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Tidbits - May 24, 2018 - Reader Comments: Thoughts and Prayers Don't Work; Kelly Clarkson Speaks Out; Working Families Party; PA Machine Candidates Defeated; Mideast War Danger; Junot Diaz; Palestine; Mapping The Resistance; more...

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Reader Comments: Thoughts and Prayers Don't Work; Kelly Clarkson Speaks Out; Junot Diaz, Working Families Party; PA Machine Candidates Defeated; Mideast War Danger; Korean War History; Palestine; Mapping The Resistance: Insurgence and Polarization; Memorial Day, more...

Working Families Party at a Crossroads

Michael Kinnucan The Indypendent
New York’s sort-of-third party has won some big victories in the past two decades but its future is uncertain after defying Andrew Cuomo and his labor allies to endorse Cynthia Nixon. This Saturday - May 19 - the Working Families State Convention is in Harlem.

The End of the U.S. Empire Can Be a New Beginning for Our Democracy

Daniel Cantor and Barbara Dudley The Nation
Only by understanding how Trump fits within our recent history will the left be able to figure out where we go from here. We are once again at a moment of consequential political realignment. Both major parties are deeply divided. We need to engage in shaping the newly emerging parties. The Democrats may or may not move left; they, like the Republicans, may split.

Defeating `Trumpism' - An Opportunity to Push the Nation - and Dems - Forward

Steve London Clarion
How we vote on November 8 will be the first step in a long process of building a new economic and political order in New York State and in the United States. It is an opportunity to push the nation - and Dems - forward. It is important to vote the Working Families Party (WFP) line for several reasons. The WFP is an independent progressive political party that in New York State can run progressive candidates who are endorsed by both the WFP and the Democratic Party.

What's Next for Bernie Sanders's Grassroots Army?

D.D. Guttenplan The Nation
We simply can't afford to throw away the energy, the idealism, the thirst for justice that the Sanders campaign has revealed and revived. In the long run, that probably matters even more than who sits in the Oval Office. For the Democrats, the road to reconciliation is not obscure. Sanders is right to rail at our rigged system - but if the Democrats win in November thanks in part to his ideas and his voters, he'll be positioned to do something about it.

The Pugnacious, Relentless Progressive Party That Wants to Remake America

Molly Ball The Atlantic
The Working Families Party has pushed the political debate to the left in the states where it's already active. Now-in the era of Occupy and Bernie Sanders-it's ready to take that fight nationwide. The WFP's agenda-frankly redistributionist and devoted to social equality-targets a class of Democratic elected officials who, in the view of many liberals, seem to listen more to their moneyed donors than to the left-wing rank and file.

Unprecedented Coalition Leads To Progressive Wins In Philadelphia

Isaiah J. Poole OurFuture.org
The win marks a major victory for the Pennsylvania Working Families Party, which endorsed Kenney. The endorsement lauded Kenney for his work on Philadelphia’s City Council “supporting efforts to raise wages, improving Philly’s schools, increasing access to housing, ending the discriminatory practices of the criminal justice system, and limiting corporate power in politics.”

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Court-Sanctioned Corruption and Plutocracy in America

Michael Hirsch The Indypendent
Successive High Court decisions have done more than enfranchise corporations at the expense of the rest of us. The same logic in the same cases now defines public corruption down: that a direct and palpable quid pro quo must be seen to operate. Absent that smoking gun, the financial elite has no limits on bankrolling campaigns whose candidates then vote their interests. To the nation's founders, that untrammeled influence was the essence of public corruption.
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