Category: Protests and Crackdowns

By Posted on Posted in Activism, Democracy, Eco-friendly, Energy & Sustainability, Environment, Politics, Protests and Crackdowns, Science Tagged with , , , , ,

HOORAY! The Massachusetts State Senate Transportation and Utilities Committee released its version of the energy bill WITHOUT a loathsome and undemocratic nuclear protection repeal that was in the House version. Our opponents say by opposing the repeal, we’re trying to ban nuclear power. But while banning nuclear power would be a smart thing to do, there’s nothing in the relevant law (Chapter 503 of the 1982 Massachusetts laws) that bans nuclear power, as long as it meets the very reasonable conditions in the law (I list them a bit later).

We’ve been battling the repealers for more than a year and a half. Huge thanks to my own Senator Jo Comerford, along with next-district-over Senator Paul Mark in the Berkshires and Hilltowns and Julian Cyr on the Cape. The three of them led the effort to keep this horrible provision out of the bill.

Thanks also to Senator Michael Barrett of Lexington and Concord (yes, THAT Lexington and Concord—how appropriate as we are weeks away from the 250th anniversary of the birth of the US), who chaired the committee, wrote the bill, and as recently as a few weeks ago was still saying he supported the repeal. Being able to change your mind as you learn the facts is an important skill, and not all legislators or members of the Executive Branch have it.

And of course, big thanks to my dozen tireless colleagues in Commonwealth Coalition for Democracy and Safe Energy—and in the leadership and ranks of the many other organizations who joined this effort, among them the Sierra Club, Indivisible-MA, and Greater Boston Physicians for Social Responsibility. And the dozen or so other orgs I don’t have space to name. But I WILL name Clamshell Alliance, which I represent on the coalition along with two other members. Clam has contacted every Massachusetts resident on its list.

The work is not done yet, though. This victory has to become permanent. We have to make sure the repeal is NOT added back in during conference committee, because the House version includes it. And if it does go forward with the repeal, we’ll need to blanket the legislature and let them know this has to be a deal breaker and MUST be amended out, or else they should vote no on the overall bill.

If you vote in Massachusetts, please convey to the members of the Conference Committee (AND to your own State Senator and Representative) that repealing 503 is unacceptable. Here are the committee members:

Contact all six of them—today!

Sen. Michael Barrett: 617-722-1572 / Mike.Barrett@masenate.gov (Room 312-B)
Sen. Cynthia Creem: 617-722-1639 / Cynthia.Creem@masenate.gov (Room 312-A)
Sen. Bruce Tarr: 617-722-1600 / Bruce.Tarr@masenate.gov (Room 308)
Rep. Mark Cusack: 617-722-2030 / Mark.Cusack@mahouse.gov (Room 43)
Rep. Bradley Jones: 617-722-2100 / Bradley.Jones@mahouse.gov (Room 124)
Rep. Aaron Michlewitz: 617-722-2990 / Aaron.M.Michlewitz@mahouse.gov (Room 243) 

The bill our opponents want to repeal was passed by 67% of voters in every county back in 1982. It requires a permanent waste storage facility, an emergency evacuation plan, and voter and legislative approval. Here are the relevant sections of the law (click here to read the entire law): 

Section 3. No new nuclear power plant shall be constructed or operated within the Commonwealth unless:
(a) construction and operation of the proposed nuclear power plant have been approved by a majority of the voters voting thereon in a state-wide general election; and
(b) the General Court has found, and has so certified by resolution duly adopted by majority vote of the members of each House:
(i) that there exists an operating, federally-licensed facility for the timely and economical permanent disposal of high-level radioactive wastes generated by the proposed nuclear power plant;
(ii) that an adequate emergency preparedness plan for the proposed nuclear power plant has been developed, approved, and implemented by the Commonwealth;
(iii) that effective emission standards applicable to the proposed nuclear power plant have been promulgated by the Commonwealth to protect the public against health and safety hazards of radioactive air pollutants traceable to nuclear power plants within the Commonwealth;
(iv) that there exists a demonstrated, federally-approved technology or means for the timely and economical decommissioning, dismantling, and disposal of the proposed nuclear power plant; and
(v) that the proposed nuclear power plant offers the optimal means of meeting energy needs from the combined standpoints of overall cost, reliability, safety, environmental impact, land-use planning, and avoiding potential social and economic dislocation.
 
Section 4. No facility for the disposal or storage of low-level radioactive wastes shall be constructed or operated within the Commonwealth unless:
(a) construction and operation of the proposed waste facility have been approved by a majority of the voters voting thereon in a state-wide general election; and
(b) the General Court has found, and has so certified by resolution duly adopted by majority vote of the members of each House:
(i) that the particular technology or means to be utilized at the proposed waste facility is superior to all other available technologies or means from the combined standpoints of overall cost, reliability, safety, environmental impact, land-use ACTS, 1982. – Chap. 503. planning, and avoiding potential social and economic dislocation; and (ii) that the site of the proposed waste facility is superior to all other available sites from the combined standpoints of overall cost, reliability, safety, environmental impact, land-use planning, and avoiding potential social and environmental dislocation.
 
Section 5. The Commonwealth shall not enter into any compact or agreement with any other state or states concerning the disposal or storage of low-level radioactive wastes within the Commonwealth unless:
(a) the compact or agreement has been approved by a majority of the voters voting thereon in a state-wide general election; and
(b) the General Court has found, and has so certified by resolution duly adopted by majority vote of the members of each House:
(i) that construction and operation within the Commonwealth of any facility for the disposal or storage of low-level radioactive wastes pursuant to the proposed compact or agreement shall be subject to the conditions of Section 4 of this Act; and
(ii) that the responsibilities and commitments of the Commonwealth under the proposed compact or agreement are no greater than those of any other party thereto.
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By Posted on Posted in Activism, Democracy, Diversity, Ethics in Government, language, Mindset, Peace and War, People Helping People, Politics, propaganda, Protests and Crackdowns, Social and Economic Justice, Talking to the Other Side Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Thrilled to read that the left-center national Jewish organization JStreet polled Jewish voters and discovered some amazing transformations in Tuesday’s elections in the US: 72% of Jewish voters supported Democratic congressional candidates; 76% disapprove of President Donald Trump’s job performance; democracy and the economy were the leading electoral concerns; 76% support sanctions against violent West Bank settlers; and most amazingly of all, 66% believe AIPAC’s campaign spending against candidates who criticize Israel increases antisemitism in the United States—and 80% believe Israel’s actions in Gaza and the West Bank increase antisemitism in the United States.

These are the actual subheads on their results press release, except that I added the phrase “and most amazingly of all” and combined their last two points. AIPAC is the acronym for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the most powerful pro-Israel lobby.

The group also raised $13 mm for its candidates. And 98 percent of the ~200 candidates JStreet endorsed won or appear to be headed toward victory!

This is a dramatic shift in the way mainstream Jews view Israel—AND a complete rejection of Trump’s attempts to drive wedges between the Jewish community and other constituencies—as well as a refutation of the despicable argument that any attack on Israel’s policies is antisemitism (especially if that false criticism provides cover for suppressing the speech of Arabs and Muslims).

The credit for that shift is partly the abject horror with which many Jews view Netanyahu’s policies. But it also represents decades of work within the Jewish community: progressive Jewish organizations like New Jewish Agenda in the 1980s and Jewish Voice for Peace in our own day—whose protests have been extremely visible since the October 7, 2023, attack by Hamas—Jewish-Palestinian partnership organizations like Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam (an intercultural village), Combatants for Peace (joint appearances by speakers who fought on opposite sides), West-Eastern Divan Orchestra (a bicultural youth orchestra), and Standing Together (a solidarity organization), to name a few among many. And this in turn meant that groups like JStreet were not seen as too far to the left, because there were a lot of Jews and Jewish organizations well to their left.

Disclosure: I was an active core member of the Western Massachusetts New Jewish Agenda chapter and of the intercultural Middle East Peace Group and have donated to several of the organizations listed above. And when I was involved with Agenda, which was early to call for a two-state solution, the mainstream Jewish community was openly hostile to us. Now, there are many Jewish and mixed organizations who want to go farther, and many synagogues have had speakers from some of these groups.

 

What this means:

Jews and lawmakers in the US finally have cover to take positions that would have been anathema a decade ago. Israel’s repressive warmongers and racists in government can no longer count on the support of US Jews and the lawmakers of any religion who want to keep that constituency happy. And the new Congress is likely to be a lot less sympathetic to funding Israel’s attempt to dehumanize and destabilize Arab and Muslim communities—not just in Palestine, where the military has stood by while ultra-right Jewish settlers have forced Palestinians from their homes and communities, interfered with the olive harvest, and committed acts of violence—but in Lebanon and elsewhere. It also means T’s dream to wipe out or expel 2 million Gazans and turn Gaza into a fancy beach resort for wealthy people from the US isn’t going anywhere.

So, over the next couple of years, we can expect a significant realignment. Many prominent members of the US Congress have been openly supportive of Israel’s openly racist government—not just in their rhetoric but in their massive funding. Many of those folks felt they had to do this because Jewish voters are a significant constituency that votes in high numbers, and supporting Jewish causes means kowtowing to AIPAC. We who’ve been saying for decades that AIPAC has no authority to speak for the entire Jewish people now have solid evidence that US Jews are willing to be harshly critical of Israel, and those who do will not be ostracized. It might even mean a reluctance to participate in asinine foreign policy blunders of the sort that got us into an unnecessary, completely avoidable, and damaging war with Iran. That war, and both the human and economic consequences, are a big part of the Republicans’ losses this week.

And from my canvassing and door-knocking in the 2024 campaign, I can say with certainty that some people who would have voted for Harris chose not to over the Biden administration’s refusal to hold Israel accountable for the Gaza war. Would it have been enough to prevent T’ second term? We’ll never know?Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

By Posted on Posted in Activism, Democracy, Diversity, Mindset, Peace and War, Politics, Protests and Crackdowns, Psychology, Social and Economic Justice, Talking to the Other Side Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Take a Moment to Celebrate! We Saved the Soul of the US
Wow, just wow! Thank you, US voters. Thank you to the thousands of organizers and democracy cheerleaders who have worked their butts off for a year or more to make this happen.
This blue tsunami isn’t just about salvaging the wreckage of an economy that had been the world’s best at the end of Biden’s term. Yes, people are hurting from higher prices, job losses, and stagnant wages. Yes, T has throttled the economy for the people while skimming a lot off the top. But this goes far deeper. T’s own niece Mary put it this way:
“Some Democrats who shall not at the moment be named would have you believe that this election was about affordability. I am not saying it was not also about affordability, but to say that this almost incomprehensible election was only about one thing, in this case the economy, is to miss the point entirely. This election was, I believe, about the soul of America, about who we are and who we refuse to allow ourselves to become. It was a tipping point. It was a massive rebuke. It was a wholesale repudiation of every single thing Donald, the Trump regime, and the Republican Party stand for.” (emphasis added)
I agree. This was an epic battle to save the very soul of our nation. And this repudiation was based in a lot of organizing over a long time. To quote Heather Cox Richardson,
The historic nature of this election cannot be overstated. It is a rejection of Trump, who insisted voters should imagine he was on the ballot. But more than that, it is a rejection of the Republican ideology that has driven American politics since the 1980s: the idea that some people are better than others and have the right to rule…

Trump and appointees like Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth have purged the government of minorities and women and undermined the health and well-being of nonwhite Americans, immigrants, and women. But rather than benefiting regular Americans, those policies have hurt them. And administration leaders have been quite open about their intention of using the government to loot the country for themselves and their cronies.

In their determination to stop Trump and MAGA, Americans came together across the artificial lines that Republicans have exploited for more than a generation to stand against what the nation’s founders would have called tyranny. The rural areas that have made up the backbone of MAGA support joined more Democratic urban areas to elect Democrats. The racial, gender, and cultural divisions Republicans have exploited to stay in power have collapsed in the face of a rising oligarchy.

Even billionaire Elon Musk’s investment of close to half a billion dollars in Republicans in the midterms could not overcome voters’ frustration with a government that works only for the very wealthy. People across the country, organized in No Kings rallies, along overpasses, in webcasts, and in everything from political clubs to knitting communities, have come together to stand against the extraordinary corruption of the Trump regime, to oppose Trump’s rejection of constitutional limits in favor of autocratic power to declare tariffs and start wars, to demand the government address the needs of Americans, and to insist on the rule of law.

WHY We Won—and Where
As I see it, all that organizing, those millions of people showing up for No Kings rallies, those thousands who stood holding banners at busy intersections and on highway overpasses, those tens of thousands of community members who gave support to their immigrant neighbors in a hundred different ways when their cities were invaded by our own government, those who wrote letters to the editor or took the microphone at a street demo or knocked on doors and wrote postcards to get out the vote—all of that gave a neighbor’s face to the resistance—and gave strength to those who hadn’t felt comfortable resisting publicly to at least get out and vote. It was an effective counter to the narrative in the mainstream media that we were powerless.
It proved that no matter how hopeless and powerless we might feel, there’s always something we can do.
Yes, we lost a few races that we were counting on. But we gained so much more, and we gained a lot of it in places like Texas, Iowa, Kansas—which hadn’t sent a Democrat to the Senate in 94 years—and the Carolinas. And we got the happy proof that T’s gerrymanders backfired, as did the racist/misogynistic campaigns of people like Mike Rogers and Vivek Ramaswami backfired big time. Who would have ever predicted that a Mississippi US Senate seat would be essentially a draw (no winner called as of this writing)? Who would have predicted the huge margins of victory for the candidates who faced those onslaughts? (El Sayed was up over Rogers by 7 points, while Amy Acton beat Ramaswami by nearly 8.)
Immediate Shifts Need to Happen
But our work isn’t done! The next steps are to:
  1. Make sure that the Democrats understand that they need to exercise the mandate they just got in the firm repudiation of trumpism to make sure a power-mad would-be dictator can never grab so much power, use the office for personal wealth, and trample so many human rights ever again. Among other things, we need to hold the perpetrators responsible, clean out the incompetents in the Cabinet, and find some way to hold T legally and financially responsible for the abuse of taxpayer dollars, the open bribery and corruption, the destruction of government property without permission, and all the rest of it.
  2. Build the floor back up to support all those who’ve suffered so egregiously under the current regime. We need to undo all the harm created by ICE, DOGE, and the gutting of agencies like OSHA, EPA, and even the DOJ that he turned into his personal vindictiveness machine. We need well-paying jobs that can support a family, housing that people can afford, protections from harassment, energy improvements that lower carbon footprint AND utility/fuel bills at the same time…
  3. Rebuild the shattered alliances with our allies around the world, and put an immediate stop to the enablement of dictators and thugs like Putin, Netanyahu, Bukele, and the rest.
For that reason, I support finding a much stronger Speaker of the House and Senate Majority Leader than Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer. While I respect them both and think they’re well-intentioned, Jeffries, 56, is very much in the tradition of those a generation older who’ve been afraid to take true progressive stands—and unwilling to match action to their rhetoric. And Schumer, 75, is not only part of that older generation that has supported the Democratic Party’s turn away from its labor roots toward its corporate funders, but has been a leader in that effort.
It’s not a coincidence that the pro-Netanyahu organizations (including AIPAC, which has been a consistent apologist for Netanyahu’s worst extremism) have donated $1,1495,512 to Jeffries and $411,980 to Schumer. Jeffries also gets money from a mortgage banking  association and private equity/investment management megafirm Blackstone. Schumer’s top 5 corporate contributors include managed care and pharma companies, Nasdaq (the stock market for new companies and especially tech), and a multi-player game company. This cycle, Jeffries also raised $12.7 million from unspecified individual donors out of $17mm total, while Schumer raised “only” $680k from individuals out of a total $1.2mm.
The Bigger Picture, The Longer Struggle
Getting out from under the thumbs of the oligarchs and major donors is part of a larger process that might include:
  • Embracing the issues of class, identity, environment—but in ways that speak to inclusiveness for ALL and that don’t burn bridges with cultural centrists, that elevate people across all classes, colors, genders, ages, etc. The party has some great models for this, among them Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders. Yes, I know, Bernie’s actually not in the Democratic Party—but there’s a fair chance he could have won the 2016 election if the party hadn’t put not just a finger but an entire fist on the scale—because his campaign energized a lot of folks who don’t always participate, because the people were so desperate for change that many defected from Bernie to T, and because HRC ran an entitled, elitist, warmongering campaign that didn’t make space for working-class folks and progressives—and I say this as someone who knocked on doors for her.
  • Building—and beginning to carry out—an economic platform that sees housing and healthcare as basic human rights, sets the minimum wage high enough to live on, subsidizes college and public transit, and provides a good safety net for those unable to work—funded by measures such as a millionaires’ tax, cutting fat from the military budget, and ending government subsidies for industries that cause more harm than good. Maybe a slogan like “If [name of country] can afford guaranteed housing, health care, and education, surely we can too.”
  • Transforming our energy and resource use patterns to slash our carbon footprint, provide full employment, and lower our costs (all of which is possible at the same time if approached systemically)—and maybe even cut the work week to 30 hours so there are enough jobs to go around.

In short, we are at a transformational moment. The potential for sweeping change to benefit ordinary people is greater than it’s been since FDR. If we can seize this moment, turn the Democratic Party into a force that benefits the whole society, and finally banish hunger, poverty, homelessness, all types of othering, environmental destruction, and even war and catastrophic climaechange to “the dustbin of history,” we can build a permanent, lasting society that works for the good of all of us (including the nonhumans).Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

By Posted on Posted in Business Ethics, Consumer Issues, Ethics in Government, Ethics-International, Mindset, Politics, propaganda, Protests and Crackdowns, Psychology, Talking to the Other Side Tagged with , , , , , , , , ,

There’s a long list of basic psychology principles that the guy in the White House doesn’t seem to understand. For starters,

  • He values feigned loyalty and obsesquiousness more than real friendship, and he never seems to have loyalty to anyone else—not even his wives and kids—with the possible exception of his abusive late father. He thinks some dictators, including the murderous Vladimir, are his friends and doesn’t notice how they play on his need for flattery to accomplish an agenda diametrically opposed to our country’s interests (I write as a US citizen).
  • He thinks he has the right to desecrate and destroy public property.
  • He thinks he can establish his greatness by slapping his name—or the name of our continent (which he doesn’t even seem to understand is NOT the name of our country)—on landmarks he had nothing to do with.
  • He squanders our tax dollars on these personal vanity projects, on the illegal war, and on the persecution of immigrants and his perceived enemies—even when he says it will all be privately paid for or funded by another government, as he claimed for his ballroom and the border wall, to name two prominent examples.
  • He also not only accepts but actively solicits payments that sure look like bribes or blackmail attempts: from media, from universities, from nonprofits, from billionaires, from corporations and foreign leaders with business before the government, etc.
  • And he thinks the laws—he’s violated dozens of them—don’t apply to him because he’s president (which, unfortunately, the Republican majorities in Congress and on SCOTUS have perpetuated by refusing to hold him in check).

But the one I want to talk about today is his perverse idea that attempting to censor or punish the press makes the problem the press is reporting on go away. This crazy mindset has been one of his hallmarks since his first presidential campaign.

This kind of “thinking” is more dangerous than it seems on the surface. By surrounding himself only with people who will give him bad advice to advance their own agendas but never criticize him and by blasting attacks on those who question anything he does, he takes away the guardrails on his actions. He is an impulsive person who not only acts without thinking things through, over and over again, but has somehow internalized a belief that he knows more than the experts on any question, no matter how far outside of his actual knowledge base.

In his first term, he had Cabinet members who could help him navigate at least some of the shoals. Those guardrails don’t exist in his second administration, with a Cabinet composed largely of incompetents, grifters, or both, and unofficial advisors or former advisors who’ve wielded real and destructive power, which, interestingly enough, often ends up benefiting those advisors directly (talking about you, Mssrs Musk and Kushner).

And that has led the US into a downward spiral. This president who said he would not start wars invaded Venezuela in a coup after killing civilians in multiple attacks on their boats. He listened to another of his thug-dictator friends and started the unwinnable war in Iran that no previous US president would touch, leaving an enemy in a far stronger position and the US far weaker than before the war. He has torched decades-long alliances for capricious reasons—even making repeated threats against other nations’ sovereignty—leaving the rest of the world to understand that the US can’t be trusted and they’d better make their way in the world without allying with us. His changing-all-the-time tarrifs and his squandering tax dollars in a war against his own residents (in the name of immigration policy) have wrecked the economy and alienated many in his own base.

It will take decades to undo the damage, hold the perps responsible, and build trusted relationships again

Please remember all of this when you vote on or before November 3rd (and if voting before, please vote in person, as he has ordered the post office to sabotage mail-in voting). The best way out of this morass is to provide unassailable majorities of Democrats in both houses of Congress. Believe me, I know the Dems are far from perfect. We need to get out of the hole we’ve dug ourselves where we have to vote for a lesser evil rather than a greater good. All the way back in 2007, I endorsed a whole package of voting reforms that I’d love to see, including a parliamentary system and ranked-choice voting (known at that time as instant-runoff), which would combine to give us a lot more choices. I’d add a few more to that list today, but I’ll let it stand as my thinking at the time. But in the current framework, the only way to get the Republicans out is to get the Democrats in.Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

By Posted on Posted in Activism, censorship, Democracy, Demographics/Psychographics, Diversity, Ethics in Government, Ethics: General, language, Mindset, Peace and War, Politics, propaganda, Protests and Crackdowns, Psychology, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Trying to make sense of these complex issues isn’t easy. It’s something most progressive Jews struggle with constantly. This is very much a personal piece, based on grappling with this situation since I was a small child. I don’t claim that this post speaks for anyone other than myself.

To complicate things, the words “zionism” and “antisemitism” have wildly different meanings to different people. I define zionism as the tenet that Jews, like other ethnic and cultural groups around the world, have the right to a homeland of our own.

The version of zionism I was raised with was an idealistic extrapolation of this principle that embraced the social experiments in Israel, such as intentional communities (notably the kibbutz and the moshav), women’s equality extending even to compulsary military service, and the commitment to agriculture and reforestation that would “make the desert bloom” as it had in biblical times. This happy, upbeat vision even had a soundtrack: happy, upbeat Israeli songs in Modern Hebrew such as “Tzena, Tzena,” popularized here in the US by the politically progressive quartet The Weavers in 1951.

But it was also rooted in the shameful slogan, “a land with no people for a people with no land”: a racist lie that ignored the thousands of years of Palestinian history dating back at least as far as the Old Testament battles with the Philistines, a lie that was used to justify the Naqba (also spelled Nakba)—the expulsion of tens of thousands of Palestinians from what is now Israel—and the continuing oppression of Palestinians both within the Green Line that marked Israel’s 1948 borders and in the West Bank and Gaza, which are still majority-Palestinian but have been under Israel’s control since the 1967 war.

Another myth underpinning the idealistic version of zionism is the idea that Israel, the lone democracy and only non-Muslim country in the region, was our democratic outpost, the only place championing human rights in a region that was openly hostile to Jews and to Israel: the little David surrounded by heavily armed Arab Goliaths who wanted to drive Israel into the sea.

The human rights champion part would be great if it were true. But Israel’s society is stratified. In 1986, when we first visited, there was still a clear prejudice in favor of Jews of Eastern European origin or born in Israel or Palestine; Sephardic Jews from Spain and Portugal were second-class citizens, third class for those from Turkey, Iran, and the Arab countries, fourth class for those from Africa—and the non-Jewish Arab populations, whether Muslim, Christian, or Druze, were at the very bottom.

The first two classes had integrated by the time we returned in 2014, but the rest of the stratification remained. Discrimination against Arabs and Palestinians remains rampant. From roadside checkpoints to destruction of their villages and orchards, long imprisonments, and more, Israel has fomented oppressive conditions for the populations under its heel.

This certainly didn’t start under Netanyahu, but he has made it much worse, culminating in the genocide of the Gaza war and its continuing aftermath.

Another strain of zionism is the post-Holocaust push for a Jewish homeland so there would always be a refuge for Jews, historically marginalized, ostracized, expelled, and murdered for more than a thousand years—a way of giving teeth to the “Never again” slogan that sprouted as the truth of those awful years started to come out. It was that experience that gave wings to the dream of a Jewish state.

The movie “Israelism” is a really good analysis of how we Jews in the US were raised to believe we were doing good for the world in our zionism—how good a job the propagandists for Israel did at inculcating these messages and beliefs across US Jewish society—even as our heroes from David Ben-Gurion and Chaim Weitzmann to Golda Meir secretly embraced ethnic cleansing and driving the Palestinians out.

*                                   *                                   *

Antisemitism is prejudice against Jews. It’s an odd choice of word, because Arabs are also Semitic peoples. For progressive Jews, it is something completely separate from criticism of Israel or sympathy to the Palestinian cause. I claim a right to criticize Israel, just as I criticize the government of my own country (especially in its brutal and disgusting current incarnation). In fact, I’ve criticized and protested against every US president since Nixon, who was elected when I was eleven—yes, even Carter, Clinton, Obama, and Biden. They all did things I thought were wrong, and I wasn’t shy about writing letters or showing up for—or even organizing—demonstrations or lobbying my elected officials to change those policies.

But in the right-wing Jewish world, any criticism of the Israeli government, even the current genocidal one that by comparison makes even the horribly cruel Stephen Miller look relatively tame, is labeled antisemitism. Ditto any endorsement of the Palestinian cause. Somehow, these people can’t envision a world that has room for both Jewish and Palestinian homelands.

These would-be censors have gone so far as to add a rider to a military spending bill protecting Israel from boycotts. This passed the US House last September but, thankfully, as far as I can tell, has not been taken up in the Senate. We’ve also seen the punishment of pro-Palestinian students such as Lebanese Mahmoud Khalil and Turkish Rumeysa Ozturk, imprisoned and deported (Khalil) or threatened with deportation (Ozturk) over their criticism of Israel.

This ridiculous conflation of opposing the Israeli government with hating Jews goes back decades. In the 80s, I was in a group called New Jewish Agenda that advocated a two-state solution. For this, we were ostracized and marginalized within the mainstream Jewish community. We did not get speaking opportunities at synagogues. I am amazed to watch Jewish Voice for Peace emerge from similar marginalization in recent years to become the main US Jewish voice for Palestinian rights. I’ve been thrilled to see integrated Israeli-Palestinian peace groups such as Combatants for Peace and Standing Together get those synagogue speaking opportunities in the last 20 years or so.

And yet that right-wing narrative is so embedded in mainstream Jewish institutions that I know many people who are in pretty much basic agreement with me on so many other issues but can’t overcome their own Islamophobia or anti-Arab bias. They still see any criticism of Israel, especially from non-Jews, as antisemitism. They call NYC Mayor Sohran Mamdani, who constantly makes pro-Jewish statements and has Jewish advisors, an antisemite even as they paint their signs for the next No Kings march—because Mamdani has accurately called out the Netanyahu government’s war crimes, protection of anti-Arab extremists, and oppression of its own Palestinian population.

In fact, this post was inspired by a conversation on Facebook that started with me praising Mamdani for his comment in response to having higher poll ratings than Netanyahu among NYC Jews: “My focus is on delivering for each and every New Yorker, and I’m proud to be the mayor of the city with the largest Jewish population in the country” and pointing out that he has made many pro-Jewish statements in his time campaigning for and serving as Mayor.

That generated two comments from this camp. “I am not at all impressed with him. His stance on Israel and Jews is dangerous and deplorable.” and, in response, “I agree. Look, he’s entitled to his opinion about the Middle East. But keep it to yourself, Zohran. Your job is to make NYC a more liveable city. Focus on that and you’ll get great support. Stop talking about Bibi (who I dislike, too, but for different reasons).”

My immediate response was:

I have actively looked into a bunch of accusations that claim Mamdani is antisemitic. If I could find any, I’d immediately stop supporting him. However, what I find each time are the ACCUSATIONS of antisemitism rather than any actual speech or action that is against Jews. He has been loud and consistent in condemning Netanyahu and Israel’s present government, yes. But that’s not antisemitism. It is condemning genocidal, brutal attacks on Palestinians and Lebanese and claiming to do so in the name of all Jews. Well, I am Jewish and I condemn Netanyahu and his genocide. Just as I speak out as a citizen of the US against the brutal policies of this government and its insistence that the government only has to represent right-wing so-called able-bodied, cis, straight, mostly male Christian Nationalists—who are not Christian, if you read Christ’s words—so I speak out against what is happening in my name over there.
What’s even worse is the way right-wing Jews insist on conflating criticism of Israeli policies with hating Jews. IMHO, that leads directly to more antisemitism, because the haters say, “look, the Jews are telling us that all Jews support Israel’s government and that government represents all Jews. THAT leads to wildly negative outcomes. Ignorant people will ingest that sick messaging and then commit pogroms—just as ignorant people in the US right have attacked immigrants, trans people, and others who got on this administration’s bad side.
This post is a longer response.

 

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By Posted on Posted in Activism, Democracy, Ethics in Government, media-general, Mindset, Peace and War, People Helping People, Politics, propaganda, Protests and Crackdowns, Shel's Personal Life, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , , , , , , , , , ,

Today should have been the joyous 250th anniversary of the world’s first modern-state democracy. (Yes, I know, the structure borrowed heavily from the  Haudenosaunee Confederacy.) Instead, it feels all-too-much like a family gathering at the bedside of someone on life support, someone who may not make it too much longer.

Democracy has taken such a beating in the year and a half since an open fascist, racist, sexist, anti-planet, convicted criminal, self-dealing monster—the greediest and cruelest president in history, a man who has used his office not for good but for personal enrichment and war against his perceived enemies that this anniversary feels like a deathbed watch. He so embodies all the reasons the Colonies left the paternalistic mix of oppression and protection provided by King George that Andy Borowitz wrote this updated Declaration of Independence. Here are the first three of his long list of grivances:

  • He has engaged in corrupt schemes to profit from his office, plunder the Treasury, and steal from the taxpayers.
  • He has desecrated the People’s House and the nation’s capital.
  • He has perverted the Department of Justice to take revenge on his perceived enemies.

But the patient—our democracy—while bleeding profusely and crying out in pain, is not dead. We are in charge of the miracle cure, and it’s called nonviolent resistance.

And this powerful and honorable tradition, which has brought down many governments and reformed many others, goes back thousands of years. The earliest documentation I know of is from Exodus 1:1-19, which tells the story of how the midwives Shifra and Puah disobeyed Pharaoh’s command to kill the Hebrew male babies, telling him that the women gave birth so fast, they couldn’t get there in time. Which is why, today, I chose to wear a t-shirt that proclaims, “Resisting Tyrants Since Pharaoh,” even though the protest march I planned to wear it to was canceled due to an extreme heat advisory.

In recent days, we’ve seen the impact of nonviolent resistance. We’ve seen the impact of mass protests like No Kings in the slow and grudging willingness to resist at least a few of T’s irrational and unconstitutional demands from both the Supreme Court and the Republican majorities in Congress—both of whom could have easily reined in T’s authoritarianism and attacks on democracy just by holding to the settled body of law, as they were more willing to do during his first term. It’s too little and too late, but it’s a sign that the voices of ordinary citizens are being heard even when those in power claim to ignore them.

We’ve also seen the impact of courageous individual actions taken at great personal risk, such as USAF Major Jason Watson, who has 23 honors and decorations in his long military career and was arrested on July 1, in uniform, for holding a sign saying “Impeach Convict Remove” on the steps of the US Capitol. His action could not only cost him his job (three years before retirement). He could also serve considerable prison time and forfeit his retirement pay. Fully aware of the consequences, he carried out the action anyway, in the long tradition of people like Daniel Ellsberg (who leaked the Pentagon Papers, vastly strengthening the peace movement during the Vietnam war) and Martin Luther King, Jr.

Also this week, we’ve had prosecutor Jack Smith finally talking about the cases against T that would have almost certainly resulted in another round of convictions had they been allowed to go to trial. Smith says openly and directly that he “will not be intimidated.” But if the treatment of James Comey, Leticia James, Mark Kelly, and others is any clue, it’s a pretty safe bet that he will be harassed in some powerful way by government stooges who act as if the First Amendment only applies to Trumpistas. The first link is to the video, the second, to a written summary.

These brave actions are perhaps even more important than the mass demonstrations—because they show raw courage and a willingness to sacrifice everything for what’s right. Many have died for these principles, both here in the US and elsewhere. To name four prominent non-US examples: Alexei Navalny in Russia, Salvador Allende in Chile,  Steve Biko in South Africa, Gandhi in India.

This is even more remarkable considering the level of repression this government has engaged in, including:

Yet, we persist. Millions of people in the US have participated in at least one No Kings march or at least one mass organizing call by a broad coalition of progressive groups (among them Public Citizen, MoveOn, Movement Voter Project, 50501, and several others) spearheaded by the Working Families Party. Voting turnouts are high, and many “safe Republican”seats have been switched. Numerous administration policies have been overturned or cancelled under public pressure, though not without doing substantial damage first. Activists from many groups have trained other activists in peaceful protest, nonviolent civil disobedience, finding levers to encourage noncooperation among the officials carrying out these brutal policies, and so much more.

And we have not only inspiration, such as the photos of protests around the country Robert Hubbell publishes daily in his Today’s Edition newsletter (usually a mix of sidewalk and park protests alongside “bridge brigades”displaying banners and signs from highway overpasses.

We also have road maps, such as…

  • An amazing list of 346 nonviolent tactics, the first 198 compiled by Gene Sharp in the pre-Internet, pre-Covid era, and another 148 compiled by Michael Beer of Nonviolence International. Personal note: I’ve been a fan of this list for years and have cited it several times. Two weeks ago, I got to meet Michael, chat with him as we hiked our neighborhood mountain, and have dinner with several others as we hosted a gathering for a mutual friend who was in from California. He told me he could have expanded the list again with many more tactics, but he wasn’t able to keep up with them.
  • The work of Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan, especially Why Civil Resistance Works (Columbia University Press, 2011). This scholarly study compares the success of violent versus nonviolent struggles and provides evidence to explain why nonviolent ones have both a higher success record and, usually, more lasting effects. The above link takes you to the book’s page on Bookshop.org, where your purchase supports the independent bookstore of your choice, instead of the billionaire who continues to be one of T’s most prominent enablers in the second term. I believe in using our economic power to help accomplish our goals, so I avoid shopping at the world’s largest online store, just as I do most of my searching and much of my web browsing on Ecosia.org, a nonprofit which plants a tree for every search (and I think another tree for every tab opened on its browser).
  •  Chronicles of the current struggle, the history of resistance, and of people you may not have heard of but whose contributions matter. A few among dozens: Waging Nonviolence, Choose Democracy, Black Lives Matter, Rebecca Solnit, Heather Delaney Reese, Heather Cox Richardson, Jessica Craven, especially her Sunday Extra Extra good news roundup, the aforementioned Robert Hubbell (link is above), Black History Stories, A Mighty Girl (feminist history), Josh Helfgott (LGBT and political news), Moments from the Past (Black and general history)…
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By Posted on Posted in Activism, Democracy, Diversity, Ethics in Government, People Helping People, Politics, Protests and Crackdowns, Social and Economic Justice, Uncategorized Tagged with , ,

I sent a shortened version that fit in their contact forms with a copy to my own delegation, but here’s the entire letter. If it inspires you to write your own letter, Jeffries has a separate contact form for non-constituents.

 

Dear Leader Schumer and Leader Jeffries:

Please encourage your caucuses to terminate ICE funding and abolish the agency. The US managed without ICE until 2003. Democrats should be demanding to abolish it entirely—and there is wide public support for this: G. Elliott Morris of Strength in Numbers, a data-driven Substack, says it could be as high as 70%. It is the only course that can be morally and politically justified right now.

As a strong Democrat, former member of my local Democratic Committee, advisor to several successful local candidates since the 1980s, business owner since 1981, and immigration justice activist since 2019, may I humbly suggest that THIS is the moment to take a strong stand. ICE has broken so many laws about due process, use of deadly force, profiling, overstepping its legal requirement NOT to do local police work, and much more. It must be held accountable NOW.

  • Public sentiment following Renee Good’s murder is strongly against this rogue agency.
  • The memo just leaked that ICE unilaterally tells agents they don’t need a judicial warrant to break down the door of someone’s home will add to the people’s fury.
  • Even before the murder, millions of people have watched ICE’s brutal violence unleashed against ordinary people with no criminal record on video, and thousands have seen it live on the ground. Just as nightly news coverage of the horror shifted public support away from the Vietnam war, revulsion against ICE has shifted the territory on immigration.
  • We’ve all been affected by this barbarism. Homeowners have lost their landscaping crews, restaurant patrons can’t get decent service because so many cooks and servers have either been taken or are too afraid to come in, businesses are shutting down because they can’t get workers. It would be difficult to find a US resident who is more than two degrees of separation from one of those abducted.
  • US citizens and members of registered Native tribes who have more of a claim on our land than we do have been taken, as have immigrants here legally. Often, they’ve told their captors they have proof, but the agents are far more interested in making quota and having the chance to behave viciously than they are about justice or fairness or legality. And refuse to look at the documents. Sometimes it has taken weeks for the system to release. To name just two among many high-visibility cases, Kilmar Abrego Garcia and Mahmoud Khalil were detained for MONTHS. In Abrego Garcia’s case, the government quickly acknowledged that his arrest, detention, and deportation to a hellhole prison in a country the government was expressly prohibited from returning him to was a mistake. Khalil was here legally until the government unilaterally revoked it with no notice and no appeal process AS THEY WERE ARRESTING HIM. He was obviously punished for his publicly stated and First Amendment-protected political opinions.

THIS IS THE TIME FOR DEMOCRATS TO BE BOLD. In the early days of Trump 2, I kept hearing, “where are the Democrats? Why aren’t they shutting this atrocity down?” ICE is out of control and has ignored its mandated obligations around due process in favor of unchecked violence against the people. “Taco Trump” backs down whenever he faces a real challenge. We’ve seen that many times and saw that again in today’s news of his capitulation on retaliatory tariffs against the eight countries that came to Greenland’s defense. We Dems need to step up and loudly and consistently say to the American people (and vote accordingly):

  • The administration is stealing your healthcare money to fund an illegal and morally reprehensible—and totally unnecessary war—against the immigrants and descendants of immigrants and Native people as well as those who have flooded the streets to protect the first group’s rights who make this country great.
  • Biden, Obama, and Clinton controlled illegal entry without resorting to this disgusting violence and intimidation.
  • It’s becoming more and more clear that Trump sees ICE as his private army that he can use to attack opponents and suppress dissent. We’ve even seen elected officials and faith leaders handcuffed and/or detained, even in cases where they attempted to exercise their right of oversight at ICE and CBP facilities.

These talking points are what is resonating. We’re hearing them from a few individual members of Congress, but from the leadership, we’ve heard far too much about trying to get along and pass some lame bill that barely impacts ICE or Trump. Don’t make the mistake of 2016 when our candidate tried to defend the status quo while the people were crying so loudly for change that they elected a racist, clueless monster because HE was calling for change while she was calling for more of the same.

The working class of the US is in pain right now. We need to tie those economic struggles to Trump’s policies on deportation and a bunch of other things. We need to be loud, strong, and consistent. We need to be making these points in the news media every day—including on Fox. And we can start by supporting the people’s demand to abolish ICE once and for all.

Sincerely,

Shel Horowitz

 

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By Posted on Posted in Demographics/Psychographics, Diversity, Ethics in Government, Ethics: General, language, Politics, propaganda, Protests and Crackdowns, Psychology, Social and Economic Justice, Talking to the Other Side, Uncategorized Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

 From today’s NY Times email newsletter, “The Morning”:

President Trump does not seem interested in de-escalating anything in Minneapolis. This week, he said that one justification for the shooting of Renee Good might have been that she had been “disrespectful” to officers. Being disrespectful is a form of speech, though — one protected by the Constitution.

With Trump, it’s always a clue that if he accuses someone of bad behavior, he is doing/has done it himself. This is on the same day that news broke about Trump giving the finger and two F-bombs to a Ford employee who called him out as a “pedophile protector”—which the Times mentioned in that same newsletter. The link above is to The Guardian, because the Times uses paywalls.

But Trump showing the emotional maturity of a two-year-old yesterday is just the latest in a lifetime flinging insults at individuals, groups, and whole countries. This is what he said about racism in 1989  (followed by the response decades later by a Black commentator whose offer to Trump to tour Baltimore after Trump disparaged that city was declined). 1989 was also the year he ran a full-page ad in all four of NYC’s daily newspapers calling for the death penalty for five Black youths falsely convicted of rape and later exonerated.

And ever since he rode that golden escalator to announce his candidacy in 2015, it’s been a nonstop barrage. He mocked a reporter’s physical disability. He called Africa, Haaiti, and El Salvador “shithole countries” and called for increased immigration from Norway (a White-predominant country) in 2018 and—just a month ago, on December 9, 2025—not only admitted the comment (which he’d denied at the time) but bragged about it and added Somalia to the list. For years, his racism led him to deny that Obama was born in the US. If that lie were true, Obama would have been ineligible to serve as President. He repeatedly attacks and insults his opponents—Biden and Harris, of course—but even former loyalists that he drove away, including then-Vice President Mike Pence and one of his biggest loyalists in Congress, Marjorie Taylor Greene. And his history of insulting and objectifying women—individuals as well as women as a class—is just as bad as his racism and ableism.

Worst of all, the vile xenophobic anti-immigrant rhetoric of his first campaign and term has not just increased. It has morphed into something truly evil: a war against immigrants that empowers a poorly trained, poorly vetted goon squad army of ICE and CBP agents to rain terror down on immigrant neighborhoods, whose residents are snatched from cars, homes, workplaces, and even their immigration court hearings—with zero due process and extreme violence—and sent to far-away gulags in the US and in countries where these victims have no connection. The conservative Cato Institute lists a multipronged attack on immigrants and citizens, from revoking legal status of people who came here legally to multiple attacks on the Constitution and due process. This is unlike anything in US history. It’s even more extreme than the detention of Japanese immigrants and descendants during World War II—for which the US has apologized and made reparations. Many US citizens have been caught in these sweeps and illegally detained. And much of what ICE is doing is a wildly illegal expansion of the powers they are chartered with. They are not supposed to take a police role other than in matters of illegal immigration (as I document in the Appendix, below). And they are not supposed to shoot people. Yet, Time Magazine reports today that  “Immigration agents have fired at or into civilian vehicles in at least 13 instances since July.” That would include the two people shot since the murder of Renee Nicole Good last week, in Portland, Oregon. At least four of those were fatal. Add to that the 32 people who died in ICE custody in the past year.

Trump’s hypocrisy takes many other forms, too. Examples:

  1. He’s praising protesters in the streets of Tehran even as he decries them in any state that voted for Kamala Harris.
  2. Killing more than 100 Venezuelan sailors (95 as of November when this article was written), then invading the country and kidnapping its (admittedly thuggish) leader on the pretext of interdicting drugs, but pardoning the biggest drug dealer of them all, former President Hernandez of Honduras. Of course, we all know and he hasn’t tried to hide that it’s really about the oil.
  3. Claiming to be a law-and-order president but inciting the January 6, 2021 riot at the Capitol and then pardoning even those rioters who physically attacked police officers.

Please let your Representative and two Senators in the US Congress know that you find this unacceptable and you want them to withhold funding from ICE until it starts obeying all relevant laws on search and seizure, delineation of responsibility, due process, and use of force. If they balk at that, defund the agency at least until Minnesota is allowed to fully participate in the investigation of Good’s murder—and then keep pressing for more accountability. And please share this post widely.

 

Appendix: Perplexity.AI Report on what ICE is and is Not Allowed to Do

I asked Perplexity, the AI engine I tend to use for serious research and factchecking, “In what situations is US Immigration and Customs Enforcement allowed or not allowed to act as local police do?” Because both AI and traditional search engines may or may not return the same results for the same search, and because AI results are not written by a human and therefore not subject to copyright, I’m copying the entire answer. Drawing on ten different sources including the BBC, the Massachusetts state government website, and the ACLU, it is quite illuminating:

 is a federal civil immigration agency, not a general police force, so it can enforce federal immigration and certain federal criminal laws but cannot simply “act like” local police enforcing state or local law. Its actions are further limited by the U.S. Constitution, federal statutes, and by how much local police choose or are allowed (under state law) to cooperate.?

What ICE is allowed to do

  • Enforce federal immigration law. ICE can stop, detain, and arrest people it has probable cause to believe are removable (deportable) from the U.S., and can place them in immigration detention and initiate deportation cases.?

  • Enforce certain federal crimes. ICE can investigate and bring cases involving immigration-related crimes like human trafficking, document fraud, and smuggling under federal criminal statutes.?

  • Make public?space arrests with probable cause. In public places, ICE may arrest someone if agents have probable cause the person is removable and likely to escape before a warrant can be obtained; they may also execute valid arrest warrants in public.?

  • Enter homes with judicial warrants or consent. ICE may enter a private home only with the occupant’s voluntary consent or a judicial warrant signed by a judge; an internal ICE “administrative” warrant alone does not authorize entry into a private residence.?

  • Conduct raids and surveillance within legal limits. ICE can conduct operations at homes, workplaces, and in communities and can use data collection and digital surveillance tools, subject to constitutional limits on searches and seizures.?

  • Request help from local law enforcement. ICE can ask local agencies to notify them when someone is being released or to hold a person briefly through “detainers,” and can enter formal agreements (287(g)) that deputize some local officers to perform limited immigration functions.?

What ICE is not allowed to do

  • Cannot enforce state or local non?immigration laws. ICE does not have authority to enforce purely state or local offenses (like routine traffic violations or most state criminal laws) unless a separate federal authority applies.?

  • Cannot enter homes using only an ICE form. An ICE administrative warrant (Form I?200/I?205) does not let agents force their way into a private home; without consent or a judicial warrant, they must stay outside or in common/public areas.?

  • Cannot force local police to act as immigration officers. Local agencies cannot be compelled to carry out civil immigration enforcement; they decide whether to cooperate, and many jurisdictions legally limit that cooperation.?

  • Cannot use detainers as binding orders. ICE detainers are requests, not mandatory orders; local agencies may violate state law or the Constitution if they hold someone past their release time without proper legal authority.?

  • Must comply with the Constitution. ICE arrests, searches, and detention are constrained by the Fourth Amendment and due process requirements, just like other law enforcement; unconstitutional stops, searches, or holds can lead to liability.?

How ICE differs from local police

  • Scope of authority. Local police are generalists enforcing broad state and local criminal laws within a limited geographic area, while ICE has a narrow subject?matter focus (immigration and related federal crimes) but nationwide reach.?

  • Civil versus criminal. Much of what ICE does is civil (removal/deportation) rather than criminal prosecution, so ICE can detain someone for immigration violations even when no crime is charged, which is different from typical local policing.?

  • Limits on cooperating with ICE. Many cities and states have “sanctuary” or similar policies that allow cooperation on serious criminal matters but forbid or restrict participation in routine civil immigration enforcement.?

When ICE and local police can overlap

  • Joint operations on crime. Local police may work with ICE when investigating federal crimes (for example, human trafficking or gang cases) where immigration issues also arise.?

  • 287(g) agreements. Under 287(g) “jail?enforcement” agreements, certain local jail officers are trained and authorized to perform specific immigration tasks (like issuing charging documents or detainers) under ICE supervision, but they still must follow constitutional and state?law limits.?

  • Information sharing and notifications. Where allowed by state and local law, police may share booking information or give ICE notice of a person’s release, even if they cannot legally hold the person longer just because ICE asked.?

Situations where ICE is more restricted than local police

  • Protected or sensitive areas (policy?based). For years, ICE policies limited enforcement in places like schools, hospitals, and churches, though recent DHS actions have rescinded some of those “sensitive location” protections; policy can be more restrictive than what the Constitution alone requires.?

  • Entering private spaces. Local police with state?court warrants for state crimes may enter a home to arrest a suspect; ICE, by contrast, often relies on administrative warrants that do not permit entering a home without consent, so ICE’s ability to mimic a home arrest by local police is more limited.?

If you want, a follow?up can focus specifically on how these rules work in Massachusetts and what they mean for day?to?day interactions with ICE.

 
 
 
 

 

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By Posted on Posted in Activism, Democracy, Ethics in Government, media-general, Politics, Protests and Crackdowns, Social and Economic Justice, Transparency vs. Secrecy Tagged with , , ,

If you cringe when protestors describe the federal government as fascist, consider what happened today in Minneapolis, where a US citizen mom of a six-year-old was gunned down in cold blood by an ICE agent after she tried to escape when an agent ordered her (using the other f-word, according to some accounts) to get out of her car.

AP has about a dozen (somewhat repetitive) news stories about this. If you can stomach it, the BBC has the actual murder starting with an agent attempting to yank her car door open and continuing as she backs the car away and then is shot point-blank by a different agent.

Judging by this quote in the AP reports by Kristi Noem, “He’s been in situations like this before, and he certainly has been out there and followed his training today,” the feds know exactly who this terrorist murderer is. I hope Minnesota and/or Minneapolis law enforcement brings him to justice immediately.

I am APPALLED at everything the feds did in this totally avoidable and unacceptable assassination and the vile cover-up lies that they’ve been telling ever since—but I AM grateful for the mass public and local/state government outrage and their demand the ICE get the F out of the state. This is at least the fifth killing by immigration agents since T’s inauguration last year.

What has this great country of ours become?Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

By Posted on Posted in Activism, Business Ethics, Democracy, Diversity, Ethics in Government, language, Media Ethics, Politics, Protests and Crackdowns, Social and Economic Justice, Talking to the Other Side Tagged with , , , , , , , ,

Marie Antoinette, the arrogant, out-of-touch 18th-century Queen of France, reportedly responded when hearing that French citizens were starving and demanding bread, “Let them eat cake.” (That’s what I’d been told my entire life—but I found out while looking for a source to cite that the quote is an urban legend.)

Even though she probably didn’t say it, “Let them eat cake” remains THE metaphor for out-of-touch, clueless autocrats.

One such is our would-be king, who can find unlimited money to unleash his goon squads on the defenseless (including at least 170 US citizens as of 6 weeks ago), prosecute his political enemies without cause, put on an expensive but pathetic military parade, literally carve his name into public buildings and propose putting his image on National Parks passes, chase after every little thing his minions see as promoting Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (and what’s wrong with those goals anyway?) to the point of changing from a vision-disability-friendly font to a hard-to-read one on government documents, scrub websites and even museum exhibits of mentions of heroes of color or who are female while eliminating free National Parks admission on Black-related holidays MLK Day and Juneteenth, tear down a big chunk of the People’s House (the East Wing of the White House) without permits, build a useless and expensive ballroom, also without permits, spend a fortune to rename the Department of Defense as the Department of War and to change such things as military bases and national parks back to their former White Supremacist names.

And let’s not forget his proposed $20 billion bailout of his ally in Argentina. Or the biggest boondoggle, $2 trillion in tax cuts for super-wealthy corporations, who, not coincidentally, have funded/are funding his campaign, inauguration, and ballroom. Other corporations and institutions—law firms, universities, and media companies, especially—paid large amounts that sure look like bribes after being harangued by the administration for not sufficiently condemning their own DEI initiatives and other specious grounds.

Many of them could have easily won in court, but—gee, what a surprise—paid these huge settlements while they had business before the federal government: universities trying to get back far larger sums in federal grants, media companies facing mergers, and big law firms so scared of this president that they donated millions of dollars in pro bono services to his pet causes (even though they then lost business to other firms who stood fast). Shame on all these capitulators who chose short-term gains over long-term reputation, throwing away their integrity to try to pacify a bully who will only come back for more!

Yesterday, this vain and ostentatious man proposed a US replica of the Parisian Arc de Triomphe near Arlington Cemetery, identifying it as “the number one priority” of his domestic policy chief, Vince Haley. Let them eat cake!

Yet, there’s no money to keep ACA premiums from doubling or worse, none for SNAP, none for USAID (likely killing up to three million people each year around the world, according to Oxfam)—nothing for the programs that help real people who aren’t wealthy in the US or around the world.

After wrecking the economy with his tariffs, his decimation of the workforce through his immigration policies, and his misdirected economic priorities, he dismisses affordability as a “Democratic hoax.” He tells the suffering public to buy fewer toys for their kids. This from a man who has never known a day of hunger or been unable to afford something in his life. A man born to privilege, but not to love. An openly corrupt man who has used the presidency for personal and family gain (and to help his obscenely wealthy corporate benefactors, billionaires, and convicted criminal friends) in ways we have never before seen or even dreamed of in the US.

But he is losing his luster, even among his base. Middle-class and working-class people, from farmers to plumbers, are hurt and upset by the economic mess. People who believe in human decency are appalled by the clear violations of due process, the violent attacks on non-criminal immigrants and those who stand up for them, the snatching up of immigrants who followed all the regulations and were taken at court hearings to get asylum, and the unilateral cancelation of many citizenship finalizations—in short, the climate of fear and intimidation.

Seven million people came out in public to protest these abuses on the most recent No Kings Day. Each of those probably represents many others who couldn’t get time off work, who worry that they would be picked up by ICE, who have physical limitations that made a public demonstration a poor choice, etc.

According to researchers Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan, if 3.5 percent of a country’s population withdraws consent from the government and nonviolently refuseds to cooperate, the government tends to fall. As of this summer, the US population stood at 347,275,807. 3.5 percent of that is 12,154,653. If each No Kings participant represents just ONE additional supporter who didn’t show up, that’s 14 million—well above the 3.5 percent threshold. So we have the power to stop the slide to authoritarianism, to reclaim our government from the thugs and crooks, and to build something far better than we had before.

What will be your first step on this road to victory? Who will you work with to carry it out?Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail