Barbara Lee Speaks For Me Daily

A black trans woman, Marsha P. Johnson, started the modern #LGBTQ rights movement. As we end #PrideMonth, know that I'll continue to fight for every member of the LGBTQ community – because no one should have to hide who they are or who they love. https://t.co/DU66cJM0TX

— Rep. Barbara Lee (@RepBarbaraLee) June 30, 2019

Sunday Walk and Brunch

Lots of Pride flags and smiling faces out and about today. The Rose Garden was more crowded than usual, the breeze coming off the Bay was sweet, shriveled brown-paper roses enrich the vibrant new blooms now that Spring's first long delirium has faded a bit. Just one more week of teaching in prospect, and late summer freedom beckons. All rather lovely. Too bad, you know, about all the Nazis.

Barbara Lee Speaks For Me Daily

There’s no mistaking it: this president is a threat to national security and we cannot let him drag us into a war with Iran. Since Day One, I’ve supported repealing the AUMF and putting power back in the hands of Congress to declare war.

— Barbara Lee (@BLeeForCongress) June 28, 2019

Barbara Lee Speaks For Me Daily

There’s no question — @KamalaHarris is the best candidate in this race to prosecute the case against the Trump administration. #DemDebate pic.twitter.com/kbeiVIiehP

— Barbara Lee (@BLeeForCongress) June 28, 2019

Barbara Lee endorsed Kamala Harris on day one and I paid attention -- since Barbara Lee is the rarest of beings, a politician I actually respect and trust somewhat -- how lucky she is actually my Representative! As of now, I'm inclining toward favoring Elizabeth Warren. I appreciate her plans and also the fact that she has them and also the fact that she makes a point of having them. But I am glad that Harris had a good debate last night and is now on the rise in the public eye against stale, pale, male mediocrities Biden and Bernie (and the rest). I hope she makes an impressive and compelling case in the space opened up by her performance. She has disappointed me on the trail so far (and there are things in her history that don't thrill me, as is true of them all, honestly, some more than others), but I've been waiting and open for her to change my mind. I do think the debates have also revealed that Castro has been the candidate who has suffered most unfairly from the media infatuation with Beto and Buttgieg. Here's hoping the more stringent requirements for the third debate round cull the also-rans and nudge at least some of them into actually useful Senate runs.

Barbara Lee Speaks For Me Daily (Twofer Edition)

Between this administration’s heartless, reckless immigration policies and the never-ending circus in the White House, Americans have had enough of the chaos and cruelty. I'm calling on the Trump administration to shut down his inhumane immigration detention facilities.

— Barbara Lee (@BLeeForCongress) June 26, 2019

As Trump so gracefully likes to say, “Wrong!”https://t.co/xzaOd86MYe

— Barbara Lee (@BLeeForCongress) June 27, 2019

Teaching Day

I handed back their graded mid-terms Tuesday (that's a one-week turnaround, things move fast in a summer intensive). Yesterday's Debate (their in-class debate, that is, not last night's Democratic scrum overstuffed as it was with pale, stale, male also-rans interrupting Elizabeth Warren) was lively and fun, today they are workshopping their final papers to strengthen their theses and anticipate objections. Next week ends the course and it's a shortened week given the July 4 holiday (can't have any distractions from Dear Leader's tantrum amongst his brass-plated pee-pee guns). Evaluations Tuesday, handing in papers Wednesday and likely early out. So strange, but the last two weeks scarcely feel like they even have time to happen at all.

Barbara Lee Speaks For Me Daily

The student debt crisis is robbing a generation of their future. That’s why I’m proud to be an original co-sponsor of the #CollegeForAll bill. No one should be punished for seeking higher education — it’s time to make college accessible for all.

— Barbara Lee (@BLeeForCongress) June 26, 2019

Teaching Day

Octavia Butler's Kindred and handing back mid-terms this afternoon at Berkeley, circling back to Fanon if there's enough time.

Barbara Lee Speaks For Me Daily

There are millions of people who are just one emergency away from living in poverty. Enough is enough. Together we must fight for a country where the minimum wage is a living wage.

— Barbara Lee (@BLeeForCongress) June 24, 2019

Today's Random Wilde

Lady Hunstanton: But do you believe all that is written in the newspapers?
Lord Illingworth: I do. Nowadays it is only the unreadable that occurs.

Barbara Lee Speaks For Me Daily

Access to public education, public health, and public safety should not be a function of how much money you have. Period.

— Barbara Lee (@BLeeForCongress) June 23, 2019

Sunday Walk and Brunch

Summer day, grading behind me, we had a lovely lazy brunch at our cafe and then scaled the top of the hill at Mountain View cemetery to look at Oakland and San Francisco spread like a splendid diorama under the blue blaze of cloudless sky. Just a couple weeks remain of my Berkeley intensive. I should spend the rest of the day preparing for it, but I'm inclining toward watching some sfnal schlock while putting a puzzle together instead -- like languid afternoons in summer break when I was a kid. 

Barbara Lee Speaks For Me Daily

Terrorizing & raiding our communities will not make us safer.

If you or anyone you know is in danger of being targeted by ICE, remember: you have rights. Do not open the door. Do not answer questions. Ask for a search and arrest warrant. Stay calm.https://t.co/zPBJBjoTxY

— Barbara Lee (@BLeeForCongress) June 22, 2019

Grading

Spent this lovely Friday grading mid-term exams for my summer intensives -- they run the gamut this time round, so far a couple of perfect scores as well as a couple in the 50s. Not sure what that is about. Will probably devote much of tomorrow to grading as well. Thank heavens we're doing debate and a writing workshop for their final papers next week -- I only need to prep for one full lecture, which gives me time to get all this grading back to them in a timely fashion. I'll tell you what tho': summer intensives, man. Busy, busy, busy!

Barbara Lee Speaks For Me Daily

The 2001 AUMF gives this unstable man unchecked power for endless war. Congress MUST take back the reins before he leads us down a path we will regret. https://t.co/DCBCIqDy4K

— Barbara Lee (@BLeeForCongress) June 21, 2019

Teaching Day

Another gray Bay day. Nervous since it feels I have two lectures' worth of material on Arendt and Fanon to cover in a single lecture. Dropping an in-class exercise they would enjoy which I had planned would help me manage the time crunch but I have to resist this temptation as I would not have done in the past. In the past I would have just firehosed them with two lectures' worth of material and stunned them with my breadth of knowledge and left them gasping with a series of rapid-fire illuminations with lots of dramatic entertainment value but perhaps less likelihood of abiding understanding and usefulness of application in their own lives... In-class work is crucial to the community of the classroom, I have come to realize; it provides a context for students to process ideas in small groups together rather than just having me drone on and on at them for three hours... I used to really resist group work and even brief silences would be enough to send me out of discussion mode into fully-controlled lecturing. I liked to feel I was working harder than my students were -- I guess because that felt like earning my keep or looking like I know what I'm doing by keeping everything under control. Although Chatty Cathy remains my default lecture setting -- ask any of my students -- with each passing year I realize more and more how wrongheaded I have been -- that students learn best when they're working harder than me, that students learn more by working their way to their own compromises than hearing my luminously polished arguments, that a silence isn't a reproach but a communication of discomfort or difficulty that it is useful to dwell in, nothing to be ashamed or afraid of. It's not that I don't have things to say that they need to hear and some of which they won't hear if they are doing in-class work instead, all of that's as true as it ever was. But it's no less true that there are things they can only bring themselves to hear after they process them together through in-class work and discussions and I just need to set aside the ego that used to make me think my job was to fill every second of time with the sound of my voice rather than to facilitate learning for a diversity of students with a diversity of histories, aims, learning styles via a diversity of pedagogical strategies...

Barbara Lee Speaks For Me Daily

As Trump and Pompeo continue to provoke war with Iran, it’s more important than ever that Congress take back its authority on war and peace. We cannot continue to give the Executive Branch a blank check for endless war. #StopEndlessWar #NoIranWar https://t.co/6jmBO4nhEC

— Rep. Barbara Lee (@RepBarbaraLee) June 20, 2019

Teaching Day

Cool and gray, outside the sleeves are long and some are donning light jackets. We're screening and discussing Cronenberg's film "A History of Violence" today, a post-9/11 allegory with new resonances (for me at any rate) post-Ferguson. Usually the discussion is pretty lively and I'm looking forward to it. Teaching is feeling a bit less like an ordeal, whatever its intensity this summer, which makes for a nice change. Perhaps it all comes down to the brutal basic fact of the matter that I've gotten seven or more hours of sleep every night in a row for a whole week -- a feat I've managed only a couple of times this last few years since that damn health-scare hospitalization and then the, er, ongoing grotesque Trump episode we're living through.

Barbara Lee Speaks For Me Daily (Juneteenth Edition With A Warren Chaser)

On June 19, 1865, Union soldiers marched to Galveston, Texas, with news that the Civil War had ended and that slavery was abolished. More than two years after the Emancipation Proclamation, around 250,000 slaves had yet to be freed in Texas. #Juneteenth

— Rep. Barbara Lee (@RepBarbaraLee) June 19, 2019

The army’s declaration marked the beginning of what would truly be the final days of slavery in the United States. And every year since, African Americans around the country have celebrated this historic anniversary. #Juneteenth

— Rep. Barbara Lee (@RepBarbaraLee) June 19, 2019

We’ve come a long way, but we’ve got further to go to achieve full equality and healing. That’s why I’m also proud to support #HR40 and am encouraged by today’s hearing on reparations. So as we celebrate #Juneteenth, let’s also take today to reflect on the work ahead.

— Rep. Barbara Lee (@RepBarbaraLee) June 19, 2019

Juneteenth isn’t just about celebrating the end of slavery in Texas. It’s a necessary reminder that 154 years later, Black Americans still feel the harsh reality that the fight for racial equality in our country is far from over. I’m in that fight all the way.

— Elizabeth Warren (@ewarren) June 19, 2019

Teaching Day

Mid-terms, so a light load today, a grading marathon tomorrow. Summer intensives move fast!

Barbara Lee Speaks For Me Daily

“In America we shouldn’t have to buy our freedom, but that’s exactly what bail forces us to do.”

Nearly half a million people are sitting in jail tonight, not because they’re guilty of a crime — but because they can’t afford bail. pic.twitter.com/GKK4TtaiBi

— Barbara Lee (@BLeeForCongress) June 18, 2019

Barbara Lee Speaks For Me Daily

Four years ago, a white supremacist took the lives of nine people in the #CharlestonShooting. Since then, hate crimes have been on the rise in America. From white supremacist attacks to fear-mongering rhetoric to senseless gun violence, we cannot allow this hate in our country.

— Barbara Lee (@BLeeForCongress) June 17, 2019

Sunday Walk and Brunch

A lovely, lazy day... long, languid summer shadows, sweet cool breezes, nothing like so purgatorial as last week's blaze. My summer intensive is halfway through, and the upcoming week is a little less frenetic for me. I've already finished crafting the mid-term exam I'll be administering Tuesday, on Wednesday we're screening and discussing Cronenberg's "A History of Violence," which I've taught many times by now. Only Thursday's lecture on Arendt and Fanon looks demanding, really. Things are truly racing along now -- this time next week I'll be grading mid-terms, prepping an Octavia Butler novel, and getting ready for them to workshop their final papers. By then, it's like accelerating to the finish line. A nice distraction from the grotesque enraging demoralizing endless illegalities and immoralities and inanities of Trumpmerica, I must say.

Barbara Lee Speaks for Me Daily

Meet Constantin Mutu, a four-month-old baby taken from his family at the border. Meanwhile, his father was deported to Romania not knowing when he would see his son again. Welcome to the Trump administration. https://t.co/NLlQ3KRFKI

— Barbara Lee (@BLeeForCongress) June 16, 2019

Early Buzz

BBC Science:

Researchers have uncovered the earliest known evidence of cannabis use, from tombs in western China. The study suggests cannabis was being smoked at least 2,500 years ago, and that it may have been associated with ritual or religious activities... The cannabis had high levels of the psychoactive compound THC, suggesting people at the time were well aware of its effects. Cannabis plants have been cultivated in East Asia for their oily seeds and fibre from at least 4,000 BC. But the early cultivated varieties of cannabis, as well as most wild populations, had low levels of THC and other psychoactive compounds. The burners, or braziers, were found at Jirzankal Cemetery, high up in the Pamir Mountains. The scientists think ancient people put cannabis leaves and hot stones in the braziers and inhaled the resulting smoke. It's possible the high altitude environment caused the cannabis plants in this region to naturally produce higher levels of THC. There's evidence this can happen in response to low temperatures, low nutrient levels and other conditions associated with high elevations. But people could have deliberately bred plants with higher levels of THC than wild varieties. It's the earliest clear evidence of cannabis being used for its psychoactive properties. The plants appear to have been burnt as part of funerary rituals... The findings tally with other early evidence for the presence of cannabis from burials further north, in the Xinjiang region of China and in the Altai Mountains of Russia... Nicole Boivin, director at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Jena, Germany, said: "The findings support the idea that cannabis plants were first used for their psychoactive compounds in the mountainous regions of eastern Central Asia, thereafter spreading to other regions of the world."

Barbara Lee Speaks For Me Daily

Let me be clear: Trump does not have the authority to go to war with Iran. Congress must act fast to sunset the #AUMF and reassert our Constitutional authority to declare war. https://t.co/xisKoYTh7W

— Barbara Lee (@BLeeForCongress) June 15, 2019

Today's Random Wilde

Nowadays we are all of us so hard up that the only pleasant things to pay are compliments. They're the only things we can pay.

Barbara Lee Speaks For Me Daily

From escalating tensions with Iran to selling weapons in the Middle East to encouraging foreign governments to interfere in our elections, this president is a national security threat. Congress must hold him accountable.

— Barbara Lee (@BLeeForCongress) June 14, 2019

Let Them Eat Disruption

After a generation of Reagan Republican neo-feudalist Randroidal asshole "Idea Guys" dismantled the New Deal and Great Society for short term-cash, the next generation of neo-feudalist techbro VC "thought leader" hustlers dismantled what was left of society for short-term cash again. We praise and coddle them to this day, as they kill us day after day after day after day. It isn't exactly a mystery how we got here or where this is all going.

Barbara Lee Speaks For Me Daily

Russia interfered in our 2016 elections. And Trump just admitted he would welcome it again in 2020. This is not partisan politics: this president is a national security threat. The House must open an inquiry into impeachment. https://t.co/8U5i7hKsgL

— Barbara Lee (@BLeeForCongress) June 13, 2019

Barbara Lee Speaks For Me Daily

Today an amendment will be offered to strip language I secured to #PutPatientsFirst and prohibit funding for the Trump-Pence refusal of care rule. The rule allows for patients to be denied care based on personal beliefs even to save a life. I urge my colleagues to vote NO.

— Rep. Barbara Lee (@RepBarbaraLee) June 12, 2019

Hot Summer Nights

Not the insomniac's friend.

Wilde on Impeachment

Some cause happiness wherever they go; others, whenever they go.

Barbara Lee Speaks For Me Daily

While Trump’s policies continue to exacerbate climate change, California is leading the way to preserve our environment and protect our future. https://t.co/l2M3e8uCbw

— Barbara Lee (@BLeeForCongress) June 11, 2019

Barbara Lee Speaks For Me Daily

The Trump administration’s anti-LGBTQ agenda gives cruel a new meaning. The government is refusing to recognize Andrew and Elad Dvash-Banks’ same-sex marriage and as a result, denying citizenship to their son. https://t.co/67n1v3bXZN

— Barbara Lee (@BLeeForCongress) June 10, 2019

Intensive

This week we finish our discussion of King, begin a discussion of Foucault, continue to a discussion of Angela Davis, and then move on to discuss Nietzsche. As if that weren't enough, Wednesday introduces propositional analysis (and enthymemes, formal and informal fallacies), Thursday digs deeper into figures, tropes, and schemes. You'd think I would be a bit daunted, but honestly we're covering so much so quickly I don't really have time to worry about getting behind or making mistakes, it's just three hours of theoretical ideas and critical tools firehosed relentlessly at them day after day after day till we're done for the weekend. Exhausting tho' it can be, my favorite part is just how useful and provocative all this stuff is. One really feels oneself making a difference, providing practical reading and writing tools, stunning people with abolitionist and Nietzschean provocations.

Barbara Lee Speaks For Me Daily

People live in cars and on the streets because of soaring housing costs. Students work 2-3 jobs just to pay rent. Teachers drive hours to schools because they can no longer afford to live in East Bay. My Renters Bill of Rights will finally tackle the housing crisis head-on.

— Barbara Lee (@BLeeForCongress) June 9, 2019

Sunday Walk And Brunch

Summer! Basking in blazing light, strolled to the Rose Garden again... it's always beautiful, but these early summer weekends it's an avalanche of blooms, I just want to keep coming back week after week just to see the technicolor spectacle caper along the color wheel. Our diner was bustling, the Pride t-shirts are coming out, people seem rather cheery -- one almost forgets Trump is President and millions of our fellow citizens are fucking Nazis and Nazi collaborators. My summer intensive is already one third through and next week we'll be barreling toward the mid-term. Time flies when you're skidding feet first into the grave! Feeling comparatively cheerful amidst the gathering smouldering ruins this lovely day.

Barbara Lee Speaks For Me Daily (Impeach The Bigot Idiot Con Man Who Lost The Popular Vote And Loves Nazis Edition)

The Trump administration’s corrupt behavior surrounding the Mueller report has been startling to say the least. I believe it’s time the House open an inquiry into impeachment proceedings now.

— Barbara Lee (@BLeeForCongress) June 7, 2019

Winning the Senate Through DC and PR Statehood: From Your Lips To Goddess' Ears

Geoffrey Skelley:

It’s been 60 years since a new state entered the union, but now Democrats and liberals are accelerating efforts to gain statehood for Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico. One of their motivations is the future of the U.S. Senate, which is currently biased toward the Republican Party. The logic goes that if Democrats can get unified control of the federal government after the 2020 election, they could push through statehood for both, adding four more seats to the Senate, and all four would likely be Democratic leaning. That might seem far-fetched, but the U.S. has a rich history of partisan state-making.

Like the ruinously entrenched conservative court, ending the anti-democratic skew of sparsely populated States in Congressional representation and the Electoral College requires a kind of hardball from Democrats I find it hard to imagine (the long shot of winning the Senate in 2020 despite GOP shenanigans followed by ending the Senate filibuster would surely be required at a minimum), but perhaps Trumpism will have steeled sufficient spines if and when the time comes to act...

Barbara Lee Speaks For Me Daily

As we celebrate the 100th anniversary of Congress passing the #19thAmendment, we honor the suffragettes who fought so hard for a woman’s right to vote. But the truth is many women of color are still disenfranchised even today and we must not give up the fight for true equality.

— Barbara Lee (@BLeeForCongress) June 4, 2019

The Solution To Homelessness Is Housing the Homeless

Watch it work in Helsinki, or simply continue to mutilate your soul hopelessly observing the ubiquity of human suffering everywhere around you while fearing the day it comes stalking for you...

Barbara Lee Speaks For Me Daily

Every day a new report warns how serious climate change is. Still, the Trump administration is full of climate deniers pushing their anti-environment agenda. There is no other way to say it: our planet is dying and we will suffer unless we act now.https://t.co/r7vzTrNt1f

— Barbara Lee (@BLeeForCongress) June 4, 2019

Barbara Lee Speaks For Me Daily

It’s crystal clear: the Republican agenda is racist and xenophobic. Trump’s citizenship question is nothing more than hateful discrimination seeking to intimidate people of color. We must not allow our country to stand for this racist behavior. https://t.co/scXofrdmjf

— Barbara Lee (@BLeeForCongress) June 2, 2019

DC Statehood

Electoral-vote.com:

In every term since 1991, Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) has introduced a statehood bill for the District. These have gotten nowhere, but she isn't giving up. At a Memorial Day event at the D.C. War Memorial, Norton pointed out that 30,000 D.C. residents are veterans, yet the 700,000 people who live there have no vote in whether the country goes to war. Norton is a member of several House committees, but she can't vote on bills. And, of course, D.C. has no senators. This time might be different. Her bill, dubbed H.R. 51 (since D.C. would be the 51st state), has a chance to at least pass the House, since House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) now supports it. The bill also has over 200 Democratic cosponsors, If it passes the House, it will die in the Senate because Mitch McConnell will never let a vote come up. He knows very well that if D.C. becomes a state, it would elect two black Democrats to the Senate (and one black Democrat—probably Norton—to the House). Although D.C. has more residents than Wyoming or Vermont, when it comes to votes in Congress, it has none. Nevertheless, if the House does pass the bill, the fight for "no taxation without representation" could come back again and it could play a role in the 2020 election. If the Democrats capture the House and Senate in 2020 and the Republicans filibuster the same bill in 2021, it will be embarrassing explaining why over 700,000 Americans (of which 63% are minorities) shouldn't have senators or a voting representative. One (weak) defense is that Art. 1 Sec. 9 of the Constitution states that states shall cede land (not exceeding ten miles square) for the seat of government. However, the boundaries of the new state could easily be drawn to exclude the White House, Capitol, and Supreme Court, which would remain in the District.

PR and DC Statehood is straightforward enfranchisement, basic decency, plain good sense, and amounts to Democratic partisan hardball against Nazi Republicans, there is nothing but upside in pushing for it every day till we die.

Barbara Lee Speaks For Me Daily

There’s no sugar-coating it: our nation is experiencing a gun violence epidemic and we must do everything in our power to ensure no more lives are lost at the hands of needless gun violence.

— Barbara Lee (@BLeeForCongress) June 2, 2019

Sunday Walk and Brunch

Summertime walks between summer intensives... the grey morning gave way to a lazy afternoon on Piedmont Avenue, not too many folks about, billions of bugs and fragrant petals to keep us company tho'. The first week's teaching went well, it's a smaller class than usual but fortunately lots of bright voices and curiosity and enthusiasm make in-class workshops and discussions buzz along nicely. Now I've got a little cookie-jar shaped cat purring between my arms as I tap away at the keyboard and contemplate next week's lesson plans...