The Derek Chauvin trial continues to day five

But first, here’s your heartbreaking testimony week in review, in Haiku.

I will take the stand
for you, to face down the man 
who didn’t serve or

protect you, and caused
your life to ebb away. I 
will take the stand for

you and think about
the men I love who were not
you that day: But for

the grace of some sort
of random god. I will take 
the stand for you this

time, and the next time,
and the next, and the next and
the next and the next.

Take good care of yourself this weekend. Good holiday to all who celebrate.

Ellen McGirt
@ellmcgirt
[email protected]

On point

The Derek Chauvin trial continues to day five It’s hard not to feel like a reckoning is taking place in Minneapolis. Earlier today, Lt. Richard Zimmerman, the longest-serving police officer in the Minneapolis PD, testified that what Chauvin did to George Floyd was “totally unnecessary.” The details were damning. “Pulling him down to the ground facedown and putting your knee on a neck for that amount of time, it’s just uncalled for.” One of the unique elements of the trial is how many officers seem willing and eager to testify against Chauvin. If you want to read about, rather than watch the trial, New York Times has a helpful tick tock below.
New York Times

Asian American Ohioans speak out after lieutenant governor uses “Wuhan virus” in a tweet The letter came from nearly 70 of John Husted’s neighbors in Upper Arlington, Ohio, a Columbus suburb. “Our children have been targeted for bullying and abuse in the district well before the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, but that abuse has increased significantly in the last 14 months and has reached levels that have brought news media attention to our doorsteps,” the letter said. “Our children are the classmates, friends, and neighbors of your children.”
Politico

Australian government considers requiring “100 points of identification” for social media accounts The announcement was immediately set upon by experts as an ineffective and potentially dangerous idea. Berlin-based Jillian C. York, a writer, educator and director for International Freedom of Expression at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, offers a crisp analysis as to why the intermittent calls to end anonymity and force people to verify their identity on social media keep resurfacing. (As if I can’t see the names, locations, and employers of the people who harass me on Facebook and LinkedIn, smdh.) “This is what I like to call the White Man’s Gambit,” she writes, a solution that flies in the face of years of research that suggest real-name policies would do more harm than good. She outlines her arguments here, and provides a long list of helpful resources here.
News.Com.AU

Private equity sees autism as an opportunity John Summers raises questions about Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA), now the standard for “treating” autism in schools, clinics, and home settings. In many states, it has become a mandated insurance benefit, which has spurred an influx of private equity backed providers into the field. But does it work? “Treating a spectrum disorder with a uniform model is unique as well as paradoxical,” he writes. “In no other area of child development does government prescribe and mandate access to one—and only one—packaged therapy.”
The Nation

On background

It’s Joe Bartmann’s birthday and he has a message for you  Today starts World Autism Awareness Month, and Bartmann, a self-described hiker, wasicu, rural shaper, worm farmer, and non-profit executive, learned he was autistic as an adult. (About a year ago, in fact.) In this moving short video, he shares his own experience in hopes that it will make life easier for other autistic people to be understood, accommodated, and accepted. “It seems pretty weird that I could live forty years and be autistic and not know it,” he begins. “But it’s actually not as strange as you might think.” He’s wonderful and you should share his video and wish him happy birthday.
Joe Bartmann on Twitter 

Rachel Crandall-Crocker is the creator of International Transgender Day of Visibility  Kate Sosin, LGBTQ+ reporter for The 19th News, explains that it was an attempt to find a way to celebrate when the only anniversary available to the community was a dark one. Rita Hester, a Black transgender woman in Boston, Massachusetts, was brutally murdered in her own home in 1998, and later mistreated and misgendered by the local press. Activists marched in the streets in an action that became memorialized as Transgender Day of Remembrance (TDOR). But Crandall-Crocker wanted to create a party. “I’d been wanting there to be a special day for us for a long time,” she recalled. “And I was waiting and waiting for someone else to do it. And then finally I said, ‘I’m not waiting anymore. I’m going to do it.’”
The 19th News

When learning to swim is an act of reclamation An alarming majority of African-American children in the U.S. Don’t know how to swim, a legacy from the Jim Crow practice of banning Black families from public pools. As a result, Black children are more likely to drown than their white peers, and many Black adults harbor an uncomfortable fear of water. Such is the case for Tanya Blackmon, Executive Vice President and Chief Diversity, Inclusion and Equity Officer for Novant Health. “I didn’t start taking showers until I entered high school because of the fear of water getting in my face,” Blackmon says. “I took baths so I did bathe, but I took baths until I started high school because of that fear.” Now, she is preparing to take swimming lessons, to raise awareness of the dangerous legacy. Click through to learn more about her quest and NSEA Swim, a program aiming to safely bring the joy of swimming to Black families in the Wilmington, North Carolina region.
WECT News

Mood board

Congrats to New York folk hero Huge Ma, a.k.a @turbovax, a.k.a "vaccine daddy," for getting his own vaccination after helping thousands of New Yorkers find vaccine appointments. Ma is also using his platform to combat anti-Asian racism.