#people are actively calling in to their reps and donating and protesting and posting about it like crazy to get Palestine help | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

phoenixyfriend · 2 months

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A lot has been happening today that rep calls could affect. UN vetoes, KOSA, Julian Assange, UNRWA's funding crisis and Israel's demands that it be completely dismantled, the large number of bills we just learned are on the docket for the coming week, and even the good news that is recent successes by the BDS movement.

And like... I care about this stuff. I want to talk about it. But it takes an emotional and mental toll to do it, and it takes time, and... there are two reasons to write up reference, update, information posts:

Compensation. I'm not a journalist, but if I were, I would in theory be getting paid for the information I collect and share to my audience. However, I am not, and am doing this for free. I have gotten maybe $5 in donations since I started this project, and while I recognize that this is probably because people are (quite rightly) donating instead to Palestinian charities or local campaigns or something, it's a basic fact that I am not actually being compensated for this work.

Promoting change and activism. This is in fact my main goal: to have a positive impact on current events by giving people a guide on the news and politics because there's so much happening that's hard to keep track of, and if I'm already doom-listening to half a dozen political podcasts, I might as well save other people the trouble, right?

The thing is, like... most of the reblogs on my guidelines and helpful posts are from me, to me. I am the one reblogging. I am desperately trying to get these things to circulate so I can make a difference, but... no dice. Some of the posts are admittedly pretty long (my 'how to call your reps, here's some verbiage' post is 3.4k words), and I can imagine some people are saving it for later, and then maybe forget, or they don't want to share something controversial, and like... I do get that. I do.

But it does mean the posts aren't circulating, and thus they're having less of an impact, and I can't help but feel like there are other things I could be doing to help that would be more effective. More bang for my buck, except it's my time and effort instead of my money. Like, maybe it would have more an effect if I hunted down a wider variety of elected officials I could bother instead of instructing other people on how to bother theirs? Maybe going to protests (which would be a huge commitment due to distance) would be more effective than trying to help ensure that the effectiveness of "I actually have a vote and you are losing it" of calls has the weight of numbers behind it.

Especially since I did try to blaze it, and tumblr mods rejected the post. I don't know why. It's not against ToS, since none of it was disinformation or election interference, which is the only reason given on the FAQ for why things might not be approved for blazing, but who knows.

Maybe tumblr just decided the possible blowback on them for blazing a pro-ceasefire post would be too much.

I don't know. I just... it's just really disheartening to try to help and it gets stymied because, as much effort as it might be, it doesn't reach more than a (comparatively) tiny audience, especially when my relatively low-effort polls and shitposts get easily ten times as many notes with way less energy put in.

EDIT: This is not a post that I need to have reblogged. this is just me bitching. This a vent post. What I am asking people to reblog is my activism posts that I spend hours on to try and help nudge things in a better direction. Please reblog THOSE. This one doesn't need reblogging unless you have an actual comment. Reblogging this post just to reblog, with neither useful comment nor encouragement, is not helping me with my issue of 'not paid, not making an impact' or helping with any important causes.

#personal #vent post #phoenix politics

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karinyosa · 6 months

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from @villageauntie on instagram: “was asked to share ideas of what people who are unable to attend physical gatherings can do to support. these are some of the things i came up with. please feel free to add more in the comments.

yes, i am purposefully leaving out certain words and flags so this post can stay in the feed. but you know who and what this post is for”

id under the cut.

image 1 ID: white title text against a dark gray background that says "nine things you can do" with the subtitle "i was asked to compile a list of suggested activities for those who are unable to attend protests or who are not active on social media. these are from my own experience and those taken from history. i invite you to explore additional ways to support and share them in the comments".

image 2 ID: title says "pray tahajjud". subtitle says "wake in the last third of the night and pray. pray without ceasing. pray like you mean it. prayer is not the least we can do, it is the best we can do. know that your prayers reach. so reach inside and use your limbs and your tongue to supplicate to the one from whom all mercy descends. pray. pray. pray".

image 3 ID: title says "provide childcare". subtitle says "many who are active in the struggle are also parenting young children. offer to watch the babies so that both physical and digital organizing can take place. you can offer to watch children in your home, at the community center, a house of worship, or even outside. just offer it and make it free".

image 4 ID: title says "get educated". subtitle says "read books on palestine, on sudan, on the struggles of oppressed people worldwide. study anti-colonial thought. watch documentaries. study about makandal. read june jordan, kwame ture, amilcar cabral, james baldwin, toni morrison, marc lamont hill, and others. read more, scroll less (unless you are scrolling to get informed). read, digest, reflect".

image 5 ID: title says "educate others". subtitle says "organize a study circle. talk to your friends. interrupt falsehood with fact. have meaningful conversations with coworkers. ask questions, listen more. use what you have read to empower your family. read to their children. answer their questions. use your voice to help others to know and never forget".

image 6 ID: title says "prepare meals". subtitle says "make food. buy food from a local restaurant that is trustworthy. buy fruit. take it to your neighbors, to the masjid, to those who are or will be actively protesting. feed the people because nourishment is important and food is a way to show love and support".

image 7 ID: title says "organize fundraisers". subtitle says "if you have something you can make/sell, use it for a fundraiser. food, quilts, artwork, services, whatever. sell it and donate it to reputable charities providing support. something is better than nothing. no amount raised is too small". as an addition from me, i've also seen people do free art for people willing to commit to calling their reps every day. and for places to donate, i've seen lots of people talking about humanitarian organizations, but two more that i'd like to suggest are the palestinian social fund (palestiniansocialfund.com, their about says "The path to liberation requires material support that is directed toward self-sustainability. The Palestinian Social Fund raises unconditional funding for cooperative farms in Palestine through grassroots efforts. These farms are started by youth who are returning to the land to reclaim food sovereignty and control their own destiny.") and palestine action (palestineaction.org), who participate in direct action activism against weapons trading with israel, mainly focusing on the company elbit.

image 8 ID: title says "engage in arts activism". subtitle says "write poems. paint, sew, sing, dance, create. the artists are desperately needed. make work that amplifies the moment and educates. pour your heart into your craft with the intention to help. art can do what other activism cannot. say it with your craft".

image 9 ID: title says "participate in digital organizing". subtitle says "use your devices as organizing tools. set up a weekly zoom. invite speakers to engage and educate. engage in digital campaigns and letter writing. harness the power of technology for the greater good".

image 10 ID: title says "write letters/essays". subtitle says "write to your elected officials. flood their interns with letters and calls. write essays and post them to your substack/medium/local paper. people are looking to be informed. add your voice through the written word. people will read".

#actions #i remember reading once that writing a real physical letter held more weight with us officials #and that they'd assume if one person wrote then at least 2 other people felt the same way #idk if that's true/still true but putting it out there #i've heard that calling also holds more weight than emailing #palestine

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dovesndecay · 2 years

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Genuine question here, I always see people say that posting online and emailing your reps isn't good enough activism and that you need to like, go to protests or volunteer or any other number of things, but the only ways to help I see people talk about involve going out and doing things, and I can't do those things due to being essentially bedridden due to disability. I do want to do all that I'm able to though, so my question is, are there any useful forms of activism that don't require me to leave my house?

I sympathize, my friend, being in a similar boat myself. Others may have better suggestions, but personally, my recommendations tend to boil down to one thing.

Your communities. Ask your communities -- online and/or physical -- if there are any groups that may need volunteers to do computer work, like helping run social media, compile educational resources, data entry, and other similar tasks.

I always highly recommend joining a union, especially if you're employed in any way (people with hiring and firing power can't vote, (iirc) at least in the IWW, but they can still join and help build the power of the union), including freelancing. Our local union branch has semi-regular meetings, and there's plenty of work to be done with them that does actively assist your community in a lot of ways.

The IWW often works with other unions, with local organizations that are focused on groups (in our branch, at least) like Florida Prisoner Solidarity (formerly known as IWOC) and Food Not Bombs, and a lot of the work they do is ... well, just from seeing @natalieironside work as the branch secretary, I can fairly confidently say it's a decent amount of data that has to be tracked and reported.

There's plenty of people right now focused on being in marches, doing big gestures to bring attention to the issues, and that's not a bad thing, necessarily, but if there's no organization behind those demonstrations of power -- which is, in the end, what a march is -- that power has nowhere to go.

If no one has gotten together to hammer out what the end goal is, has kept track of donations, of volunteers, tasks and connections, made phone calls to voters and to politicians, then that march was a very angry parade and little else.

If there's a specific issue that is important to you, that you're passionate about, look to see what kind of local or online organizations you might be able to connect with and ask them if they have any kind of online work they need assistance with. If they don't, move on to the next one. Someone will have something for you.

And don't get me wrong -- not all organizations are going to be disability accessible, and that's something I hope changes. But there are also plenty of them that at least try, and I'm certain they're eager for more people.

But if that's something that isn't accessible to you -- regardless of the reason -- then I would encourage you to focus on education, both for yourself and educating others when you can. Boosting fundraisers, organization's calls for help, sharing good practical resources (educational and material!) are all really awesome ways to help people that still makes your own health and safety a priority.

Anon, I hope this helps, and please don't let the assholes get you down -- there's ableism even among our comrades, and I know how hard it is to hear that shit when you're doing as much as you physically or mentally can handle. There's no shame in that, and don't let anyone tell you different.

From each according to his ability.

If any of my followers have further suggestions (or any corrections to what I've said here), please feel free to add on!

#original post #askbox #hey nonny nonny #boy howdy i hope this made sense

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thequeerator · 5 months

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In case you haven’t heard, a global strike for a ceasefire has been announced for December 11, 2023. Unfortunately, I will not be able to participate, but I support everyone who is striking and wanted to share the news. if you are able to, please call out sick, take a self care day, do anything to put a pause on the economy.

In a perfect world, I would be striking, but I cannot risk losing my job right now or the state that my health is in that allows me to work so I will be doing everything I can to spread awareness of the strike and provide support in other ways.

Anyways, I wanted to share a list of ideas for things to do on the 11th for anyone else who may want to strike, but is unable to.

Many of these are ideas that have already been proposed in previous protests and events for Gaza but I don’t think it hurts to restate them. I’ll just group those ones in a bullet point though.

- Wear a kefiya, like, comment, post, and repost content, contact your reps, hypothetically leave awful reviews for companies manufacturing weapons that are being sent to perpetrators of genocide, continue boycotting, stop vaping (when it’s for non-medical reasons of course), or pull your money out of a national bank and switch to a local credit union.

- If you know anyone who is striking, see if there are any ways you can support them for the day. Maybe invite them over to your house for dinner so they don’t have to worry about paying for food for a night.

- For anyone who works at a job where are you are not allowed to discuss anything that someone else may consider to be related to politics without risking being fired, show support in subtle ways that other people who are Palestinian or who support Palestinians will be able to notice. This can look like wearing clothes or doing makeup in Palestinian colors, making a traditional Palestinian food for lunch, reading a book about Palestine during your break, or talking about how you won’t be buying gifts for the holidays this year. This is probably considered malicious compliance but what matters is that it allows you to create a sense of solidarity and community with others who are also passionate about humanity.

- Find the Palestinians in your community and see if there are ways you can be there for them.

- Take the first step in building community where you are that is there for each other. This might be doing research on what that even looks like or reaching out to some friends you haven’t talk to you in a while. Community outside of work is one of the most important things right now and will allow us to support each other and encourage each other and to help us not burn ourselves out. For some of you, it might also give you the option to be able to strike in the future for something like this. I hope that it’s never needed though.

- Not only do many cities have Facebook groups that support buying nothing in your city but I recently discovered that some cities have queer mutual aid/information/trade/help groups as well. Join these.

- Start a little free library and/or mini food pantry in your neighborhood.

- after work, hang some posters in high traffic areas about calling for a ceasefire

- Buy esims for journalists and medical professionals via Nomad, Simly, Holafly, and others and send the receipt with the attachments to [email protected]. Do not activate them. For more info: https://www.gazaesims.com/

I will continue adding to this post as I think of things. If you have other ideas feel free to comment them, too.

#thequeerator #free palestine #from the river to the sea palestine will be free #strike

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kabutone · 2 months

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tiktok making me mad again

a lot of people have been saying “is xyz what it takes for you to care?? look at the suffering happening how could you not care!!” but like girl . that really is what it takes. palestine has been occupied for like 75 years but it took a genocide to really kickstart the free palestine movement (even though it did exist before oct 7).

BLM has been around for way longer before 2020 but it took multiple murders of black ppl by police for people to actually start to care. yes there are people that have been listening since before then, people that have been around since before these movements became so big, but it really does take generations of suffering and then it has to culminate in one big bloody, gory catastrophe to get people to care.

and i am watching yall ignore the millions of covid deaths! i’m asking YOU how you can turn a blind eye to SO MUCH SUFFERING. apparently it’s really easy. how much longer do we have to suffer until you care? how many more people must die before you do something? we reached the “tipping point” long ago and you’re going to your protests without masks.

i’m not asking everyone to dedicate their lives to doing everything for every cause. i’m only asking you to do what you can. cause when everyone does a little bit, it makes a big impact. everyone showing support for palestine is putting pressure on the government to call for a ceasefire (not a permanent one yet 🙄 but it’s something). this way, it’s not just the palestinians all by themselves, they have the support of millions. i’m still pissed that everyone seemed to give up on BLM before much effective change was made though. but yall refuse to mask!!! if everyone wore masks out, the BARE MINIMUM, imagine how many lives we could save.

the truth is covid is getting worse. the gov is trying to hide the deaths and long term damage the pandemic is doing, but you don’t see it even when it’s right in front of your face. we’ve been constantly suffering in silence for years and our pleas for help are consistently falling on deaf ears. it’s especially maddening when it’s people who claim to want to help, who want to do the right thing, and then refuse effective options for more performative and showy ones.

but i guess wearing a mask actually requires you to DO something. it’s easier to just make posts. you get to post a video of yourself doing poses, AND you get give yourself a pat on the back for making minuscule effort. that’s the extent that your care goes though. but to actually INCONVENIENCE yourself for a cause? ew!! yeah people are dying but… we can’t expect you to go out of your way in the slightest, it’s too much. so, you settle for telling people they’re horrible for not using a tiktok sound, because it’s so easy. it’s really a bad look when the most effort you’ll go to is less than the bare minimum and then you have the nerve to act like it’s the height of activism. it’s so frustrating for there to be better, more effective solutions and people go ‘umm… no…. i COULD help, and i know i said i wanted to, but actually i just wanna make posts and that’s it.’

and for the people that HAVE been doing actual work, like going to protests, donating e sims, contacting their reps, these are the people that are ACTUALLY living their politics and not just trying to look good online. and it’s working!! but i implore you to please please please consider the impact your actions. if you’re putting in effort, you’re someone that truly cares about helping people. just wearing a mask is not only an easy solution, but it’s highly effective. a lot of us feel hopeless bc individually, how do we help people suffering across the world? we can’t personally go help, so we can just do our best to get the government to listen and fucking stop killing people. it’s kinda hard to make a direct impact, but that’s why it’s so important that we have a LOT of people trying. it’s the same with every movement ever. but with masking you are directly helping the people around you, immediately. it’s low effort, but very very high impact. if you want real change to happen, invest in things that will make the biggest impact!!

anyway, kill the eugenicist in your head that tells you certain lives are disposable!!!!

#people say this is going to change them forever. but will it?#or will you care while it’s trendy and go ‘back to normal’ when you’re bored?#anyway . mad . mad #i think a lot of people just do not fucking mean what they say #or don’t believe what they say they do #and it’s so frustrating

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wormthejay · 4 years

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Sorry for the long post ahead:

Message from Frontline Protesters in Portland, OR

"I need you all to understand how not okay we are in Portland.

I'm going to start by telling you that you're seeing it in the news late. This has been happening for days. They're disappearing BLM supporters at all hours in unmarked vans, and so far, no one knows where they're ending up. I'm watching Twitter, and there are people looking for their missing people. They've been gone for days.

They are trying to scare us.

I also want you to know what tear gas does, specifically to uterus-havers. It causes miscarriages and basically makes you have a heavy, brutal period. Many, many protesters have been talking about this on Twitter and the damage it has done to them. (By the way, if you're not following things on Twitter, you are not as on top of the new cycle as you think you are. You are missing the worst of it right now, and we cannot afford to let that happen.)

They are trying to harm us, permanently.

They are trying to cage us.

If you are not with us, you are against us. If you are not actively talking about this, you are part of the problem. This is nothing less than a complete descent into fascism, and it's all hands on deck.

Because if we don't do this now? This will happen in your city. That poem about the order that came for people in? It's never been more apt, at least not in my lifetime.

Because frankly? Soon they're going to be actively killing us.

I am begging you - Make some noise.

Make sure everyone knows what's going on. Make sure everyone is calling the leadership in their city, county, and state. Our mayor has been completely ineffective in the face of all of this, and our governor isn't much better - And it won't get better unless they hear us loud and clear.

What to do:

1. Donate to the ACLU and mutual aid networks in Portland

2. RT and share - optics matter

3. Call your reps and demand action

4. Use your Karen powers for good - stand up, stand out.

5. SERIOUSLY, SPREAD THE WORD, THEY CAME FOR THE PROTESTERS, YOU ARE NEXT

silence is violence here, it is your (yes, you) individual responsibility to say something NOW, before it's too late"

Please reblog or copy and paste to share

#blm #protest #portland #shareit

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singinginthecar · 4 years

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Namjoon from BTS also told a story of his graduation where it snowed real hard but noone is dragging him for it because he was just sharing his story, like Taylor was. Y'all just frustrated and at this point and will take anything to drag that. I'm not saying that I support Taylor's silence, no. I'm just saying focus on other BETTER MORE IMPORTANT things going on. Y'all have been doing this for a few days now, instead of sending shit to TN, send emails to the govt, reps and officials and shit 3/

I used to absolutely love tumblr and coming on here but now??? It's just filled with so much of almost hate and negativity???? I legit logged off for a good two days, no lie. I just feel like y'all are missing the point here and that's all. I get being disappointed in Taylor's lack of activism when she herself said otherwise. I know. I'm a poc, I get it. But like we have a bigger issue ahead of us so can we please focus more on that? It's about black lives not about getting Taylor to speak. 4/?

And lastly, I just want you to know that I wasn't targeting you or anything. My rant was truly general and not directed at you. The reason I wanted to you is that I felt safer with you. Idk. I hope you get it. Have a good day/night. Thanks. Take care. 5/5

like i said, people are stretched thin rn. especially with her lack of actions surrounding the blm movement. so at a time like this, an innocent story being misconstrued is... inevitable. i'm not justifying it. but i get why it's there. and about namjoon... um... the swifties don't care tbh. we care about taylor, hence the expectations and the resultant disappointment. and who says we haven't been doing work? so many people i know on here have gone to protests, are signing petitions, donating, and most importantly sharing resources and educating others. i've been pleasantly surprised to find out that some of the most popular posts on here with tons of resources and insights are actually from my mutuals on here. we're absolutely doing everything that we can. and we're calling for taylor to speak up. it is possible to multitask. and i understand if all this is overwhelming or not what you want to see. it's fine. but i'm just saying... maybe the ppl speaking up on here have a solid reason to do that. their pain and disappointment is extremely valid. and if that's overwhelming for you or you don't like it and you prefer a different way to support Black lives... then that's completely fine. as long as you're not speaking over those who need to be heard. and thank you for feeling safe enough to tell me how you feel ♡

#honestly thank you for being nice #that can't be said abt the other anons in my inbox #and i'm sorry that i've posted only half the asks here.... i posted the other half separately 😬#ask #anon

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ironinkpen · 7 years

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Could u make a post of things ppl suggested? I wasnt able to make it to the march either but i really want to get involved but i just dont know how to start

Absolutely! Here’s a list of the suggestions I got from other people, along with stuff I’ve picked up while researching over the last few days:

Things you can do right now from home:

Get registered to vote. It takes like two minutes if your state lets you do it online, you can click here right now to get it done.

Donate to charities and organizations you think are important, as often as you can. My main pick’s Planned Parenthood, since it’s going to be taking a lot of hits in the next few years.

Contact your representatives. Your congresspeople are terrified of not getting reelected. Call them and tell them when you’re mad at them. Call them and tell them when you support their decisions. Hell, get a group of people together, make a day out of it. 5calls gives you issues, your reps numbers, and handy phone scripts if you don’t know what to say.

Download some trusted news apps and turn the notifications on so you get news as it’s happening. Try CNN, AP News, and BBC News. Don’t buy bullshit attempts to discredit major news sources.

Encourage social media websites to be stricter when enforcing their community policies. A lot of people report harassers and never check back to see if their accounts got shut down. Follow up on that shit. Email Tumblr, Twitter, what-have-you and ask them to crack down more. Be polite, but be persistent.

Educate others. No one knows everything. If you see someone saying something ignorant (especially a minor), try to give them some new info and explain your side. Of course, there’s a big difference between ignorance (“I don’t get why [issue] is a problem”) and hatred (“I think [minority] should be wiped off the face of the earth”). Please refer to our country’s good ol’ tradition of kicking fascist ass when it comes to interacting with the latter.

Pick your battles. You can’t fight the whole world. Don’t engage with every single slightly negative thing or you’ll burn out fast. Take a step back when you need it and come back for the bigger fights.

Things you can do in your community:

Go to protests / local activist meet ups. There are many different groups that meet up around the country to discuss different issues and march. To find them, online’s a good place to start (a lot of events are organized on Facebook, just be aware that surveillance is a thing). Also, if you live on a campus any race/gender/sexuality club or center should have information, as should local community centers.

Volunteer for local nonprofits. Animal shelters, health clinics, soup kitchens, etc. are always looking for people to donate time.

Volunteer for national organizations. A lot of organizations allow you to sign up for their mailing lists and get notified when volunteering opportunities in your area pop up.

If you’re in college, join a club. Colleges have clubs for everything. If there’s somehow not a club for an issue you’re passionate about, consider making one yourself.

Organize at school. If there’s something that sucks about your high school / college, gather a group of people who agree that it’s an issue and have at it. It’s a lot easier to change a school than a whole country, for sure.

Otherwise:

Get creative. Activism can take so many different forms. Make a youtube channel on a topic you’re passionate about. Make T Shirts about punching nazis and donate the proceeds to charities you care about. Have a car wash if that’s what your heart desires. There’s a lot of different ways to make a change. Find one that fits you (while also trying to get active in other ways!)

This isn’t a comprehensive list by any means, so if anyone has something to add, I’m totally open to suggestions! But I do think this is a good starting point, if you need one, Anon!

#Anonymous #Izzy talks to people #long post #nazism tw #because i briefly mentioned that there #anyway I hope this helps you anon!!

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morganbelarus · 7 years

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Trumpolicy: Day 11

Washington (CNN)President Donald Trump's second full week comes after a chaotic weekend sparked by the executive order temporarily halting immigration from seven Muslim-majority nations. Protesters and lawyers jammed US airports to protest the order and help those who were detained. White House press secretary Sean Spicer said Monday any US diplomats who don't agree with the order can "either get with the program or they can go."

ACTION PRESIDENT TRUMP TOOK TODAY...

ECONOMY -- He signed an executive action designed to reduce the regulatory burden on small businesses. Trump said: "There will be regulation, there will be control, but it will be normalized control where you can open your business and expand your business very easily."

WHAT ELSE IS NEW ON DAY 11...

IMMIGRATION

Former President Barack Obama was moved to put out his first post-presidency statement. The statement praised protesters and said Obama "fundamentally disagrees with the notion of discriminating against individuals because of their faith or religion."

Senate Democrats pushed for a vote on a bill to rescind the Trump immigration ban.

After some initial legal successes from those opposed to the new restrictions, lawyers are acknowledging the wins could be short-lived. CAIR filed a new lawsuit Monday.

A former Google exec called the travel ban "an enormous problem."

America, Delta and United are promising refunds to affected travelers.

Business leaders are warning isolationism will be bad for business.

Reuters

reports Charles Koch is working against the idea of a border tax.

The Mayor of Cincinnati declared the city is a "sanctuary city." The Police Chief said his department, "will not be enforcing immigration laws."

The City of Miami and Miami-Dade county both have mayors, but they each have an opposing view of whether their jurisdiction should be a "sanctuary city."

ACLU donations are now up to $24.1M, just from this weekend.

OBAMACARE

Open enrollment closes tomorrow, amid great uncertainty about the future of Obamacare.

A group funded by the Koch brothers

has a replacement plan that pushes high-pools and freezes Medicaid expansions. Freedom Partners has been circulating a memo on Capitol Hill.

Republicans continue to have a tough time agreeing on a replacement plan.

The Wall Street Journal reports

, contrary to his testimony, HHS nominee Rep. Tom Price was offered a privileged price for a biotech stock that he purchased. Senate Democrats will seek to delay a scheduled Tuesday vote on him.

Democrats are wondering why HHS stopped advertising open enrollment

. A group of them sent a letter to the acting HHS Secretary.

Celebrities are urging people to enroll in Obamacare before Tuesday's deadline. A naked Lena Dunham was among those who have made videos in response to HHS ads being pulled.

If Obamacare is repealed, would California try its own version? The Mercury News says under the Cassidy/Collins plan, yes, but it depends what Californians are willing to pay.

INFRASTRUCTURE -- A Raleigh News and Observer piece this afternoon is the latest good example of local outlets picking up on the draft document obtained by McClatchy last week for potential infrastructure projects.

ENVIRONMENT/ENERGY -- The Washington Post highlights new Republican efforts to roll back Obama's environmental regulations. The rules target methane emissions from oil and gas drilling and water pollution resulting from coal mining activities.

TRADE

When it comes to the US economy China and Mexico's impact is nothing compared to automation.

The Wall Street Journal

writes up a Brookings study that finds "Trump country" is more likely to get hurt in a trade war than places that voted for Clinton.

The acting U.S. Trade Representative officially sent a letter to ask New Zealand to notify other countries the US "does not intend to become a party" to TPP.

The New York Times has a big picture look explaining why a trade war may already be underway.

LOOKING AHEAD...

TUESDAY -- OBAMACARE -- Open enrollment ends. Protest are planned. There will be a committee vote on Rep. Tom Price for HHS Secretary.

TUESDAY -- SUPREME COURT -- Trump makes his Supreme Court nomination announcement at 8:00pm ET.

WEDNESDAY -- IMMIGRATION - There's a Homeland Security committee meeting on border fencing.

More From this publisher : HERE

=> *********************************************** Post Source Here: Trumpolicy: Day 11 ************************************ =>

Trumpolicy: Day 11 was originally posted by 11 VA Viral News

#11 VA Viral News

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thisdaynews · 5 years

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My Weekend At the Activist Bootcamp Trying to Reshape the 2020 Race

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My Weekend At the Activist Bootcamp Trying to Reshape the 2020 Race

STONY POINT, N.Y. — “When we were taught about the civil rights movement as kids, it was told to us as if a few big marches just happened and then the laws changed,” Emily LaShelle told me last weekend as she smoked a cigarette. Behind her, a group of her peers played Frisbee in a field while the sun set behind them. “But there was so much more work and effort by activists behind the scenes,” she said. “And that’s the kind of work we’re teaching people to be involved in for this movement.”

LaShelle is 21, with short-cropped blond hair and a nose piercing. Her movement is the Sunrise Movement, an organization of mostly twenty-something climate activists who are best known for seemingly instantly and improbably injecting the idea of a “Green New Deal” into the national conversation. This past week, more than 70 Sunrise activists, including LaShelle, traveled to a rural, multifaith retreat center along the Hudson River, about 50 miles north of New York City, to take part in a weeklong boot camp that’s intended to transform them into the next generation of climate activists—who, in turn, are supposed to transform American politics.

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Sunrise has already moved shockingly swiftly on that front. Last November, Sunrise activists joined newly elected Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in a splashy protest at House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office that catapulted the group to national relevance. The resulting publicity added thousands of people to the group’s ranks of supporters and active volunteers. Less than a year later, Sunrise’s proposal for a Green New Deal has gone from being widely mocked as an overly ambitious socialist fantasy (or the “Green Dream,” in Pelosi’s words) to being endorsed by 16 of the Democrats running for president—most recently by none other than Joe Biden. Four years after it was founded by several activists in the fossil-fuel divestment movement on college campuses and a climate policy researcher supported by the Sierra Club, Sunrise has become an influential force not just in climate activism but in Democratic politics. And its oldest staff member is only 33.

The most pressing question Sunrise now faces—and one that occupied this past week’s boot camp—is not unlike the one that faced Robert Redford at the end ofThe Candidate: What do we do now? How do a bunch of twenty-somethings, somewhatblindsided by their own success, come up with a next act?

The Sunrise Movement is part of a crop of progressive groups that have sprung up outside the mainstream Democratic Party and have helped to dramatically reshape the left’s agenda, often with minimal infrastructure. At its founding, Sunrise saw itself as solely focused on changing public opinion as an indirect means of pressuring the party’s establishment. But after the election of President Donald Trump, the group and its leaders underwent a change in philosophy: They needed to convert their idealism into power by engaging in hard politics.

In less than five years, Sunrise has grown from a small and quixotic project to a full-fledged advocacy organization that draws thousands of volunteers across the country and tens of thousands of participants to its events, including a large protest that’s being planned around the Democratic presidential debate in Detroit later this summer. Among the activists at the Sunrise boot camp, there was a palpable sense of enthusiasm but also anger and even desperation at what it calls the “climate crisis.” There was a pervasive feeling that previous generations of adults had ignored the apocalyptic threat of climate change and left it to be solved by millennials and Gen Zers. At times, Sunrise’s leaders seem like they’re winging it, or even engaging in a right-wing parody of performative wokeness. Yet it’s also undeniable that whatever this earnest and improvisational organization is doing, it’s working. The national discussion around climate change has moved more in the past eight months than it did during the previous eight years.

Last year, Sunrise held a similar boot camp for its activists, 75 like-minded young adults who were volunteering their summers to help a fledgling movement. No members of the news media showed up. “We were sending press releases out, but no one was responding,” Stephen O’Hanlon, Sunrise’s communications director and one of its eight original co-founders, told me last weekend. O’Hanlon is 23.

This year’s camp was for 60 full-time organizers who will receive food, housing and a stipend for up to six months, during which they’ll be placed in “movement houses” around the country.Politico Magazineshowed up, and so did a reporter forVogue. ANew York Timesvideo team was expected, too. “It’s fucking insane,” Victoria Fernandez, who’s 26 and another of the movement’s co-founders, said to me about the media coverage—and the organization’s rising status.

***

“Initially we thought,”Sunrise co-founder Sara Blazevic, who is 26, told me of the group’s founding, “if we can build the public support and the public pressure, our political system will follow. We’d be a movement that was pretty solely focused on the outside game strategy: building public pressure, elevating the urgency of the crisis in the eyes of the American people and demonstrating it to political leaders and forcing them to reckon with it,” she said.

That was the summer of 2016.

“And then when Trump got elected, and we realized there was just no credible path to passing any type of federal legislation on climate in four years, we realized that we also had to contend with how to win political power pretty seriously.”

Over the next year, Sunrise participated mostly in demonstrations organized by others, like a People’s Climate March in D.C. and a protest at the United Nations climate talks in Germany. As the group’s plan for how to focus its efforts on hard politics began to take shape, Sunrise began to acquire, either from donations or by paying rent, a series of houses across the country. In the summer of 2018, Sunrise placed activists in these movement houses, as it calls them, to work on campaigns in states like Michigan, Pennsylvania, New York and Florida. They focused on picking candidates in Democratic primaries who would stand for bold progressive policies—candidates like Ocasio-Cortez, who received Sunrise’s endorsement and support.

After picking a candidate, the activists would, says Aracely Jiménez, a 22-year-old Sunrise staffer who started as a volunteer canvasser in New York last summer, knock on doors for them, often in working-class communities, telling people why “just any Democrat having a D next to their name doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re going to be fighting for immigrant rights or housing justice or climate justice.”

That fall, the election of Ocasio-Cortez, and the protest she joined at Pelosi’s office, was a “turning point” for the organization, said Claire Tacherra-Morrison, a 24-year-old University of California, Berkeley graduate who participated in the protest and is now a Sunrise staffer.

“We were saying all the same shit on November 12 as we were on November 13,” Blazevic said, “but having Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez saying it with us really did change everything.”

She added, “Part of what made our protest so powerful was because we had this story: We just hustled and worked our asses off for six months to help win back the House for Dems, and they owe us better than this. They owe us a plan, and they don’t have one.”

A year ago, Sunrise had an organized presence in only about a dozen cities. By December, that grew to around 80, and now has reached more than 250. Each city is organized from a “hub,” usually led by regular, part-time volunteers; each hub is autonomous, choosing where and what to protest and whom to endorse in local elections, and volunteers write op-eds and letters to the editor for their local newspapers on behalf of the broader movement. “We don’t have a super hierarchical structure where a CEO or CFO has to sign off on every plan,” Blazevic said to a group of the activists at this past week’s boot camp.

Last year, Sunrise operated on a budget of about $850,000, its leaders say, while this year they have a budget goal of about $4.5 million. They received several large foundation grants, but they also said “a huge portion of funding comes from individual grassroots donations.”

***

The boot camp itself sometimes seemedlike a cross between a summer camp for hippies and a high school pep rally. There were a lot of songs sung in circles, the facilitators shared many favorable videos and articles about Sunrise published over the past year, and people snapped incessantly to show support whenever anyone said anything remotely vulnerable or profound. Other times, it could feel like first-year orientation at a liberal college. Participants were asked to share their preferred gender pronouns along with their names during introductions. A Sunrise leader opened the very first session by thanking the spirits of the Native Americans whose land they were on.

But when they got down to work, the boot camp felt more like a corporate retreat designed to foster team-building and to inculcate new recruits on the values of the organization. The activists were trained on the history of Sunrise and its theory of change. On how to be “compelling storytellers.” On how to canvass, how to plan protests and how to strategically question presidential candidates on the trail. Others were trained to be trainers, so that Sunrise can expand exponentially.

Benjamin Finegan, a 22-year-old activist who took the last year off from Cornell to move into Sunrise’s Philadelphia movement house, says while the group is young and likes to emphasize its youth, it isn’t trying to reinvent progressive activism—just the politics of climate change. “We take a lot of guidance from slightly older to much older people in other movements,” he said. Sunrise uses a “public narrative model” developed by famed community organizer-turned-Harvard professor Marshall Ganz. Movement houses were used by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in the 1960s. Another Sunrise activist Nikola Yager says the group has a roster of “coaches” from various other movements like Black Lives Matter and Occupy Wall Streetwho volunteer as mentors for Sunrise’s organizers.

“This is unlike any other fellowship program,” Tacherra-Morrison said to the Sunrise activists at the opening of the boot camp.

The 60 activists, who are embarking on three- to six-month fellowships with the potential to stay for longer, make up the bulk of the full-time workforce of the Sunrise Movement. There are about 25 actual staff, like Tacherra-Morrison, but the distinction says less about the kinds of roles they play in the organization and more about their compensation. Staff are salaried, while fellows receive stipends.

More than 200 people applied to the program. Many of the fellows are recent college graduates or are taking a gap year to work with Sunrise. Others left jobs as congressional staffers or at other environmental organizations, like the Sierra Club. LaShelle joined last summer after her freshman year at Wellesley and has taken time off from school to continue working with Sunrise ever since. She lives in a movement house in Philadelphia with Aru Shiney-Ajay, another 21-year-old who’s taken time off college (in her case, Swarthmore), and several other Sunrise activists.

Half of the boot camp’s sessions were held in a makeshift classroom, and half were, naturally, outdoors. There were PowerPoint presentations, but they were distinctly millennial, with gifs and memes that underscored whatever point is being made. To illustrate futility, one slide featured a child trying and failing to eat a cookie while wearing armband floaties.

A key messaging guideline was “make it hopeful.” As another PowerPoint slide stated, “a winning story needs both a national crisis of historic proportions and a vision that tells us how to beat it.”

The Green New Deal is Sunrise’s policy vision, now taken up by its allies in Congress. It ties together the group’s twin goals of achieving net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 and a federal jobs program, one that would employ millions to expand renewable energy generation and improve infrastructure.

“The right-wing media is doing a lot to tell the story of the Green New Deal from a certain perspective that is mostly around sacrifice: That Americans will have to sacrifice their cars, airplanes and hamburgers,” Fernandez, the Sunrise co-founder, said. “Fox News watchers are hearing a lot more about the Green New Deal than the average voter, and they’re not hearing about it in relation to climate change.”

At one point, the activists were asked to turn to the person sitting next to them and role-play as if they were a Fox News host interrogating a Sunrise activist. One man turned to the woman next to him and asked her whether she really wants to “drag this country into socialism?” She laughed and said, not entirely seriously, “Yes, that actually sounds great!”

Later that day, Shiney-Ajay opened a discussion of the Green New Deal by passing out a printed one-page summary of the resolution put forward a few months ago in Congress by Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Ed Markey of Massachusetts. Shiney-Ajay asked the room if there were any questions.

Where does the Green New Deal stand on the use of nuclear energy? one fellow asked.

“We don’t want there to be any new nuclear energy plants,” Shiney-Ajay began tentatively, before revising her answer to say, “Actually, I’m not sure if nuclear is considered carbon neutral.” She then asked the room whether they knew the answer.

How about carbon capture? another fellow asked.

“The resolution was created on a very short timeline,” Shiney-Ajay said.

These are the sorts of specifics—not legislative arcana but principles for how best to confront climate change—the movement has struggled to come to a consensus on.

“Sunrise’s role is not to be super caught up in the details,” Shiney-Ajay told the room. “We’re 18-, 19-, 20-, 21-year-olds who don’t really know policy.” It’s their job, she said, to lay out a vision while others write proposals that meet that vision.

When I asked Fernandez about this, she responded: “Everyday Americans, they want to know the impact of the policy. Most people don’t want to debate the actual policy or the years or the timelines or things like that. They want to know what the impact is, and that’s how they’ll make their decisions.”

***

Sunrise wants to play a major rolein the 2020 presidential election. It wants a Democrat who can not only beat Donald Trump, but also has signed on to the group’s vision of remaking the economy on a New Deal-era scale to fight climate change. To get there, it is pushing every candidate who isn’t already on board to become so.

As part of that effort, Sunrise is planning to host debate watch parties across the country, and it’s going to open movement houses in Iowa and New Hampshire. It plans for activists to accost candidates on the trail to ask them about their commitment to fighting climate change. “The way that we got Kamala Harris and Beto O’Rourke and Cory Booker and so many other candidates to commit to the No Fossil Fuel Money Pledge and feel the heat around the Green New Deal is relentlessly confronting them at all of their campaign events across the country,” O’Hanlon said. By bird-dogging public figures in this way, Sunrise intends, as the boot camp worksheets instructed the activists in training, “to elicit a public response from a powerful person through strategic questions or actions.”

Earlier this year, the group announced grand plans for a summit and protest in Detroit, timed to coincide with the second round of primary debates at the end of July. Sunrise has sent three demands to each candidate: To commit to prioritizing the Green New Deal, to reject money from fossil fuel executives and lobbyists, and to call upon the Democratic National Committee to host a primary debate dedicated to climate change—something that, so far, the DNC is assiduously refusing to do.

According to Sunrise’s latest count, 16 of the 2020 Democratic presidential candidates have endorsed the Green New Deal, 18 have signed the No Fossil Fuel Money Pledge and 16 have called on the DNC to host a climate debate. Sunrise did not respond to a request fromPolitico Magazineto list which candidates have met which demands.

Detroit represents the perfect intersection of Sunrise’s twin theory of change, said Nicholas Jansen, Sunrise’s Michigan state director, who is 24. “Electorally and narratively,” he said, it has huge potential: the decline of industry and need for economic revitalization, Trump’s narrow margin of victory there in 2016, its racial diversity, its history of environmental disasters like the water crisis in nearby Flint.

The next iteration of the Sunrise fellowship is scheduled to begin six months from now, in January 2020 rather than June. The group hopes to recruit hundreds of new full-time organizers to work on primary campaigns across the country and then the presidential election in November.

“For our entire lives, we’ve seen politicians and the political establishment totally fail our generation,” O’Hanlon said. “I wish that the adults in the room were solving this crisis, but the reality is they aren’t. So now it’s on our generation to do it.”

#Foreign #Politics #Reshape #trying

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ralphmorgan-blog1 · 7 years

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10 answers for white people wondering, What can I do about Charlottesville?

In case it wasn’t clear enough already, the Nazi rally in Charlottesville and the deadly violence inflicted on counter protesters (resulting in many serious injuries and the death of activist Heather Heyer) made it abundantly, horrifically clear: Racism and white supremacy are alive and well in 2017.

Many white people are feeling shocked, upset, and helpless right now, seeing Nazis march openly in the streets. “What can I do about Charlottesville?” is a question that’s coming up a lot. Well, here are 10 answers to that question.

Show up. There are vigils and protests happening in response to Charlottesville all over the country this week. Show up for those. There are more alt-right rallies planned in many cities in the very near future. Show up for those—and send the message loud and clear that you will not tolerate hate in any form, anywhere, from anyone. If you’re grappling with guilt about your white privilege and feeling helpless, this is one tangible way to use your privilege and increase your efficacy: Show up where people of color often do not feel safe, like in the presence of police, neo-Nazis, and fascists.

Keep showing up. Protests, rallies, and candlelight vigils are important, but there are countless other events happening every single day that don’t look as good on Instagram but can be even more impactful. City hall meetings. Police commission meetings. Local elections. City council meetings. Go sit in the uncomfortable chairs in the drab, gray rooms where real decisions get made and demand real change from the people in charge. Ask why the police in your city arrest, harass, and kill black people at such high rates. Demand to know what they’re going to do about it. Keep asking. Keep demanding. If you don’t like the answers, work to vote them out. Keep showing up.

Give money. This is a great list of organizations in Charlottesville that you can support financially. Your local Black Lives Matter chapter would also appreciate your financial assistance. So would legal aid programs fighting to protect civil rights. So would minority-owned businesses in your town. Or put your money toward a subscription to Safety Pin Box, which supports black women and gives you tools to become a better ally.

THREAD: I think it would be cool if tons of folks donated to good Charlottesville-based nonprofits those Nazi jerks would really hate. So…

— Sara Benincasa (@SaraJBenincasa) August 12, 2017

Denounce white supremacy on social media. Much ado has been made over millennials’ tendency to change their Facebook profile picture and call it activism. Is there some truth to that critique? Yes. Should we all get involved in real life and not call it a day after posting a political rant on Twitter? Of course. But that doesn’t mean that there’s no value in publicly denouncing white supremacy on social media. So do it—explicitly, unapologetically, and as publicly as possible.

Remember, this isn’t about patting yourself on the back for being a “good” white person (you know, the kind who doesn’t go to murderous Nazi rallies), this is about making a clear, public statement that white supremacy is wrong and you will not tolerate it. White people need to speak out on every available platform and say “racism in America is real but it’s not normal and I will do everything in my power to dismantle it.”

Read. There is so much amazing writing, insight, honesty, and wisdom being generously shared right now, much of it by writers of color specifically addressing white people. Read everything you can. Read this. Read this. Read this. Read this. Educate yourself on America’s history of white supremacy. Learn about why none of this—Trump’s election, Charlottesville, escalating police brutality—is coming as a surprise for people of color. If an article makes you uncomfortable, that’s a good sign. Keep reading.

Interrupt racism in your own life. White people need to show up publicly to combat white supremacy, but we also need to push back against the racism that happens privately in our families and friend groups. Make a vow to not let casual racism go unchecked, whether it’s coming from your great aunt, your coworkers, or the cashier at the deli. It’s hard, it’s awkward, and it’s uncomfortable, but these are just conversations—being a constant target of racism and violence is a hell of a lot harder. It’s imperative that we do this work. To remain silent is to be complicit. To remain silent is to normalize racism.

Ruin 👏🏼 every 👏🏼 Thanksgiving 👏🏼 until 👏🏼 your 👏🏼 whole 👏🏼 family 👏🏼 denounces 👏🏼 racism. 👏🏼

— Dan Wilbur (@DanWilbur) August 13, 2017

Listen to people of color. People of color have been raising the alarm for years and years that white supremacy still thrives in America. Many white people, meanwhile, saw Obama get elected and thought, “We’re all good now! Racism is cured!” It sounds harsh, but here’s the deal: If you were shocked about Trump’s election, you weren’t listening to people of color. If you were shocked about Charlottesville, you weren’t listening to people of color. At this point, we should all be outraged, but we should not be surprised.

Listen to people of color. Amplify their voices whenever possible. Feeling the need to defend yourself? Take a breath and listen instead.

Don’t let politicians off the hook. Has your representative explicitly denounced white supremacy in the wake of Charlottesville? Good. Call them, thank them, and ask what exactly they’re going to do about it. Did your rep pull a Trump and issue a vague platitude about unity that’s more appropriate for a HomeGoods throw pillow than a Nazi uprising? Call them, tell them to denounce white supremacy, and ask what exactly they’re going to do about it.

Get real. A common response from white people to Charlottesville has been surprise, shock, and denial. People like Lady Gaga and Ellen Degeneres have been (rightfully) called out for responding to Charlottesville “This is not who we are” and “Is this America now?” White people love inspiring quotes and platitudes, but this is not the time for that.

We have to face the reality of our country if we want to have any hope of making meaningful change. It is impossible to believe that racism is a thing of the past while actively working to dismantle it.

Journalist and author Isabel Wilkerson put it this way: “Our country is like a really old house. I love old houses. I’ve always lived in old houses. But old houses need a lot of work, and the work is never done. And just when you think you’ve finished one renovation, it’s time to do something else. Something else has gone wrong. And that’s what our country is like. And you may not want to go into that basement, but if you really don’t go into that basement, it’s at your own peril. Whatever you are ignoring is not going to go away. Whatever you’re ignoring is only going to get worse. Whatever you’re ignoring will be there to be reckoned with until you reckon with it. And I think that that’s what we’re called upon to do where we are right now.”

White people: We have to go into the damn basement of this country and take stock of our dirty secrets. We have to look at racism and white supremacy and the systems that support them. We have to acknowledge all the ways these systems have benefited us.

We have to admit the hard things: This is who we are, and this what we have always been. America is not better than this. America was built on slavery and oppression and exploitation. America could be better than this, but it’s impossible to transform without owning up to our past.

Look inward. Now is a time when white people need to engage publicly and politically, but we also must commit to the important work that needs to be done on a quieter, personal level.

I’ve been thinking about this quote, from Shani Akilah, co-founder of the Black & Brown Workers Collective, a lot lately:

“I think one of the things, one of the pieces of advice I would give to someone looking to be involved, is that, often we think that getting involved means getting arrested or organizing a huge protest. Getting involved can be looking at your own attitudes and belief systems. And starting to really reflect on what it is you’ve taken in and started to believe based on what the world has taught you.”

White people, let’s look at what the world has taught us. Let’s ask ourselves the hard questions. Let’s be brave enough to delve within ourselves, seek out the buried shame and prejudice, and look at it, unblinking.

Let’s get to work.

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politicalfilth-blog · 7 years

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Video: “I Abandoned Antifa For The Identitarian Movement”

We Are Change

This is Luke Rudkowski of WeAreChange.org here in Sicily, Italy. Today I’m joined by Robert Timm. There are very few moments in my life where I listen to someone’s story and then my jaw drops. Robert told me a story that’s fascinating about him. Robert one of the things that you explained yesterday that stands out is how you transitioned from being part of what people would consider a far left organization Antifa to what is thought to be a far right group the Identitarian movement.

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Luke: I just wanted to ask you before getting into your transition when you were a part of Antifa, what can you tell us about being a part of that organization? What can you tell us about the stuff you did with them?

Robert: I have not been that deeply involved, I wasn’t a leader. What I did was go to protests like the first of May. There were different attempt to block off far-right demonstrations in Germany, so this is what I did. I kept within the laws there, and I never threw rocks at anyone. I had different feelings towards the police back then obviously, but I stayed within the boundaries of the law.

Luke: What made you want to be a part of Antifa, how was it being in that organization?

Robert Timm: I was quite young, and I grew up in the family where people are somewhat political but not so involved in parties or anything. Nobody was telling me to in this or that direction. That was back when I was 15, I am now 27. The leftists were pretty good at approaching young people of my age.

That was something cool back then, to be called the punks even though we really hadn’t much to do compared to the guys from the 80s with the mohawks and stuff. We considered ourselves part of a lifestyle because we dyed our hair and dressed differently.

They were able to address the feeling that we have as a young guy that there’s something going on with the world that is wrong. There’s a whole lot of injustice out there. They figured out how to give you the feeling that you were doing something against all this inequality.

Luke: Was there a moment that made you question everything that they were a part of?

Robert: Yeah there wasn’t one key moment, it was a long line of events that were taking place in my life. I decided to go to a different school because I thought my current school was boring because there were so many Germans. We had a few migrants at my old school which I liked, and I thought if I go to a school with more migrants it will be more exciting. It then turned out to be a bit different, I had contact with this reality and then started to see how politics work. There was one key moment at the school where I got to see how there is inequality everywhere and how people are treated.

There was a Holocaust survivor that came to our school and told us how he survived the Holocaust and spoke about his living in Israel. He spoke a bit about his life there. There were some Palestinian students that did not like that so much. So they disturbed the event at the school, and they tried to attack. The way the school dealt with it afterward, just showed that they are treating these guys differently. They would have done the same to me if I had been a migrant. This was one of the key moments where I realized the whole ideology of equality is just not true. People are not treating everybody equally.

Luke: I bet there is a lot of backlash coming from different people when you changed from being a part of Antifa to now being a part of the Identitarian movement. Can you tell us what happened to you during that transition?

Robert: From my perspective, it’s a transition that has been taking place for a couple of years so I thought nobody would be that surprised. When I told them, that I’m taking part in activism with the Identitarians. People, we’re surprised, they have this image of you when they meet you. They still keep this even though you have conversations with them about politics and you tell them that you don’t agree to the migration policy for example in Germany.

When you explain that you are part of the Identitarians now, they are completely shocked. Most of my social circle back then fell away and distanced themselves from me.

Luke: You also told me last week that you were attacked when you were trying to do interviews. You probably face a lot of that as well is there anything more you could tell us?

Robert: I was doing an interview with a TV crew from a public broadcaster in Germany. I took them to my old school just to show them how I ended up with the Identitarians. We were doing an interview a corner away from the school when people sitting in front of a restaurant recognized me, came up to me, started an argument. When they saw that they couldn’t force me to be aggressive towards them since I was peaceful, they began shouting that I was a Neo-Nazi and a right-wing extremist. A lot of people gathered, and some left-wing extremists arrived and attacked us, pepper spraying me, and trying to beat me.

Luke: Now there’s a lot of accusations against the Identitarian movement. That you guys are the extremists and social justice warriors on the right. Can you talk about what your ideology is or what principles, what information brought you to the Identitarian movement and do you see it as a kind of extremist response on the right now?

Robert: No, I don’t see it extreme in any way because I’m not a guy with extreme views. For me it’s the policy of common sense, our positions are pretty much in the center of what society thought just 10 or 20 years ago. Now suddenly it’s called extremism, which indicates that our society is moving towards extremism.

This is why they consider everything that is opposed to them as extreme. That is what brought me to the Identarian viewpoint. They reject blunt, stupid racism, they also say that we need rules for migration and that every culture has their own value including the European culture.

This is something that we always here in the global discussion, the word “diversity,” however nobody goes to China for example and tells them that they have to become more diverse and get more European migrants. We as Europeans and also North Americans, we have to take in migrants in huge amounts. When you only make the slightest criticism of that, you are called a right-wing extremist.

Luke: There’s a lot of these kinds of words just thrown out there. This latest defend Europe mission that you’re a part of here in Sicily, many of the leftist organizations and the mainstream media have labeled it as very dangerous. They say that this mission is going to hurt people. Do you have a response to all the mainstream media articles have been going against you guys?

Robert: Well if this mission is hurting anybody it’s probably will hurt us because we are taking the risks of going out at sea. Which always comes with with a certain amount of risk. We will not risk anybody else who is in danger on the Mediterranean that they will drown. We are there to observe, and we will also help. Every additional ship on a Mediterranean makes the sea a bit safer. That’s the kind of perspective that these guys should try to adapt to.

Luke: Robert thank you so much for your insight, thank you so much for sharing your experiences with us. It’s an incredible story going from Antifa all the way to the Identitarian movement. Is there anything else you would like to say or leave the audience with?

Robert: Don’t be scared about the Identitarians, if you criticize us don’t hesitate to contact us. I’m willing to meet people with opposing views just to get in touch and explain what we are doing. I think everybody lives in kind of a filter bubble and we should work on getting rid of that. We should be talking with each other, we have to do that.

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thefabulousfulcrum · 7 years

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this is some BU@*SH*T right here!!

GOP Congressman Frelinghuysen Targets Activist in Letter to Her Employer

via WNYC

by Nancy Solomon

The most powerful congressman in New Jersey, Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen, wrote a fundraising letter in March to a board member of a local bank, warning him that a member of an activist group opposing the Republican worked at his bank.

The employee was questioned and criticized for her involvement in NJ 11th for Change, a group that formed after the election of Donald Trump and has been pressuring Frelinghuysen to meet with constituents in his district and oppose the Trump agenda.

“Needless to say, that did cause some issues at work that were difficult to overcome,” said Saily Avelenda of West Caldwell, New Jersey, who was a senior vice president and assistant general counsel at the bank before she resigned. She says the pressure she received over her political involvement was one of several reasons she decided to leave.

The form letter, on campaign stationery, asks Frelinghuysen’s supporters to donate two years ahead of his next election because he is under attack. “But let’s be clear that there are organized forces — both national and local — who are already hard at work to put a stop to an agenda of limited government, economic growth, stronger national security,” the letter says.

Above the word local, there’s a hand-written asterisk in the same blue ink as Frelinghuysen’s signature. At the bottom of the letter, scrawled with a pen, is the corresponding footnote: “P.S. One of the ringleaders works in your bank!”

Attached to the letter was a news article that quoted Avelenda. She says her boss presented her with both the letter and the news article. She was not fired, but she says she had a lot of explaining to do.

“I had to write a statement to my CEO, and at my level as an assistant general counsel and a senior vice president, at this employer it was not something that I expected,” Avelenda said. “I thought my Congressman put them in a situation, and put me in a really bad situation as the constituent, and used his name, used his position and used his stationery to try to punish me.”

NJ 11th for Change began with one Facebook post after the Trump election and quickly grew into an organization of more than 7,000 members who live in Frelinghuysen’s moderate Republican-leaning district. They began by requesting a town hall — he hasn’t held one in four years — and when that request was denied, they organized empty-chair town halls without him. The group has also held weekly protests at his office and visits to his Washington offices. Frelinghuysen has held two telephone town halls, which offer more control than an in-person event. Last week, he complained about the number of phone calls he is receiving.

“For people who have jammed our lines and made it difficult for us to meet our constituent needs, it would be nice for you to back off,” Frelinghuysen said. “I’m not suggesting people don’t have a right to speak and let their views be known, but some of this is highly orchestrated and it’s unfortunate.”

Frelinghuysen is the new chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, widely considered one of the most powerful positions in Congress because all funding decisions for the entire federal government now run through him. And for the first time in many years, his moderate district is no longer considered a safe Republican seat by the national Democratic Party. Jordan Libowitz, spokesman for the non-partisan Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), says the letter is unusual and noteworthy because members of Congress don’t usually turn to businesses in their district to do damage to their political opponents.

“It’s certainly troubling," Libowitz said. "Whether or not it breaks a criminal statute is one issue, but the very clear issue is that it appears that a member of Congress might be using his power to threaten someone’s employment because of their political activities.”

The fundraising letter went to Joseph O'Dowd, a Lakeland Bank board member who has given $700 to Frelinghuysen during previous election cycles, according to Federal Election Commission records. O’Dowd and several managers at the bank also donate to the New Jersey Bankers Association, which in turn gives most of its money to the American Bankers Association. That group has about 20 paid lobbyists in Washington, according to disclosure statements filed with Congress.

The letter from Frelinghuysen may be more of a political problem than a legal one, according to a lawyer and former staffer for the Office of Congressional Ethics who spoke on condition of anonymity. He said the letter may look heavy-handed, but to be illegal it would need to threaten action or be written on Congressional stationery, not campaign letterhead, or the bank would have to have business pending before a Frelinghuysen committee.

But the chair of appropriations has business and influence with everyone, including lobbyists, federal agency heads and other members of Congress, says Libowitz. And the fact that Frelinghuysen apparently put the job of a constituent in jeopardy undermines the fundamental relationship between a representative and his or her district.

“They could always argue that it was just a friendly heads up, and not asking for anything in particular, but the fact that it is even there, again, is somewhat troubling,” Libowitz said.

Frelinghuysen’s spokesman referred all questions to the campaign office, which responded with a written statement.

“The Congressman wrote a brief and innocuous note at the bottom of a personal letter in regard to information that had been reported in the media. He was in no way involved in any of the bank's business and is unaware of any of the particulars about this employee's status with the bank.”

Update: Lakeland Bank issued a formal response Monday afternoon to the original report by WNYC. The institution used its Facebook page to comment:

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yo-mk · 7 years

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Hot Knees #14: On representation, Asian parents and Insta-blogging

This month's interview is courtesy of Thi Minh Huyen Nguyen, and at 24, she's the youngest member of New York's Black Roses running collective. We chatted about running, visibility and writing over mugs of tea and steaming plates of momos. She joined Black Roses in 2014 after meeting one of the members at a shoe store and repped them this year when she completed her first marathon in New York. When she's not running, which is rare, she's a writer, avid reader, Insta-essayist and works as a studio manager at District Vision. (They make pretty fly eyewear for runners, by the way). After suffering a stress fracture last year, Huyen had to postpone running New York and rehabilitate herself, which made this year's race all that more significant. Prior to injury, she was overtraining; some days she was running doubles (running in the morning and then track at night) and pushing herself too hard. The injury forced her to put things into perspective, recalibrate and ease up on the self-inflicted pressure. "Everyone on my team is 10 years older. I'm not supposed to run crazy [distances] like 75 miles per week." She's learned to run less and stay active through other means like biking and yoga. The New York Marathon is one of the toughest World Marathon Majors and the course is dotted with hills. When I asked her how her first marathon went, she chuckled and started listing the hills. "It's like at some point, maybe mile 20, there's a hill. Mile 23, another hill. The finish is on a fucking hill!" she says. Huyen laughs easily and has a charming accent. "Dope" is a favourite adjective and litters the conversation. She grew up in Germany, an hour outside of Frankfurt, to Vietnamese parents who came to the country as refugees. We muse about our Asian parents and their muted responses to our running. [Cue Parents Just Don't Understand.] (For the record, my mom told me not to run so much, so I obviously didn't heed her advice.) Huyen's parents also don't understand the weight of running in her life and asked her why she ran so much especially after her fracture. She contrasts her folks' response to the one her Muslim teammate Aisha received. Upon learning that Aisha qualified for Boston when she ran the Philly Marathon, her father texted: "You are the ONLY one in generations in our entire family who has reached this milestone." "My parents never sent me a message like this," says Huyen. "I talked to my dad before the race and he was like, ok get some rest." Still, she may have had an influence on her folks after all. She grins as she tells me her mom started going for runs in Germany wearing her old running shoes. The conversation eventually turns to representation and visibility in the sport. After the statistics for the NYC Marathon came out, she realized the weight of her accomplishment. "Only 3.5 per cent who ran New York are under 25. It has so much more meaning than simply chasing your goal time. Being out there, showing up, taking pictures, posting on social media, showing the world we did it...it's less about our time and more about us being out there." She says after the U.S. election results, everyone felt deflated. Depleted and dispirited, Aisha questioned the importance of running--in the midst of protests and rallies, running a marathon felt selfish. Huyen told her, "Just do it. You're going to be standing at the starting line, and there's going to be no one who looks like you. It's about representation [of] women and women of colour." There are times when she doesn't feel like racing either but she runs anyway because visibility and inspiring others are important. "Let me just be out there and show other people of colour that they can do it too.” If you follow Huyen’s Instagram, you'll notice she loves long captions. She used to have a blog but Instagram is now her preferred platform. "I draft on my commute and as soon as I get out of the subway, I can publish [it]." It's a quick and easy microblog, allowing for rapid-fire glimpses into her life, which very often involves friends, running and books. (If you’re looking for creative inspiration and motivation, she highly recommends the Miles Davis autobiography.) As we wrap up our chat, she ends with a simple sentiment: “Running makes me happy.” Hey, me too! (Huyen ran the NYC Marathon and raised funds on behalf of the Girls Gotta Run Foundation, a non-profit that invests in girls who use running and education to empower themselves and their communities. Even though the marathon is over, there's still time to donate, so if you want to contribute, you can do so here.

Fuel for the mind Carding is about control, not safety. I keep going back to the Roxane Gay episode (the day after the U.S. election results) on the Politically Re-Active podcast. "Everyone else is turned into caricatures and props." How to stay sane while black. It has little to do with education and more to do with prejudice. Call it what it is. This column on rehabilitating and running with a donkey, slays me. Indonesia is waking up. What other artists can learn from the cast of Hamilton.

Fuel for the ears Reading about brujas this week led me to Azizaa's "Black Magic Woman." The new Childish Gambino album, Awaken My Love! drops next week. Brandy slays at the Soul Train Awards (and even brings back Ma$e!) Seu Jorge's The Life Aquatic Studio Sessions is excellent writing music. Lee Moses is excellent writing-break music. So is "I Wanna Be Down." New trippy music video from Tasseomancy and genius Jesi Jordan. New New Fries! Cool it down with Takeoh Onuki.

2016 is almost over!

#hotknees #newsletter #archive #bye2016 #running #writing #runnersnotrunning #representation

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