for justice and freedom."
Pussy Riot has gained international fame for its politically charged performances that see members don balaclavas and skewer everything from the Russian church to persecution of the country's gay community.
Tolokonnikova, 33, is one of three members of Pussy Riot who were sentenced to two years in prison after they sang a "Punk Prayer" denouncing the Russian Orthodox Church's close ties with President Vladimir Putin in Moscow's central Church of Christ the Saviour in February 2012.
In late 2021 Russia labeled members including Tolokonnikova "foreign agents" as part of a broader crackdown on dissent.
The feminist collective last year went on a European tour in support of Ukraine, warning against "totalitarianism" under Putin.
"Oh and a quick reminder to Vladimir Putin and anyone who supports his Z regime ... All you fascists are bound to lose," Tolokonnikova wrote in her Guthrie Prize statement.
Among American folk music's most towering figures, Guthrie penned iconic anti-fascist songs including the socialist-leaning "This Land Is Your Land."
He had major influence on the work of stars including Springsteen, Baez and Seeger as well as Johnny Cash, Jerry Garcia and, of course, Bob Dylan.
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RBG’s death set off a pattern of 'distrust and discord' that still plagues the Supreme Court today
March 23, 2023
Although Democrats have won the popular vote in seven of the United States' last eight presidential elections, they have had terrible luck with the U.S. Supreme Court — which is now controlled by a 6-3 majority of GOP-appointed justices. One-third of the High Court consists of justices who were appointed by former President Donald Trump: Brett Kavanaugh, Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett.
The Robert Court's Democratic critics have complained that Trump obviously had no interest in choosing nuanced Republican justices like Sandra Day O'Connor and Anthony Kennedy (two retired Ronald Reagan appointees). He was only interested in far-right ideologues and social conservatives.
Just as Democrats and abortion rights activists feared, that 6-3 majority overturned Roe v. Wade with its 2022 ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. Public confidence in the Court, in poll after poll, has continued to sink since that widely protested ruling.
Joan Biskupic, CNN's Supreme Court analyst, examines the condition of the High Court in her forthcoming book "Nine Black Robes: Inside the Supreme Court's Drive to the Right and Its Historic Consequences" (which has an April 4 release date on Amazon). CNN has published, in article form, an excerpt from Biskupic's book. And the excerpt details the role that the appointments of Kavanaugh, Gorsuch and Barrett played in Roe's demise.
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After liberal justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, at 87, died on September 18, 2020, Trump wasted no time nominating Barrett as her replacement. The former president was voted out of office less than two months later.
Biskupic explains, "Within days of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's memorial service in late September 2020, boxes of her files and other office possessions were moved down to a dark, windowless theater on the Supreme Court's ground floor…. The abrupt mandate from Chief Justice John Roberts' administrative team to clear out Ginsburg's office and make way for the next justice broke from the common practice of allowing staff sufficient time to move and providing a new justice with temporary quarters if needed while permanent chambers were readied…. The confirmation of then-President Donald Trump's chosen successor, Indiana-based U.S. Appeals Court Judge Amy Coney Barrett, was as much a fait accompli at the Court as in the political sphere. That behind-the-scenes drama and internal tensions over cases that followed, accelerated by all three Trump appointees, led to a new level of distrust and discord among the justices that lingers today."
According to Biskupic, the High Court's "internal negotiations" in Dobbs "were tightly tied to Ginsburg's death and the succession of Barrett."
"By late 2021," Biskupic recalls, "it was becoming clear that (Justice Clarence) Thomas, (Justice Samuel) Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Barrett wanted to end Roe, irrespective of what they had told senators about adherence to precedent during their confirmation hearings. Barrett had been especially skillful in deflecting questions about her personal opposition to abortion during her hearing, even as then-Senate Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican, declared, 'This is the first time in American history that we’ve nominated a woman who's unashamedly pro-life and embraces her faith without apology.'"
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Five years after Parkland, proposal to allow 18-year-olds to purchase long guns gains favor
March 23, 2023
Five years after the Florida Legislature and then-Gov. Rick Scott passed a package of gun reforms in the immediate aftermath of the Parkland school shooting massacre, a committee in the state House advanced a bill Thursday that would repeal one of those provisions – reducing the age to purchase rifles and other long guns from 21 to 18 years old.
The measure (HB 1543) would allow someone as young as 18 to be able to legally purchase a firearm from either a licensed dealer or a private seller.
However, federal law still prohibits purchasing a handgun under the age of 21.
The measure passed 16-6 in the House Judiciary Committee in its first of two stops in that chamber. However, there is no Senate version bill yet, and Senate President Kathleen Passidomo has said that she does not support the proposal.
The sponsor of the bill is Republican Bobby Payne of North Florida.
Broward County Democrat Dan Daley, a graduate of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, said the issue was deeply personal to him and acknowledged that he was angry and flustered that the proposal was even up for discussion. He emphasized that in his opinion, nothing had changed since the Legislature reduced the age to purchase a firearm to 18.
He cited a number of statistics and studies indicating that most school shooters are younger than 21 and that medical research “has been clear for years” that the pre-frontal cortex of the brain is not fully developed until 25.
“Nothing has changed,” Daley declared. “It’s not that in the last five years since the passage of the bill, it’s not since the last five years since the shooting at my alma matter that suddenly brain development has sped up – that the science has changed and suddenly 18-year-olds are as rational as 25-year-olds. Nothing has changed there.”
Daley went on to mention how many state lawmakers who voted for the bill that raised the age to purchase a long gun in Florida from 18 to 21 still remain in the Legislature, asking if the committee believed that they were wrong then.
House Speaker Paul Renner is one member of the Legislature who voted for the ban then but has now said he wants to reverse the age limit, and on Thursday so did committee member Thad Altman, a Brevard County Republican who served in the state Senate when that vote came up in 2018.
“I’m happy to see that we’re reversing that action today,” he said, adding that the package had dramatically increased the amount of psychological counseling in schools and created “red flag” provisions to take away firearms from people who are considered a danger to themselves or society.
“I don’t think that we need to penalize millions of young Americans between 18-21 for the actions of one individual,” Altman said. “I feel confident that the actions we took in that vote and the way we’ve implemented those things to protect our students, we can make this change today and feel that we’re doing the right thing.”
Those comments perplexed Tampa Democrat Dianne Hart, who says that there’s been gun violence in her community nearly every week since she began serving in the Florida House four years ago.
“You’re not changing the brains of kids under 21 years old,” she said. “You cannot legislate that. We just keep talking about, ‘well, you know, it’s not going to happen again.’ It’s bound to happen. It’s happening every single day out in communities throughout the state of Florida.”
Pinellas County Republican Berny Jacques stressed what other bill supporters said – that it was unfair to punish law-abiding people under 21 because of what happened in Parkland.
“And so off you are that single mom at 20 years old who has some deranged ex-boyfriend, you’re going to wish you had that right when he comes through that door at 2 a.m,” he said. “If you’re that gas station clerk who’s 18 or 19 years old in a high crime area, and a group of thugs come through who are armed, you’re going to wish you had that high-capacity rifle to protect yourself. That will do the trick.”
Immediately after the law passed in 2018 reducing the legal age to purchase a long gun in Florida from 21 to 18, the National Rifle Association challenged the law, alleging it violated the Second and Fourteenth Amendments. Earlier this month the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit ruled in favor of the state.
Florida Phoenix is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Florida Phoenix maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Diane Rado for questions: info@floridaphoenix.com. Follow Florida Phoenix on Facebook and Twitter.
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