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Happy Martin Luther King Jr. Day. (Happy Black History Month, too.)
It does seem funny wishing a good day in honor of a late great American (assassinated by our own security state), but what else can I say?
I suppose I could say “Happy Inauguration Day!” but some folks would have a complete and utter meltdown if I dare mention Donald Trump being sworn in as president for a second time. So, I won’t say that, but what could I say instead? Maybe: “Trump is living in the White House again. Get use to it”?
I find it interesting how most of the individuals I know who have constantly worried and fretted over or made fun of the “Orange Man” won’t live any differently whether Trump is president or not. They still have their white privilege. They still live solidly middle- to upper-class lives. They will keep their jobs or be able to retire as planned. This is in complete contrast to the poor people that Dr. King spoke about frequently who struggled to pay their bills and never once considered retirement to be possible...
And now a short excerpt from our guest blogger's piece:
Swords Into Plowshares
by Coast Watcher
...Instead of scrapping one or both of the huge and expensive super-carriers Britain could instead donate them to the United Nations for use as disaster relief ships. Able to travel quickly to wherever they’re needed, each carrier could house dozens of search-and-rescue helicopters and other aircraft. Current hangar space below decks can be repurposed as hospitals equipped for emergency surgery, storage space for medical supplies, food, water, disaster relief equipment, tents and anything else required in a disaster relief operation. The ship’s nuclear power plant can be hooked up to shoreside facilities to provide electricity wherever local power generation has been damaged or destroyed...
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Last year, we spent several weeks in the month of February
discussing various topics that are of particular interest to
African-Americans—reparations, critical race theory, and what it
must be like to be considered only 3/5 of a human being (according to
the US Constitution). We were still reeling from the deaths of George
Floyd and many others. The Afghan War was winding down about that
same time, but the upcoming proxy war in Ukraine was winding up. I
held out still some hope the war hawk rhetoric would die down and the Minsk Agreements would keep things peaceful.
One year later, we find ourselves in a world of déjà vu.
Critical race theory is under violent attack by right-wing pundits,
reparations are still seen as an impossible (or at least a far-off)
goal, and the police are killing an average of three ordinary
Americans every day, many of them persons of color. (See last week’s
blog about some of the latest police caused deaths, Targets On Our Backs.)
Hundred of thousands have been left homeless or slaughtered in
grueling, needless warfare in Ukraine thanks to a determined lack of diplomacy and billions of dollars of American military-industrial
complex weaponry.
The rich got richer. The poor and POC got shot at and beaten up by
thugs wearing cop uniforms. Endless warfare for control of fossil
fuels continues. The more things change...
It is said, “History repeats itself,” but that statement isn’t
an imperative. We don’t have to keep repeating ourselves,
especially when the event is destructive and immoral. So much of
American history is just that—destructive and immoral. I don’t
pull punches anymore. There’s no use lying about the filthy
propaganda US government officials spew forth from their mouths like
volcanoes full of molten shit. There’s no use lying about our
blood-soaked history of killing our own and others across the globe
simply for the sake of lining the pockets of capitalists who desire
ever more blood money.
We don’t need militarized police forces or killer cops—we need
social services and Medicare for All. We don’t need to pretend any
longer we’re doing anything except money laundering for Raytheon,
General Dynamics, Northrup Grumman, Boeing, etc., in a provoked proxy
war in Ukraine to knock out Russia’s economy. And we certainly
don’t need to pretend that we’re not gunning for another chance
at starting World War III by antagonizing China this week over a lost
weather balloon.
We’ve been here before. Déjà vu. History repeats itself.
Things don’t change for the better for the vast majority of human
beings.
I read a couple of articles this past week that opened my eyes and made me think of
how history and the present are intertwined. The first article ran in
the New Yorker online in July 2020. The Invention of
the Policetells the story of what we understand as “police”
from ancient times to the present day. We learn how the American
system of policing is based upon military practices. The article
is well worth the few minutes it takes to read (or listen to) to see how the
destructive, immoral patterns we witness in our world today have their roots in a
history not worth repeating.
My argument in Targets On Our Backs about how the police in
the US are based on the slave patrols is further buttressed with some
interesting facts:
In eighteenth-century New York, a person held as a slave could
not gather in a group of more than three; could not ride a horse;
could not hold a funeral at night; could not be out an hour after
sunset without a lantern; and could not sell “Indian corn, peaches,
or any other fruit” in any street or market in the city. Stop and
frisk, stop and whip, shoot to kill.
Then there were the slave patrols. Armed Spanish bands called
hermandades had hunted runaways in Cuba beginning in the
fifteen-thirties, a practice that was adopted by the English in
Barbados a century later. It had a lot in common with England’s
posse comitatus, a band of stout men that a county sheriff
could summon to chase down an escaped criminal. South Carolina,
founded by slave owners from Barbados, authorized its first slave
patrol in 1702; Virginia followed in 1726, North Carolina in 1753.
Slave patrols married the watch to the militia: serving on patrol was
required of all able-bodied men (often, the patrol was mustered from
the militia), and patrollers used the hue and cry to call for anyone
within hearing distance to join the chase. Neither the watch nor the
militia nor the patrols were “police,” who were French, and
considered despotic. In North America, the French city of New Orleans
was distinctive in having la police: armed City Guards, who wore
military-style uniforms and received wages, an urban slave patrol.
(…)
It is also often said that modern American urban policing began
in 1838, when the Massachusetts legislature authorized the hiring of
police officers in Boston. This, too, ignores the role of slavery in
the history of the police. In 1829, a Black abolitionist in Boston
named David Walker published “An Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of
the World,” calling for violent rebellion: “One good black man
can put to death six white men.” Walker was found dead within the
year, and Boston thereafter had a series of mob attacks against
abolitionists, including an attempt to lynch William Lloyd Garrison,
the publisher of The Liberator, in 1835. Walker’s words
terrified Southern slave owners. The governor of North Carolina wrote
to his state’s senators, “I beg you will lay this matter before
the police of your town and invite their prompt attention to the
necessity of arresting the circulation of the book.” By “police,”
he meant slave patrols: in response to Walker’s “Appeal,” North
Carolina formed a statewide “patrol committee.” —Jill Lepore,
The Invention of the Police
Eye-opening and thought provoking, isn’t it? What we’ve
tricked ourselves into believing—that all police officers are the handsome cops on Law and Order or diligent Detective Joe Friday in
the TV series Dragnet—is
completely false. We do have an excuse. We’ve been taught to
believe these lies all our lives through the clever use of novels
and television/movie dramas
which
paint the police in strictly heroic and positive terms. If there’s ever
a racist cop or a
crooked cop or
a super-violent cop portrayed in fiction,
they’realmost always
seen as the exception, never
the rule.
Jill Lepore’s article
demonstrates how destructive
this “copaganda” (cop
propaganda) truly is. When an
organization is based upon protecting the property (that is, enslaved
persons) and tasked with maintaining the safety of the
ruling elites (that is, to prevent slave uprisings), it will always be a corrupt and violent organization.
Poor and powerless persons
will undoubtedly suffer and die from this organization’s practices.
It’s what our true
masters—the super-rich
oligarchs—demand of their policing agencies.
A
corrupt, violent organization must hire and train only
those who are willing to do
the job they’ve been tasked with, which is to keep us the poor
and struggling workers,
persons of color, and
unwanted immigrants in their
proper place, planted firmly beneath
the heels of theruling capitalist
elite.
Are you starting to see why
history should never be allowed to repeat itself in regards
to the police? The
time of rounding up “property” in order to keep the capitalist class safe and
wealthy is over. At least, it should be.
So everyone's losing
their minds over a balloon that in all probability would be mostly
worthless for spying, even while everyone knows the US spies on China
at every possible opportunity. US officials have
complained to the press that American spies are having a much
harder time conducting operations and recruiting assets in China than
they used to because of measures the Chinese government has taken to
thwart them, and in 2001 a US spy plane caused
a major international incident when it collided with a Chinese
military jet on China's coastline, killing the pilot.
The US considers it its sovereign
right to spy on any nation it chooses, and the average American tends
more or less to see it the same way. This is highlighted in
controversies around domestic versus foreign surveillance, for
example; Americans were outraged over the Edward Snowden revelations
not because spy agencies were conducting surveillance, but because
they were conducting surveillance on American citizens. It's just
taken as a given that spying on foreigners is fine, so it's a bit
silly to react melodramatically when foreigners return the favor.
But,
of course, the US is acting melodramatically over
a lost weather balloon. They are attempting
to provoke the Chinese into
a “shoot first” situation, such as they did to Russia in February 2022 when,
under the auspices of the NATO, they completely forgot about the Minsk Agreements and armed
Ukraine to fight a proxy war. Yet
again we are all living under
the imminent threat of nuclear war.
We’ve been here before. Déjà
vu. History repeats itself.
Things don’t change for the better for anybody.
Why are we repeating history like
this on a yearly basis? Isn’t the military-industrial complex
making enough money from
armaments sales? Arms manufacturers' stock prices have
skyrocketed
on Wall Street. The idea that the US/NATO bloc can take on two
nuclear powers at the same time is utterly insane. But here we
are again, repeating history, attempting
to provoke another super-power, while simultaneously riling up the American
public’s emotions
with over-the-top propaganda about a lost weather balloon.
For example, my husband turned on
ABC News Friday night.
We rarely, if ever, watch mainstream media outlets, and he’d
turned off the sound, but I noticed the first story was about
the lost weather balloon. I
went into the kitchen and a few minutes later I
came back and noticed
that the same video clip of the weather
balloon was still plastered on the screen. I
turned on
the sound and heard nothing
buthysterical
“The Chinese are invading!”
commentary. I promptly hit the mute button. Five minutes later, the
weather balloon was still on the screen and “experts” were all
screaming about how this lost
weather balloon means war.
ABC spent the entirety of its half
hour newscast spewing inflammatory nonsense, probably at the behest of the Biden Administration. War
propaganda bears repeating,
apparently.
All
Americans can learn something from celebrating Black History Month. That
feeling of “We’ve been
here before. Déjà vu.
History repeats itself.
Things don’t change for the better for the vast majority of human
beings,” is real. It proves
that our gut feeling is correct. The ruling elite will
do whatever it takes
to get the results they want.
If the
elite wantto
keep their enslaved workers
from running away,
they’ll equip
and arm a slave patrol. If they
want to corner the LNG
market in Europe, make
huge profits from selling arms,
and destroy Russia’s and possibly China’s economies,
they’ll rev
up the propaganda machine of the mainstream media (90% of which are owned by just six corporations) to create the
necessity for a war
in order to do so.
The
US is still the only
industrialized country on Earth without a single-payer
(Medicare For All) health
care system, free education pre-K
through college, and a
Universal Basic Income because these programs have been deemed unnecessary by our masters. We breath polluted air, drink water full of plastic particles, and eat cheap processed food infused with high fructose corn syrup because its all we can afford. If we should ever act out because of these injustices and protest, the elite's "slave patrols" stand ready to put us back into our place, swiftly and violently, if they deem necessary.
Whatever the ruling capitalist elite want
they will have it. They will
have their way, and they won’t
lose any sleep over how many are starved, killed, or maimed in the process. You can be sure about that, as history repeats itself.
Happy Black History Month,
America. Our sordid history doesn't need to keep repeating itself. Abolitionist David
Walker had the right idea for
a rebellion, don’t
you think? Watch out for those slave patrols.
Ask an empire apologist to show you how China is aggressing against the
US and they'll start babbling about TikTok and balloons. --Caitlin Johnstone
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Arresting the homeless for camping in public areas, "loitering" in parks, and sleeping on sidewalks is nothing new. In fact, Los Angeles recently passed a law that makes being homeless in the city illegal. Police regularly grab and pitch people's tents and belongings, and there are well over 66,000 homeless individuals in L.A. at last count.
What if we flipped this social challenge on its head? What if we didn't turn the homeless into "outlaws" but outlawed the whole tragedy of homelessness instead?
Outlaw homelessness.
How would this work? I envision a similar program such as the one implemented in Finland. If a person is found to be without a secure home--for whatever reason--we simply provide one for them. It's not like there's any shortage of housing. It's estimated there's at least 17 million empty housing units in the US. That's more than enough to house the current estimate of 11 million homeless individuals.
So, what gives? Why aren't we providing homes for folks who need them when there's no shortage of empty homes? Answer: Because capitalists like landlords and international real estate holding firms don't want to fill those empty homes. It's better in their opinion to make everyone believe there's a shortage of housing so the capitalists can charge higher rent prices and drive up sale prices when they do decide to sell off some of their surplus housing stock.
Simply put, capitalists hoard things--money, houses, spaceships, yachts, etc.--so that others can't use them. The capitalists themselves aren't in need of these surplus homes since they have homes of their own in quite nice neighborhoods. They just don't want these empty homes they're hoarding to be used unless they can dictate the terms, even if these terms mean that ordinary people won't be able to afford to rent or buy these homes and even could be evicted during a pandemic.
Logically, then, the only way to effectively outlaw homelessness is to outlaw capitalism. Forever.
You're probably thinking, "It can't be done!" but I beg to differ. It can be done and it must be done for the sake of our homeless (and about to be evicted) neighbors. "How can it be done?" is the better question, and it's a tough one to answer. Why? Because for every homeless person in the US there are at least a dozen others working against any change in the status quo.
And why do Americans (some of whom aren't particularly well-to-do) wish to maintain things they way they are? Why should they support the capitalists at all? The obvious answer is that those who have a lot of wealth and power are loathed to give any of it up, and those who kiss up to the capitalists are hoping some of the "crumbs" will fall from the capitalists' table and into their laps.
But I believe there's a deeper fear beneath this heartlessness and hoarding. I believe that many capitalists (and their sycophants) are afraid that if they share any of their material wealth they will somehow be diminished in the eyes of others and thought less of. We might even make fun of the way they dress, talk, act, and well... hoard things.
In other words, capitalists are deeply afraid that no one will take care of them if and when they ever need to be taken care of, and they'll become as unwanted and uncared for as those poor souls currently camping in our cities' streets.
It's not an unreasonable fear on the capitalists' part. They realize just how much they hate their "neighbors," so they conclude that their "neighbors" are bound to reflect some of this hatred back at them. I've covered this particular irrational fear before, so I won't go into it here. You can read all about it in this piece: Why are the rich so scared of socialism?
Until we wipe out all fears that both the homeless and the capitalists have, we will continue to suffer this great divide of haves versus have nots in our society. And we will continue to see a growing number of homeless neighbors while simultaneously enjoying a growing surplus of housing units in the US.
It's insane. It's inhumane. But that's capitalism for you.
Outlaw homelessness. Today.
Here are some more videos and articles to think on:
As many as 1.2 million tenants have reported that they
were very likely to be evicted as soon as the moratorium expired on July
31. The country now faces a race against the clock to find resources
and shelter for millions of people, even as we are now facing
yet another wave of increased COVID transmissions and lockdowns.
Although Biden has said he does not have the power to extend the
original moratorium himself, Congress does have this power. If lawmakers
were to reconvene immediately and reinstate the mortatorium, countless
families could be spared from disaster. We
need bold action from Biden and Congress, and fast. Sign here to demand
that Congress stay in session until they extend the federal eviction
moratorium to protect all Americans!
Thank you,
Miranda
The Care2 Petitions Team
P.S. The eviction moratorium prevented landlords from kicking people
impacted by the COVID recession to the curb, but now it's over. Sign the petition to extend this moratorium.
***
There are more than 11 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S. and every one should have a safe pathway to citizenship.
Immigrants
are essential to the success of America. During the pandemic, roughly
23 million immigrants -- including 5 million who are undocumented --
served as health care workers, public health and safety workers, food
system workers and farmworkers.
Some
of the undocumented are Dreamers, brought here as children. Other
immigrants are here legally due to war, political persecution or natural
disasters in their countries of origin.
A
recent Gallup poll proves that the American people overwhelmingly, by a
75% to 21% margin, support creating a pathway to citizenship.
Now we can make it happen. Senator Bernie Sanders,
Chair of the Senate Budget Committee, has included $150 billion in the
$3.5 trillion budget reconciliation proposal earmarked specifically for
implementing immigration policies, including a pathway to citizenship.
But Bernie needs our help building support to make sure it doesn’t get cut during negotiations on a final bill. It’s time to finally let the undocumented come out of the shadows with a pathway to citizenship.
Just
enter in your information and we’ll find and target your letter to your
members of Congress. We’ve provided suggested text too, but if you’d
rather write your own you can edit it and say it in your own words.
Whether
your message is short and to the point or long enough to tell your
personal story -- or one of a friend or family member -- you can be sure
your letter will be delivered immediately.
For
too long Congress has failed to take action on immigration. Isn’t it
time for Congress to deliver solutions that reflect both our shared
values and our national interests?
All
undocumented immigrants, essential workers, Dreamers, and those fleeing
disasters or political persecution should be provided a pathway to
citizenship without more delay.
Thank you for fighting for change.
-LeeAnn
LeeAnn Hall
Director, National Campaign for Transit Justice
Bourgeoisie: (inMarxistthought)therulingclass of thetwobasicclasses of capitalistsociety,consisting of capitalists,manufacturers,bankers,andotheremployers.Thebourgeoisieownsthemostimportant of themeans of production,throughwhich it exploitstheworkingclass --The Free Dictionary
It's a
funny word, but it's been receiving a lot more airtime lately. Is it because
Americans are becoming more sensitive to income inequality, or is it
because they themselves are suffering deprivations due to the pandemic? Either
way, more people are openly discussing what they find unfair or unjust in our
society and aren't afraid to use either bourgeoisie or the "C word."
No,
not that "C word"--although often a discussion of communism comes
after the mention of this particular C word. (And not that C word, either, for those
who have their minds in the gutter.) The word I'm referring to is simply
"class." And before you go off on a rant about how America is a
"class-less society," let me ask you one question:
Where
did you go to high school?
I
learned the awesome power of this particular question when I lived in St. Louis,
Missouri. Here's the scenario: You're introduced to someone in a conversation
and then about nine times out of ten in the St. Louis area you are then asked,
"So, where did you attend high school?" I found it an odd question as
an adult long since graduated from high school, but I'm friendly so I shared the
name of the high school I attended in Ohio. This threw the conversation for a
loop usually, and I often got cross looks or simply ignored for the rest of the
evening. But all too soon I learned why they asked me, a total
stranger, this question, and why the answer was vitally important for the questioner to ask.
Americans
tend to dress and speak alike no matter where or how they grew up. I'm not
talking about regional dialects or accents. I'm talking about how difficult it is to
tell what side of town a fellow American comes from
if they dress similarly and use similar terminology to yours. So, we have to
figure out another way to discover what "C word" another American
belongs to without seeming too obvious. In St. Louis, it's as easy as asking
which high school you went to since this gives the questioner the neighborhood
you grew up in (true of both public and parochial schools there) and the
approximate value of the home you grew up in, and, therefore, how much money
your parents made to support your family.
Of
course, if you admit to attending a working class area high school, you might
be shunned by those who attended schools in wealthier neighborhoods. That
is the true power of the question. It helps separate Americans by class in a
relatively quick and painless way. You didn't attend the "right" high
school? Then the questioner knows that you're probably not going to fit in well
with their bridge club or even know what golf is, let alone how to play it. For
recent immigrants and people of color this question is a double insult, as the
wealthier high schools are almost certainly populated with a majority of white,
native-born students.
Please don't get hot under the collar when I tell you that America displays just
as many classes as a Downtown Abbey episode. We all know it's true. Americans
don't like to think of themselves as snobs, but we act as human as the
rest of the world, and we like to put our inferiors in their place. We've
just agreed among ourselves to pretend that we're not capable of such
vulgarities as class consciousness.
American
might be unique in the fact that here there is such a thing as poor snobs as
well as rich snobs here. I know because I am one. My favorite tale of how I first
realized how much of a poor snob I was comes from my high school days. (Funny
how secondary education keeps popping up, isn't it? Possibly this is where most
of us first learn how we're "different" from the others who go on from
there to attend Ivy League schools and drive luxury cars.)
There
was only one high school in our city, one large public high school.
This lead to some interesting interactions among students. I remember talking
to a classmate at the end of an English class about where we were both planning
on working in the summer. Most kids from our side of town worked part-time in
the school year and full-time in the summer months. It's how we were able to
afford new shoes, winter coats, and save up for college or trade school.
Anyway, a third classmate entered our conversation and said something along the
lines of, "Oh, I don't know what I'm doing this summer, too. Should I go
to horse riding school or tennis camp?" The first classmate and I
exchanged knowing glances of the variety of, "Yeah, wouldn't it be nice if
the summer months were actually a time to have fun and go on vacations,
right?" We then returned to
discussing the benefits of working at the local ice cream shack versus looking
for more underpaid big chain fast food work located closer to the highway.
It was
then that I realized how much I hated rich people--not necessarily my
well-to-do classmate since she was a nice enough person, but how this idea of
class kept us separated and how it kept working people from ever enjoying a life that our rich classmate
took for granted that everyone else in our high school enjoyed.
Had
she ever been to our side of town? Possibly not. Why would she leave her side? She had
everything she needed on her wealthier side of town and could go out of town to
the big city whenever she or her parents wanted to go. Working class kids just had
to make do with what we had and stay put. That was our lot in life. End of
story.
I take
some hope in the fact that more and more Americans seem free to talk about class and
income inequality and the lack of universal health care for all in 2021, but we
still have a ways to go. We still need to discuss what concrete steps we're
willing to take to destroy this system that condemns those without what our
society calls "wealth" to a life of poverty, hunger, possible
homelessness, and an early preventable death. If the founders were willing to
risk it all for the "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" why
aren't we?
"No
war but class war" says the bumper sticker slogan. I think that's what it's
going to take--an
all out assault against the institutions that propagate the evil
capitalistic class system in this country and the world. Voting out the corrupt billionaire supporters has proved impossible. The Citizens United ruling has taken away our voices since money is speech according to it. We will never be able to outspend the billionaires and their lackeys. We'll have to outsmart and out-fight them in the streets.
In other words, it's time for the pitchforks, folks.
We can't keep pulling our punches. Speak out, speak loudly, and never give in to those who say it's not a fight worth winning. It is. Our planet is dying because of capitalism. We don't need to maintain the classes to survive. The system is killing us all. We need each other without these artificial divides.
All is not lost for the rich according to this short video--they can be taught to empathize! https://youtu.be/Pg5QFOuMoN8
***
Over 300,000 immigrants were deported in Biden’s first 100 days — a
rate of deportations higher than any period under the openly
anti-immigrant Donald Trump or under the “Deporter-in-Chief,” Barack
Obama.
The deportation machine of Immigration and Customs Enforcement
(ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) continues unabated. ICE
and CBP defied Biden’s 100-day moratorium on deportations.
Predictably, these agencies targeted Black and Latino immigrants for deportation.
Biden partially rescinded Trump’s “Return to Mexico" policy for
asylum seekers, but only for Latin Americans. Reflecting the
longstanding anti-Black racism of US immigration policies, Haitians
and Africans were excluded.
Black people have been flown by ICE without due process of their
asylum requests to countries like Haiti, Cameroon, and the Democratic
Republic of the Congo where the political violence means they may face
death.
More Haitians were deported to Haiti in Biden’s first 100 days than in the last year of the Trump administration.
Biden has the legal authority to bring ICE and CBP into compliance
with the law and his administration’s policies. These rogue agencies’
unions and members campaigned in uniform for Trump in open defiance the
Hatch Act. ICE and CBP must be dismantled and replaced with a new agency
that will uphold the law.
But Biden shows no appetite for that fight.
Instead, Biden submitted a moderate immigration bill to Congress
on his first day in office, the U.S. Citizenship Act, which would leave
ICE and CBP in place. It would provide immigrants in the U.S. before
2021 with a path to legal status and, after eight years, to
citizenship. But it reinforces the racial biases in the criminal justice
and national security systems toward Black, Latino, Muslim, Arab,
Middle Eastern,
and South Asian people, who remain targeted for criminal and national
security surveillance, discrimination, and arrest that would render
them ineligible for legal status and citizenship.
In any case, if the Democrats in the U.S. Senate don’t eliminate
the filibuster, no immigration reform will happen. 800,000 Dreamers and
more than 20 million undocumented immigrants will continue to live
their lives in constant fear of deportation.
Meanwhile, Biden has continued Trump's "Title 42" public health
authority to immediately expel people seeking asylum without due
process.
The only exception is allowing the entry of unaccompanied minors,
tens of thousands of whom are now stuck in some 200 facilities across
two dozen states. Most of these detentions centers are unlicensed and
riddled with neglect, abuse, covid, lice, and failure to help connect
children with their families or vetted care providers.
While Biden has said he will not build more border wall, his
administration is in the courts pursuing eminent domain proceedings that
were initiated by the Trump administration against landowners at
the border where more wall could be built.
Nor has Biden stopped the policy of co-opting local police into
federal immigration enforcement, which has made racial profiling worse
and undermined the trust and cooperation of immigrant communities
with local police in solving crimes.
The rule-or-ruin intransigence of the Republicans make them
irrelevant to immigration reform—or any other reform. The Democrats in
control of both houses of Congress and presidency are negotiating
with themselves. They may try to blame the Republicans, but it is the
Democrats who could but will not eliminate the filibuster by a simple
majority vote in the Senate.
That is why we need the Green Party now more than ever.
We are working to help Greens build that alternative and advance
the agenda we advocated during the presidential campaign, from
immigration reform and student debt relief to Medicare for All and
the Ecosocialist Green New Deal.
A federal judge just compared a military-style assault weapon to a Swiss Army knife – and then struck down California’s decades-long assault weapons ban.
This
shouldn’t even have to be said, but an AR-15 is not the same as a Swiss
Army Knife. These deadly weapons of war do not belong in the hands of
civilians.
In Parkland, an assault weapon was used to shoot and kill 17 people, not a knife.
In Las Vegas, an assault weapon was used to shoot and kill 61 people, not a knife.
In Newtown, an assault weapon was used to shoot and kill 28 people – including children, not a knife.
We are
talking about weapons of war that are designed to kill as many people as
possible, as quickly as possible. Banning assault weapons keeps
Americans safe and saves lives – and this gun lobby-backed ruling means
we have to work harder than ever to do it. Brady is fighting tooth and
nail to support efforts to overturn this ruling and reinstate the
federal ban on assault weapons and we need you with us:
An
military-style assault weapon is far deadlier than a Swiss Army knife.
Full stop. Thank you for taking action to ban these weapons of war.
Kris Brown
Brady President
