Bucks County Courier Times Fails Its Readers, Doug Mastriano vs. the Free Press, “2000 Mules” & Almost as Many Lies, LGBTQ Pride & Prejudice in Bucks, Beyond the Bubble, & More!
What's happening in Bucks County, PA, and Beyond...
The Bucks County Beacon needs your support. Please become a monthly sustainer today!
I started the week off with a blistering column taking Gannett’s Bucks County Courier Times and The Intelligencer newspapers to task for not reporting on Bucks County GOP extremism. Whether it is about local Republican leader Pat Poprik singing fake election documents claiming Trump won Pennsylvania, or a local woman who was arrested for her role in the insurrection and who was caught on video saying she wanted to kill Nancy Pelosi being elected by Doylestown Republicans to represent them as a committee person, or Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick’s refusal to vote on a bill to fight white supremacy and domestic terrorism – for the editorial leadership of these papers they are either just not interested, or they don’t want to upset their fellow conservatives in their social circles. Not only are these editors failing to practice actual journalism, they are failing their readership and their sins of omission are part of the reason why democracy is under assault locally, statewide, and across the country and is fraying at the seams. Read “Five Stories Gannett’s Bucks County Courier Times Refuses To Cover, But Should,” and stay tuned Sunday for Cyril’s next column where he unpacks how editors and reporters (like at Gannett’s two newspapers) should be practicing journalism in this autocratic moment we find ourselves in.
Hundreds of Bucks residents turned out Friday night to protest the overturning of Roe v. Wade outside of anti-choice Republican Congressman Brian Fitzpatrick’s local office in Newtown.
The Bucks County Beacon welcomes a few new writers from academia this week. First, Kutztown University Professor Michael Gambone, author of Modern Conspiracies in America: Separating Fact from Fiction, wrote about big deception “2000 Mules,” which is nothing more than pro-Trump lies and propaganda masquerading as a documentary. Second, Alison Dagnes, a professor of Political Science at Shippensburg University and author of "Super Mad at Everything All the Time: Political Media and Our National Anger," wrote about why Doug Mastriano’s disdain for the press is a threat to democracy.
These are two more examples of analysis you won’t find in the Bucks County Courier Times. Invest in the Bucks County Beacon and pro-democracy journalism.
Pennridge parent and Beacon contributor David O’Donnell read through the school district’s Comprehensive Plan 2022-2025 and let readers know about the good, the bad, and the ugly. Staying in the district, while Perkasie readies itself for their Family Pride Festival Saturday, local GOP club president penned an ugly and awful letter in opposition to the event – even attacking a children’s book found at the previous year’s event called “Worm Loves Worm.” Hate definitely has a home in Pennridge School District, but so does love. If you can, take the drive out and support Bucks County’s LGBTQ community and help love win the day.
Lily Freeman, a female student of Trans experience from Central Bucks School District, penned a column about why Pride Month is a time for celebration, reflection, and resistance.
East Rockhill Township’s Kyle Esposito wrote a great piece entitled Fortress America Can’t Save Us.
He writes that There are already too many guns in the United States, and more guns won’t save us. We are looking forward to more guest columns from him in the future.
Bucks County Beacon book reviewer Emily French reviewed Ibram X. Kendi’s new book “How To Raise An Anti-Racist,” which offerssome great suggestions for how parents can be intentional in nurturing children to be culturally competent and free from myths of white supremacy.
The Bucks County Beacon is about solutions, and we have a solution for the baby formula shortages: Break up food monopolies!
Finally, a few articles that I read this week to take you Beyond the Bubble:
The Cash Before the Killing
A trove of Dutch and U.S. legal and financial documents shared with The Intercept reveal, for the first time, the flow of international funding in the days leading up to March 2, 2016, when a hit squad broke into Berta Cáceres’s house and killed her. Cáceres was an indigenous environmental and human rights defender who co-founded the Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras.
https://theintercept.com/2022/06/23/honduras-berta-caceres-murder-money-trail
In Colombia, “a Government of the Callused Hands”
History was made in Colombia this week when Gustavo Petro, a leftist former mayor and senator, and Francia Marquez, an Afro-Colombian organizer and rights defender, were elected president and vice president.
https://www.thenation.com/article/world/colombia-petro-francia-marquez/
Oil Pollution Destroying Niger Delta Farmers’ Livelihood
“Before the advent of oil exploitation activities at Ikarama it was a community that was fertile both for fishing and for farming. Its location in the Bayelsa National Forest marked it out as a custodian of a rich biodiversity. The benevolence of nature has been brutally threatened by oil over the past decades…”
https://www.blueprint.ng/spdc-eni-oil-pollution-destroying-niger-delta-farmers-livelihood-homef/