Tidbits – Nov. 14 – Reader Comments: Trump 2.0; What Next?; Where To Begin?; Texas Victories; What the Hell Happened? How – Why Did Working Class and Union Members Vote? Virtual Event; Strategy for Labor: Panel Discussion in Honor of Merle Ratner

Reader Comments: Trump 2.0; What Next?; Where Do We Begin?; Texas Victories; What The Hell Happened? How - And Why Did Working Class and Union Members Vote? -- Virtual Event; Strategy for Labor: Panel Discussion in Honor of Merle Ratner; Cartoons;

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Tidbits - Reader Comments, Resources, Announcements, AND cartoons - Nov.14, 2024,Portside

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Re: Democrats Deserted Working Poor: Bishop William Barber on Healthcare, Living Wages, Voting Rights
 

We cannot allow people to suggest that if you focus on this issue [of poverty], that it’s a far-left issue. It’s an American issue. It’s a moral issue. The level of poverty and low wages in this country is a violation of our claim of our Constitution to establish justice and promote the general welfare. It is disgusting and damnable that we’ve not had a full-on dealing with this issue in the media, in the halls of Congress and in our election. Not one presidential candidate was asked at any of the two debates that were held, “Where would you — do you stand on the issue of poverty and low wages? And what are your plans to address it? And how will you lead this country?” For issues that affect nearly 50% of the population. We’ve got to face this issue.

Francisco Gonzalez
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

 

Re: Democrats Abandoned the Working Class: Robin D.G. Kelley on Trump’s Win & Need for Class Solidarity
 

If you like this article, please sign up for Snapshot, Portside's daily summary.

(One summary e-mail a day, you can change anytime, and Portside is always free.)

We speak with historian Robin D. G. Kelley about the roots of Donald Trump’s election victory and the decline of Democratic support among many of the party’s traditional constituencies.

Jennifer Nouri
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

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Baloney. What did trump ever do for the working class?

Deborah R Kingery
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

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Deborah, he managed to convince them that voting for him was a better idea than voting for Democrats. We must try to understand how he was able to do that.

Mary-Alice Strom
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

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This is an EXCELLENT read:

    How to root out Trumpism
    What happened and what must be done

    Robert Reich
    Nov 11, 2024

Deborah R Kingery
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

 

Re: Democrats Must Choose: The Elites or the Working Class 
 

Oh Bernie,

If only we had YOU for our president!

Why don't Democrats make  their own Project 2025 using your points?

And THEN get it out there to the public instead of keeping it within our increasingly small bubble? 
CA

Carol Allan

 

Mirror  --  Cartoon by Rob Rogers

 

I will admit that I live in a bit of a bubble. I was naive enough to think that most of my fellow citizens believed in freedom and democracy. Apparently, I was wrong. They voted for a convicted felon, sexual abuser and soon-to-be dictator who plans to use the military against U.S. citizens and put his enemies in jail. Is this really who we are now? I guess it is.

Rob Rogers
November 8, 2024
TinyView

 

Re: How We Can Defend Ourselves in the New Trump Era
 

I enjoyed the interview of Mr. Fletcher by Dave Zirin

I'm curious: who did each of them vote for in the recent Presidential election?

Thanks

Paul Leavin

 

Re: How Trump Avoided the Mainstream Media — and Won the Presidency
 

"To court voters, Trump leaned heavily into the fragmented reality of media. He ditched traditional TV interviews, even backing out of an appearance on CBS’s “60 Minutes,“ and instead relied on podcasts and influencers to speak to voters who don’t tune in to legacy news outlets. That follows where audiences have gone — no longer do a handful of broadcast networks and newspapers set the agenda on news and information."

Jim Stone
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

 

Re: Media Blame Left for Trump Victory—Rather Than Their Own Fear-Based Business Model
 

Kamala Harris did not run as a progressive, either in terms of economic policy or identity politics. But to a corporate media that largely complemented, rather than countered, Trump’s fear-based narratives on immigrants, trans people and crime, blaming the left is infinitely more appealing than recognizing their own culpability.

Chuck Dineen
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

 

Trump's Cabinet  --  Cartoon by Dr. James MacLeod

 

Dr. James MacLeod
November 12, 2024
MacLeodCartoons

 

Kristi Noem  --  Cartoon by Nick Anderson

 


 

I will forever associate Gov. Kristi Noem with her own admission that she shot her dog Cricket to illustrate her willingness to do anything 'difficult, messy and ugly' if it simply needs to be done.' I'm sure she'll never live it down. Although in today's ultra-macho GOP culture, they will probably love her for it.

Nick Anderson
November 13, 2024
Pen Strokes

 

Re: Now What for Public Health?
 

RFK jr is a murderer not telling people to get vaccinated. No human innovation has saved more lives than vaccines. Nothing I hate more than ambivalence in the face of medical marvels. Go back to the stone ages

Benjamin Amos Gerber
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

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We need to be ready for a new world. RFK Jr. will have more influence, with his cast of characters who have a history of opposing evidence-based public health practice.

Brian A. Hayes
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

 

Re: US House Urged To Stop Bill Enabling Trump To Attack Nonprofits
 

This is what they do Putin's Russia. All they have to do to take away Constitutional rights and destroy an organization, religion or person is to label them as extremists and therefore a danger to homeland security. Ask the Jehovah’s Witnesses who were labeled extremists and banned from the country, even though "religious freedom" is granted in the Russian constitution, and all the LGBTQ+ organizations and support groups also labeled extremist! The extremist amendment allows civil rights to be revoked even when Constitutionally guaranteed. This WILL happen here in Trump's Russia 2.0!

Philip Bray
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

 

Grief  --  Cartoon by Clay Bennett

 

Clay Bennett
November 12, 2024
Chattanooga Times Free Press

 

Re: Most Major Jewish Organizations Rush To Toast Trump, Some Say They Are ‘Terrified’
 

World Jewish Congress president called Trump a 'proven ally', while the ADL's CEO said he looked forward to working with Trump and all of Tuesday night's winner. However, not everyone struck a celebratory tone.

Promising "to speak truth to power," Rabbi Rick Jacobs, president of the Union for Reform Judaism – the largest Jewish denomination in the United States added: "The strength of our movement has always been in the community that we are, standing alongside each other in moments of joy and moments of challenge. We will care for 'the orphan, the widow, and the stranger.' We will remain firm in our values and bring them to bear in the public square."

 Amy Spitalnick, CEO of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, expressed even deeper concerns about Trump's victory. "This outcome is nothing short of terrifying for so many communities who have been consistently threatened and demonized by his campaign," she wrote in a statement.

"President Trump's embrace of anti-democratic, antisemitic, xenophobic and racist conspiracy theories and tropes seeks to pit communities against one another and sow distrust in our democratic institutions, while making all of us less safe. These increasingly normalized, hate-fueled conspiracy theories go hand-in-hand with the dehumanizing and dangerous agenda outlined by the Trump campaign and Project 2025.

Mary-Alice Strom
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

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so unfair to the tradition of the Jewish Left and progressives. But the Major Jewish Organizations were always those of the wealthy and elite.

Paul Buhle
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

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They were always on the side of apartheid, ethnic cleansing, and Jewish supremacy. Now they're explicitly on the side of genocide and fascism.

Alan Hart
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

 

Re: Kamala Harris Is Not Doing Well With Union Voters
 

Yep, if real wages fall, you expect the government to win? And still many leftists expect the Democratic Party to offer a real alternative.

Dan Morgan
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

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Considering how pro-union Biden has been relative to other presidents, this headline reads like nonsense.

Joseph Persico
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

 

Re: Labor Movement Must Unite Working Class

(Posting on Portside Labor)
 

We can start by insuring that the future generation has an understanding and appreciation for the mission and role of the American Labor movement. Support and promote the mission of the American Labor Studies Center  (www.labor-studies.org) to promote the teaching and learning about the labor movement in K-12 schools nationwide.

Paul F. Cole

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Had Harris campaigned vigorously on a platform of reining in corporate power, investing in green jobs, and providing universal healthcare, she would have given working people a more compelling reason to vote for her than simply opposing Trump.

David Johnson
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

 

Immigrants Contributed Billions

 

 

Americans for Refugees & Immigrants

 

Re: When a Multi-Racial Democracy Was Violently Overthrown in America
 

“In 1935, when fascism was rising globally, Sinclair Lewis wrote It Can’t Happen Here, a novel warning Americans against homegrown threats of dictatorship. 

Now, on the heels of a presidential race billed as an existential struggle between freedom and authoritarianism, PBS is premiering a new documentary film that reminds viewers that not only could autocracy happen here, but that it once did. American Coup: Wilmington 1898, by award-winning filmmakers Brad Lichtenstein and Yoruba Richen, chronicles the overthrow of a democratically elected government in the land of the free.”

“On November 10, a white mob burned the offices and the printing press of The Daily Record, and Manly fled Wilmington. Between forty and sixty Black people were massacred and white supremacists took over the municipal government. American Coup grippingly reconstructs the terrifying tale. Shown in the documentary are clips from D.W. Griffith’s 1915 racist epic The Birth of a Nation with UCLA professor Robin D.G. Kelley calling it a “cinematic monumental version of Wilmington.”

Van Caldwell
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

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American Coup: Wilmington 1898 premieres Tuesday, November 12, 2024, on ”American Experience” on PBS television, PBS.org and the PBS App.

Carolyn Toll Oppenheim
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

 

Re: Global Fury After State Dept Claims Israel Not Violating US Law by Blocking Gaza Aid
 

"This will be the Biden administration's legacy: unconditional support for war crimes and complicity in genocide," said one group

Sue Rouda
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

 

Re: Contesting the Idea of Progress: Labor’s AI Challenge

(Posting on Portside Labor)
 

Contemporary use of the term AI mystifies the technology.  This effect is not accidental. It serves the interests of capital.

Lorraine Suzuki
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

 

It Did Happen Here  --  Cartoon and Commentary by Jen Sorensen

 

    

I actually think Harris ran a good campaign. I give her credit for choosing a solid progressive in Tim Walz. This was a largely pro-labor, pro-union administration, not that most people know it.

This election was utter madness. If you want to point fingers, point them at democracy’s most powerful saboteurs:  the oligarchs who destroyed reality through deranged media, and those who carried water for them. Also, misogyny didn’t help. 

(And by “we,” I mean the nation as a whole blew it — not the people who worked hard to prevent this from happening.)

For my weekly newsletter with background on each cartoon, please consider joining the Sorensen Subscription Service! Also on Patreon.

  

Jen Sorensen
November 13, 2024
jensorensen.com
 

This strip from 2004 conveys the world's shock when George W. Bush won:
 

[Jen Sorensen’s comics and illustrations have appeared in the The Nation, NPR.org, Ms. Magazine, The Progressive, Politico,  Daily Kos, Fusion, The Nib, AlterNet, Truthout, MAD, Nickelodeon, The Los Angeles Times, The Austin Chronicle, The Village Voice, In These Times, The Book of Jezebel, and dozens of other publications around the country. She has created commissioned long-form comics for the ACLU, NPR, Kaiser Health News, The Oregonian, and other clients.

Jen serves on the National Advisory Council of the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum at Ohio State University. She was President of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists in 2021.

Jen grew up in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, and went on to attend the University of Virginia, where she studied cultural anthropology and drew cartoons for college publications. She started her weekly strip in 1998, which quickly became political as the 2000 election and 9/11 dominated the national conversation.]

 

Texas Victories - Dallas, McAllen, Amarillo, Lockhart and Bastrop

 

 

Ground Game Texas, and their partners won local ballot initiatives in places where we otherwise lost badly like the Rio Grande Valley and Amarillo. 

Here's a note from Catina Voellinger, Ground Game Texas' director:

Over the past few years, our team at Ground Game Texas has built something transformative through organizing. We bring new people into the fold, show up in places often overlooked, and prove that when we commit to this work, we make real progress. Although it's a bittersweet victory amidst the painful losses throughout the state and country, on Tuesday Ground Game won every election we ran or supported, from Dallas to McAllen to Amarillo. These victories are a testament to the strength of our communities and the work we're doing together.
 

  • Dallas, Proposition R, to decriminalize misdemeanor marijuana possession, passed with 67%.  This change will address deep racial disparities in enforcement–last year, Black individuals made up 69% of low-level marijuana arrests in Dallas, despite being only 24% of the population.
     
  • McAllen, both of our pro-democracy initiatives passed. Proposition A, to adopt campaign contribution limits, won with 56%. Proposition B, grants voters the direct democracy powers of initiative, referendum, and recall, passed with 67%. This was a hard-fought battle, centered around the people and their desire to hold local politicians accountable.
     
  • Amarillo, we supported a terrific grassroots organization, the Amarillo Reproductive Freedom Alliance. ARFA hired Ground Game to manage the campaign against Proposition A, an anti-abortion, “sanctuary city for the unborn” ordinance. Remarkably, we were able to defeat the measure by 18% in one of the deepest conservative cities.
     
  • Lockhart, Proposition A, to decriminalize misdemeanor marijuana possession, passed with 68%. Lockhart is a growing community that believes in doing right by their neighbors. This charm became the pulse of our campaign, even when established forces made organizing difficult.
     
  • Bastrop, Proposition M, to decriminalize misdemeanor marijuana possession, passed with 70%. Like Lockhart, Bastrop is growing and the community’s commitment to fairness prevailed overwhelming. This victory is just the continuation of ongoing work by local organizers.

Ground Game's theory of change has always been to listen to communities and organize around the issues that matter to them. These victories prove that theory is sound. We don’t take these successes for granted—instead, we use them as fuel to keep working together, to inspire one another, and to build on the progress we've made, juntos.

Ground Game Texas  
PO Box 383
Manchaca, TX 78652-9998
info@groundgametexas.org

 

What The Hell Happened? How - And Why Did Working Class and Union Members Vote?  --  Virtual Event  --  November 25  (Third Act Union)

 

Monday, November 25  --  7:00 PM

What Role Did Class Play In This Election?– Join us for a conversation with former AFL-CIO Political Director Steve Rosenthal on November 25, 2024 at 7:00 pm EST.

Join us for this two part forum on the role of unions and working class voters in the 2024 election.
  
Part 1 on November 25th will analyze the issues important to working class voters and how the campaigns addressed, or failed to address those issues.
  
Part 2 in January will include a panel discussion on next steps to engage working class and unionized workers, post election. 

Click Here to Register

 

A Strategy for Labor: A Panel Discussion in Honor of Merle Ratner  --  New York  --  December 12  (The CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies)

 

Please join us on December 12 for a panel discussion in honor of Merle Ratner, featuring Bill Fletcher Jr, Virgilio O Aran and Bhairavi Desai. The event will take place at the The CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies as well as via a zoom link. https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZclce6rpjwpGNeVKW1UjOX6ZGzEWc3ORPV8#/registration

December 12  -- 6:00 - 8:00 PM

The CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies 
25 West 43rd Street
18th FL
New York, NY