Unite to Defeat Trump and His Enablers

The critical issue for this election is to defeat Donald Trump and his enablers. 

·      He has magnified racial prejudice to win tax cuts for the wealthy, to assault labor unions, and to reverse efforts to halt climate destruction. 

·       He has collaborated with the Russians while cutting health care for the poor in the U.S.  

·      We must stop him now before he and his enablers can further consolidate power.  

·      The available way to stop him is to Vote to win control of the U.S. Congress in the 2018 election.  

Trump’s Racially Divisive Politics Must Be Exposed and Opposed !

The intolerant campaign  promoted by Donald Trump and supported  by the Republican Party is a call to the “silent white majority” and a demand that 11 million immigrants be deported.  This campaign promotes a dangerous and divisive racial message.  It must be vigorously opposed.

 Donald Trump is a serial liar, he  regularly incites political violence and he  is a  rampant xenophobe, racist, and  misogynist. He has sought to ban all Muslims — 1.6 billion members of an entire religion — from entering the U.S. He promises to build a wall on the border that would cost at least $35 billion to build, and billions each year to maintain.  And, it would not work. 

Trump has an overly cynical and conspiratorial view of immigration: calling for  building  walls, breaking up families,  and deporting people.  This fear mongering political message has found a very receptive base within our society among xenophobic and angry conservative older voters.

This campaign is dangerous.  It mobilizes right-wing  anti immigrant forces. Trump’s campaign is not just racism- it is a strategy to magnify racism to win the election – and we must defeat it.  He is promoting an anti Mexican, anti immigrant, anti Muslim agenda. This is more than the ranting of a fringe right. He is mainstreaming racism. 

This is Dog Whistle Politics, as described well in Dog Whistle Politics: How Coded Racial Appeals Have Reinvented Racism and Wrecked the Middle Class, by Ian Haney López (2014).

The Trump campaign provides an example  of strategic racism, which is a system of racial oppression created and enforced because it benefits the over class, in this case the many billionaire funders of the Republican Party.   These groups foster and promote interracial conflict and job competition as a strategy to keep wages and benefits low and to promote their continuing white supremacy in the nation.

Mexicans, Mexican Americans and other Latinos have good reason to be concerned about the mobilization of racist movements by these harsh and xenophobic  campaigns. During the 1930’s some 1,000,000 Mexicans were deported in response to similar campaigns, including over 500,000  US citizens, and  an additional 1,000,000 Mexicans were deported in Operation Wetback in the 1950's. Trump is at it again- terrorizing the Latino community.

We need to recognize the  danger  of racist scapegoating to win elections. 

The purpose of Trump’s intolerant bombasts are not to develop a policy -- it is to capture and exploit the anxiety and emotion of a particular sub-set of voters: xenophobic Republicans and the hard Tea Party Right.

Anti-immigrant campaigns such as that promoted by Trump  and the Republican Party  have effects and must be opposed. The campaign  can be defeated if we unite the growing electoral strength of the Latino community with women, people of color, immigrants, and other voters of good conscious (Democrats, Republicans, and independents).   Together we are the majority.  But to win we all need to vote. We need to work together to defeat Trump and his dangerous plan to divide us. 

Sen. Bernie Sanders  said, “ the major political task in the next five months is to make certain that we defeat Donald Trump.”

"We cannot have a president who insults Mexicans and Latinos, Muslims, women and African-Americans," he said. "We cannot have a president who, in the midst of so much income and wealth inequality, wants to give hundreds of billions of dollars in tax breaks to the very rich. We cannot have a president who, despite all of the scientific evidence, believes that climate change is a hoax."

To defeat Trump, all eligible citizens must register and vote.  Low voter turnout among young people and progressives gives the radical right an opportunity to win.  If you believe in a democratic society -   

Join us in a campaign to register and get out the vote. 

This is an except from a longer post here. http://antiracismdsa.blogspot.com/2015/10/trumps-racially-divisive-politics-must.html

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