Using Technology to Deepen Democracy, Using Democracy to Ensure Technology Benefits Us All
Saturday, August 31, 2019
Always just a few days or even hours from the next mass shooting...
Wednesday, August 28, 2019
Barbara Lee Speaks For Me Daily
Offering a pardon in exchange for breaking the law is a crime in itself – and it’s certainly not a joke. This is yet more evidence of this president’s lawlessness and another example of why I support opening an impeachment inquiry into this administration. https://t.co/0KhPUUzZle
— Rep. Barbara Lee (@RepBarbaraLee) August 28, 2019
Monday, August 26, 2019
Prep Prep Prep
Sunday, August 25, 2019
Barbara Lee Speaks For Me Daily
The chaos coming out of the White House cannot distract us from our fight for a living wage, affordable housing, and quality health care.
— Barbara Lee (@BLeeForCongress) August 25, 2019
Prepping
Saturday, August 24, 2019
Barbara Lee Speaks For Me Daily
I am proud to stand with @RepDonBeyer in our letter to the FBI Director. @HouseDems will continue to stand up #ForThePeople to combat the growing threat of white supremacist extremist violence. https://t.co/eY1flv62V5
— Rep. Barbara Lee (@RepBarbaraLee) August 23, 2019
Trumpproval
A new national CNN/SSRS poll finds that President Donald Trump's approval rating stands at 40%. His disapproval rating is 54%. His approval rating is down from late June when it was 43%. His disapproval rating is slightly up from 52% in late June... Over the last month and a half, a lot has happened in our national dialogue. Trump went after four congresswomen of color. Then he turned his sights on Maryland Rep. Elijah Cummings, who is black. More recently, there were the shootings in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio. And fears are growing over a potential economic slowdown. [And all this is before the utter insanity of the latest I'm buying Greenland and ordering businesses to stop selling to China and tantrum-throwing at the G7.] All together, it seems like recent news cycles are causing a downturn in the President's fortunes. His approval rating does seem to be sliding, which is troublesome news heading into 2020. Presidents' approval ratings have been highly correlated with their re-election margin. In the midterm elections, Trump's approval rating lined up nearly perfectly with his party's vote share in the House elections... [O]ur CNN poll is not... the only poll to show that Trump's approval rating is down. Take a look at these other probability-based polls that meet CNN's standards and were completed over the last two weeks. AP-NORC puts the President's approval rating at 36%, down from 38%. Fox News gave Trump a 43% approval rating, a decrease from 46%. Gallup shows Trump's approval rating at 41%, down from 42% in late July and 44% in early July. Monmouth University pegs Trump's approval rating at 40%, down from 41%. NBC News/Wall Street Journal found Trump had an approval rating of 43% among all adults, a decrease of 2 points from 45% in July among registered voters and 1 point from 44% in their last poll that surveyed all adults in June... Together... they make a fairly strong case. Adding in the CNN poll, Trump has an average decline of 2 points in his approval rating... Normally, a 2-point drop in a president's approval rating would not be a big deal. For this president, however, a 2-point movement is a bigger deal than usual. Trump's approval rating has been unusually stable. Any sort of movement is noteworthy with him. According to Gallup, no president has had as narrow a range (35%-46%) of approval ratings than Trump. Trump's still within that range, though now more toward the middle than the upper part of that range as he had been earlier in the year. Trump needs to be able to break out of the narrow range... for reelection. No president has won an additional term with an approval rating as low as Trump's is currently. [Emphasis added.--d]
Older
Friday, August 23, 2019
Barbara Lee Speaks For Me Daily
This isn’t funny. More than 3,000 Americans died in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria. Some of those deaths could have been prevented if it wasn’t for neglect by the Trump administration.https://t.co/5r1ExmMk5y
— Barbara Lee (@BLeeForCongress) August 23, 2019
Thursday, August 22, 2019
Here Is the Syllabus For My Upcoming Fall Queer Theory Survey Course, "Queer Manifestations"
Wednesdays, 4.15-7 FM130, August 30-December 6, 2017
Course Requirements: Attendance/Participation, 15%; Co-Facilitation, 15%; In-Class Report (10-15 mins.), 15%, Symposium Presentation, 15%; Seminar Paper, 10 pp., 40% (subject to contingencies)
In-Class Report:
Oscar Wilde The Soul of Man Under Socialism
Co-Facilitation:
1. Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young -- 2. Preface for The Picture of Dorian Gray -- 3.Wilde on Trial
In Class Reports:
Week Five | Wednesday, September 27
Harry Hay, Mattachine, Radical Fairies (handout)
Audre Lorde, Uses of the Erotic -- Poetry Is Not A Luxury
Co-Facilitation:
Valarie Solanas, SCUM Manifesto / The Combahee River Collective Statement
In Class Report:
Week Ten | Wednesday, November 1
Jaspir Puar, Homonationalism and Biopolitics (Introduction to the book Terrorist Assemblages)
(supplemental) Jaspir Puar, I'd Rather Be A Cyborg Than A Goddess
In Class Report:
Alison Kafer, Feminist Queer Crip
Barbara Lee Speaks For Me Daily
This is a direct violation of the Constitution.https://t.co/AKUqX9ub96
— Barbara Lee (@BLeeForCongress) August 22, 2019
Wednesday, August 21, 2019
Today's Random Wilde
-- Jorge Luis Borges
Here Is the Syllabus for My Upcoming Fall Critical Theory Survey Course in the City, "The Point Is To Change It"
Mondays, 4.15-7pm, Studio 18, 8/26/19--12/6/19
"The philosophers hitherto have only interpreted the world, but the point is to change it." -- Karl Marx
This course is a chronological and thematic survey of key texts in critical and cultural theory. A skirmish in the long rivalry of philosophy and rhetoric yielded a turn in Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud into the post-philosophical discourse of critical theory. In the aftermath of world war, critical theory took a biopolitical turn in Arendt, Fanon, and Foucault -- a turn still reverberating in work on socially legible bodies by writers like Haraway, Spivak, Butler, and Puar. And with the rise of the global precariat and climate catastrophe, critical theory is now turning again in STS (science and technology studies) and EJC (environmental justice critique) to articulate the problems and promises of an emerging planetarity. Theories of the fetish define the turn of the three threshold figures of critical theory -- Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud (commodity, sexuality, and ressentimentality) -- and fetishisms ramify thereafter in critical accounts from Benjamin (aura), Adorno (culture industry), Barthes (myth), Debord (spectacle), Klein (logo), and Harvey ("tech") to Mulvey and Mercer (the sexed and raced gaze). We think of facts as found not made, but facts are made to be found and, once found, made to be foundational. Let us pursue the propositions that fetishes are figures we take to yield false facts, while facts are figures we have fetishized to yield paradoxical truths.
Provisional Schedule of Meetings
Week One | August 27 -- Fact, Figure, Fetish
Maps, Stories, Warnings by Way of Introduction
Week Four | September 17 | Marx and the Fetishism of Commodities
Marx on The Fetishism of Commodities and the Secret Thereof from Capital
Week Five | September 24 | Freud and Sexual Fetishism
Sigmund Freud, Fetishism -- from Freud's Study of Schreber: 1, Psychoanalysis and Scientificity 2, Storytelling 3, Psychoanalysis and Patriarchy (Homosociality and Homosexuality) 4. Psychoanalysis Brought to Crisis.
Week Six | October 1 | Commodity, Aura, and Culture Industry
Week Seven | October 8 | Nature As Fetish; Or, Ideology Is Structured Like A Language
Roland Barthes, Mythologies -- Workshop: The Toulmin Schema
Week Ten | October 29 | Out With The Old, In With The New
William Burroughs,Immortality -- Hannah Arendt, Reflections on Violence
Week Twelve | November 12 | The Carceral Archipelago and Abolition Democracy
Michel Foucault, from Discipline and Punish, Introduction, Docile Bodies, Panoptism -- Angela Davis, selections from Are Prisons Obsolete?
Week Thirteen | November 19 | Intersections and Performances
Week Fourteen | November 26 | Workshopping Final Paper | Hand in Final Notebooks/Reports
Week Fifteen | November 3 | Fact, Figure, Fetish in Planetary Assembly
Aldo Leopold, The Land Ethic -- Rob Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor -- Bruno Latour, To Modernise Or Ecologise? -- Gayatri Spivak, Theses on Planetarity
Barbara Lee Speaks for Me Daily
I can’t believe this still needs to be said in 2019, but every woman deserves access to safe, affordable, and comprehensive reproductive health care — and that includes abortion.
— Barbara Lee (@BLeeForCongress) August 21, 2019
Trump’s gag rule defunds Planned Parenthood and jeopardizes millions of women's health.
Tuesday, August 20, 2019
Prep
Monday, August 19, 2019
Barbara Lee Speaks For Me Daily
While every new report warns us of the dangerous, life-changing effects of climate change, the Trump administration is doubling down on its science-denying agenda. It’s outrageous. https://t.co/Za4rMelQGc
— Barbara Lee (@BLeeForCongress) August 19, 2019
Saturday, August 17, 2019
Barbara Lee Speaks For Me Daily
Trump’s gag rule kicks in on Monday — cutting off federal funding for any women’s health clinic that provides or refers abortions, including Planned Parenthood.#IStandWithPP & the 1.6 million patients who may not be able to afford care anywhere else.https://t.co/gfxSg7qgqr
— Barbara Lee (@BLeeForCongress) August 17, 2019
Friday, August 16, 2019
Barbara Lee Speaks For Me Daily
.@RashidaTlaib & @IlhanMN were banned from visiting Israel after the president encouraged a foreign leader to reject them. From inciting violence to his racist comments, the president's attacks on congresswomen of color never end. I stand with my sisters.https://t.co/nFWQTVLHyW
— Barbara Lee (@BLeeForCongress) August 16, 2019
Today's Random Wilde
Thursday, August 15, 2019
Barbara Lee Speaks For Me Daily (And, Often, Hourly)
Barring Congresswomen @Ilhan and @RepRashida from entering Israel sets a dangerous precedent and is outrageous. This move is motivated purely by politics and ideology. https://t.co/jwE0Ajk7kr
— Rep. Barbara Lee (@RepBarbaraLee) August 15, 2019
Wednesday, August 14, 2019
Barbara Lee Speaks For Me Daily
Happy 84th birthday to Social Security! As one of our nation’s most effective anti-poverty programs, Social Security helps many seniors live out their golden years in comfort. While the GOP tries to rip it away, Democrats are fighting to protect — and expand — this vital program.
— Barbara Lee (@BLeeForCongress) August 14, 2019
Into the City...
Tuesday, August 13, 2019
Barbara Lee Speaks For Me Daily
I‘m a proud co-sponsor of the #PEACEAct, which would help end police shootings by raising the federal standard for “use of force” laws. Too many Black and Brown boys have died at the hands of police violence.
— Barbara Lee (@BLeeForCongress) August 13, 2019
Monday, August 12, 2019
Today's Random Wilde
Barbara Lee Speaks For Me Daily
It’s been two years since we lost Heather Heyer during the #Charlottesville white supremacist rally. With hate crimes and targeted attacks on the rise, it’s clear we need to do more to end hate all across our nation.
— Barbara Lee (@BLeeForCongress) August 12, 2019
Sunday, August 11, 2019
Barbara Lee Speaks For Me Daily
Trump is threatening to take away food stamps from more than 500,000 children. Children. It’s cruelty for cruelty’s sake. https://t.co/31SzY0MyDw
— Barbara Lee (@BLeeForCongress) August 11, 2019
Sunday Walk and Brunch
Saturday, August 10, 2019
Barbara Lee Speaks For Me Daily
It’s time to stand up against gun violence and speak out against white supremacy. Join me Tuesday evening at Frank Ogawa Plaza for a vigil in solidarity with the communities impacted by the recent shootings in El Paso, Dayton, and Gilroy. #EnoughIsEnough #NotOneMore #ElPasoStrong pic.twitter.com/FAYqhO8F5G
— Rep. Barbara Lee (@RepBarbaraLee) August 9, 2019
Today's Random Wilde
Friday, August 09, 2019
Barbara Lee Speaks For Me Daily
It’s been five years since Michael Brown, a young, unarmed Black man, was murdered by Ferguson police officer, Darren Wilson. His family still doesn’t have the justice they deserve. #BlackLivesMatter
— Barbara Lee (@BLeeForCongress) August 9, 2019
Thursday, August 08, 2019
Barbara Lee Speaks For Me Daily
Alarm bells should be ringing! The climate crisis is destroying our planet and threatening our livelihoods while the Trump administration is pushing its anti-science agenda and burying climate reports.https://t.co/35EfdT5ajF
— Barbara Lee (@BLeeForCongress) August 8, 2019
Today's Random Wilde
Wednesday, August 07, 2019
Looking At You, Little Brother
“I’m voting for the tax cuts not the racism” isn’t a thing. It’s a package deal.
— Adam Serwer🍝 (@AdamSerwer) August 7, 2019
YES! Warren Proposes A Public Option for the Internet
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) announced a plan Wednesday to create a public option for the internet, aiming to ensure universal broadband access... To enact her plan, Warren hopes to first pass a federal law preventing state-level restrictions that have hampered municipalities that want to pursue a public internet system. She would then create an $85-billion federal grant program to shoulder 90% of the costs for utility cooperatives, nonprofits, cities, counties and Native American tribes interested in laying the fiber needed to bring broadband -- contemporary high-speed internet -- to the mostly rural regions that do not currently have it. The entities applying for the money -- for-profit utilities are notably ineligible -- would have to agree to serve as internet service providers for residents they serve, offering at least one high-speed plan and one plan affordable for low-income people. [Whether this actually qualifies as a fully public option on my undersanding depends on the details, whatever they are this is likely a great improvement on the status quo and nudges this regulatory/governance discourse in socially democratizing directions --d] “I will make sure every home in America has a fiber broadband connection at a price families can afford,” Warren writes in a Medium post introducing her rural investment plan. “That means publicly-owned and operated networks -- and no giant {internet service providers) running away with taxpayer dollars.” ... About one-quarter of the population living in rural areas and one-third of the population living in Native American tribal lands lack broadband access, according to the FCC. Warren also hopes major cities will take advantage of her plan, noting that even in urban areas where infrastructure is robust, the cost of high-speed internet keeps it out of reach for many low-income families...
Salute!
Tuesday, August 06, 2019
Barbara Lee Speaks For Me Daily
Today in 1965, President LBJ signed the Voting Rights Act into law to expand the right to vote. But ever since the Supreme Court gutted the #VRA, there has been rampant voter suppression across the country, disproportionately targeting communities of color. We must #RestoreTheVRA
— Barbara Lee (@BLeeForCongress) August 6, 2019
Monday, August 05, 2019
Barbara Lee Speaks For Me Daily
The time for debate is over. Last month was the hottest on record. Enough of Republican stonewalling and foot dragging. The climate crisis is real and the American people deserve real solutions.
— Barbara Lee (@BLeeForCongress) August 5, 2019
Sunday, August 04, 2019
The View From Down Under
It was only two weeks ago when Trump inspired an auditorium full of his supporters to chant “send her back” in reference to the country’s first elected black Muslim congresswoman, Ilhan Omar, who was born in Somalia and migrated to the US as the young daughter of refugee parents. Earlier in the year, Trump smeared all immigrants approaching the US-Mexico border as invaders when he said, “People hate the word ‘invasion', but that’s what it is.” Trump has also referred to Latin American refugees and asylum seekers as “rapists”, “criminals”, drug dealers” and “terrorists”. It’s worth remembering that when a Rwandan politician described Rwanda’s Tutsi minority as “cockroaches” it started a genocide that resulted in the deaths of upwards of one million people in that country. These are the same flames Trump fans with his dehumanising discourse. It is no coincidence that far-right extremists were responsible for 100 per cent of all terrorist attacks on US soil since the end of 2017, according to the Anti-Defamation League, and why hate crimes against Jews, Muslims, and other minorities are at unprecedented levels. Much of Trump’s political shtick is pivoted on the white nationalist notion that white Americans find themselves in a do-or-die struggle with non-white immigrants, and thus framing Hispanics, Muslims, Jews, African Americans, and other ethnic minorities to be an external threat, or “invaders”. Just hours before Robert Bowers walked into the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh on October 27 last year, he posted on social media that the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society wants “to bring hostile invaders to dwell among us. It’s the filthy EVIL Jews. Brining (sic) the Filthy EVIL Muslims into the country!! Stop the kikes then Worry About the Muslims!” Making matters worse is the fact that Trump and his supporters are hyping themselves in what can best be described as a positive reinforcement loop, in which his supporters reward his racism with approval, and he, in turn, rewards them, whether that be by calling on a ban on Muslim immigration or channelling funds from the Pentagon for the construction of his border wall. In time, we will learn exactly what drove the suspect to carry out today's mass shooting, but what we know for sure is the United States finds itself in the midst of a domestic white nationalist terrorism crisis.
Tituss Burgess "45"
Friday, August 02, 2019
Barbara Lee Speaks For Me Daily
No one should be forced into poverty from medical costs. If we want to help lift people out of poverty, we need to expand access to #Medicaid – not restrict it. https://t.co/aiOkApdXgA
— Rep. Barbara Lee (@RepBarbaraLee) August 2, 2019
Thursday, August 01, 2019
Barbara Lee Speaks For Me Daily
Congratulations to these Oakland residents and new American citizens! California knows that our diversity makes us stronger. https://t.co/1esOamw5IC
— Barbara Lee (@BLeeForCongress) July 31, 2019