BARBWIRE by ANDREW BARBANO Pirate Laureate of the High Desert Outback of the American Dream The Barbwire Molly Ivins Memorial Columniator Hall of Flames Now including Dennis Myers and Don Dondero

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1. CORONAVIRUS PROMOTION. The foreign-owned contractor running the Washoe County bus system is refusing to enforce Gov. Sisolak's very legal order that passengers wear face masks. Some of the bald-faced barefaced have even invoked the name of Czar Donaldov in dissing mask-wearing Teamsters drivers. Infectious details at NevadaLabor.com/

2. LAW ENFORCEMENT WON'T HELP. The City of Reno and the sheriffs of Lyon and Washoe County have all announced that they won't enforce Coronavirus mitigation orders. I'm getting an increasing number of complaints from fearful citizens including senior citizens forced to live in apartments with neighbors who won't wear masks. Ditto businesses who believe this virus thing is (insert favorite obscenity). I saw some yahoo on Channel 8 commenting on a weekend Carson City demonstration. The old grouch said that COVID-19 danger had not been proven. He gets his news by carrier pigeon, then eats the pigeon.

3. IN GOD YOU'LL TRUST BECAUSE YOUR PREACHER'S NUTS. A conservative outfit has gone to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals to allow mass church gatherings as a First Amendment right. Korea was a model of virus dampening until some yahoo preacher held a huge Sunday service.

4. PARTY HEARTLESSLY. ABC News reported Monday that Caesars Entertainment has disclosed an employee death from COVID-19. Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow you die
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5. BLACK PEOPLE IN FEAR. A professional African-American couple wanted to ride their bikes a few blocks to look at a Sparks house listed for sale. They decided against it after they remembered the case of Ahmaud Arbery, the 25 year-old black jogger killed after stopping to look at a vacant house under construction. It wasn't too many years ago that a local black teen was arrested during Hot August Nights for the crime of walking while black on Victorian Square.

6. RICHARD NIXON, CALL YOUR OFFICE. The ghost of Rosemary Woods apparently haunts Sparks PD. On Monday, District Attorney Chris Hicks released a 50-page report exonerating Sparks officers in the killing of suicidal black teenager Miciah Lee. No one can remember if any local cop has ever been held accountable for wasting somebody. Gomorrah South had so many incidents that they formed a now-diminished citizen police review board.

I got Mr. Hicks' report at deadline and only had time to read the last paragraph on page 50. Am I psychic or what? I knew what it would say before I scrolled down. I am informed that cop cam video of that tragic January night has some curious gaps. President Richard the Rotten blamed his very efficient secretary Rosemary who took the fall for the infamous 18-minute gap in the Watergate tapes.

7. "MY BODY IS A CONFEDERATE MONUMENT." That's the title of author Carolyn Randall Williams' op-ed in Sunday's New York Times. It is by far the best work I've seen among all the millions of words written about racism this year.

"I have rape-colored skin," she stated. "My light-brown blackness is a living testament to...the Old South...If they want monuments, well, then, my body is a monument. My skin is a monument...I am a black southern woman, and of my immediate white male ancestors, all of them were rapists. My very existence is a relic of slavery and Jim Crow....I am biologically more than half white and none of it was consensual...My body and blood are tangible truth of the South and its past...And I ask you now, who dares tell me to celebrate them? Who dares to ask me to accept their mounted pedestals?

"I come from Confederates. I've got rebel-gray blue blood coursing through my veins. My great grandfather Will was raised with the knowledge that Edmund Pettus was his father. Pettus, the storied Confederate general, the grand dragon of the Ku Klux Klan, the man for whom Selma's Bloody Sunday Bridge is named...(A)ll of the man-made monuments must come down...I am quite literally made of the reasons to strip them of their laurels."

8. THE CON. "Race" is a purely social construct useful to empower some over others. We are such a primitive, violent species. A hundred years ago, Brazil came up with a capitalistic solution. If you could prove one drop of white blood, you could purchase a "certificate of whiteness" to help you rise in society. In this country, any percentage black means don't get stopped by cops.

9. BLIND FAITH PREDIXION DEPT. Every presidential candidate polls stronger alone than with a running mate. If Joseph Biden is looking for an experienced president-in-waiting, he has two choices: Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and former Obama UN Ambassador and National Security Advisor Susan Rice. The former's age is against her. Rice would allow the moonhowlers another endless Benghazi re-run.

NY Times columnist Frank Bruni favors Sen. Tammy Duckworth of Illinois, legless combat pilot, Asian-American young mother. Maybe not. Remember how former Sparks schoolboy Karl Rove smeared John Kerry's outstanding military record in 2004?

I'd bet on New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lynn Lujan Grisham, a lawyer who served three terms in the House of Representatives. She's a she and Latinos are the biggest minority voting bloc.

10. STOLEN SLOGAN DEPT. Sign at last Sunday's anti-mask rally in Carson City: "My body. My choice." Wonder if the young woman carrying it also does so at Planned Parenthood rallies.

Andrew Barbano is a 51-year Nevadan, executive producer of Nevada's annual César Chávez Day celebration, first vice-president and political action chair of the Reno-Sparks NAACP, superannuated labor/consumer/civil rights advocate, member of Communications Workers of America Local 9413/AFL-CIO and editor of NevadaLabor.com and BallotBoxing.US and SenJoeNeal.org and DoctorLawyerWatch.com and Protect Our Washoe.org and ChantalCoalition.org/ He is a withdrawn-in-good-standing member of Culinary Local 226. As always, his opinions are strictly his own. E-mail barbano@frontpage.reno.nv.us. He has lived in both northern and southern Nevada during his half-century+ in the Silver State. Barbwire by Barbano has originated in the Sparks Tribune since 1988 and received its 10th Nevada Press Association award (6 of 10 first-place) at the 21 Sept. 2019 NPA annual convention in Ely. In 1996, he was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for a six-month investigative series. His multi-media road construction zone safety campaign for Laborers' Union Local 169 won a first-place award from the National Safety Council in a nationwide competition. (Such ephemera and about six bucks will get you a Latte Mocha Cotsafracas Chingade at just about any Starbux worldwide, guaranteed.) His work has appeared on CNN, in The New York Times, The Guardian of London/UK and more important publications.

WEB XTRAS & SMOKING GUNS —>

Veni, Vidi, Jockocracy?
Locker room rules: Caesars goes commando, union vows resistance to Eldorado empire
By Bryan Horwath / Las Vegas Sun 6-28-2019 / Reno Gazette-Journal 7-8-2019

Eldorado-Caesars merger means labor union battles far beyond Reno & Las Vegas
Culinary Union leader D. Taylor: "Where are they going to cut?"
Building trade union campaigns continue
By Ed Komenda / Reno Gazette-Journal / 6-27-2019

[4-20-2019] — About 100 demonstrators from almost all the region's unions, local community service organizations and political activists joined Culinary Union members picketing Circus Circus in the late afternoon of April 18. A couple of CC suits came out to see what all the fuss was about, as if they didn't already know. In addition to the familiar union "contract now!" chants came calls for a strike against the Carano jocks. ¡Viva Huelga! ¡Sí se puede

REAL NEWS DEPT. In January 2019, Culinary Union Local 226 defeated an attempt by Circus Circus-Reno to decertify (terminate) the union's representation of its workers. No word on whether management plans to appeal the result to the National Labor Relations Board which was recently put out of business for 35 days. Thank you, Czar Donaldov.

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BLACK LIKE ME 2119: The problem as solution
Barbwire by Andrea Luigi Barbáno / Expanded from the 2-13-2019 Sparks Tribune / Updated 2-14 and 2-16-2019
Breaking News —> Culinary Union defeats decert at Circus Circus Reno
Dear Readers: The above column served as the conclusion of remarks I submitted before the "Tahoe Talks: Racism in America" symposium at the Incline Village, Nev., Library on February 12, 2019. So you might want to read "FADE TO BLACK" before you read "Black Like Me 2119".

	Triangle Shirtwaist Factory owners Max Blank and Isaac Harris. Is not Mr. Harris eerily familiar to television junkies?
From the Emmy-winning opening slate of the blockbuster "Cheers" television series. Combined with its "Frasier" spinoff, it lasted 20 years.	The "shirtwaist kings" immigrated from Russia and made a fortune manufacturing "Gibson Girl"-style blouses. (Photo, "The American Experience"/PBS)	The Emmy-winning opening slate of the "Cheers" television series before the "slate" of creators is superimposed. Looks like Mr. Harris' dead ringer (at left) is having a bloody good time.

"Who ya gonna believe, me or your own eyes?" — Chico Marx disguised as Groucho Marx in "Duck Soup" (1933)
Back to the story of the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist holocaust

Triangle tragedy recalled as requiem "The Fire in My Mouth," a new oratorio by Pulitzer honoree Julia Wolfe, premiered with the New York Philharmonic Jan. 24 By Michael Cooper / The New York Times 1-23-2019

SITE NAVIGATION TIPS: When all else fails, read the instructions (A favorite John Hanks aphorism I've been using for decades)

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Copyright © 1982-2020 Andrew Barbano

Andrew Barbano is a 51-year Nevadan, editor of NevadaLabor.com and SenJoeNeal.org; and former chair of the City of Reno's Citizens Cable Compliance Committee. He is the executive producer of Nevada's annual César Chávez Day celebration and serves as first vice-president and political action chair of the Reno-Sparks NAACP. As always, his opinions are strictly his own. E-mail barbano@frontpage.reno.nv.us.

Barbwire by Barbano moved to Nevada's Daily Sparks Tribune on Aug. 12, 1988, and has originated in them parts ever since.
Whom to blame: How a hall-of-famer's hunch birthed the Barbwire in August of 1987
Tempus fugit.

Betty J. Barbano 2-7-1941 / 12-27-2005

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