Another December Day that Will Live in Infamy

On Monday, December 8, 1941, President Roosevelt addressed the nation after Japan launched an unprovoked attack on Pearl Harbor on Sunday, December 7. The United States entered World War II by declaring war on Japan on that fateful day but what we most remember from that famous address is how the president labeled December 7: “A date which will live in infamy.”

Seventy-nine years later, in a traumatic twist of history, we experienced yet another December Day which will live in infamy in our nation's history.

On December 8, 2020, the state of Texas filed a lawsuit directly with the U.S. Supreme Court to bar the battleground states of Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin from casting their electoral voted for Joe Biden. Biden had won these states in the November presidential election. The Texas lawsuit essentially asked the Supreme Court to declare Trump the winner in those four states and hand over the presidency to him for a second term.

That the Supreme Court threw out the absurd lawsuit three days later is not the point. It was expected and was obviously the right thing to do, even though Trump had packed the court with his hand-picked nominees.

No, the reason why this date will live in infamy, 79 years after the first one, is because 126 Republican Members of Congress (more than 60 percent) and 17 Republican Attorneys General signed the lawsuit filed by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.

Think about that for a moment! People who swore to uphold the law and the constitution chose instead to support the baseless claims of a demagogue that the election was stolen from him, even though more than 7 million Americans voted for Biden than Trump, the largest difference in U.S. history.

For four years, Trump had assaulted the foundational values of America, aided and abetted by his sycophants, Republican Congressmen, Senators, Attorneys Generals and white supremacists. Trump’s criminal negligence in combating the lethal coronavirus has so far resulted in the deaths of over 300,000 Americans, more than the number of Americans who lost their lives - 291,557 - fighting in the four years of WWII after Roosevelt asked Congress to declare war on Japan following its deadly attack on Pearl harbor.

The difference between the two infamous dates couldn’t be starker. A foreign nation attacked America in December, 1941, forcing America to declare war. The cause was just, the right to defend the country moral and the nation united.

Seventy-nine years later, majority of the Republican Members of Congress and Attorneys General of 17 states declared war on America from within, threatening secession and evoking the specter of a Civil War.

These “By Hook or by Crook” Americans who so brazenly betrayed our democracy must not be forgotten for their treachery. We the people have the power to vote them out of office when it is their time for reelection.

Here are the names of the traitors, the quislings, the domestic terrorists, who have betrayed their oaths by supporting the unholy and undemocratic demands of a rogue president:

First, the attorneys general, supposedly the chief law enforcement officers of their states, who joined Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in their treacherous lawsuit:

Eric Schmitt, Missouri; Steve Marshall, Alabama; Leslie Rutledge, Arkansas; Ashley Moody, Florida; Curtis Hill, Indiana; Derek Schmidt, Kansas; Jeff Landry, Louisiana; Lynn Fitch, Mississippi; Tim Fox, Montana; Doug Peterson, Nebraska; Wayne Stenehjem, North Dakota; Mike Hunter, Oklahoma; Alan Wilson, South Carolina; Jason Ravnsborg, South Dakota; Herbert H. Slatery III, Tennessee; Sean Reyes, Utah; Patrick Morrisey, West Virginia.

 

Second, the House members, including House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, Whip Steve Scalise (La.); Jim Jordan (Ohio), ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee; Kevin Brady (Tex.), ranking member of the Ways and Means Committee; Rep. Gary Palmer (Ala.), head of the Republican Policy Committee; and Mike Johnson (La.), who organized this betrayal of the U.S. Constitution.

 

The rest, in alphabetical order of their home state, are:

Alabama (Robert B. Aderholt, Mo Brooks, Bradley Byrne), Arizona (Andy Biggs, Debbie Lesko), Arkansas (Eric A. “Rick” Crawford, Bruce Westerman), California (Ken Calvert, Doug LaMalfa, Tom McClintock), Colorado (Ken Buck, Doug Lamborn), Florida (Gus M. Bilirakis, Mario Diaz-Balart, Neal Dunn, Matt Gaetz, Bill Posey, John Rutherford, Ross Spano, Michael Waltz, Daniel Webster, Ted Yoho), Georgia (Rick Allen, Earl L. “Buddy” Carter, Douglas A. Collins, Drew Ferguson, Jody Hice, Barry Loudermilk, Austin Scott), Idaho (Russ Fulcher, Mike Simpson), Illinois (Mike Bost, Darin LaHood), Indiana (Jim Baird, Jim Banks, Trey Hollingsworth, Greg Pence, Jackie Walorski), Iowa (Steve King), Kansas (Ron Estes, Roger Marshall), Louisiana (Ralph Abraham, Clay Higgins), Maryland (Andy Harris), Michigan (Jack Bergman, Bill Huizenga, John Moolenaar, Tim Walberg), Minnesota (Tom Emmer, Jim Hagedorn, Pete Stauber), Mississippi (Michael Guest, Trent Kelly, Steven M. Palazzo), Missouri (Sam Graves, Billy Long, Vicky Hartzler, Blaine Luetkemeyer, Jason T. Smith, Ann Wagner), Montana (Greg Gianforte), Nebraska (Jeff Fortenberry, Adrian Smith), New Jersey (Gregory Steube, Jeff Van Drew), New York (Elise Stefanik, Lee Zeldin), North Carolina (Dan Bishop, Ted Budd, Virginia Foxx, Richard Hudson, Greg Murphy, David Rouzer, Mark Walker), Ohio (Bob Gibbs, Bill Johnson, Robert E. Latta, Brad Wenstrup), Oklahoma (Kevin Hern, Markwayne Mullin), Pennsylvania (John Joyce, Frederick B. Keller, Mike Kelly, Dan Meuser, Scott Perry, Guy Reschenthaler, Glenn Thompson), South Carolina (Jeff Duncan, Ralph Norman, Tom Rice, William Timmons, Joe Wilson), Tennessee (Tim Burchett, Scott DesJarlais, Charles J. “Chuck” Fleischmann, Mark Green, David Kustoff, John Rose), Texas (Jodey Arrington, Brian Babin, Michael C. Burgess, Michael Cloud, K. Michael Conaway, Dan Crenshaw, Bill Flores, Louie Gohmert, Lance Gooden, Kenny Marchant, Randy Weber, Roger Williams, Ron Wright), Virginia (Ben Cline, H. Morgan Griffith, Rob Wittman, Ron Wright), Washington (Cathy McMorris Rodgers, Dan Newhouse), West Virginia (Carol Miller, Alex Mooney), Wisconsin (Tom Tiffany).

Don’t forget these traitors who put politics and party above country. We have the power to give them the boot through our voting power.

We are counting on Joe Biden and Kamala Harris to restore decency, civility, Rule of Law, justice and democracy to a traumatized nation after four years of nonstop misrule by Donald Trump. It won’t be easy, and it certainly will not be accomplished overnight. But given their experience, expertise and sincerity of intention, we know that Joe and Kamal can accomplish these goals with our continued support and activism.

Japanese-Americans Speak Up for Muslim-Americans

You can also read the article here.

SAN JOSE, Calif. - “A monetary sum and words alone cannot restore lost years or erase painful memories. Neither can they fully convey our nation’s resolve to rectify injustice and to uphold the rights of individuals.” Tom Oshidari, co-president of the Japanese-American Citizens League, San Jose Chapter, was reading from the letter he had received from President George Bush in October 1990. “We can never fully right the wrongs of the past. But we can take a clear stand for justice and recognize that serious injustices were done to Japanese Americans during World War II.”

His parents – American Citizens – were shipped off from California to the Jerome internment camp in rural Arkansas in 1942 under President Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066. Tom was born in the camp. His parents died several years ago. An estimated 60,000 of the 120,000 Americans of Japanese ancestry interned during WWII are still alive and received redress payments of $20,000 and letters of apology from the 41st president.

About 200 of us gathered last weekend in front of City Hall for the solidarity day organized by the Nihonmachi Outreach Committee and the South Bay Islamic Association, with participation from Evergreen Islamic Center. Masao Suzuki, the architect of the rally, explained: “In the lessons learned from 75 years of resistance from 1942-2017, we say No to Concentration Camps and Islamophobia. President Trump’s Executive Order 13769, banning travel from 7 Muslim-majority countries, has brought back painful memories of internment, among the darkest chapters in American history. We will not let Muslim-Americans stand alone. We will stand by them. We will not allow history to repeat. Never again!”

City Hall is about a mile away from San Jose’s Japan Town but when we walked the distance on solidarity day, the weight of history was heavy upon us. The minutes spanned a lifetime of grief and sorrow.

Naoko Fujii, a lawyer in Silicon Valley, never misses such rallies. “It’s a matter of principle,” she said. Her father, only a high-school student in 1942, was moved between Internment camps in Arkansas, Utah and Wyoming, along with his three siblings and parents. To this day she has difficulty imagining the physical and the emotional trauma they suffered in the bitterly cold and unbearably hot camps.

Fumi Tosu, affiliated with Casa De Clara Catholic Worker of San Jose, exhorted the gathering not to repeat the mistakes of the past. “When Nazi Germany was sending Jews to the gas chamber, the supposedly ‘Good Germans’ looked the other way. When Japanese-Americans were being hustled off to camps, ‘good Americans’ looked the other way too. Americans right here in San Jose looked the other way. But not all Americans. Quakers protested the internment and helped the interned. Let’s be the Quakers of 2017. Let’s make sure Muslim-Americans don’t suffer the same injustice that our parents and grandparents suffered. Let’s fight for radical equality.”

I looked around: a sun-splashed Saturday afternoon, a perfect spring day for the outdoors, for picnic, for hiking, for taking in the beauty of wildflowers after the profusion of rain in the valley. Yet here they were, my fellow-Americans, sacrificing their time for a cause they believed in, whites, blacks, Latinos, African-Americans, families with infants in strollers, the kaleidoscope that’s America. An elderly white man next to me held up a poster that read “No to Religious or National Exclusion.” Another read “Steve Jobs Was Syrian.” The man in front of me wore a white T-shirt that listed all the 10 internment camps in America under bold red letters: “Never Again.”

But something was troubling me, although I couldn’t quite put my finger on it.

The event was being co-emceed by Zahra Billoo, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), San Francisco Bay Area, and Lisa Washio-Collette, whose father, Kintaro Washio, and brother Zentaro, both spent years in internment camps at Tule Lake and Gila River. Zahra and Lisa reinforced the message of the solidarity day, that every act of injustice must be fought in the court of law as well as in the court of public opinion. A Civil Rights attorney, Zahra was among the first to sue Donald Trump over the “Muslim Exclusion Order” in January, following Trump’s infamous Executive Order 13769.

It was only when Billoo was thanking the rally on behalf of Muslims that I suddenly realized what was troubling me: There were a disappointingly few Muslims!

At a mosque later in the day, I lamented to a few of my fellow-Muslims how disappointed I was. So few of us showed up when other Americans had come together to voice their unconditional support for us. There were the usual excuses of “didn’t know about it,” “very busy” and “family obligations." But then one Muslim said: “Do you really think this rally changed anything?”

I could not let this go unanswered. “I don’t know whether this rally by itself changed anything or will change anything. But I know one thing for sure: It changed me. I met Japanese-Americans whose parents and grandparents were sent to Internment camps, concentration camps, really, even though they were loyal citizens. I no longer think of injustice and racism as abstract ideas. I see them with human faces, and I know that I am of them, and they are of me. If we can change this way, we are compelled to act. And when enough of us change and act, mountains move and tyrants fall.”