November 07, 2018
Last night, Americans shifted the balance of power in the House of Representatives, creating a Democratic majority. The new Congress now holds the responsibility to take a stand for civil and human rights. Here are four immediate steps Congress must take to put America back on the right track. Add your name in support.
1. Reauthorize and Strengthen the Voting Rights Act. Congress must enact a new Voting Rights Act to ensure fair elections and unfettered access to the ballot for everyone.
2. Investigate America’s resurgent white supremacist movement. President Trump’s role in electrifying the white supremacist movement cannot be ignored. Congress must hold hearings to investigate the rise in hate and extremism in this country and on possible solutions.
3. Stop the Trump deportation machine. The Trump administration is operating an inhumane deportation machine that rips families apart, terrorizes communities, and flouts due process and American values. Congress must hold the administration accountable for its abuses and enact sensible reforms to our broken immigration system.
4. Stop the Census from being rigged. By including a question about citizenship, the Trump administration wants to use the decennial Census as a weapon of intimidation against immigrants, one that would distort the results. Congress must take steps to stop this scheme.
4 comments:
Yeah, right. All good and fine except that there are still the crazies in our demo party like Pelosi, Waters, Schiff, Feinstein and especially the Marxist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Your so lucky to have Barbara Lee in your district. I'm stuck with Waters in my district. With the repubs gaining senate seats with an again demo rep congress, I'm afraid nothing will get done. Does anyone really want Pelosi as speaker again? She can't even talk straight and screws up facts.Do you realize that a total of $5.2B was spent by both parties for this mid-term? What a waste of money that could have been spent on some of your suggestions. Sorry, rube, this nation is a slow motion train wreck no matter who has the reins. The 1% elites of the nation, repubs or demos, will have their way to keep all Americans constantly divided. I suppose it will take another manufactured war to unite us all as it has in past American history. Until then, urbanites will hate rurals and rurals will hate urbanites.
Circular firing squad in three... two... one? Your points, one by one:
Barbara Lee seems to feel lucky to have colleagues like Waters, Pelosi, and Ocasio-Cortez to work with... if you really think I'm lucky to have Barbara Lee as my representative (and I agree that I am!) it's difficult to believe you think their constituents are so very unlucky after all.
I teach Marxist theory at the university level, and have little patience for ignoramuses who use the term "Marxist" either as a simple epithet or a rosy bumper sticker.
If you want elections to waste less money -- a worthy problem to tackle, to be sure, all this pay-to-play money and corruption has long been obviously ruinous -- I recommend you start working for public financing of elections by joining one of the many campaigns with seasoned and committed activists already devoted to this outcome.
Your "analysis" that urbanites interminably hate rurals and vice versa is, of course, reductive (which ones exactly?) and distracting (from policies actually affecting the constituencies misnamed by monolithic categories like "urbanites" and "rurals") and a likely recipe for cynicism (whatcha gonna do haters gonna hate etc). This is no doubt its purpose.
I presume such cynicism underlies your "both parties are the same" nonsense -- that's the substance of your declaration at a time of explicit Republican white-supremacist authoritarian attacks, that the nation is "a slow-motion train wreck no matter who holds the reins."
Yeah, I'm not exactly thrilled by the ongoing demolition of public and common goods in this country through Reagan Bush Gingrich W. and Trump throughout my whole fucking lifetime, either, dude.
Yeah, my politics are to the left of most of the Democrats, they are hardly my dream party either (though I do appreciate that Democrats in general are incomparably more diverse, informed, equitable, and concerned with sustainability than Republicans have been for well over a generation).
Yeah, voting is not enough to save this country from climate catastrophe and wealth concentration and corporate-militarism even if not voting is tantamount to voting for evil racist war-mongering greedhead queer-bashing fascists who want to change the country for the worst, including fomenting more of those "manufactured wars" you rightly abhor or at least are pretending so to do here and should if you are a person of the least conscience or sense.
So, anyway, given all these limits and compromises and very real frustrations what you do is... you vote for Democrats and then you educate, agitate, and organize to inspire, embarrass, pressure Democrats and others to do more and do better on and on and on until you drop dead in a world that you hope is a bit better because you lived in it.
Believing this as I do you call me a "rube." That's fine. I'm sure I could come up with unflattering labels for you, fauxvolutionary brocialist or right-wing troll or what have you. Anonymous scattershots don't exactly inspire a lot of confidence in comments sections, you know. I used to get a kick out of doing that sort of name-calling online and definitely the targets of my ridicule always really were ridiculous -- and I doubt this blog will attract back its old readership since life has changed my priorities a bit these last few years.
If your comments come from an earnest place I hope you will translate your ideals into outcomes through organizing. If you are just trolling a stranger online to sow confusion or cause bad feelings, I hope your life finds its way to someplace better soon.
Good luck to you.
Just as sanctimonious and condescending to the common person as I remember you many years ago when I was a student in your USB class. I would have thought that age had mellowed you. I'll cheer you up as I'm out of your blog forever. Don't bother responding. Good luck to you and goodbye.
I miss you already.
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