Category: Trump effect

November 22, 2018

     Before the blandly commercial, yet oddly reassuring sound of “Today” show hosts narrating the steady stream of balloons, Broadway chorus lines and heartland marching bands of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade blares from the tv; before the more personal cacophony of rushing to get the turkey stuffed and  in the oven in time for it to emerge at 3:00, hopefully perfectly crisp on the outside and juicy within, there is time to reflect on what we’re thankful for.

      Personally, I am thankful that my children, Marcus and Noelle, are growing into young adults who balance their love of friends and family with a healthy sense of adventure and curiosity.  I’m thankful for a husband who is a partner, a lover and a friend and mother who calls to alert me to the latest State Department warnings before I travel or that I’m overdue for a colonoscopy(!). I am thankful for good friends from Mexico to Michigan, from Boston to L.A. who always have my back.  I’m thankful for my suburban village that welcomes the diversity of humanity and grapples honestly with the messiness that sometimes entails.

      Most of all, though, I am thankful for each of us who reacted to the horror unleashed by Trump’s election, not with paralysis born of despair, but by marching, organizing, mobilizing and voting, loudly standing up for democracy and pledging to overcome hatred and fear with love.  I believe that we will overcome these awful ”plague years” to remake this country as a more perfect union, with a seat at the table for all of us. Happy Thanksgiving!

November 20, 2018

 

As the midterms recede in the rearview mirror, the news cycle has been consumed with chronicling the challenge to Nancy Pelosi for Speaker of the House in the incoming Congress.  Between this and the 24/7 coverage of Alexandria Ocasio Cortez’s every utterance and wardrobe choice, in an effort to paint her as a fraudulent arriviste who is in over her head, the Beltway pundit class has clearly pivoted to its preferred narrative of “Dems in disarray,” rather than acknowledging the seismic change this election represents and who has powered that change.

First, we need to look at what the job of the Speaker actually is.  The Speaker presides over the House, controls what legislation gets to the floor and is responsible for keeping the Caucus unified in order to pass important legislation. The Speaker is also third in the line of succession for the President.  This is not a job for poseurs or neophytes.  Nancy Pelosi is widely acknowledged as having been an extremely effective Speaker and is credited with passage of the Affordable Care Act, (Source:  “How Obamacare Will Return Nancy Pelosi to House Speakership,” by Bruce Japsen, Forbes.com, 11/18/18). Continue reading “No country for old women?”

November 17, 2018

    Yesterday, Georgia Democratic gubernatorial candidate, Stacey Abrams, acknowledged that she would not prevail in her race to become the nation’s first Black woman governor.  As she forcefully detailed, her speech was not a “concession,” because conceding would necessitate acknowledging defeat in a fair contest and Georgia’s election was the antithesis of that.  In a stunning act of corruption, Brian Kemp refused to relinquish control of the state’s electoral apparatus, deeming it proper that he be both a competitor in, and arbiter of, the election for the state’s highest office.  Kemp capped an eight year campaign of massive suppression of Black votes by closing polling places and withholding such basic supplies as sufficient numbers of paper ballots or power cords for electronic voting machines!

     As Ari Berman details, between 2012 and 2016, Kemp “purged 1.5 million voters, twice as many as in the preceding four years.”  He removed another 735,000 in the next two years. Nearly half of those purged were voters of color, in a state that is 60% white.  70% of the 53,000 registrations Kemp placed on a “pending” list were African American and 80% were voters of color, (Source: “Brian Kemp’s Winnin Georgia is Tainted by Voter Suppression,” by Ari Berman, MotherJones.com, 11/16/18).  Kemp was not subtle.  He was on record warning that if newly registered voters of color exercise their rights, Republicans would lose. Thanks to the Supreme Court decision in Shelby County v. Holder, in the absence of preclearance requirements, outcomes like this are sadly predictable. Continue reading “Georgia on my mind”

November 14, 2018

   Over the past week, as the huge number of Democratic gains has come into focus, Trump has retreated into a “cocoon of bitterness and resentment,” refusing to even venture out to Arlington National Cemetery on Veterans’ Day and rage-tweeting insults at French President Emmanuel Macron like a petulant toddler.  Rumors of the imminent firing of alleged “adult in the room,” lying racist, John Kelly, and distaff Goebbels, Kirstjen Nielsen, are rampant, (Source: “Trump, stung by the midterms and nervous about Mueller, retreats from traditional presidential duties,” by Eli Stokols, The Los Angeles Times, 11/ 13/18). Continue reading “What we’re fighting”

November 12, 2018

 

Since Democrats’ decisive victories on Tuesday, Trump has responded by waging a non-stop assault on decency and the Rule of Law.  He began with a frontal attack on the First Amendment, revoking the credentials of a Latino journalist and hurling racist invective at three esteemed Black women journalists.  As the Democrats racked up more Congressional victories, Trump ratcheted up the vitriol— proving that he is nothing more than a rotting mass of ignorance and acrimony, displaying  both bottomless cruelty and a basic lack of knowledge in a tweet about the devastating California wildfires. Trump then proceeded to embarrass us on the world stage by being a no-show at the commemorative ceremony at Aisne-Marne American Cemetery on 100th Anniversary of the Armistice because of rain, (Source:  “Critics pile on after Trump cancels visit to U.S. military cemetery outside Paris, citing weather,” by David Nakamura, Seung Min Kim and James McAuley, The Washington Post, 11/10/18). Continue reading “Jim Crow 2.0?”

November 8, 2018

 

After a momentous election which saw both heartbreaking losses (Beto, Gillum) and inspiring firsts (Sharice Davids, Ayanna Pressley, Lucy McBath) our relief was tempered by our losses in the Senate. In addition to Texas, we lost Indiana, North Dakota and Tennessee and the jury is still out in Florida and Arizona.  Our joy at seeing an incoming Congress filled with record numbers of women and welcome diversity was muted by the realization that the structural disadvantage built into the Senate will make it frustratingly difficult to elect a Democratic Senate majority for the foreseeable future.

That said, the importance of Tuesday’s election results should not be understated.  Everything from having Maxine Waters chair the Banking Committee to Adam Schiff chair the House Intelligence Committee means that for the first time since his inauguration, Trump and his toadies will face real Congressional oversight.  The gravity of that fact may not have been immediately apparent to us, but, as his erratic and impulsive actions yesterday made abundantly clear, it is apparent to Trump. Continue reading “It’s only the beginning”

November 5, 2018

 

What we are facing tomorrow is nothing less than a reckoning that has been more than two centuries in coming. This country was founded on two diametrically opposed ideas — that all men were created equal and that Black people were not citizens entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. In order to make the white citizens of this new nation comfortable with the contradiction, this nation invented the pernicious myth of white supremacy.  This country told its children the fairy tale that Black people weren’t really “people” in the way that white people were.  They said that we lacked the intellect, the impulse control, the ability to form familial attachments, that white people had.  By inventing this vicious mythology, they rationalized denying us any education, selling our children away from us and exercising absolute control over us by the most violent means at their disposal.  By doing so, Southern slaveholders (and those Northern merchants that profited from them) could sleep at night, secure in the delusion that those they brutalized weren’t fully human. Continue reading “The reckoning”

November 3, 2018

    In 72 hours we will face the most consequential election of our lives.  It is no exaggeration to say that Democracy hangs in the balance. The choice is stark.  On one side are those who want a fascist oligarchy that will cement white supremacy. On the other side is a multicultural coalition with a hopeful vision for America’s future, where we all can love and worship as we want, and no one’s horizons are limited by their race, gender, religion or sexuality.

    One side is represented by hate filled individuals who murder people in synagogues and supermarkets; the other by Muslims who raise money to help Jewish families bury those senselessly slaughtered.  One side defaces and sets fires to synagogues; the other holds peaceful vigils to protest anti-Semitism.

     One side appeals to its base by proudly trafficking in racism, featuring an ad so vile that CNN refused to run it.  The other fields candidates who forcefully reject the politics of division and propose actual solutions to Americans’ problems.

     One side is exemplified by the venomous rhetoric of the tangerine Grand Wizard in the Oval Office, who orders a military response to a humanitarian crisis.  The other side is represented by the nation’s first Black President, crisscrossing the south from Miami to Morehouse, repeatedly exhorting us to vote for a “vision where love and hope overcome hate,” until he was hoarse.

     This is The Last Weekend.  What we do between today and the moment when the last polls close in Hawaii will determine our future.  Leave it ALL on field, because, as President Obama said, nothing less than “the character of our country is on the ballot.”

#SWINGLEFT.ORG

#GOTV

#VOTE

October 31, 2018

We awakened yesterday morning to the ping of a news alert bearing ominous news— that Trump planned to do away with birthright citizenship by executive order, in direct contravention of the Fourteenth Amendment.  This is part and parcel of a malevolently coordinated attack on Latinx immigrants, which mixes demonizing propaganda, a manufactured crisis justifying military action and a declaration that the emergency necessitates suspending the Constitution .

In the four days since a hateful murderer outraged by HIAS’ assistance to Central American refugees gunned down 11 Jewish Americans; rather than exercise restraint or demonstrating contrition, Trump, his administration and Republican candidates, have continued with anti-Semitic dog whistles and proudly advocated treating migrants fleeing violence like an invading army. Continue reading “Welcome to our nightmare”

October 28, 2018

     Yesterday’s massacre of eleven people at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life Synagogue was truly unspeakable.  Armed with an AR-15, the assailant burst in on Saturday morning, shouted anti-Semitic slurs and started firing indiscriminately.  It was the most deadly act of anti-Semitic violence in American history, capping a week which saw assassination attempts targeting two progressive Jewish philanthropists, along with most of the prominent leaders of the Democratic Party.

       The murderer was allegedly enraged that the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society was assisting Central American refugees attempting to flee horrible conditions (Source:  “11 Killed in Pittsburgh Massacre; Suspect Charged With 29 Counts,” by Campbell Robertson, Christopher Mele and Sabrina Tavernise, The New York Times, 10/27/18).  Of course, Trump has been demagoguing this issue for two weeks, aided by outlets as disparate as The New York Times and Fox  News, all of whom treated a desperate group of women and children currently 1100 miles from the U.S. border and traveling on foot, as front page news.   Continue reading “Courage”