Democrats

Every Day is Labor Day

/ Brienna Parsons / Leave a comment

“Nothing binds you except your thoughts; nothing limits you except your fear; and nothing controls you except your beliefs.”

— Marianne Williamson

The big 1-2-5.

That’s right, 125 years ago, 1894, Labor Day was marked on mental calendars of the working class for the first time. Class consciousness has been beaten out of us since then however, so if you’re unfamiliar with the international struggle, this is a refresh.

Fascism doesn’t take kindly to freedom. A controllable society, one built on hierarchies, the one we live in, has been keeping its fascist face behind a mask. The capitalist class, and their war of division and hate, has been called out before by Marianne Williamson, an author, activist, public speaker, and Democratic candidate for President.

Bread & Roses

You’ll see it in many places. It comes from a rich socialist history. Bread for the fruits of our labor and roses for the peace to enjoy it. Today, we have neither.

“A New Jersey town was forced to cancel its Labor Day parade Monday after multiple small explosive devices were found near the route where Gov. Phil Murphy was set to march, officials said.”

New York Daily News, Sept. 2, 2019.

“The images of children crying after their parents were arrested in a massive immigration raid in Mississippi revived a longstanding complaint: Unauthorized workers are jailed or deported, while the managers and business owners who profit from their labor often go unprosecuted.”

AP, Aug. 14, 2019.

“There’s a very common lie… the lies they scare in you… the lies they use to control you…”

— Camp Cope, Jet Fuel Can’t Melt Steal Beams

Not Without Struggle

Biden Is Betting on Unions. They Might Bet on Someone Else.

“This Labor Day weekend, thousands of Muslim Americans descended on Houston, Texas, for the annual three-day Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) convention. This year’s ISNACON featured many well-known figures, such as Trevor Noah, who shared his story of growing up in South Africa and joked about the ups and downs of “The Daily Show.”

Noah wasn’t the only draw. Well-known Muslim Americans, including Democratic Rep. Rashida Tlaib and Women’s March organizer Linda Sarsour, spoke to large crowds. The most popular person, however, was a 77-year-old Jewish man born and bred in Brooklyn. I’m speaking of 2020 presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders, of course. While Noah, Tlaib and Sarsour attracted the attention of many, Sanders packed the venue that held nearly 7,000 — receiving several standing ovations.”

Dean Obeillah, CNN | Opinion

Earlier this year, Democratic candidate for President, Senator, and activist, Bernie Sanders announced his inspiration to see the progress of FDR’s New Deal continued today. After a rocky and violent three years of an unapologetic President — of a country — landlord, mob Don, con artist, white nationalist, misogynist, and fascist.

Labor is “the last line of defense,” Sanders said as he accepted his first major labor union endorsement. Following several other endorsements this one is mentionable for its size and name recognition. Especially today.

Mother Jones

“Bankruptcy exposes the economic vulnerability and insecurity of middle class women.”

— Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA)

Women’s labor has a noticeable history, not just in the forming of revolutions in France or Russia, but in the successful organizing of labor. From the International Ladies Garment Workers Union, to Lucy Parsons, let’s embrace women 100 years after winning the vote and 125 years to today: Labor Day.

That’s why women have been leading this movement from airlines to schools to factories. Women have been speaking up. So when you celebrate Labor Day every day, celebrate with unionized women close to you.

“If they want to hang me, let them. And on the scaffold I will shout Freedom for the working class!”

— Mary Harris “Mother” Jones

#ACAB

“If there is going to be class warfare in this country, it’s about time the working class won that war.”

— Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT)

Following law as a tool to protect property, and estate, the mercantilism of earlier capitalism is revived in the class warfare of today. The police enforce the law; the law of property becomes protected by force. Prisons become the place where those unwilling to labor, or those who threaten property, if they must remain alive, are kept. Especially following slavery, sheriffs became the tool for enforcing property laws, while the slave-catching role falls onto the average officer.

This is a part of the struggle. A part of the class struggle. Increasingly militant and militarized, this spells class war. Why haven’t unions brought roses to this front in the war for bread?

Progress

There’s a lot of ground to cover for making up for labor rights and frankly other basic and human rights that have been shorted out by corporate corruption of government and policy. For trans folx in the United States we see this, for migrants this is most prevalent to mind right now, but there is still quite a lot blocking progress for everyone equally under the law which historically has affected Black communities across the country not only first, but worst.

Not to say there isn’t progress, there is. It’s just hard-fought. Slowly we’ll see a major change in labor in the United States, and I don’t mean automation.

Worker power is on the rise. Different industries have had more successes unionizing or organizing, from those in media, education, retail such as Amazon, Walmart, and fast food, the new and booming marijuana industry. Part of that power is coming from a younger generation, and also one which is less familiar with unions due to their nationwide victimhood in the past hundred years.

“So much of what we take for granted each and every day – the 40-hour workweek, weekends off, a minimum wage – is the result of the blood, sweat, tears, and in some cases even lives of those who fought to give American workers a better life.

If labor unions weren’t so uniquely effective, the coordinated, heavily-financed campaign to decimate them wouldn’t exist. Unfortunately, the campaign is working – union membership is less than half of what it was 40 years ago. Recent decisions from the Supreme Court’s right-wing majority, such as Janus v. AFSCME last year, threaten to worsen this trend.

It’s no surprise that income inequality has increased dramatically over the same period.

With labor battles still taking place all over our nation – such as the #RedforEd movement to earn higher wages for teachers across the country – I hope you’ll take a moment this Labor Day to reflect on how far we’ve come and how far we still have to go.”

— Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA)

Americans Are Starting to Love Unions Again

Even progressive political campaigns for Sanders, Warren, Booker, and Castro, are unionizing. It’s not only good for the working class that workers the country over unionize, but great for the capitalist class. If collectives negotiate wins for the working class, there’s no reason for capitalists, in and out of government, to be concerned of an imminent general strike.

Ironically, a nationwide Walmart strike would likely be just as fatal to the capitalist engine against the working poor and that’s a single corporation. For instance, earlier strikes over Walmart’s gun sales have recently proved fruitful, maybe even pressuring one of the country’s other largest retailers to act as well, Kroger. Dick’s Sporting Goods also followed suit.

Sanders is ahead of the curve on this issue. He’s been speaking out for unions before he ever reached Congress, so it comes as no surprise that he has a powerful Workplace Democracy Plan. Or as Vox put it, Unions for All, and a campaign that Labor 411 called “a rapid action tool to support striking workers.”

His plans to empower the press, the working class, and every student and healthcare professional are revolutionary. Yet, regardless of support from workers’-revolution-minded organizations such as the Democratic Socialists of America, he’s the candidate everyone takes seriously when he says “Not Me. Us.“

“In Times of Tragedy, Labor Steps Up”

Inspired by Our Revolution, a Movement for Change: Justice Democrats

/ Brienna Parsons / Leave a comment

“They’re talking about us. We’re endorsing a slate of candidates who will usher in a new progressive era in Congress.
But not everyone is happy about our work. According to Bloomberg, our work is giving Nancy Pelosi a ‘headache’ because we’re unapologetically taking on the establishment.
We have an easy way she can get rid of that headache — get out of the way of policies like Medicare for All, a Green New Deal, and an end to mass incarceration and deportation.”

Policies, solutions to issues, I’ll emphasize here, are extremely popular. Especially holistic plans that take on big issues, such as the Green New Deal and Medicare for All. Now if more individuals, journalists and news organizations foremost, spread the details of these plans in an illustrative way.

Or dropped a link.

“Right now the top of the Democratic Party is still disproportionately wealthier, whiter, and more male than the base of our party. But together we’re going to change that and elect a new generation of progressive leaders who reflect our party and country.

Nancy Pelosi and the DCCC have their corporate donors to fall back on for huge checks. We don’t. We rely on your grassroots support to fund our work of taking on corporate Democrats like Henry Cuellar and Dan Lipinski that the DCCC is trying to protect.“

“In 2018, we sent a powerful message: no out-of-touch incumbent is safe from our movement. Now, it’s time to fulfill that promise.”

The Squad. You recognize them, right? Ayanna Pressley, Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, and, of course most recognizably: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. That was the Justice Democrats, and they want to do it again.

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Can’t pass this by…

/ Brienna Parsons / Leave a comment

Climate change has been here for a while now kids. There’s no doubt that each state and municipality has a Bo role to play. No mistake further, representatives to the federal government in Washington, D.C. have an important position to play as leaders.

New senator from Arizona’s 9th District, Kyrsten Sinema, this is your article.

This one is for that beautifully-open, open-borders, bisexual Democratic candidate that won her 2018 midterm election bid. This is for that progressive candidate Arizonans, and especially the young ones, were hoping for. The candidate I playfully refer to as Felicity Smoak, one of my greatest non-super, super-hero, fictional TV idols.

This one is for the woman that students voted for, even when they were burnt out, drowning in debt, and feeling the foreboding fear of the future. A vote made to conquer that fear. That fear which is, I’ll remind you, in part, due to how we have voted, legislated, communicated, and degradated the planet through poor stewardship, in the past and to this day.

There’s a lot of work to do and students, young people, Millennials, adults, the middle-aged, and the elderly, everyone, voted for you. They saw you as that rock. Those people that voted for you put their belief and hope in your hands assuming that those hands would go to the people’s work.

On March 26, 2019, on one of the most important votes in your career, you stepped away from those progressives that we’re leaning on you. They’ve fallen on their faces, as you may, hopefully, also feel you’ve done. They counted on you, to at the very least, vote present in the face if this sham of a vote.

You didn’t though. Here’s what you did do, from the Senate floor:

“At 4:17pm, the Senate began a 15 minute roll call vote on the motion to invoke cloture [procedure to end debate and move to vote] on the motion to proceed to S.J.Res.8, recognizing the duty of the Federal Government to create a Green New Deal.”

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell

(R-KY) set up this vote in order to tie up hands in a process of debate. I saw this happen in student association government in New York.

Let me say that another way, and to be clear kids are a lot more intuitively intelligent than adults in my opinion, but again: I saw the same tactics used by children when the conversation was about student identification modification for adult transgender students.

But the vote was begun in the chamber minutes to 4:20, and this was the outcome from the 53 Republicans, 45 Democrats, and 2 Independents:

Yays: 0 – Nays: 57. Most Democrats voted “Present” in order to avoid justifying the tactic. But that leaves 2 Democrats doesn’t it?

This is where this comes back to you Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ). Yourself, Doug Jones (D-AL), Joe Manchin (D-WV), and, Independent from Maine, Angus King, voted Nay. As in, there wasn’t enough debate regarding whose job it was to be the leader on this issue. That doesn’t sound like a leader.

That’s why you were elected though, Kyrsten. People saw you as leadership material on that level. They believed in what you’ve done and what you could do. Now there’s a lot of doubt surrounding that part of you.

On Tuesday, your constituents didn’t see you step up to the plate as a leader. They saw you sit down next to McSally (R-AZ) and vote Right beside her. Meanwhile, those progressives that saw hope in you are looking to real leaders such as Bernie Sanders (I-VT), who voted “Present” with the Democrats, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), spending every chance she can get, getting that message across:

This isn’t about who takes charge on this issue. We all are responsible. We just expect more responsibility from our leadership as well, especially those of us who feel the impetus is upon us.

Those are the people that voted for you. Don’t let this become a habit, because in today’s political climate, ain’t nobody got time for that lack of leadership and gumption.

I leave you with the facts:

This one comes from the state that I most recently called home, Boulder, CO, and should dispel any issues you have with the climate debate as it appears in media coverage.

And here’s just climate news.

Plus, if you don’t already, you should read reports from the UN on the subject.

Besides, if it isn’t the federal government job, whose is it Kyrsten?

NOAA (2006)?

University of Arizona?

Solely the UN?

Your constituents have questions. And some words:

“To me, being anti-Green Deal isn’t any different than being pro-extinction of the humankind.” — Juan Mendez, March 15, 2019. AZCentral.

— To the care of Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ).

The Big Progressive Wins on Election Night, Midterms 2018

/ Brienna Parsons / 2 Comments

Democrats were looking forward to a Blue Wave. Progressives were hoping for progressive candidates. Right-of-center? A redder political map.

Well, we can delve into that later on, but here’s what we got for the most part last night.

The Big Progressive Wins

First, a list. Next what we can expect policy-wise from the new Democratic U.S. House of Representatives.

  1. Candidates outside the status quo:
    1. Jared Polis (D-CO) – the country’s first openly gay Governor
    2. Sharice Davids (D-KS) – the country’s first Native American, openly gay Congresswoman
    3. Deb Haaland (D-NM) – the country’s second Native American Congresswoman
    4. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) – the country’s first Somali-American, Muslim Congresswoman, a Somali refugee
    5. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) – the country’s second Muslim Congresswoman
    6. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) – the country’s youngest Congresswoman, at 29 years old
    7. Abby Finkenauer (D-IA) – the country’s second youngest Congresswoman, also 29
    8. Young Kim (R-CA) – the countries first Korean-American Congresswoman
    9. Ayanna Pressley (D-MA) – Massachusetts’ first black Congresswoman
    10. Janet Mills (D-ME) – Maine’s first woman Governor
    11. Letitia James (D-NY) – New York’s first black woman Attorney General
  2. Progressive ballot measures that passed*:
    1. San Francisco, CA – raised taxes on big corporations to fund homeless services
    2. Florida – returns voting rights to over a million people that served time for felony charges
    3. Louisiana – requiring felony convictions to have a unanimous jury conviction ruling
    4. Massachusetts – an affirming transgender bathroom anti-discrimination protection
    5. New Hampshire – affirms freedom from governmental intrusion in private or personal information
    6. Missouri – legalizing medical marijuana.
    7. Michigan –
      1. confirming automatic & Election Day registration
      2. confirming an independent redistricting commission
      3. And last but pot least — had to. legalizes recreational marijuana. Making Michigan the tenth state to do so. The others? Alaska, Washington, Oregon, California, Nevada, Colorado, Maine, Vermont, and Massachusetts.

*Not a complete list

Although there were a lot of wins, there are some big losses to note before we move on. Before we touch on the bad though, let’s do a quick “good wrap.”

Kim Davis (R-KY), lost her election. She was the county clerk who refused to sign marriage licenses for same-sex couples. The Neo-Nazi GOP candidate renounced by his party lost to Illinois Democrats.

This is where the positives end here. In races across the country, Republicans made wins, losses for progressives. Electing racists wasn’t their only win on election night. In Alabama, voters stripped rights from pregnant people. They gave those full legal rights to fertilized eggs, instead. Republicans went so far as electing to Congress Steve King (R-IA), denounced by his party as a Nazi.

Moving forward, nonetheless.

What to Expect from the new Democratic U.S. House of Representatives

Eight (8) years since the last time Democrats controlled the House, there’s a new image for Congress. A woman’s image. Over 100 women**, are new and returning to the House of Representatives. About one quarter (1/4) of the 435 seats. These are the Policy Positions shared by those women listed above, as per Vote Smart:

  1. Healthcare to cover pre-existing conditions and protecting the ACA
  2. Pro-choice rights
  3. To balance the budget, income taxes rising, particularly for the wealthy and top 1%
  4. Campaign finance reform
  5. Increasing federal spending to spur economic growth, not cutting corporate taxes
  6. Ensuring education has proper federal standards
  7. Government funding for renewable energy
  8. The federal regulation of greenhouse gas emissions
  9. Gun control legislation
  10. Pushing back against “The Wall.” Protecting immigrants and ensuring asylum and an easier path to citizenship
  11. legalizing recreational marijuana use

**A similar look at the Top Priorities of these women at a later date.

***Rashida Tlaib offered the most to Vote Smart. She made very clear her political stances and postions.

**** Notable mention. Kate Brown (D-OR) – the countries first openly bisexual governor is re-elected in Oregon.

4 Parts US Compromise for Dreamers

/ Brienna Parsons / Leave a comment

“By the time the Tuesday discussions came to a close, lawmakers had agreed to focus on a narrow plan that includes four main components: a permanent solution for DACA recipients, border security and reforms to the diversity-visa lottery program and what the President calls “chain-migration,” or when immigrants sponsor relatives to join them in the U.S.”

via Congress May Be Moving Closer to a Compromise on Dreamers — TIME

NY Sen. Schumer Calls for Fentanyl Screening

/ Brienna Parsons / Leave a comment

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork/AP) — Senate Minority leader Chuck Schumer urged President Donald Trump to sign legislation that would allow U.S. Customs and Border Protection to buy portable screening equipment to detect the powerful opioid fentanyl before it enters the United States. Schumer said Sunday that the bill that passed both houses of Congress last year…

via Sen. Schumer Urges Trump To Sign Fentanyl-Screening Bill — CBS New York