Tidbits - July 23, 2020 - Reader Comments: Portland - Trump's Militia and the Moms; Teachers Prepare to Resist School Openings; Strike for Black Lives; Unions and Racial Justice; Cuban Medical Internationalism; Resources; Announcements; and more....
Re: Federal Agents Invade Portland, Citing Trump’s Executive Order Protecting Statues (Ward Duff; Gina Woody; Michael McColley; Swanee Bee; Capn' Steve Krug; Stan Nadel; Alan Gregory Wonderwheel; Bruce Thompson; Roger Thompson; Emmet Cullen)
Wall of Moms in Portland (Ryan W. Miller in USA Today; Mauri Fox - #Wallofmoms; Tim Eagan)
I'm From Homeland Security -- cartoon by Ricardo Cate
Re: Teachers Unions Look Like the Last Line of Defense in Trump’s “Reckless” School Reopening Crusade (Tony Austin; Debbie Konkol; Amparo Ocasio; Fernando Medina; Rafael Rodriguez; Senya Means)
Dr. Seuss ... Today's Teachers
Re: Strike for Black Lives; Unions and Racial Justice (John Gehan; The CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies)
Re: History Shows That Sustained, Disruptive Protests Work - Tidbits - July 16 (Victor Grossman)
Re: Black People Own Less of the U.S. than 100 Years Ago. A ‘Black Commons’ Could Help Reverse the Trend (Ronaldo Subawon; Verona O'Connor)
Re: Illinois - Slave State (Donna Marie Martin)
I Want You - To Die ... Donald Trump
Re: Flight Attendants Tell Airlines: Don’t Even Think About Concessions (Janey Siegrist; Pedro A. Diaz Vazquez)
Re: Danger at the Mask Factory (Leanna Noble)
Re: Union Drive Could Inspire Organized Labor Beyond Asheville (Sonia Collins)
Re: The Southern Key: Class, Race, & Radicalism in the 1930s & 1940s (Benjamin Melançon; US Progressive Activists' Update)
Re: The Electoral College Is Surprisingly Vulnerable to Popular Vote Changes (Patrick Riley; Michael Benjamin Ray; Ann Crow; Marla Barlow)
Re: The New Lysenkoism in Washington (Philip Specht; Francisco Valentin; Obed Betancourt; Martha Rosen; Walker Country)
Canada-US border -- cartoon by Patrick Corrigan
Remembering John (Bob and Pamela Smith/Zellner)
Resources:
When You’re in Riot Gear, Everything Looks Like a Riot — Poster of the Week (Center for the Study of Political Graphics)
It’s bad economics to fear deficits more than mass joblessness (Economic Policy Institute - EPI)
IATSE Releases COVID Safety Guidelines For Broadway Return: Testing, Sick Leave & Pick Up Your Own Playbills
Fact Sheet on Cuban Medical Internationalism (US - Cuba Normalization Committee)
Announcements:
U.S. Out of Puerto Rico! March - New York - This Saturday - July 25 (The ProLibertad Freedom Campaign)
Re: Federal Agents Invade Portland, Citing Trump’s Executive Order Protecting Statues
It's getting a little bit too much like Handmaid's Tale.
Ward Duff
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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Federal officers have no jurisdiction to uphold local laws. This is a violation of States Rights as stated in our Constitution.
The only way they can act as law enforcement is to be sworn in by the state.
We know this has not happened.
Gina Woody
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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Michael McColley
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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People are more precious than statues. Let Portland handle their business...that's what they literally asked for, for the federal police to leave, because they have escalated a situation which had been deescalating.
Swanee Bee
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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I put the attached graphic together, wanted to share it with you...
Awhile ago Portside ran a news article about how the Nazis manipulated public sentiment against the left in Germany. The Nazis portrayed themselves as the restorer of law and order, and of national pride, same playbook, different time.
I can only assume the job description of Federal officers will now be expanded to include Agent Provocateur and Secret Police. Where these people dozing off when they took the oath to defend the constitution?
Capn' Steve Krug
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Next step, disappearances and helicopter flights dropping the disappeared into the ocean. But some "leftists" tell us to ignore this threat and focus on Joe Biden's faults---or Nach Trump Uns!
Stan Nadel
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Most of them are Border Patrol Agents.
Alan Gregory Wonderwheel
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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"Just following orders" can get you imprisoned.
Bruce Thompson
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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The U.S. Border Patrol's authority is only Constitutionally valid within 100 miles of an American border.
Roger Thompson
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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Sounds like the logical conclusion of ‘The Patriot Act’ and creation of the DHS.
Emmet Cullen
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
'Wall of moms' at Portland protest formed to protect demonstrators
Ryan W. Miller
July 20, 2020
USA Today
A group of protesters in Portland, Oregon, formed a "wall of moms" during demonstrations over the weekend as the city saw tensions rise after weeks of unrest that led to the presence of federal authorities.
The women formed a human shield dubbed the "wall of moms" at the front of a protest outside a federal courthouse Sunday. Videos on social media showed the group chanting, "Moms are here, feds stay clear" and "Leave our kids alone."
Read full story here
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“The “Wall of Moms” last night in Portland, Oregon.
They’re chanting “feds stay clear, the moms are here”
Tear gas was unleashed on them too!”
Mauri Fox
#Wallofmoms
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Tim Eagan
October 19, 2018
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I'm From Homeland Security -- cartoon by Ricardo Cate
Ricardo Cate
[Ricardo Cate has been drawing the daily cartoon Without Reservations for the Santa Fe New Mexican since 2006. His wry and often poignant humor pokes fun at both the white man and the Indian. Ricardo follows the ways of his Kewa Pueblo heritage and teaches on the reservation. He has three children and lives in the Santo Domingo Pueblo, New Mexico.]
(posting on Portside Labor)
As American families fret over a patchwork set of standards for reopening schools that vary widely by city and state, teachers unions across the country are denouncing the Trump administration’s approach.
Tony Austin
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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2011 looks so much worse now doesn’t it Wisconsin?
Debbie Konkol
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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They're the ones that will be putting their lives at risk.
Amparo Ocasio
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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Only Trump and his puppets politicians support returning to school without the consensus of the american people. How crazy can these politicians get following a President that at one point suggested using some form of internal cleansing to get rid of the coronavirus.
Fernando Medina
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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If they don't want to die, they better use every means at their disposal to oppose the sitting president on this. He has not shown any remorse about the more than 130k dead from Corona virus. A few thousand more people dead from the virus won't cause him any grief.
Rafael Rodriguez
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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Well, they can "denounce" all they want, but the question is, what are they gonna do on the day schools are supposed to reopen?
Senya Means
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
Dr. Seuss ... Today's Teachers
Re: Strike for Black Lives; Unions and Racial Justice
(posting on Portside Labor)
SEIU, the Teamsters, AFT, CWA, UFCW, UNITE HERE, ATU and the UFW joined dozens of other labor and community organizations today in a national Strike for Black Lives. Meanwhile, unions are pushing the fight for racial justice beyond resolutions.
John Gehan
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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America is a nation honeycombed with racism and inequality - a centuries-old public health issue that has been tough to remedy. There is a need for real change and #StrikeForBlackLives is bringing some attention to these injustices. As one organizer explained, "The Strike for Black Lives is a moment of reckoning for corporations that have long ignored the concerns of their black workforce and denied them better working conditions, living wages and healthcare.”
See what dozens of #laborunions and #communityorganizations are doing to help with this initiative, and get involved. #CunySLU's, Stephanie Luce, documents how unions have been mobilizing their members in this Portside article.
The CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
Re: History Shows That Sustained, Disruptive Protests Work - Tidbits - July 16
In an otherwise laudable commentary, James McGinnis, recalling "dedicated protests" in history, slips the Berlin Wall and the fall of the USSR in between the end of Jim Crow and Apartheid. A common but mistaken analogy! In Berlin, as I personally lived through it, blunders, restrictions, a total lack of media skill by over aged leaders, still shaped by active anti-Nazi struggle or imprisonment in their youth and by fears of defeat which proved very correct, led to growing opposition. At first, many or most East Germans wanted a democratized but still socialist republic. In the end the temptations of less restrictions but, more important, an unlimited consumer choice – hitherto rare bananas, swift cars, and tourist trips in all the world, cleverly sold by TV experts from the "wealthy West", won the day. Thus, the old giants which built up Hitler - Siemens, Bayer, BASF, Deutsche Bank, Krupp - regained their lost property and power in all of Germany, and McDonalds, Coca Cola, GAP and Amazon joined the party. Cut or dropped entirely were free child care and summer camps, free abortions, free education to university level, with livable financial support, coverage of all medical and dental costs (including many 4-week rehab cures), youth clubs, cheap three-week vacations at lakes or seashore and most important, no fear of job loss or evictions (legally forbidden).
Some do well and enjoy free elections, all the commodities you can afford and, until corona, foreign tours. But the disappointment of those with precarious, underpaid or no jobs and anger at being totally annexed opened the door to an invasion of neo-fascists, who revive old prejudices, march, slug, burn and boast of a coming "Day X".
An ironic side-note: it was that so despised East Germany, as opposed to the current state, which was a major supporter of the anti-Apartheid movement – and of Allende, Ho Chi-minh and Black rights in the USA (as in the fight for Angela Davis).
This misjudgment by McGinnis in admittedly complicated history can lead to misjudgments about current crusades and blockades of Cuba, Venezuela or the growing confrontation with China!
Victor Grossman
This issue needs to revisited, and addressed. Some of these lands that was legally acquired were taken away by scamming the owners. Due to they had no legal recourse. Some of these lands are still owned by the scammers family.
Ronaldo Subawon
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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that sounds about right a disguised way of stealing from the under represented community yet again, and taking what's NOT theirs
Verona O'Connor
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
this is disgusting,,,,,,,,,,,and was never part of any history class!!!
Donna Marie Martin
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
I Want You - To Die ... Donald Trump
Re: Flight Attendants Tell Airlines: Don’t Even Think About Concessions
This doesn't make me feel any better about flying
Janey Siegrist
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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“Dealing with the virus would require political leadership, something the Trump administration is unwilling to provide. Concessions would mean only that flight attendants would work for lower wages, and those who were furloughed would come back to a diminished job. Labor costs are not the problem, and never will be.”
Pedro A. Diaz Vazquez
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
Re: Danger at the Mask Factory
(posting on Portside Labor)
This sweatshop owner is a well-documented misogynist as well as exploiter of garment workers -- primarily women of color. Support Garment Workers Center in LA as workers organize for justice!
Leanna Noble
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
Re: Union Drive Could Inspire Organized Labor Beyond Asheville
(posting on Portside Labor)
Lower patient loads is a very important demand for both nurses and the public safety. Hospitals say they cannot afford such things, but if you see the pay and bonuses of the executives and the inflated bills for supplies you will know that is not true. There is a lot of profit in non-profits.
Sonia Collins
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
Re: The Southern Key: Class, Race, & Radicalism in the 1930s & 1940s
(posting on Portside Culture)
Support workers and everyone organizing in the South.
Benjamin Melançon
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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"The Southern Key argues that much of what is important in American politics and society today was largely shaped by the successes and failures of the labor movements of the 1930s and 1940s, and most notably the failures of southern labor organizing during this period. It also argues that these failures, despite some important successes in organizing interracial unions, left the South (and consequentially much of the rest of the United States as well) racially backward and open to right-wing demagoguery.
These failures have led to a nationwide decline in unionization, growing economic inequality, and overall failures to confront white supremacy head on. In an in-depth look at unexamined archival material and detailed data, The Southern Key challenges established historiography, both telling a tale of race, radicalism, and betrayal and arguing that the outcome was not at all predetermined".
US Progressive Activists' Update
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
Re: The Electoral College Is Surprisingly Vulnerable to Popular Vote Changes
This is the 21st century we don’t need the electoral college it is time for congress to remove it. One person one vote not some ass who thinks his vote is more important then the one cast.
Patrick Riley
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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Wrong. The Electoral College is more relevant than ever, otherwise we find something like three states dictating how the country will be governed, and never mind that they are out of touch with about half of the nation’s populace. See, the Founding Fathers’ vision actually took these ideas into account some 2 and a half centuries ago, and we deviate from their ideas and ideals at Our peril.
Michael Benjamin Ray
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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your thinking is archaic, dude. It's based on the assumption that states all vote one party. The ec has been corrupted for 200 years. In the age of electronics and digital everything, the ec is outdated and unnecessary. One person, one vote
Ann Crow
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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Abolish the electoral college
Marla Barlow
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
Re: The New Lysenkoism in Washington
If you have never heard of Lysenko, pay attention. He managed to convince Stalin that the failure of the potato crop wasn't a fungus, but stage-aging, a vague concept that he invented. Perhaps millions starved as a result.
Philip Specht
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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This is exactly what is going on with this pandemic!!!
Francisco Valentin
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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"When bad science meets politicians looking for easy answers, you can get a whole lot of trouble."
Obed Betancourt
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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May we live through and finally learn from this catastrophe
Martha Rosen
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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At a time when we desperately need scientific leadership, what we’ve got is a rogues’ gallery of frauds and flatterers who see the pandemic as a career move.
Walker Country
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
Canada-US border -- cartoon by Patrick Corrigan
Patrick Corrigan
July 11, 2020
Toronto Star
"Do not get lost in a sea of despair. Be hopeful, be optimistic. Our struggle is not the struggle of a day, a week, a month, or a year, it is the struggle of a lifetime. Never, ever be afraid to make some noise and get in good trouble, necessary trouble." --John Lewis
I woke up this morning with my mind on freedom, thinking about the incredible life of my friend and leader John Lewis. Most people don't get to know and work with a truly historically great person. We have recently lost a number of comrades like Connie Curry and Julian Bond. Yesterday news came that "the movement" lost two more giants, C.T. Vivian and John Lewis. Pamela and I learned of John's death last night in the midst of some movement work we are doing. We sat on the couch in our living room in Fairhope, Alabama and cried.
It is early morning now and I have an urge to sit down with some remaining comrades from SNCCC and the Civil Rights struggle to talk about John. John never held himself out to be a fine theoretician of revolution, nor a great orator like, Dr. King. He was content to be a common man, humble, just doing what he can. John, a man of action, was a perfect young leader for the youth uprising of the early sixties, the most militant of the March on Washington speakers in 1963. His fame around the world made America look good. Not like our nation's shattered reputation today.
Most movement folks will agree that john Lewis in Congress made us all proud. In a corrupt profession–Politics, in a swampy corrupt location, Washington, D.C., he chose not to be corrupt. Power seems always to corrupt but John resisted as he resisted other evils in American life
SNCC, with John's leadership, was the original Black Lives Matter movement. Bernice Reagon, SNCC organizer and founder of SWEET HONEY in THE ROCK, wrote Ella's Song, a freedom song articulating the belief that "We who believe in freedom cannot rest until it comes. Until the killing of Black men, Black mothers' sons, is as important as the killing of White men, White mothers' sons, we cannot rest."
I was very close to John. We have similar names - John Robert Lewis and John Robert Zellner, and we grew up in the same area of southeast Alabama. A little white boy and a little Black both experiencing life on Sharecropper farms. We came early to SNCC with similar church backgrounds, sharing a belief in the power of nonviolent direction action. We were both mentored by MLK and Ms. Rosa Parks, thereafter we worked in some of the same areas of the deep South.
John Lewis has given us our marching orders. Keep on keeping on. Never give up the struggle. Quitting is not an option.
Thank you, we love you, John.
Sincere in the struggle,
Bob and Pamela Smith/Zellner
John Emerson, Occuprint
Silkscreen, 2012
Brooklyn, NY
41086
Two Civil Rights giants died last week. Reverend C.T. Vivian (1924 - 2020) and Rep. John Lewis (1940 - 2020) were both committed to non-violent direct action. Both were often arrested, jailed, and beaten by police during their decades-long fight for social justice. Vivian almost died trying to integrate a whites-only Atlanta beach in 1964. Lewis almost died from his 1965 beating during the pivotal Selma to Montgomery, Alabama march for voting rights, known as “Bloody Sunday.” Both worked closely with Martin Luther King, Jr. Vivian was national head of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC); Lewis, the youngest person to speak at the 1963 March on Washington, was the chair of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).*
Non Violent Activists Met with Violence — This could be a headline from the 1960s…or today. All across the country, non-violent activists are being beaten, arrested, maimed, and killed. Trump ordered Federal troops deployed to the Federal Courthouse in Portland – even though Oregon’s governor and Portland’s mayor don’t want them, and accuse the troops of making the situation much worse. In response, an inspiring “Wall of Mothers” — up to 200-strong—stood on Sunday, July 19, between the riot-gear clad military and the unarmed protesters. They chanted, “Feds stay clear! Moms are here!” until dispersed with tear gas and stun grenades.
These Federal troops are anonymous, have no visible identification, and are literally grabbing people off the streets and putting them into unmarked vans. This reminds too many of Chile in the 1970s and Germany in the 1930s. Once again, non-violence is met with extreme state violence. Is this a dress rehearsal for what to expect leading up to November?
*See CSPG’s recent Poster of the Week featuring John Lewis here.
Sources:
- C.T. Vivian, Martin Luther King’s Field General, Dies at 95
- Civil rights legend Rep. John Lewis dead at 80
- Oregon governor says ‘Trump troops’ in Portland are escalating tensions, not easing them
- Dozens of moms formed a human shield to protect protesters from officers outside a federal courthouse in Portland
Center for the Study of Political Graphics
3916 Sepulveda Blvd, Suite 103
Culver City, CA 90230
It’s bad economics to fear deficits more than mass joblessness (Economic Policy Institute - EPI)
Don’t fear COVID debt and deficits
Debt and deficits in the coronavirus recovery
The economic shock of the coronavirus has been as sudden and jarring as any in U.S. history. The correct policy response to a shock like the coronavirus is to push deficits even larger than they would go on their own by providing expansions to relief and recovery efforts. As always, there are some who seem more concerned about the rise in federal budget deficits and public debt than by the rise in joblessness and losses of income generated by the shock. But prioritizing the restraint of debt in coming years over the restoration of pre-crisis unemployment rates is bad economics. If baseless fears about the effects of adding to debt block an effective response to joblessness and income losses, then it will cause catastrophic economic losses and human misery. This FAQ attempts to answer some of the many questions we hear about the deficit and debt in light of the current economic crisis. Read the fact sheet »
Economic Policy Institute
1225 Eye St. NW, Suite 600
Washington, DC 20005
Phone: 202-775-8810 • epi@epi.org
By Greg Evans
July 22, 2020
Deadline
Theatrical stage union IATSE has issued a 27-page set of safety guidelines for the still-to-be-determined reopening of Broadway and other live performance venues, with recommendations including the employment of COVID-19 “compliance officers,” paid sick leave and diagnostic testing of workers.
The guidelines address what IATSE calls “the unique challenges stagecraft workplaces face in a global pandemic,” and cover all relevant stage-related crafts. The International’s Stagecraft Department collaborated with local union officers repping stage, wardrobe, treasurers and ticket sellers, front of house, make-up artists and hairstylists, and designers in the United States and Canada.
The guideline document, which IATSE says was reviewed by medical experts in occupational health and safety, includes a roster of guiding principles and recommended general practices...
Full story here
Fact Sheet on Cuban Medical Internationalism (US - Cuba Normalization Committee)
The performance of the Cuban state and government in combating the COVID-19 pandemic inside Cuba is in stunning contrast to the disastrous performance by governmental authorities in the United States, particularly at the Federal level in Washington DC. Gross negligence by US authorities – within an already broken and grotesquely unequal health-care system – has led to wholly unnecessary rises in disease, death, infection, and spread. US pandemic deaths are at 140,000 and rising.
Read full Fact Sheet - VIEW FACT SHEET CUBAN MEDICAL INTERNATIONALISM
In Solidarity,
Organizing Committee, International Conference for the Normalization of US-Cuba Relations
Saving Lives Campaign US-CANADA-CUBA Medical Cooperation
New York-New Jersey Cuba Sí Coalition
End All Economic and Travel Sanctions Against Cuba!
Return Guantanamo Territory to Cuba!
Stop US “Regime Change” Policy Against Cuba!
US - Cuba Normalization Committee
328-61st. Street
West New York, NJ 07093
Masks & distancing required. Please check mta.info for latest weekend service cuts.
The ProLibertad Freedom Campaign is an organization composed of individuals who work together on a broad and unitary basis, accepting differences of ideological and political position, but sharing the responsibility to support the Puerto Rican political prisoners and prisoners of conscience who have been imprisoned for their political convictions and activities. The ProLibertad Freedom Campaign is an anti-imperialist and anti-colonial campaign that also supports the release of all U.S. political prisoners, and completely opposes the United States' colonial control of Puerto Rico and its military presence in the Island municipality of Vieques, and all Puerto Rico.
Through a comprehensive regimen of public educational programs and events, ongoing lobbying efforts, public pressure work and related initiatives like this web site and El Coqui Libre, ProLibertad's newsletter, it is our goal to secure the freedom of these brave activists and humanitarians.
Spread the word