oo: photo by Jakapong Kanjanajetane, 7 January 2014

Untitled [fox, London Bridge]: photo by Sam Rodgers, 26 May 2018

Untitled [pachuco, metro, México]: photo by **Sonia Carolina**, 17 June 2018

Untitled [Nezahualcoyotl, Estado de México]: photo by **Sonia Carolina**, 18 May 2018

Buena noticias | Los Angeles, Ca.: photo by michaelj1998, 22 June 2018

#9 | Sunset Beach, Ca.: photo by michaelj1998, 18 June 2018

Traffic Control [The Arlington, Thousand Oaks, Berkeley, CA]: photo by efo, 22 June 2018

There are more cars than ever now, and the cars there are now are bigger than cars ever were before, even back in the day, when cars were notoriously too big. To step out into the streets now may not be as scary as doing photojournalism but it is to take a direct adrenalin heart shot. Every time I cross the street I stop breathing. And having been mown down the once it takes me forever now to tap tap tap my slow way across, while the serenade of honking grows. As in a dream. They're bearing down. I close my eyes. I start breathing. Would you like to be my neighbor?

This guy in Eben's very cool picture reminds me a little bit of me. One-issue guy, and same issue. This is just up the way from us. There's so much traffic now, the neighborhood people who have kids are beginning to resort to interesting defensive measures. Feeble, ineffectual, but the clown theatre aspect of this helps to lighten things up, while usefully signaling, while indicating awareness. An ally. If there were to be a civil society a small poetic act like this might help. But in truth there is no civil society, just cars, cars are deeply uncivil, they make the people in them uncivil, and war simply isn't all that funny. The war of cars on people I mean.

We're older and don't have small kids but we too have reason to fear these streets. We must cross them. We have no car. We are vulnerable. I know the spot where Eben took this shot, have passed it on foot many times, but after losing my spine to a Jetta not too far from here - in fact quite close to home here, but on a much busier street, at a spot where an amusing shot like this could not have been staged as this one was, for one would be risking one's life in the staging of it - will not ever again pass it, or GO, or collect $200.

But no worries, though, if the word around the trashbins on the street regarding the big nitrogen shipment can be trusted - those photojournalists, where there's improperly secured nitrogen, trust it, they're there! - and why would it not be, unless it isn't.

Nitrogen | Berkeley: photo by efo, 22 May 2018

* | Portland, OR - June 2017: photo by gumanow, 10 May 2018

011717 GW690 Fuji T64 14d (1 of 1) | by patrickjoust

0117717 GW690 Fuji T64 14d (1 of 1) [Baltimore]: photo by Patrick, 22 June 2018

011717 GW690 Fuji T64 8d (1 of 1) | by patrickjoust

0117717 GW690 Fuji T64 8d (1 of 1) [Baltimore]: photo by Patrick, 22 June 2018

We Make Children Disappear

Activists vandalized a @1800GOTJUNK billboard in #emeryville, ca with a message aimed at @ICEgov and their participation in separating children from their parents when trying to enter the #US from Mexico. #KeepingFamiliesTogether: image via Justin Sullivan @JustinSullivan, 21 June 2018

Looks like the people who altered the billboard in #Emeryville are hateful, homophobic right-wing AnCaps.: image via tree@treekisser, 21 June 2018

Appearing over Shellmound Street today in #Emeryville. Regardless of how it got there, it reflects our community’s belief that #FamiliesBelongTogether: image via John J. Bauters @JohnBauter, 21 June 2018

Why are there Blackhawk helicopters circling over #Emeryville: tweet via Robert Surenbroek @Square1Pilates, 19 June 2018

Activism or vandalism? The political message on an #Emeryville billboard that attracted a lot of attention today @nbcbayarea: image via Anaoushah Rasta @Anousha_Rasta, 21 June 2018

"We make kids disappear" - ICE Today in #Emeryville, seen from I-80. #FortressBayArea #DeportICE: image via Fortress Bay Area @FortressBayArea, 2 June 2018

Cloud Stacking [Emery Cove, Emeryville, CA]: photo by pixelmama, 5 February 2017

Baretables East | Around 14:50 the baretables seen earlier in Emeryville appeared on the horizon, and after snaking through Pinole and Hercules are seen here coming past Lone Tree Point with a trio of SD70Ms on the point.[Rodeo, CA]: photo by Ian Martin, 14 May 2008

Orange and Purple Skies | by charlottes flowers

Orange and Purple Skies | Amazing clouds and sunsets in the S.F. Bay Area [Emeryville, CA]: photo by charlottes flowers , 27 June 2015

Orange and Purple Skies | Amazing clouds and sunsets in the S.F. Bay Area [Emeryville, CA]: photo by charlottes flowers, 27 June 2015

This just in: We have pig We have hamburger We have cake to display You must die

Recess, 1940. | May 1940. Recess time at grade school in Hobbs, New Mexico." Medium format negative by Russell Lee for Farm Security Administration.: image by Michael Ryerson, 12 April 2018

President Trump chided a male protester with long hair as he was being escorted from Trump’s Duluth rally by asking the crowd “is that a man or a woman”. @BobSeger would not be pleased.: image via scott olson @olsongetty, 20 June 2018

Trump pushes back against border separation uproar: Jonathan Lemire and Darlene Superville, AP, 22 June 2018

President Donald Trump, left, arrives for an event on the White House complex in Washington, Friday, June 22, 2018, with people who have lost family members from crime committed by undocumented immigrants.: photo by Susan Walsh/AP, 22 June 2018

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump tried to cast doubt Friday on wrenching tales of migrant children separated from their families at the border, dismissing “phony stories of sadness and grief” while asserting the real victims of the nation’s immigration crisis are Americans killed by those who cross the border unlawfully.

Bombarded with criticism condemning the family-separation situation as a national moment of shame, Trump came back firing, sometimes twisting facts and changing his story but nonetheless highlighting the genuine grief of families on the other side of the equation.

“You hear the other side, you never hear this side,” said Trump, standing with a dozen of what he calls the “angel families” who lost loved ones at the hands of people in the country illegally. He focused on the fact that young migrants separated from parents are likely to be reunited, unlike the victims of murders.

“These are the American citizens permanently separated from their loved ones. The word ‘permanently’ being the word that you have to think about. Permanently — they’re not separated for a day or two days, these are permanently separated because they were killed by criminal illegal aliens.”

Trump Pushes Back on Border Separation Furor

President Donald Trump is highlighting the plight of Americans whose loved ones were killed by people who entered the country illegally.: photo by AP, 22 June 2018

Amid mushrooming bipartisan concern over depictions of terrified migrant children separated from their parents, Trump on Wednesday had abruptly reversed course and signed an executive order to overturn the policy, although up to 2,000 children are still believed to be separated from their parents. But that rare moment of public capitulation was brief from the president, who laced his remarks at a rally in Minnesota that night with hardline immigration rhetoric that continued Friday. In a tweet, the president raised questions about whether the migrants’ hardships really existed.

“We must maintain a Strong Southern Border,” the president tweeted. “We cannot allow our Country to be overrun by illegal immigrants as the Democrats tell their phony stories of sadness and grief, hoping it will help them in the elections. Obama and others had the same pictures, and did nothing about it!”

Trump’s suggestion that the stories were erroneous was likely fueled by revelations Friday about one of the defining images to this point in the crisis, a 2-year-old Honduran girl crying as her mother was stopped by a Border Patrol agent. But the girl in the photograph, who ended up on the cover of Time Magazine this week, was not separated from her mother but detained with her, the child’s father told the Daily Mail. Time Magazine said it stood by the image because it captures “the stakes of this moment.”

Trump has long chafed at the media’s treatment, his fury only growing in the past week when he felt that he did not receive proper credit for his summit in Singapore with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. He told the Trinity Broadcasting Network, in an interview with former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee set to air Saturday, that he found the news coverage “almost treasonous.”

Some conservatives seized hold of the migrant photo faux pas to attack the media, and White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders tweeted, “It’s shameful that dems and the media exploited this photo of a little girl to push their agenda.”

Other Trump allies have gone even further. Ann Coulter, a conservative pundit, said Sunday in an interview on Fox News that kids at the border were “actor children” who were “given scripts to read by liberals.”

Coulter then turned to the camera and said to Trump, “Don’t fall for it.”

A number of Democrats aggressively pushed back against Trump’s claims. Rep. Peter Welch of Vermont said Friday that Trump’s assertion was “bizarre” and that the border patrol processing center he visited in Texas in recent days was “nothing short of a prison.”

As part of his defense for his zero tolerance border crossing policy, Trump has frequently pointed to — and exaggerated — the threat posed by members of the violent gang MS-13 who have entered the United States. In what was likely not a coincidence, the Justice Department on Friday unsealed an indictment charging 11 suspected MS-13 gang members in connection with the killings of two teens in Virginia. All the suspects were from El Salvador.

But the central piece of Trump’s attempts to counter-program against the despairing images at the border was to stand with the “angel families,” as he did repeatedly during his presidential campaign, including at the 2016 Republican National Convention. At the somber event at the White House complex on Friday, Trump introduced the families, who delivered heartbreaking tales of their loved ones’ lives and, at times, gruesome descriptions of their deaths.

Many of them held large photos of their loved ones, some of which the president autographed. Trump said that one of the victims looked like the actor Tom Selleck.

“Your loss will not have been in vain,” Trump said. “We will secure our borders, and we will make sure that they’re properly taken care of.”

The president also rattled off a litany of statistics that indicated that illegal immigrants commit violent crimes at a far higher rate than U.S. citizens, saying “you hear it’s like they’re better people than what we have, than our citizens. It’s not true.”

But his assertion has been contradicted by a number of studies, including one by the Cato Institute and another in the journal Criminology that found that places with higher percentages of undocumented immigrants do not have higher rates of crime.

A Homeland Security report said there were 972 calls reporting crimes to its Victims of Immigration Crime Engagement hotline from April 26 through Sept. 30 last year. The hotline handled a total of 4,602 calls including general comments. The report said some of the calls were made for victim impact statements that lead to the deportation of someone who commits a crime. Victims also testified in immigration court proceedings, and their calls led to the arrest and detention of others.

At the event, Trump also bashed “the mayor of San Diego” for warning citizens about immigration agent raids. But the mayor of San Diego, Kevin Faulconer, is a Republican who did not provide a tip; a mayor who did was Libby Schaaf, a Democrat from Oakland.

Christina WilkieVerified account @christinawilkie

NEW: Trump autographed photos of deceased crime victims for today's White House 'Angel Families' event https://cnb.cx/2tj9UT4
Fred Delicious Retweeted Christina Wilkie

Fred Delicious added,

Worst Comic-Con ever
image via Fred Delicious @Fred_Delicious, 22 June 2018

Migrant Kids Crying Audio Played on House Floor

Democratic Rep. Ted Lieu of California has aired audio on the House floor of sobbing children in a detention center crying out for their parents. Lieu said Americans need to hear their cries.: photo by AP, 21 June 2018