Tidbits - Apr.23, 2020 - Reader Comments: Reopen or Re-Infect; Black Plague; Voting Imperiled - Today, Remembering the 60s; Coronavirus: The Crisis This Time; Nurses Wearing Garbage Bags; The Killing Floor at Smithfield; Killing the Post Office
Re: The Trump Reopen Effort: 'An Utter Sh*t Show' (Meredith Lee Schafer-Garza)
Let my people golf -- cartoon by Rex A. Jones
Re: Another Republican "Grassroots" Movement Hijacks the Media (Ivonne Brown-Ieromazzo; Tom Trumper; Miriam Haiman-González; David Lax; Nelson Morales; Gabriel Andres Ramos Serrano; Mateenah Floyd-Okanlawon)
Re: The Black Plague (A Rose for Puerto Rico Grassroots)
Re: Stop Blaming Black People for Dying of the Coronavirus (Marilyn Frankenstein)
Re: Selma 1965, Wisconsin 2020: Multiracial Democracy vs. A White Republic (Jay Schaffner; Laura Owen; Peter Verikas; Robert Maldonado; Jane Becker Whitaker; Edward Miessner)
Re: Canceling Rent and Suspending Mortgage Payments (Sonia)
Re: The Coronavirus and the Crisis This Time (Mariam Alunkal)
Re: Mike Davis On Pandemics, Super-capitalism and the Struggles of Tomorrow (Making Contact)
In Lieu of Adequate PPE -- cartoon by Drew Sheneman
Re: How Did the U.S. End Up with Nurses Wearing Garbage Bags? (Iara Lee; Heather Squire; Leanna Noble; Jeannie Fagundo; Lynette Castillo; Craig Gauthie; Beba Jorge)
Re: The White House Has Erected a Blockade Stopping States and Hospitals From Getting Coronavirus PPE (Bequi Marie; Tammy Alenduff)
Re: What Wall Street Doesn't Want You to Know About Hospital Emergency Rooms (Karen Saunders)
Re: Millions of Essential Workers Are Being Left Out of COVID-19 Workplace Safety Protections, Thanks to OSHA (Hollis Stewart; Mike Liston)
Re: Smithfield Foods Is Blaming "Living Circumstances In Certain Cultures" For One Of America's Largest COVID-19 Clusters (Alberta Maged; Patricia Dranginis Shulman; Daniel Millstone; Judith Halprin; Carol Driscoll;Mary Llenza; Suzanne Prescott; Senya Means)
Re: The Head of the Postal Workers Union Says the Postal Service Could Be Dead in Three Months (Hillel Ben Yochanan; Therese Masters Jacobson; Bill Mager)
Re: 'Beyond Predatory': Trump Treasury Department Gives Banks Green Light to Seize $1,200 Stimulus Checks to Pay Off Debts (Patricia Dowling; Judyth Hollub; Hilde Edler Souweine; Lizzi Azalia Swane; JD Scot; Matt Dingeldein)
Re: Banks Funneled Stimulus Funds to Largest Companies to Fatten Fees, Lawsuits Say (Emory Thompson; Yvonne Gumowitz; Alvin Jackson; Stan Nadel)
Re: COVID-19 and the Unfunded Black Belt Commission (Ferris Ann Branch-Crawford)
Give Me Liberty..Or -- cartoon by Robert Ariail
Re: 1918 Flu Pandemic Killed 12 Million Indians, and British Overlords' Indifference Strengthened the Anti-Colonial Movement (Miguel Tamargo; Glenda Méndez)
Re: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Has Never Spoken to Joe Biden. Here's What She Would Say (Jose Felipe Gonzalez Pabon; Claire O'Connor; Zvi Baranoff)
Re: Joe Biden Needs to Start Acting Like a Presidential Candidate (Radames Ortiz Ortiz; Clare Max)
Re: What Mrs America Gets Right and What It Gets Wrong About 70s Feminism (Sonia Collins)
Revolutionary Earth Day Greeting from Italy (video)
Re: How China Broke the Chain of Infection (Steve in Wuhan; Dale Jacobson; Philip Specht)
Re: The Crime of the Century: Remembering Sacco and Vanzetti 100 Years Later (Joseph Kaye)
Re: Dorothy Day's Radical Faith (Pat Byrne; Marcel Rivera)
Resources:
Poster of the Week - 50th Anniversary of Earth Day (Center for the Study of Political Graphics)
The America We Need - Special New York Times Magazine
Re: The Trump Reopen Effort: 'An Utter Sh*t Show'
I hope there area lot of wrongful death suits
Meredith Lee Schafer-Garza
Posted on Portside's Facebook pager
Let my people golf -- cartoon by Rex A. Jones
Rex A. Jones
April 22, 2020
Rex A. Jones Krazy Karwonz
Re: Another Republican "Grassroots" Movement Hijacks the Media
following the precepts of Joseph Goebbels:
"The rank and file are usually much more primitive than we imagine. Propaganda must therefore always be essentially simple and repetitive. In the long run, basic results in influencing public opinion will be achieved only by the man who is able to reduce problems to the simplest terms and who has the courage to keep forever repeating them in this simplified form, despite the objections of the intellectuals."
Ivonne Brown-Ieromazzo
Posted on Portside's Facebook pager
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Billions of dollars isn't enough for the Koch brothers, they want power over the people as well.
Tom Trumper
Posted on Portside's Facebook pager
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Miriam Haiman-González
Posted on Portside's Facebook pager
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Sponsored by DeVos and friends.....
David Lax
Posted on Portside's Facebook pager
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Don't let them in the emergency room ,when they come knocking.
Nelson Morales
Posted on Portside's Facebook pager
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Lacking total state control over the media, Republicans employ AstroTurfed street theater to hijack our free press for propaganda. There are salt-of-the-earth working folk, battered by economic hardship, who just want their jobs back. However misguided, their motives generally aren't questioned. Wrong, among them were neo-Nazis, Confederates, NRA extremists, anti-vaxxers, etc. Who could imagine?
Gabriel Andres Ramos Serrano
Posted on Portside's Facebook pager
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I am angry! As a retired E R nurse I am outraged at the treatment of nurses, doctors and all the frontline workers that are being needlessly sacrificed because of incompetent leadership in Washington. Please read and get mad!
Mateenah Floyd-Okanlawon
Posted on Portside's Facebook pager
The old African-American aphorism "When white America catches a cold, black America gets pneumonia" has a new, morbid twist: when white America catches the novel coronavirus, black Americans die.
Thousands of white Americans have also died from the virus, but the pace at which African-Americans are dying has transformed this public-health crisis into an object lesson in racial and class inequality. According to a Reuters report, African-Americans are more likely to die of covid-19 than any other group in the U.S. It is still early in the course of the pandemic, and the demographic data is incomplete, but the partial view is enough to prompt a sober reflection on this bitter harvest of American racism.
A Rose for Puerto Rico Grassroots
Posted on Portside's Facebook pager
Re: Stop Blaming Black People for Dying of the Coronavirus
Excellent analysis, but I would add another point: in addition to the institutional racism that has led to Corona so disproportionately affecting Black people, there is also the fact that Blacks and Latinx are disproportionately front line workers, risking their lives to save everyone and getting paid crap and often disrespected for that work (e.g., I'm including janitors as vital public health workers).
One of the ways I hope we come out of this pandemic glimpse of what so many, in the same and different ways, live every day (waiting for the next bomb to drop, searching for food in a world aplenty with food, and so on) is with strong support and strong organizing for real respect and compensation (in salary and other benefits like shorter hours) for the workers who hold up our society.
Marilyn Frankenstein
Re: Selma 1965, Wisconsin 2020: Multiracial Democracy vs. A White Republic
Please read - great piece by my friend Max Elbaum - only way out of the multi-faceted political-economic-health-societal crisis is a path that lifts up those most oppressed and suffering, while fighting the dire situation for all that we find ourselves in.
Tonight on the news in northeastern Pennsylvania was coverage of the mob that descended on the state capital of Harrisburg. Signs included those that COVID was a hoax, and "fake news". This while the national death total soars past 40,000 - double what it was a week ago, with the preponderance of those loosing their lives as African American and Latino. 1366 of those in Pennsylvania.
40,000+ dead in our country, 170,000+ throughout the world, no vaccine, no testing, and this is just heating up.
This reminds of the German people after the war saying that they just had no idea, no knowledge of the round-up of Jews and others, no knowledge of the concentration camps. That is what the Trumpsters remind me of. That is why it is so vital to defeat Trump and the GOP in this election.
Jay Schaffner
Posted on Portside's Facebook pager
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Well guess what white NEO Nazis there's a new kid in town a powerful disease called Covid-19, your Guns , your Rhetoric ain't gonna save your sorry asses, it's gonna wipe you out like nobody's business, and your Savior Trump is absolutely not gonna save you
Laura Owen
Posted on Portside's Facebook pager
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Dr King was opposed to the so called right to work legislation . It is ironic that this anti union law is a kind of Jim Crow against workers of all colors!
Peter Verikas
Posted on Portside's Facebook pager
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to them everything is a hoax, except the Hoax of the POTUS#45.
But only until it hits one of theirs.
Robert Maldonado
Posted on Portside's Facebook pager
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A Milwaukee polling place has become a COVID hotspot. Blood on their hands.
Jane Becker Whitaker
Posted on Portside's Facebook pager
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Not just a White Republic but a Right-winged Straight Male White Republic
Edward Miessner
Posted on Portside's Facebook pager
Re: Canceling Rent and Suspending Mortgage Payments
In NYC, the huge Kushner style real estate companies regularly get 20 year tax abatements when they build speculative luxury towers. They do not pay their fair share. In this emergency, if a small owner cannot pay bills because their tenants cannot pay rent, the debt forgiveness has to go upward to the mortgage holding banks, the water authority, the taxes etc. In general the burdens of this crisis should be borne by those who can afford to take the hit.
Sonia
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
Re: The Coronavirus and the Crisis This Time
One of the best articles I have read. Well Done, Portside. The author is admirably capable of original thinking.
Mariam Alunkal
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
Re: Mike Davis On Pandemics, Super-capitalism and the Struggles of Tomorrow
" What are the underlying political, economic and environmental structures that paved the way for this global outbreak? Where do pandemics emerge from? Is our capitalist way of life biologically sustainable?" Thx Portside
Making Contact
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
In Lieu of Adequate PPE -- cartoon by Drew Sheneman
Drew Sheneman
April 16, 2020
The Star-Ledger (Newark)
Re: How Did the U.S. End Up with Nurses Wearing Garbage Bags?
America watched, shocked, as doctors and nurses pleaded for protective gear and medical equipment such as ventilators. What followed was an inside glimpse of the dysfunction emanating from Trump's Washington in the midst of the pandemic, a crash course in the breakdown that has led to nurses in one of the wealthiest countries in the world wearing garbage bags to protect themselves from a virus whose outbreak the President downplayed until it was too late to prepare for its consequences. (via Portside)
Iara Lee
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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"Independent reporting has corroborated what Ries and other volunteers saw for themselves: "a fragmented procurement system now descending into chaos," as the Associated Press put it. The news agency found that not a single shipment of medical-grade N95 masks arrived at U.S. ports during the month of March. The federal government was not only disorganized; it was absent. Federal agencies waited until mid-March to begin placing bulk orders for the urgently needed supplies, the A.P. found. The first large U.S. government order to the big U.S. producer 3M, for a hundred and seventy-three million dollars' worth of N95 masks, was not placed until March 21st-the same day that Ries got his first phone call about the Kushner effort. The order, according to the A.P., did not even require the supplies to be delivered until the end of April, far too late to help with the thousands of cases already overwhelming hospitals."
Heather Squire
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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For years now health care and every other "service" industry has been corporatized with every manufacturing, privatized capitalist trick possible to maximize PROFITS. Nurses & other health care workers have fought this by unionizing. Now ALL of us as workers and patients re paying the price with our LIVES. Medicare4All is now to save lives!
Leanna Noble
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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Its a disgrace! These professionals deserve protection. They risk their lives everyday. Very sad.
Jeannie Fagundo
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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The question should be how did the USA, supposedly the most powerful nation , ended up having a con man for president.
Lynette Castillo
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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Because Trump and big business says we don't need regulations, safety nets, healthcare for all and a plan to stop a pandemic, it's all a hoax, it will be over by April
Craig Gauthie
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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It's called GENOCIDE!! This beast has his hands full of blood
Beba Jorge
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
With the cooperation of federal employees.
Can you _imagine_ being the person who agrees to do this.
There is no such thing as a peaceful nazi.
Bequi Marie
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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This isn't right.
It will NEVER be right.
The current administration only disgraces itself even more.
Tammy Alenduff
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
Re: What Wall Street Doesn't Want You to Know About Hospital Emergency Rooms
Yet another reason why our hospitals should be publicly owned and controlled, now during the pandemic and permanently. Emergency rooms should be a public good, not an engine for profit.
"Care of the sick is not the mission of these companies; their mission is to make outsized profits for the private equity firms and its investors. Overcharging patients and insurance companies for providing urgent and desperately needed emergency medical care is bad enough. But it is unconscionable to muzzle doctors who speak out to advocate for the health of their patients and co-workers during the global pandemic that is rapidly spreading across the U.S."
Karen Saunders
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
If workers aren't safe, we aren't safe. Viruses and other living things travel by air, sea, land, our skin, our hair and our friends, neighbors, the person/s working next to us, a person who is ill -- so we are everyone's health helper just as they are ours.
Hollis Stewart
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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When I was in college, I worked 20 hours plus a week down on the Anchorage docks and most of my work was on a roll on, roll off cargo ship which meant that truck tractors would drive on board and off hauling off wheeled container loads. The ship had a ventilation system installed to suck out the diesel fumes from the lower decks but in order to save money, I'm guessing, it was often off or on low speed and the fumes were so bad, a worker would be left with carbon monoxide headaches that would linger for days. Our union wouldn't do anything about, they'd been bought off, so I took it upon myself to report the problem to OSHA. What a farce, the inspector rolls in having made an advance phone call, has a nice cup of coffee chumming it up with the bosses allowing them plenty of time to turn on the ventilation on high and for almost a good hour and then he lets himself be led by the nose to the absolutely best ventilated part of the ship and takes some bullshit tests after which he concludes everything is just fine and this was back in the early 1980's! They were a bunch of useless a****les then so I'm sure there much worse than such now. I quit not longer that. I figured the carbon monoxide headaches were just not worth it, all the best, and to your health,
Mike Liston
once more, speechless ... or way too much to scream out:
Alberta Maged
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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right...that's why they have closed 3 plants in different states, because all those people live together....the worst of corporate america
Patricia Dranginis Shulman
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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Well, of course it's their own damn fault. The workers ain't got no culture. One of the more startling "blame the victims" has a racist ring and more. In "certain cultures," Smithfield bosses explain people want to live together in crowded unsanitary conditions. Thus those flacking for this master class explain that Smithfield workers don't live in houses (like we do; ha!). Do they mention the rotten pay? Do they mention the appalling conditions? Of course not. What's a poor boss to do?
One of the things the virus teaches us over and over again: an injury to one is an injury to all. 0ur food (as here) comes to us through a system of ruthless exploitation. We enrich the bosses and (as a reward eat cheaper food) when the farm workers, the meat packers, the supermarket workers, the restaurant workers, the delivery guys live in the shadows. We can fix this. Thanks to Portside (and Daily Kos) for sending this along.
Daniel Millstone
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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because surely it can't be working conditions, right?
Judith Halprin
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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I never eat anything made by Smithfield. One of the worst companies in America in terms of how their workers are treated.
Carol Driscoll
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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Boycott their products
Mary Llenza
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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Most certainly. I'll check the labels of pork products to make sure I avoid Smithfield and buy products where the processors did a better job of protecting employees
Suzanne Prescott
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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So not only are these MF's gonna murder the people that work for them, they're gonna put the blame on them for dying, too.
Senya Means
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
Re: The Head of the Postal Workers Union Says the Postal Service Could Be Dead in Three Months
(posting on Portside Labor)
Greed. Trump wants to divvy up the US Postal Service to private companies so that those private companies can fund his presidential campaign for another 4 years term. What about the possible reprocautions after he leaves office? What about the people?
Selfish! Straight up selfish! Trump is only thinking about himself, not the people.
Hillel Ben Yochanan
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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I use our little post office weekly. Knowing the clerk by name, and I hope asking about her kids and grandchildren makes her feel as good as I do, because she is an important part of the community and I want her to know it.
Therese Masters Jacobson
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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No temporary bail out that only puts a band aid on. Get congress to work on a long term plan that will both protect the post office but will also assure that far into the future past, present and future postal workers will get the benefits promised! Look around at numerous states and cities where pension plans are in deep debt. It has to be fixed!
Bill Mager
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
"The Treasury Department is pointing out opportunities for banks and debt collectors to steal Americans' relief checks out from under them."
Patricia Dowling
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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How much more proof do we need of Trump's and the Republicans' amorality and avarice? And yet Trump supporters will probably not recognize that they are amongst the groups that are being victimized the most. Let's hope they wake up to these facts before the election.
Judyth Hollub
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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This will be so helpful - for banks, that is.
Hilde Edler Souweine
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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So the banks just take them all away from the poorest people who need them the most. What creepiness.
Lizzi Azalia Swane
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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Now do you see how Republicans work?
JD Scot
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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Release a "FOREVER" stamp with his mug on it. His ego and vanity will prevent him from defunding
Matt Dingeldein
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
Re: Banks Funneled Stimulus Funds to Largest Companies to Fatten Fees, Lawsuits Say
Wells Fargo.... again....
Emory Thompson
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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No end to the mismanaged misery.
Yvonne Gumowitz
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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Use your platform to change the politically conspired public law to reassess the small business size standard. 500 employees? Not a small business. During the 1980's up to 99 employees. Where did we go wrong. Or maybe we were asleep at the wheel.
Alvin Jackson
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Gee, who would have ever imagined that banks would serve their biggest and most important customers 1st? Maximizing profits is the name of the game--that's what banks are for when they are profit making corporations and their officers would be derelict in their responsibilities to their shareholders (and possibly liable as well) if they didn't take care to do so. Only changing the rules of the game could change that--cooperative or government owned banks that could put serving their customers 1st, i.e. a socialized financial sector.
Stan Nadel
Re: COVID-19 and the Unfunded Black Belt Commission
Hospitals in some southern states were closed due in part to politicians keeping out federal funds until the smaller ones got gobbled up by larger ones, this causing a monopoly effect on many regions, coincident Al? I got some ocean front property in Nashville if you believe that! Lol
Ferris Ann Branch-Crawford
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
Give Me Liberty..Or -- cartoon by Robert Ariail
Robert Ariail
April 21, 2020
Townhall
Harbinger of things to come?
Miguel Tamargo
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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"Influenza became one more example of British injustice that spurred Indian people in their fight for independence. Mahatma Gandhi wrote, "In no other civilized country could a government have left things so much undone as did the Government of India"
Glenda Méndez
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
Re: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Has Never Spoken to Joe Biden. Here's What She Would Say
No doubt about it, Alexandria is not only my candidate, she is the fundamental voice of awareness in the Democratic party. Winning the presidency and replacing Trump is crucial. But not just by superficially polishing what's considered 'controversial' issues. There must be a commitment to tackle those issues with firmness and resolution regardless of the expected 'backfire' from big interests.
Jose Felipe Gonzalez Pabon
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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Like many I started out this election season with iron solid knowledge that no matter what, I would not for BIden. Well, like others, a touch of today's accumulating disasters, i have softened. And I share the anger and bitterness as both Warren and Sanders face the reality of the domination of the democrats machine. With my anger still very live, I think it is time to turn away from considering the sh*t we are being handed and toward finding answers to the question "What are we going to do about it?" On the optimistic side we can organize to make sure that people will get to vote and the votes will all be counted. SO THEN the question - as we wonder what we are going to do with Their candidate masquerading as OUR president. And the answer is - we the people are going to rise up and make him give us a fair and just society and fight the forces for our planet extinction.
Now lets get to that job.
Claire O'Connor
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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"Ms. Ocasio-Cortez made clear that she intended to support the Democratic nominee, but said his current overtures to progressives must go further. She made a distinction between supporting Mr. Biden in November and offering a full-throated endorsement of his campaign. Where she lands, she said, is up to him."
Zvi Baranoff
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
Re: Joe Biden Needs to Start Acting Like a Presidential Candidate
1st step let Trump be Trump. 2nd Trump will beat Trump. 3rd go out vote for best Biden.
Radames Ortiz Ortiz
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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This would be nice, wouldn't it? I'm not holding my breath though.
Clare Max
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
Re: What Mrs America Gets Right and What It Gets Wrong About 70s Feminism
(posting on Portside Culture)
"Chisholm is portrayed not as the one-dimensional martyr that feminist history so often makes her, but as an earnest, principled advocate who suffers deep pain at the racist and sexist determination of those around her to underestimate and overlook her talents." Must see!
Sonia Collins
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
Revolutionary Earth Day Greeting from Italy (video)
Watch/Listen herehttps://youtu.be/lCiyUxtFf1Y
Re: How China Broke the Chain of Infection
Nice to see this on Portside. What I particularly liked about this piece is the attention to the community volunteers and the grassroots implementation of the patriotic health campaign. I live in a complex of six thirty story towers on Guangba road in Wuhan, those volunteers figured out work arounds for all sorts of mundane problems I had over the ten weeks of the lockdown as well as assisting all of us residents stay healthy and well fed.
Steve in Wuhan
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"In the World Health Organization's February report after a visit to China, the team members wrote, "In the face of a previously unknown virus, China has rolled out perhaps the most ambitious, agile and aggressive disease containment effort in history.""
And what did we do? Trump ignored it all for a month and a half. Then congress give more money to the rich.
Dale Jacobson
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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"In the face of a previously unknown virus, China has rolled out perhaps the most ambitious, agile and aggressive disease containment effort in history."
Philip Specht
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
Re: The Crime of the Century: Remembering Sacco and Vanzetti 100 Years Later
(posting on Portside Labor)
Yes, to be followed by the judicial murder of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg.
Joseph Kaye
Re: Dorothy Day's Radical Faith
(posting on Portside Culture)
And a Saint she should be!!
Pat Byrne
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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An American Saint!
Marcel Rivera
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
Poster of the Week - 50th Anniversary of Earth Day (Center for the Study of Political Graphics)
Micah Bazant
Grassroots Global Justice Alliance
Digital print, 2015
Berkeley, CA 45974
Yesterday was the 50th anniversary of Earth Day.
The first Earth Day was in response to a major oil spill off the coast of Santa Barbara, CA. It was the largest oil spill in United States waters at the time, and now ranks third after the 2010 Deepwater Horizon and 1989 Exxon Valdez spills.
50 years later we are dealing with another disaster. As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to spread, killing tens of thousands around the world, it reveals the criminally inadequate responses by neoliberal governments--with the U.S taking pride of place.
The poster’s message, "System Change, Not Climate Change” has never been more urgent.
CSPG’s Poster of the Week was produced for the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP21), held in Paris.
To see more posters on the environment, visit CSPG’s online exhibition, available in both English and Spanish:
English: “Too Hot to Handle: Posters on Climate Change, Pollution &
Environmental Justice.” Click here to see the exhibition.
Spanish: Carteles Sobre el Cambio Climático Contaminación y Justica
Click here to see the exhibition. Haga clic aquí para ver la exposición.
Center for the Study of Political Graphics
3916 Sepulveda Blvd, Suite 103
Culver City, CA 90230
cspg@politicalgraphics.org
The America We Need - Special The New York Times Magazine
The pandemic has shown Americans how far apart they are. But out of this crisis there's a chance to build a better nation.
The America We Need
By The Editorial Board
April 9, 2020
The New York Times
From some of its darkest hours, the United States has emerged stronger and more resilient.
Between May and July 1862, even as Confederate victories in Virginia raised doubts about the future of the Union, Congress and President Abraham Lincoln kept their eyes on the horizon, enacting three landmark laws that shaped the nation's next chapter: The Homestead Act allowed Western settlers to claim 160 acres of public land apiece; the Morrill Act provided land grants for states to fund universities; and the Pacific Railway Act underwrote the transcontinental railroad.
Nearly 75 years later, in the depths of the Great Depression, with jobs in short supply and many Americans reduced to waiting in bread lines, President Franklin Roosevelt proved similarly farsighted. He concluded the best way to revive and sustain prosperity was not merely to pump money into the economy but to rewrite the rules of the marketplace. "Liberty," Roosevelt said at the Democratic Party's convention in 1936, "requires opportunity to make a living - a living decent according to the standard of the time, a living which gives man not only enough to live by, but something to live for." His administration, working with Congress, enshrined the right of workers to bargain collectively, imposed strict rules and regulators on the financial industry, and created Social Security to provide pensions for the elderly and disabled.
The coronavirus pandemic has laid bare once again the incomplete nature of the American project - the great distance between the realities of life and death in the United States and the values enunciated in its founding documents.
Over the past half century, the fabric of American democracy has been stretched thin. The nation has countenanced debilitating decay in its public institutions and a concentration of economic power not seen since the 1920s. While many Americans live without financial security or opportunity, a relative handful of families holds much of the nation’s wealth. Over the past decade, the wealth of the top 1 percent of households has surpassed the combined wealth of the bottom 80 percent.
The present crisis has revealed the United States as a nation in which professional basketball players could be rapidly tested for the coronavirus but health care workers were turned away; in which the affluent could retreat to the safety of second homes, relying on workers who can’t take paid sick leave to deliver food; in which children in lower-income households struggle to connect to the digital classrooms where their school lessons are now supposed to be delivered.
It is a nation in which local officials issuing stay-at-home orders must reckon with the cruel irony that hundreds of thousands of Americans do not have homes. Lacking private places, they must sleep in public spaces. Las Vegas painted rectangles on an asphalt parking lot to remind homeless residents to sleep six feet apart — an act that might as well have been a grim piece of performance art titled “The Least We Can Do.”
It is a nation in which enduring racial inequalities, in wealth and in health, are reflected in the pandemic’s death toll. In Michigan, where the coronavirus hit early and hard, African-Americans make up just 14 percent of the state’s population but 40 percent of the dead. Jason Hargrove, who kept driving a Detroit city bus as the virus spread, posted a Facebook video on March 21 complaining about a female passenger who coughed without covering her mouth. He said he had to keep working, to care for his family. In the video, he told his wife he’d take off his clothes in the front hall when he got home and get right in the shower, so that she stayed safe. Less than two weeks later, he was dead.
Read full editorial here