Thursday, August 31, 2017
Wednesday, August 30, 2017
What If DACA Ends ?
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Tuesday, August 29, 2017
Sacramento Will Support DACA
Sacramento Bee .
Sacramento city leaders, including the mayor, the police chief and the superintendent of city schools, Tuesday pledged to continue to welcome “Dreamers” even if the federal government moves to end the protected status of these young adults brought to the United States illegally as children.
During a morning rally at City Hall, Mayor Darrell Steinberg said there are currently about 13,000 young adults eligible for the federal Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) immigration program living in Sacramento County. With DACA, they are able to register for a two-year renewable deferral from deportation that allows them to legally work and attend school.
“This is the land of opportunity,” said Steinberg. Dreamers “have worked hard to contribute, not to take ... There is always a new opportunity to embrace American values. Protect DACA, celebrate the Dreamers.”
The DACA program is unpopular with many conservatives. During the presidential campaign, Trump promised to end it, but he has delayed taking action since he took office.
Monday, August 28, 2017
Joe Arpaio: 26 Days From Conviction to Pardon by Donald Trump | Phoenix New Times
The Phoenix New Times have been covering the heinous acts of Sheriff Joe Arpaio for two decades. Their coverage angered Joe Arpaio so much he even orchestrated the arrest of two reporters, an act that later cost Arizona taxpayers millions and was deemed unconstitutional by a judge. After news broke that Donald Trump had pardoned his vile, racist political ally, the Phoenix New Times unloaded a dizzying list of just some of the documented heinous acts of Sheriff Joe Arpaio and his deputies.
Joe Arpaio: 26 Days From Conviction to Pardon by Donald Trump | Phoenix New Times
Sunday, August 27, 2017
Wednesday, August 23, 2017
Tuesday, August 22, 2017
Trump Travels to Phoenix. Expect more anti immigrant bashing
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| Joe Arpaio and Trump |
The event risks deepening the hole in which Trump finds himself, especially if it turns rowdy or violent, as has been known to happen. "We know that there is a strong group of neo-Nazis that would love nothing more than to start fights," Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz) told Slate last week. "And they have nothing better to do, so they'll come do it." Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton (D) urged Trump to delay the event; Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey (R) will skip it to monitor law enforcement efforts to keep the peace.
The speech will be a sequel of sorts. A year ago, candidate Trump delivered an address in Phoenix that called for tougher immigration enforcement. He promised to build a wall along the southern border that the Republican Congress hasn't funded yet and to "immediately terminate" the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which remains in place, though the administration won't likely defend it against a legal challenge that nine attorneys general have threatened to file next month. Trump has, though, cranked up immigration enforcement, and he'll likely highlight that.
Resist White Supremacy and Neo-Nazis
This weekend, DSAers across the country rallied against the white supremacists and neo-nazis using "free speech" to support the glorification of slavery. More than a dozen New England chapters joined anti-hate rallies in Boston. And in communities like Anchorage, Alaska, Huntsville, Alabama, and Long Beach, California, DSAers stood up against racism as well.
And democratic socialists fight the ideological battle, too! Please write letters to the editor and opinion editorials, and call in to local radio shows to refute the idea that celebrating our heritage must mean celebrating the Confederacy and slavery. Open by affirming positive values and then pivot to the talking points below.
Below are some talking points you can use. And click here for a pdf you can share with friends.
In solidarity,
Maria Svart, DSA National Director
DSA Charlottesville and Confederate Monument Talking Points: for use in writing local media op eds and letters
- We believe in celebrating our history and heritage, but unlike Trump who celebrates those who fought to protect and expand slavery, we celebrate the history of freedom fighters like Harriet Tubman, Ida B. Wells and Martin Luther King, Jr. on our own soil, as well as those who fought the rise of Hitler in Germany, those who led the resistance to Nazi aggression and occupation in France, Greece, Yugoslavia and elsewhere, and who resisted the rise of fascism in Italy.
- Donald Trump’s use of the invented term “alt-left” is an attempt to create a false equivalence between “alt-right” white supremacists and neo-nazis who supported his candidacy and who killed activist Heather Heyer in Charlottesville, and the leftists and anti-fascists that have always opposed the far-right.
- White supremacists know that anti-racist, anti-capitalist activists are the greatest threat to their horrific vision for this country because we build interracial solidarity through working together to demand fair wages, decent housing, and other basic human needs. Our vision is a society based on cooperation instead of competition, and we know it’s possible once we take our country back from the billionaire class.
Saturday, August 19, 2017
Memories of Charlottesville
Memories of Charlottesville,
Palmer Foley
In 2016,
things fell apart. The center lost its hold, and the worst of the far Right,
full of passionate intensity, seemed poised to loose their blood-dimmed tide
upon the world. With cracks suddenly appearing in the
free-markets-and-phony-multiculturalism orthodoxy, Luxemburg’s old question was
suddenly, shockingly, back on the table: socialism or barbarism? And it
appeared barbarism had a considerable head start.
Four years
ago, I was a groom’s maid in my dear friends’ wedding in a little chapel in
Charlottesville. I’d spent many happy, moon-shining nights talking and walking
the streets of the college town, 45 minutes from my home in Richmond, VA. When
I learned armed fascists, confederates, white nationalists, and sundry other
scum, emboldened by the pandering faux-Bonapartist businessman in the White
House, were descending en masse on
the community, I was no longer thinking about long-game Left strategy. I only
knew we all had a duty.
The morning
of Saturday, August 12th was drizzling and miserable when our crew
from the Richmond DSA chapter set out. By the time we met up with other DSA
chapters in Charlottesville, the storm clouds had cleared. After precautions,
plans, and red armbands were shared, we set out for Emancipation Park. A
comrade handed me a button that read, “No Race But Human.”
Emancipation
Park – teargas? Cops or Nazis? Hard to tell.
Unlawful assembly declared –
Better move to McGuffey Park.
Pass the
darkened windows of twee little shops, their handpainted sandwichboard signs
folded up like sleeping birds.
Anti-capitalista! Anti-fascista!
Regroup.
Everyone’s offering water bottles,
but everyone has to pee.
Several people lie on stretchers in medic
tents.
Now
down the block, at the corner of Market Street –
They
pass by:
Doughy boys in white polos with
floppy Nazi haircuts sweated to foreheads
Colonel
Sanders klansmen in bulletproof vests
White
knight LARPers with Celtic cross shields
Olde
Europa-fetishists shouting slurs at immigrants
(I wonder
how many of their ancestors were spat at, dragging through Ellis Island, not
yet considered white.)
There
are some grizzled old bigots, but mostly, they’re startlingly young,
the glaring
sun revealing on their faces the sallow stamp of 4chan and closed circuits of
hate.
August Bebel
once called the proto-fascist anti-Semitism of his day “the socialism of
fools,” and rarely have I seen such fools as on that street.
They
looked like little puffed-up cowards – fractured consciousnesses adrift in this
viciously competitive, alienating, spiritually barren capitalist society that
gambled away our future on speculative markets, leaving us stuck with a present
in foreclosure.
Friday, August 18, 2017
Tell Trump: Don't Pardon Racist Arpaio
STOP TRUMP FROM PARDONING JOE ARPAIO
Joe Arpaio is a criminal. A few weeks ago, he was found guilty by a federal court for repeatedly violating a court order to stop illegally detaining Latinos.
Yet President Donald Trump is “seriously considering” pardoning Joe Arpaio, saying: “He’s a great American patriot and I hate to see what has happened to him.”
As Sheriff of Maricopa County, Arizona, Arpaio and his deputies systematically terrorized communities of color with unlawful detentions.
Federal prosecutors secured a criminal contempt conviction against Arpaio after it was proven his office profiled and illegally detained Latinos, violating their constitutional rights.
A pardon by Trump would absolve Arpaio’s flagrant violation of federal court orders and his racism and bigotry.
Tell President Trump’s counsel Don McGahn: Do NOT pardon Sheriff Joe Arpaio.
SUPPORT THIS PETITION
Tuesday, August 15, 2017
Charlottesville: Race and Terror – VICE News Tonight
Hundreds of white supremacists marched with torches in an American city Friday night. They arrived the next day brandishing weapons and armor. One white supremacist allegedly murdered an anti-racist protester in the street with his car and injured several others. This is what really happened when you peel back all the rhetoric flying in the aftermath, and after you tune out the first reprehensible response from the President of the United States, and his subsequent update to it that was two days late and a dollar short.
Vice News, to the outlet's immense credit, was on the ground to document the events in Charlottesville this weekend. Reporter Elle Reeve even embedded, for a time, with white supremacist leader Chris Cantwell. What she found speaks for itself, but keep an eye out for the little things. Like, say, how many guns these white supremacists have.
DACA at 5 Years
Five years ago, we won DACA by taking direct action— we marched, we organized, we came out of the shadows. We made it impossible for the American public and politicians to ignore our voices. Since then, DACA has provided temporary protection for hundreds of thousands of undocumented youth. It was a major victory for the immigrant rights movement— a victory that is now under threat.
We know that DACA was never enough. It is conditional and discretionary protection for only a small part of the immigrant community. Because it is not permanent protection, 800,000 undocumented youth are at risk of losing their protection.
Now more than ever, our community is under attack by white nationalists and a Republican administration that is sympathetic to violent, racist, and xenophobic actions that demand our detention and deportation.
That's why we need to fight for permanent protection for all of us. We won’t back down until all 11 million undocumented workers, parents, and children have permanent protection from deportation and the dignity and respect we deserve for the labor we give to this country.
Check out our guides to learn how to organize a creative, disruptive actionor a high risk, high sacrifice action in your local community.
See you in the streets,
Sunday, August 13, 2017
The Promotion of Racial Violence and White Supremacy
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| One dead after car plows into anti-racist demonstration photo by Ryan M. Kelly/ the Daily Progress |
No,
Mr. Trump, It’s Not About Bigotry On All Sides: It’s About White Supremacists
August 12, 2017
I sat here listening to Trump’s remarks in connection with the
violence carried out by neofascists in Charlottesville this afternoon, violence
which has resulted in the death of at least one anti-fascist. He
condemned bigotry on what he called all sides.
Once again Trump obscures reality. He either ignores the
violence and terrorism carried out against traditionally oppressed groups,
e.g., attacks on mosques, or he uses evasive language in order to avoid
pointing the finger at the real perpetrators of racist violence.
Some will act as if this is a sign of incompetence on the part
of Trump. While Trump clearly lacks competence in so many aspects of his
life and presidency–as we are witnessing in the sabre-rattling with North
Korea–Trump’s attitude towards race is not about incompetence. This
represents a long-standing feature of who he is and the politics that he
represents. This is someone who spearheaded the Birther attack on
President Obama’s legitimacy, raising unsubstantiated suggestions regarding
Obama’s citizenship. This is someone who led the charge against the
Central Park 5. This is someone who has been quite comfortable aligning
himself with right-wing populists and neofascists.
We should not expect anything better or clearer from Trump.
What we must do is rip the cover off of every effort that he undertakes
to obscure white supremacist and xenophobic violence and hatred.
Progressives should stop using the term “alt-Right” and recognize that
what we are witnessing are neofascist movements, movements that are interested
in provoking violence and are, in many cases well-armed.
Trump is prepared to remain silent about such movements.
Many liberals are hoping that the neofascists will simply go home and
shut up. What we must understand is that they will not go home and shut
up. They must be defeated. They cannot be tolerated. They are
a cancer in the system of democracy. They seek not to create a more
conservative system but to radically eliminate democracy and with it many
populations that they believe to be antithetical to the openly white republic
that they believe that the USA must return to being.
They shall not pass!
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Bill Fletcher
Activist and writer Bill Fletcher, Jr. served as a senior staff
person in the AFL-CIO and as former president of TransAfrica Forum. He is an
editorial board member of BlackCommentator.com.
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Saturday, August 12, 2017
Friday, August 11, 2017
Wednesday, August 09, 2017
Tuesday, August 08, 2017
Thursday, August 03, 2017
Tuesday, August 01, 2017
March in Austin, Texas for Immigrants' Rights
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