Re: All of Donald Trump's Lies

 

Trump has lied since his corrupt hotel building business

 

Anthony Moreno

Posted on Portside's Facebook page

 

     ====

 

36% favorability.... who is spitting in his food today---- it must be difficult walking into a room and knowing that 2/3 of the people there wish you would go away..... MEDIA don't fall for the shiny object stories.... focus on what TRUMP HATES...... his failed policies.... his failing wall.... the RUSSIA INVESTIGATIONS

 

Marty Comroe

Posted on Portside's Facebook page

 

 

 

 

Take us to your leader - Cartoon by Dan Piraro

 

 

 

 

Dan Piraro

June 30, 2017

Bizarro

 

 

 

 

Re: No Voter Data for Trump

 

If Mississippi can do this - for whatever the reason - that every state can - as part of a broad front against Trump manipulation of the electorate.

 

Jay Schaffner

Posted on Portside's Facebook page

 

     ====

 

Yes, they CAN. Some, like my state, a rethuglican place, will play the game at our expense. Never thought Mississippi would be my Hero.

 

Gwendolyn Ivey

Posted on Portside's Facebook page

 

     ====

 

When the South tells the idiot to jump....that's when you know he's losing any chance for complete control. Thank you Mississippi.

 

Becki McCoy

Posted on Portside's Facebook page

 

 

 

 

Re: Fourth of July Like You've Never Seen It Before!

 

This year, sit back with your favorite beverage or herb, prop up your feet and open your head to consider Independence Day in a whole new way. By Mike Ferner, channeling Howard Zinn, in Portside. 

 

Peter Dreier

Posted on Portside's Facebook page

 

 

 

 

Re: Would a Berniecrat Have Won Ossoff's Georgia Race?

 

An Ossoff victory  would not have required a shift of 9703 votes. Only half of that plus 1 would have been enough; that is, 4852.

 

But, of course, the point about turnout and those who did not vote is important.

 

Thanks for your good work, Portside.

 

Charles Courtney

 

     ====

 

Richard R. J Eskow has the first half of a fascinating essay here. He identifies voter groups to which the Ossoff campaign could have appealed to for support but didn't. The (so far) missing half? Actual turnout data of those groups. Would those voters have been brought to the polls in greater numbers by a different campaign? How can we know this? This appeals to my feelings but I am not yet convinced. Thanks to Portside for the link.

 

Daniel Millstone

Posted on Portside's Facebook page

 

     ====

 

I just got this email from you about Jon Ossoff and Georgia.  Have you seen this letter, here, and attached?

 

Richard Tamm

 

     ====

 

June 23, 2017

 

Georgia State Election Board; 214 State Capitol; Atlanta, GA 30334

Cobb County Board of Elections and Registration; 736 Whitlock Ave NW #400; Marietta, GA 30064

Dekalb County Board of Registration and Elections; 4380 Memorial Drive,Suite 300; Decatur, GA 30032

Fulton County Board of Registration and Elections; 130 Peachtree St Suite 2186; Atlanta, GA 30303

 

 

RE: Grave Concerns about the integrity of GA6 Special Runoff Election

 

Dear Election Board Members:

 

We the undersigned public advocates for accurate and transparent elections are writing to alert you to early indications that hacking or other tampering may have altered the results of the Sixth District Special Election Runoff held on June 20, 2017.

 

As you are aware, the majority of votes in the District are cast on direct record electronic (DRE) voting machines that produce no paper record. Therefore, the presence of statistical anomalies is key in assessing the accuracy of election results. Statistical review by qualified analysts has only begun, but red flags are already apparent.

 

The only verifiable votes cast in Georgia are the absentee mail-in ballots. Mail-in voters constitute a discrete subset of the total electorate for each election, and official records reveal a consistent pattern of mail-in voter partisanship in GA6. Historically and consistently, Republican voters (i.e., those casting their vote for the Republican candidate) in GA6 are more likely to vote by mail than are Democratic voters. In any given election, therefore, percentages for Republican candidates would be expected to be higher among mail-in voters than among the electorate as a whole.

 

However, in the Special Runoff Election, exactly the opposite occurred. The numbers weren't even close, with the Democratic candidate winning the absentee votes 64% to 36%, while reportedly losing the election 48% to 52%. The data, both historical and current, is a matter of public record.

 

Again, this glaring disparity is especially significant because the votes cast on mail-in ballots are the only votes that can be verified. This means they can be recounted if any doubt exists as to their veracity. It also means mail-in votes are less likely to be tampered with, because:

 

a) tampering would be much easier to detect, and

b) mail-in votes make up such a small percentage of the total vote (just over 10% in this election) that tampering with them would, given the far greater risk factor, be neither a necessary nor desirable way to alter the results of an election.

 

When combined with known vulnerabilities of the systems in use, the known extended exposure of key election data stored in the Center for Elections' (CES) website at Kennesaw State University, and numerous tracking polls, emerging statistical patterns indicate a strong likelihood that the outcome of the Special Runoff Election was altered.

 

In other words, the candidate for whom the most voters cast their ballots may have been declared the loser of the Special Runoff Election.

 

Please understand that we are not claiming that the information in this letter proves either that the election results were tampered with or that they are inaccurate. DRE technology does not produce such proof. It also, notably, does not produce proof that the election results were not tampered with or are accurate. This is precisely why DRE voting systems should be banned from use in U.S. elections.

 

The information does, however, provide significant evidence that it is highly likely the unofficial results of the Special Runoff Election are incorrect, to the point that the election outcome appears to have been affected.

 

We declare that based on the above information, there is no basis for public confidence in the election results of the GA6 Special Runoff Election. Should you continue to stand by the reported results, we call upon you to prove to Georgia's voters that the reported results are a true and accurate measure of the votes cast by the voters of Georgia's Sixth Congressional District.

 

Sincerely,

 

 

     ====

 

Yeah, ummm, and hyper-financed standard Democrat couldn't win, I doubt a devout Marxist would do any better. It is a wonderful thing to see that a platform of lower taxes, more jobs, and less government intrusion in our lives is called "running like a Republican". Let the Left keep getting more extreme and more petulant and violent, so that they can keep losing more elections and blaming it on everything but themselves and their ideas.

 

Alan Bauerle

Posted on Portside's Facebook page

 

     ====

 

berniecrats, democrats, liberals, progressives and moderates are all in this together. stop trying to divide the good people, so the trumpies can win...

 

Kenny Ray

Posted on Portside's Facebook page

 

     ====

 

I don't know, but sure thought he had it. He was up against a lot of money tho.

 

Linda Ward

Posted on Portside's Facebook page

 

 

 

 

Travel Ban - Rob Rogers Cartoon

 

Trump's tweets attacking MSNBC's Morning Joe co-anchor Mika Brzezinski are reminiscent of the Hollywood Access video. The difference now is that he is spewing his misogynistic views from the Oval Office. Not cool.

 

 

 

Rob Rogers

July 2, 2017

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

 

 

 

 

 

Re: 'Huge Victory': Progressives Vow to Keep Fighting GOP Health Bill After Vote Delay

 

GOP have had 7 years to come up with a replacement for Obama Care. They haven't. They voted 70 times to kill it over 7 years. 

 

For the billions and billions in bribes the gop took from big pharma to kill Obama Care with no replacement of Obama Care. The gop don't give a rats ass about you or me they get free medical paid by you and me.

 

Nick Turbin

Posted on Portside's Facebook page

 

 

 

 

Re: The Senate GOP Isn't Fixing Health Care. It's Waging Class War

 

Wasted 8 years that could have been used to improve healthcare!

 

Larry L. Cunningham

Posted on Portside's Facebook page

 

     ====

 

The Senate GOP is waging class warfare, gouging the poor over the richest Americans. rump promised during his campaign the he would not do this. NOT!!!! The Senate GOP is the party of the richest, proclaiming it is otherwise: that is it proclaims it will make laws for the benefit of the struggling working class. NOT!!!!!

 

"To pay for those tax cuts, the bill cuts deeply into Medicaid. Senate Republicans have tried to give the appearance of having "more heart" (to use President Trump's phrase) than their colleagues in the House. So instead of cutting off federal money for the expansion all at once, as the House bill did, the Senate version gradually cuts off the money over several years. But that "glide path" is meaningless in eight states-Arkansas, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Montana, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Washington-where automatic triggers will end the expansion immediately if federal funding declines. The Senate's phaseout is actually crueler than the House bill, because it affects people who are currently enrolled in the expansion, not just those who would become eligible in the future.

 

More significantly, the Senate bill makes truly drastic changes to the entire Medicaid program, which helps not only low-income Americans but also the disabled and elderly people living in nursing homes. As currently structured, the federal government pays a share of a state's Medicaid load, with no caps. The Senate bill would upend that structure and impose per-capita limits on the federal contribution. That would cut federal spending on the program by about 25 percent, which health-care experts believe would force states to cover millions fewer people. The Senate bill would also tie Medicaid spending to inflation, which generally increases at a slower rate than health-care spending. Ultimately, the cut to Medicaid could be more than $800 billion."

 

Larry Aaronson

Posted on Portside's Facebook page

 

     ====

 

Class warfare WITH A VENGEANCE -- a wicked, intentional, unprecedented, devil may care, more-than-even-cutthroat capitalism-requires animosity, vengeance and will to destroy the lives of not just the 20 million whom the bill will effect directly, but many more. All of us will be affected, directly or indirectly. We all need to 1.) Fight this as hard as we can and 2.) UNITE to fight it -- it affects all except the now and might be billionaires, and, even among them only the most uncaring of their group. They thrive on our division, and we are doing very well at furthering those divisions. That won't work.

 

Peter Donaldson

Posted on Portside's Facebook page

 

     ====

 

Take them off their insurance !!!! They don't deserve it....start treating these arrogant asses like they treat you..maybe they'd straighten up and work like they should instead of taking corporation monies and do their bidding.,laws need to change these people are not working for the people they are working for themselves..they should NOT be able to vote themselves raises or to keep their health coverage ..that's nothing but stupid!!!

 

Patty Lambert

Posted on Portside's Facebook page

 

     ====

 

What on earth is with you Americans anyway?.....I am pretty sure that about 2/3 of you NEED and want a decent and affordable health care system!....Yet, you CANNOT seem to get past about 40 or so sleaze bags in Congress and about six or seven senators in the upper house - who, NO DOUBT, are bought and paid for by the lords and masters who run your present system!...

 

These people DO NOT CARE IF ANY OF YOU LIVE OR DIE!...So, why on earth do ANY of you care whether they, not only live, but get filthy stinking rich off of ALL OF YOU?

 

AND DON'T start handing me any S*** about socialism - Socialism IS ALIVE AND WELL (and expected) in A LOT of other aspects of your life in the USA....You have things like community water, sewer, libraries, city-county0state-national parks & playgrounds, fire protection, police protection - ALL paid for by tax revenue and EXPECTED/DEMANDED BY YOUR POPULATION!

 

So, WHY NOT healthcare?????.....The greater good of a country is served by the hundreds of millions of people who will have accessible and affordable health care than by the LITERALLY few thousand who profit immensely and obscenely by the present FOR PROFIT system that seems to be the number one cause of personal bankruptcy in your country!....

 

IT IS TIME TO SHOW THE PEOPLE WHO ARE RUNNING THINGS AS MUCH GOODNESS, MERCY AND KINDNESS AS THEY ARE SHOWING YOU!

 

WAKE UP ALREADY!!!!!!!

 

David Green

Posted on Portside's Facebook page

 

     ====

 

No class war, that is giving them too much credit. They are just giving money to the wealthy by harming everyone else. That is what the 1% pay them to do.

 

Jeff Friedman

Posted on Portside's Facebook page

 

 

 

 

 

Re: Companies Can Either Make Things or Make CEOs Rich

 

Profits can be reinvested in improving the business, or giving huge, really huge bonuses to the CEO. For many mature businesses, the CEO is getting most of the profits.

 

Philip Specht

Posted on Portside's Facebook page

 

 

 

 

Re: NY Times Employees Walk Out to Demand Respect and Save Jobs

 

In their decision to cut in half the number of copy editors, NY Times managers offer another weapon in the quivers of those who charge them with a loose grasp of  the truth and the production of "fake news."  Not smart.

 

James Young

Harrisburg, PA

 

 

 

 

Re: How Union-Busting Bosses Propel the Right Wing to Power

 

The failure of unregulated capitalism is that it ALWAYS leads to robber-barons controlling the masses.

 

Tom Dugan

Posted on Portside's Facebook page

 

     ====

 

Libertarians! The Big Libertarian Scam. Cut funding? That will solve everything? Cut the funding, then it fails, and then you make it all private. Ho, ho, ho!

 

Don't need no regulation! Don't need no rules! Don't need no governing at all! Bags of money and Jesus and god and the free market gonna take care of everything for our good old America! It's the teenage wet dream of all republican boys. Yeehaw libertarians forever! 

 

Martin Pitts

Posted on Portside's Facebook page

 

 

 

 

Re: Stamped from the Beginning: Ibram X. Kendi on the History of Racist Ideas in U.S.

 

Cotton Mather was a latecomer. By the time he was 30, in 1690, the planters in Virginia and Maryland through their governments and the Anglican Church were well on their way to codifying into law the enslavement of black bondservants, a process that began after Bacon's Rebellion in the late 1670s.

 

There had previously been a belief that a Christian could not enslave another Christian - hence if a slave became a Christian, he or she would be free. But with the institutionalizing of slavery, that theological belief was expeditiously changed. Indeed, religion became another instrument of enslavement ("everyone in his place as ordained by God").

 

Best source for all this is Theodore W. Allen's THE INVENTION OF THE WHITE RACE. 

 

Donald Pelles

Posted on Portside's Facebook page

 

 

 

 

Re: Still on White Privilege

 

Yes. Understand. Well said.

 

However, when referring to us as a people please capitalize Black. Let us have some importance.

 

Tureeda Mikell

 

 

 

 

Re: Sacrificing Black Lives for the American Lie

 

Appreciate Dr. Kendi's penetrating analysis of the problem of racism and American [in]justice.

 

James Johnson

Posted on Portside's Facebook page

 

 

 

 

Re: Let America Be America Again - Friday Nite Videos - June 30

 

link to the only sung version I  know of the complete poem, performed 5 years ago by Patrice Eaton and Mimi Stern-Wolfe here.

 

 

Leonard J. Lehrman

 

 

 

 

Re: Whole Foods Market, Amazon and Inhospitable Hospitality

(posting on Portside Labor)

 

 

Is there a way for the public to start protesting this treatment of labor?

 

Marcia Newfield

 

 

 

 

Re: Reclaiming Public Services

(posting on Portside Labor)

 

 

Stop all public subsidies of private capital profits! Privatization is a BIG scam to rip off our tax money!

 

Leanna Noble

Posted on Portside's Facebook page

 

 

 

 

Re: Sorry, Fox News: Legal Experts Say Trump Collusion With Russia Could Be a Crime

 

 

 

 

 

 

Kevin Rice

Posted on Portside's Facebook page

 

     ====

 

Mother Jones is one of the most outspoken Russophobe voices on the left.

Shame!

 

Michael Munk

 

     ====

 

How cynical can they be. The not so hypothetical use of a foreign country to work on another countries election is not a crime? Maybe to justify the US involvement in countless other countries elections? Wrong either way.

 

John S. Morawetz

Posted on Portside's Facebook page

 

 

 

 

Re: Socialism's Future May Be Its Past

 

This is an eloquent and convincing essay with which it would be hard to disagree, and I'm pleased that in the present political climate, Sunkara's text made it into the NY Times.

 

Only there's just one problem: Democratic Socialists of America advertises itself as a "Member of the Socialist International," the traditional Socialist organization which as Victor Serge among many others has pointed out, betrayed its anti-war pledge in August 1914 and led French Socialist workers and German Social-democrats into four years of fratricidal slaughter in obedience to their respective imperialist governments.

 

The same Socialist International was responsible in 1918-19 for the murders of anti-war socialists Rosa Luxemburg and  Karl Leibnecht and the crushing of the post-war German revolution which, according to Serge, might have prevented the rise of fascism.

 

In our own time, the neo-liberal French Socialist Party of François Hollande, which the author correctly criticizes, is a member of the Second International , and the SI President, Panadreou, was the corrupt Greek Prime Minister who led his country into unpayable debt.

 

This is hardly heritage we want to endorse.

 

If for the DSA the line from the Finland Station leads to Stalin's Gulag, a dubious argument at best, clearly the lines from the 'Socialist' betrayals of 1914 and 1919 lead much more directly to Hollande, Papandreou and our contemporary neo-liberal adversaries: wolves in sheep's clothing.

 

Yours, Richard Greeman

Secretary, Victor Serge Foundation

 

     ====

 

Richard, You point to one major problem in Sunkara's New York Times op-ed: DSA's adhesion to the Second International. I see two others problems, perhaps not unrelated to the one you correctly call attention to. 

 

First, Sunkara endorses the idea workers' co-ops, competing with each other on the market, as the basis for a socialist economy. Although market mechanisms may be useful under socialism for registering consumer preferences, the idea that the production of self-sufficient worker-owned firms would be regulated by the market seems to me contrary to one of socialism's major goals: the abolition of the anarchy of production. 

 

Second, Sunkara's advocacy of socialism without a "day zero" seems to be a renunciation of revolution in favor of reformist gradualism. Who was it who said that a favorite metaphor of reformists--that we can peel away at capitalism like the layers of an onion--is inappropriate, because such a strategy is rather like trying to peel away the skin of a living tiger.

 

Jim Creegan

 

     ====

 

Very poor piece, in my opinion. An appeal to "return" to what never was, won't be - a revolutionary social democratic mvmt & a gradualist creep toward "socialism."

 

Bruce Bostick

Posted on Portside's Facebook page

 

 

 

 

Political philosophies

 

Trump was nominated because no other Republican had anything worthwhile to say. They all lived on slogans and shibboleths. The worst is the often debunked statement, not fact, that reducing taxes of the wealthy promotes economic growth. Look at what happened from 1945 to 1980. In fact, the increasing concentration of wealth in the top one percent is an existential threat to American democracy.

 

We must go back to some form of President Kennedy's tax code. The gutless Democrats did not have the nerve to spell out the problems in plain language, but could use only anodyne statements like the wealthy should pay their "fair share."

 

"Water flows downhill and money flows upward. The only way to stop either is with a dam. The money dam is the tax code." It should be made clear that the only health plan will be either the ACA with problems corrected or a single-payer system. The profit system works well when the seller gets paid only when delivering a product or service, Insurance is based on a fixed monthly income, maximum profit comes from minimum delivery of service. That's why we have insurance commissioners, even for casualty insurance.

 

We should phase out the student loan program, provide a 13th and 14th year of free public education, and grants to help good and deserving students go to four-year colleges.

 

We should establish a commission to simplify the  structure of government. For example, the fifteen current major departments of the executive branch could be reduced to ten.

 

Business income taxes could be reduced or even eliminated if we had a proper personal income tax code. Tax people, not things. These are things that the pusillanimous Democrats should be saying.

 

Hubert I. Flomenhoft

 

 

 

 

Re: A Grand New Theory of Life's Evolution on Earth

 

Nuclear power is the energetic epoch that comes after fire. It may be the last of these epochs until life emerges in the future under very different conditions.

 

Susan Rosenthal

 

 

 

 

Re: Are We in the Midst of a Mass Extinction? Five Previous Ones Give Clues

 

Well, yes. The anthropocene or human extinction, also known as the 6th mass extinction. We're also in the early stage of runaway methane clathrate breakdown, exacerbated by anthropregenic global climate change.

 

Josh Davis

Posted on Portside's Facebook page

 

 

 

 

Re: Wonder Woman

 

SHAME ON PORTSIDE FOR TOUTING THIS ACTRESS!!

 

Not only did she serve in the Israeli military for two tours of duty as a combat trainer, she has come to this country to GLAMORIZE the Israeli military and its brutal occupation of Gaza and the West Bank.

 

I had expected better of Portside than to get sucked into this phony debate about sexism and this movie.

 

The fact is, Gadot flaunts her body in order to titillate young men and excite them with the lure of Israeli imperialism.

 

Rather than distribute articles like the one you have sent me, try digging around and finding out the truth about this RACIST, ZIONIST Amazon. She enthusiastically supports the illegal Israeli occupation and its brutal genocide of Palestinians.

 

See:

• #BoycottWonderWoman
• Tunisia joins boycott of Wonder Woman
• Wonder Woman: The Real Conflict

 

Romi Elnagar

 

 

 

 

Re: What Jews Of Color Hear When You Say Gal Gadot Isn't White

(posting on Portside Culture)

 

 

here is a lot to commend and agree with in this article. It's a good start but I think it's narrow in some of its assumptions and its statements seem to be "blanketed" with regards to U.S. Jewry.

 

Several paragraphs talk about Jewish assimilation and complicity with white (non-Jewish) power structures. It lumps all U.S. Ashkenazim into one bucket. I think one needs to parse this a little deeper. The article fails to discuss the fact that the above applies, primarily, to Jews of means and not to working class Jews.

 

"Jews who enjoy *all*(my emphasis) the privileges of whiteness yet want to claim people of color status would do well to remember the origins of the term."

 

I find some of the points of the article are too narrowly construed. Again, they refer, primarily to Jews of means and to (without actually stating such) Jews lucky enough to be in certain geographic locales. In the U.S. those locales would be NY, SF, LA and a few other places. In those locations, "white skinned" Jews are, for all intents and purposes, white and they receive most, if not all, the privileges of that association.

 

To be sure, the fact that we (Ashkenazim) are visibly white gets us (wanted or not) certain privileges above other PsOC, the authors would do well to remember that outside of the aforementioned locales we are NOT WHITE and are NOT treated, even if we are well off, as such. I've worked all over this country. Skin color gets me so far. Once the last name comes up, attitudes and treatment can deteriorate rapidly. Am I treated as badly as other peoples of color? No, and that is (inarguably) privilege, but I am also not treated as white.

 

Humanity has, unfortunately, not only created "race" and People of Color but it has also created a stratification of color. This enables those at the top to point to one layer and tell it to "watch out for that other layer" while they (the Top) take no blame upon themselves. It is that which we would all do well to remember.

 

Kevin Glick

Posted on Portside's Facebook page

 

 

 

 

 

Re: Redneck Revolt Builds Anti-Racist, Anti-Capitalist Movement With Working Class Whites

 

Is this American values

VS

Nazi old school Germany values????

Not even the Germans like NAZI guys!!!!

 

Hanibal Carigula

Posted on Portside's Facebook page

 

     ====

 

I always assumed the Nazis got their ideas from the USA. The Nazis wouldn't have had the success they did with out Henry Ford.

 

Edward Richardson

Posted on Portside's Facebook page

 

     ====

 

General Motors built as many tanks for Hitler as Ford did. And let's not forget IBM, without whose help the Holocaust would have been impossibly complicated. And let's not forget the Main Stream Media which never lost a chance to lionize the fascists such as when Time Magazine declared Hitler the Man of the Year, or when Newspaper publishers extolled Mussolini's fascist government for supposedly making the Italian trains run on time.

 

American corporate interests have historically had a soft spot for fascism, it's true.

 

Joe Elegua

Posted on Portside's Facebook page

 

 

 

 

 

The Freedom to Marry on iTunes - Special Offer - 99 cents

 

 

 

 

Due to popular demand, we're extending this incredible deal through the rest of July-you can rent The Freedom to Marry on iTunes right now for just $.99!

 

Get the insiders story of how love won nationwide now! Just click this link, then select "View in iTunes" to access this special $.99 rental price. 

 

As the country pauses to celebrate Independence Day-and with so much work ahead of us in the fight to keep our democracy safeguarded-here's your chance to relive the story of one of the most tremendous civil rights victories of our time.

 

This is the inspiring story of 'how to win.'

 

We are thrilled that in the last two weeks alone, The Freedom to Marry has broken the Top 20 list of documentaries on iTunes, and can now be seen in 62 countries around the world! Help keep the momentum going-and join thousands worldwide who are viewing this award-winning film at an unbeatable price.

 

For just $.99, you can rent The Freedom to Marry on iTunes now!

 

Enjoy this holiday weekend-and enjoy the film!

 

Eddie Rosenstein

Director/Producer, The Freedom to Marry

 

P.S. Once you've watched The Freedom to Marry, please be sure to rate it in iTunes to encourage more people to watch it too!

 

 

 

 

Mother Jones Resist Poster - New from Mother Jones Museum

 

 

 

 

Poster 11x17  -Resist poster. Thick cardstock, glossy. 

A message for our times. Created for Mother Jones Museum by Lindsay Hand of Colorado.

 

$10.00 (quantity discounts available)

 

Mother Jones Heritage Project

630 Joanne Lane

DeKalb IL 60115

 

For more information contact:  Rosemary Feurer 815-754-4750

 

 

 

 

Your Testimony Is Needed - four former SNCC staff members ask for you to speak out

 

As four former SNCC staff members, we urge all former SNCC people who reside in the state of Massachusetts to participate in upcoming efforts to defeat a bill that would prevent the state of Massachusetts from contracting with individuals or companies that engage in economic boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel.

 

Through 50 years of military occupation of traditionally Palestinian lands on the West Bank, Israel has created an apartheid state in which Palestinians are forced off their lands and confined to certain limited areas. Their travel is restricted and they are burdened by rules and regulations that make earning a living difficult.  

Furthermore, Palestinians living within Israel itself suffer discrimination and oppression in many forms.

 

Three of us have been in Israel and Palestine several times and have personally witnessed the oppressive conditions under which Palestinians are forced to live. We have also witnessed a growing nonviolent resistance movement among Palestinians aimed at gaining equal rights, ending apartheid, and creating a Palestinian state. 

 

Millions of people across the world are supporting the Palestinian freedom movement in a variety of ways.

 

In SNCC we saw first hand that economic boycotts, divestment and sanctions can play a role in helping people who are fighting for their rights. We saw this in Alabama, in Mississippi, in Tennessee, in Georgia and elsewhere. 

 

We also witnessed the power of BDS in contributing to the ending of apartheid in South Africa.

 

Not only is BDS well within our time-tested and remarkable tradition, but the First Amendment protects those who advocate for it, and we believe that businesses have the right to engage in BDS against Israel if they choose to do so.

 

If you would like further information about how to participate in the Massachusetts hearings on this bill (July 18 in the Gardner Auditorium of the Statehouse in Boston), please contact Elsa Auerbach, the Boston chapter leader of Jewish Voice for Peace, at Elsa.Auerbach@umb.edu. You may submit written testimony before July 18 or sign up to give oral testimony on the day of.

 

Legislative efforts like the one in Massachusetts are taking place all over the country -- but they can be defeated, as happened in April 2017, in Maryland.  We urge you to become involved in this effective method to halt the deterioration of the life and liberty of Palestinians.

 

In the struggle,

 

Judy Richardson, SNCC staff, 1963-1966

Larry Rubin, SNCC staff, 1962-1965

Zoharah Simmons (aka Gwen Robinson), SNCC staff, 1963-1967

Dorothy Zellner, SNCC staff, 1962-1967

 

 

 

 

Free Non Violent Resistance Trainings - 10 Cities To Start, Please Come Join! (Greenpeace)

 

Greenpeace has received requests from allies and supporters around the country asking us to share our Non Violent Direct Action skills since the election. We regularly do trainings at our Actions Warehouses in Oakland and DC, but to meet the need, we are experimenting with taking these trainings on the road, as well as doing some webinar trainings (but the in person ones are better!)

 

You will learn NVDA history, strategy, safety and more. As the conventional means to influence decisions that affect us are eroding, we need to ensure our movement is skilled up for safe, smart NVDA.

 

Each city will have two 1 day trainings (Sat and Sun) and we have room for 100 people in each  day. This traveling training  is an experiment; if it goes well, we will add more cities.

 

Here is the schedule and sign up link to share:

 

Schedule:

 

Chicago: July 1 -2

Philadelphia: July 8  - 9

Las Vegas:  July 15 - 16

Los Angeles: July 22 - 23

Washington, DC: July 29 - 30

Miami: August: 5 - 6

Charlotte: August: 12-13

New York: August: 19 - 20

 

Sign up for an in person Greenpeace NVDA training at this link here: Summer of Resistance Sign up

 

 

Annie Leonard

 

THE STORY OF STUFF PROJECT

www.storyofstuff.org

 

 

 

 

 

"Voices from 1967: Recalling the Newark Rebellion" -- panel discussion on July 15

 

 

To mark the 50th anniversary of the Newark Rebellion, the Newark History Society has organized a panel discussion, "Voices from 1967: Recalling the Newark Rebellion," that will take place on Saturday, July 15 at 11:30am during a day-long symposium at the Newark Public Library.

 

Linda Caldwell Epps, CEO of 1804 Consultants and one of our trustees, will moderate the discussion. She recruited five distinguished panelists with different experiences and perspectives:

 

This program will take place in the 2nd floor reading room at the Newark Public Library, 5 Washington Street.  It is free and open to the public; a light lunch will be available.

 

The day-long symposium will start at 11:00am with an exhibit, "Voices from the Rebellion," in the Library's first floor gallery and then continue after our program with another panel at 2:00pm, "Fifty Years Later: Living Legacies of the Rebellion," moderated by Junius Williams.  All the details are in the attached flyer.

 

You may RSVP here.  Related programs scheduled for July 11-15 are also listed on the eventbrite site

 

See you on the 15th!

 

Timothy Crist

Newark History Society