Barbara Lee Speaks For Me Daily

As we sit down for a Thanksgiving meal, let’s pause to reflect on all the immigrant families who aren’t together today because the Trump administration tore children from their parents.

Let us remember what it means to be a warm and welcoming nation.

— Barbara Lee (@BLeeForCongress) November 28, 2019

Barbara Lee Speaks For Me Daily

Trump has had a white nationalist agenda since Day 1. My trip to the US-Mexico border showed us exactly how his administration has been working to keep people from “s**thole” countries out of America.

These cruel & bigoted policies have no place in a nation built by immigrants.

— Barbara Lee (@BLeeForCongress) November 26, 2019

Sunday Walk and Brunch

I spent the day today prepping lectures for the upcoming week, to make up for yesterday's long day visiting the Rose Garden after brunch at our diner on Piedmont. It's been a month since our last long stroll, I've been breaking in a new pair of vegan Doc Martens and my bleeding blistered feet had no truck with our usual hike. They fit like a dream at last, but for three weeks they were a toothy mouth gripping each foot like a metal trap. It's nearly Thanksgiving, so Eric and I have been enjoying our annual revisit of Peter Jackson's Tolkein adaptations. The first movie was one of our first dates, so the saga has a long romantic history for us. We've made it through five of the films by now and will probably wait till Thursday afternoon to finish off "Return of the King." We fast forward through most of the ponderous mechanistic battle scenes and teenage boy "humour" and Samwise Gamgee wankery, it's amazing how much more manageable the four-hour extended editions are when you trim an hour or two of grunting straight guy idiocy from each one. Anyway, spent today scribbling about Combahee and Haraway. Even with the Republicans going full Nazi-enabling nihilist in the background, texts like these make me feel hope. Here's hoping they give my students some strength for what is coming.

Barbara Lee Speaks For Me Daily

The climate crisis is the most important issue of our lifetimes. It’s about time we caught up to the young people leading this fight.pic.twitter.com/dl2NrdxRDL

— Barbara Lee (@BLeeForCongress) November 26, 2019

Barbara Lee Speaks For Me Daily

The amount of gun violence in this country is beyond alarming. Every other developed country that has experienced tragedy has taken action to stop it from happening again. It's past time for Mitch McConnell to do his job! #EnoughIsEnough https://t.co/PX9GfwGOQ3

— Rep. Barbara Lee (@RepBarbaraLee) November 23, 2019

Prep Prep Prep

Just two weeks remain this term and I'm prepping a lecture for Tuesday (Audre Lorde, Combahee, Haraway, Butler, as if I'll honestly cover that much in a single session, what dreamworld am I pretending to be living in...?) and trying to change the Symposium schedule for my Queer Manifestations next week to accommodate what is already a spate of absences and conflicts and excuses that seem to me likely only to proliferate in the coming days to the ruination of my many Virgo exertions to keep things organized and going smoothly. It's getting kinda hectic.

Barbara Lee Speaks For Me Daily... Even Hourly!

I’ve spent my career fighting to legalize marijuana and provide restorative justice to communities of color. This bill is HUGE and I’m proud that key tenets from my own legislation have been included to help correct the wrongs of the failed #WarOnDrugs.https://t.co/13iLf9rYJY

— Barbara Lee (@BLeeForCongress) November 21, 2019

Barbara Lee Speaks For Me Daily

Stephen Miller has used his position in the White House to push a dangerous and discriminatory white nationalist agenda. From family separation to ending DACA, his legacy is one of pain and suffering.

It's past time for him to go. https://t.co/ryw974hjlR

— Rep. Barbara Lee (@RepBarbaraLee) November 21, 2019

Teaching

Yesterday was a bear of a day, with meetings and lectures from dawn to sunset, but everything went reasonably well and I'm trying to take it easy today in the aftermath. As it turns out, this aftermath seems to require the filling out of many forms and many e-mail consultations with colleagues. Taking it easy isn't what it used to be.

Barbara Lee Speaks For Me Daily

This is the third massing shooting in California in less than a week. My heart breaks for all those affected.

Mitch McConnell, there are several gun reform bills sitting on your desk. When is #EnoughIsEnough? https://t.co/NwdkJhZjCM

— Barbara Lee (@BLeeForCongress) November 18, 2019

Trumpproval

Maybe the Cheeto Nazi Death Cult can't defy gravity forever. Maybe they won't take us all down with them after all...

New ABC/Ipsos poll:

51% of Americans say Trump should be impeached *and removed*

58% say they're following impeachment hearings closely

70% say it was wrong to ask a foreign leader to investigate a political rival (i.e., the call was not "perfect")https://t.co/U4wSiRx26N

— Greg Sargent (@ThePlumLineGS) November 18, 2019

Barbara Lee Speaks For Me Daily

If companies can afford to pay their CEOs tens of millions of dollars, they can afford to raise wages for their employees.#TaxCEOs.

— Barbara Lee (@BLeeForCongress) November 16, 2019

Barbara Lee Speaks For Me Daily

Ambassador Yovanovitch fought corruption for decades. Trump removed her to set the stage for his campaign to bribe Ukraine and to cheat his way in the 2020 election. #DefendOurDemocracy https://t.co/4kwQJrj4Ej

— Rep. Barbara Lee (@RepBarbaraLee) November 15, 2019

Barbara Lee Speaks For Me Daily

Another school shooting. More young people hurt and traumatized. When will Mitch McConnell say #EnoughIsEnough and pass common-sense gun safety reforms?

Lives are on the line. We must act. #EndGunViolence https://t.co/dH5j6kiUJ8

— Rep. Barbara Lee (@RepBarbaraLee) November 14, 2019

Teaching Days

A little Mulvey, a little Mercer today, leftovers from last week's lecture. But the main event for today is lecturing on Michel Foucault and Angela Davis. Suspect I'll only get through half of my Davis material, but it's not the worst thing to be teaching Davis nowadays a couple classes in a row -- it's the best thing. In the Queer class it's a writing workshop, so less prep now but more bother then, in any case well worth it. We're a month out from final grading and there is a zany energy in the air already.

Barbara Lee Speaks For Me Daily

Facts, figures, and justice are on our side.

We will decriminalize marijuana at the federal level and we will finally provide restorative justice to communities of color hit hardest by the failed #WarOnDrugs.

We will win this fight. https://t.co/IsaUGxHruz

— Barbara Lee (@BLeeForCongress) November 10, 2019

Barbara Lee Speaks For Me Daily

Lots of big wins for Democrats last night! Let’s carry this energy all the way to 2020 and elect even more Democrats up and down the ballot — from the school board to the White House.

— Barbara Lee (@BLeeForCongress) November 6, 2019

Teaching This Week

Finishing Arendt and moving on to Fanon (with whom Arendt was in conversation) and then talking about Laura Mulvey and Kobena Mercer (on Mapplethorpe) in connection to Fanon. Probably I'll end up talking Mulvey and Mercer next week, I've tended to lag about thirty to forty-five minutes behind my lecture notes when it comes to it. In Queer Manifestations on Wednesday we're turning to Eve Sedgwick, Jaspir Puar (reactionary homonationalism and racist homonormativity), and Alison Kafer (from Feminist, Queer, Crip). I'm running behind on the syllabus in that class too, but with all the discussion and presentations it's a bit like a rolling bacchanal-slash-conference all the time in there, the scheduled topics bleed rather promiscuously into one another. I can scarcely credit it, but we're just a month out from end of term now, and the syllabus bristles with workshops and symposia, lecturing (with all its attendant performance anxiety) is soon giving way to students presenting their work for one another. That will be a relief for me.

Barbara Lee Speaks For Me Daily

#OTD in 1968, my mentor, the unbossed and unbought Shirley Chisholm, became the first African American woman elected to Congress. She was an inspiration and dear friend. I miss her tremendously, but I'll keep fighting for her legacy with my sisters in Congress ✊🏾 pic.twitter.com/ca5FwLLo93

— Rep. Barbara Lee (@RepBarbaraLee) November 5, 2019

Less Than One Year Out

The stupid racist assholes who failed to secure Trump a mandate but scraped by an electoral college win last time around could definitely manage to do so again. If it happens, kiss your ass goodbye. Elizabeth Warren is my candidate now by a mile -- Harris never seemed to step up to the plate. I'm inclining to Castro for Veep, but who knows? It's easy to see this Silly Season will be as filled with ugly fascist bigotry and lies from the Republicans, timidity, panic and fauxvolutionary circular firing squads from the Democrats as 2016 was, and that was literally unbearable to live through, so don't expect me to belabor the obvious here.

Barbara Lee Speaks For Me Daily

As the White House continues to plunge our country into chaos, remember: it is up to us to make America stronger. Register to vote, run for office, get involved in electoral politics, peacefully protest, and keep holding elected officials accountable.

— Barbara Lee (@BLeeForCongress) November 2, 2019