The GOP’s decades-long effort to keep people of color, low-income folks, and students from the ballot box has created a voter suppression crisis in our country. With 2020 right around the corner, it’s time to increase election security. https://t.co/NmoN3i4rbW
— Barbara Lee (@BLeeForCongress) December 28, 2019
Using Technology to Deepen Democracy, Using Democracy to Ensure Technology Benefits Us All
Sunday, December 29, 2019
Barbara Lee Speaks For Me Daily
Saturday, December 28, 2019
Vacation
Barbara Lee Speaks For Me Daily
A reminder that this holiday season, the GOP is trying to rip food stamps away from hundreds of thousands of families and kick people off their health care by sabotaging the Affordable Care Act while separating immigrant families.
— Barbara Lee (@BLeeForCongress) December 27, 2019
Merry Christmas, indeed!
Friday, December 27, 2019
All Passion Spent
Help Beat Trump and His Collaborators Now Or Kiss Your Ass Goodbye
“Many observers of India have been surprised that Modi has grown so much more extreme in his second term in office. But a comparison of populist governments around the world suggests that India is following a predictable pattern of what would-be authoritarians do when they win reelection.”
“As we’ve seen in countries including Hungary, Turkey, and Venezuela, populist leaders are at first hamstrung in their ability to concentrate power in their own hands. Many key institutions, including courts and electoral commissions, are still dominated by independent-minded professionals who do not owe their appointment to the new regime. Media outlets are still able and willing to report on scandals, forcing the government to tread somewhat carefully.”
“Once these governments win reelection, these constraints begin to fall away. As the independent-minded judges and civil servants depart, populist leaders feel emboldened to pursue their illiberal dreams.”
Tuesday, December 24, 2019
And What Have We Done
Hark, the Herald Fugelsang
#ChristiansAgainstTrump
— John Fugelsang (@JohnFugelsang) December 20, 2019
Because you can follow Jesus, or you can follow Trump. It’s not actually possible to follow both.
If you don’t believe me, you haven’t read their books. https://t.co/TNmXykCAhW pic.twitter.com/UFTps92isQ
Christmas Effects by Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick
What’s “queer?” Here’s one train of thought about it. The depressing thing about the Christmas season -- isn’t it? -- is that it’s the time when all the institutions are speaking with one voice. The Church says what the Church says. But the State says the same thing: maybe not (in some ways it hardly matters) in the language of theology, but in the language the State talks: legal holidays, long school hiatus, special postage stamps, and all. And the language of commerce more than chimes in, as consumer purchasing is organized ever more narrowly around the final weeks of the calendar year, the Dow Jones aquiver over Americans’ “holiday mood.” The media, in turn, fall in triumphally behind the Christmas phalanx: ad-swollen magazines have oozing turkeys on the cover, while for the news industry every question turns into the Christmas question -- Will hostages be free for Christmas? What did that flash flood or mass murder (umpty-ump people killed and maimed) do to those families’ Christmas? And meanwhile, the pairing “families/Christmas” becomes increasingly tautological, as families more and more constitute themselves according to the schedule, and in the endlessly iterated image, of the holiday itself constituted in the image of "the" family.
The thing hasn’t, finally, so much to do with propaganda for Christianity as with propaganda for Christmas itself. They all -- religion, state, capital, ideology, domesticity, the discourses of power and legitimacy -- line up with each other so neatly once a year, and the monolith so created is a thing one can come to view with unhappy eyes. What if instead there were a practice of valuing the ways in which meanings and institutions can be at loose ends with each other? What if the richest junctures weren’t the ones where everything means the same thing? -- Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Tendencies, Duke University Press, 1993, pp. 5-6
Barbara Lee Speaks For Me Daily
Don’t let this circus of a White House distract you from what we’re fighting for: a living wage, affordable housing, free education, and quality health care for all.
— Barbara Lee (@BLeeForCongress) December 23, 2019
Sunday, December 22, 2019
Sunday Brunch
Barbara Lee Speaks For Me Daily
Families all across the country are without housing — not because they did something wrong, but because the cost of living is too high and wages are too low.
— Barbara Lee (@BLeeForCongress) December 22, 2019
The next president MUST make affordable housing a top priority for their administration.https://t.co/gUkhgNyPXs
Friday, December 20, 2019
Speaking of "Hope Is A Discipline" ...
The Season of Losses
Wednesday, December 18, 2019
Barbara Lee Speaks For Me Daily
Today is a solemn day for the country. Trump is a threat to our democracy and our national security. His actions have left us no choice but to impeach him for his abuse of power and contempt of Congress.
— Rep. Barbara Lee (@RepBarbaraLee) December 18, 2019
Presidents are not kings. #DefendOurDemocracy https://t.co/JZSY72Nkjn
Friday, December 13, 2019
Grading Is Done
Barbara Lee Speaks For Me Daily
The 2001 #AUMF gave any president the power to wage war anywhere, at any time, for any reason.
— Rep. Barbara Lee (@RepBarbaraLee) December 13, 2019
America's culture of endless war has harmed too many. It's past time we take a hard look at our ongoing military operations & authorizations to #StopEndlessWar. https://t.co/vsLEAMObSg
Wednesday, December 11, 2019
Barbara Lee Speaks For Me Daily
I’m so proud of @GretaThunberg for being @TIME’s person of the year.
— Barbara Lee (@BLeeForCongress) December 11, 2019
But the sad truth is she should be in school — getting to be a kid. The climate crisis is robbing her and a generation of their future. It’s time for us adults to start acting like the leaders our kids deserve.
Grading and Ongoingness
Monday, December 09, 2019
Today's Random Wilde
Barbara Lee Speaks For Me Daily
The truth is we have a real possibility of an all-white slate of top-tier candidates for president and the likelihood of an entirely white roster at this month’s presidential debate. Make no mistake: this demonstrates a lack of respect for Black women at the highest levels.
— Barbara Lee (@BLeeForCongress) December 9, 2019
Grading and the rest...
Saturday, December 07, 2019
Grading
Tuesday, December 03, 2019
Barbara Lee Speaks For Me Daily
As always, proud to be by your side, @KamalaHarris. pic.twitter.com/WW1NQAOn8A
— Barbara Lee (@BLeeForCongress) December 3, 2019
Kamala Harris wasn't my first choice (Elizabeth Warren still is for now) but a debate stage dominated by unqualified uncharismatic white guys is a stupid travesty and a recipe for disaster.
Monday, December 02, 2019
Barbara Lee Speaks For Me Daily
A gun is fired on school grounds twice a week in America.
— Barbara Lee (@BLeeForCongress) December 2, 2019
It has been over 250 days since the House Democratic majority passed gun safety reforms. When will Mitch McConnell and the Senate GOP do their jobs to protect our kids and vote on this legislation?