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Maurice Cunningham on the Rise and Fall of Moms for Liberty

By dianeravitch
December 21, 2023 //
5

Maurice Cunningham, a retired professor who is a specialist in dark money in education politics, surveys the meteoric rise and fall of the rightwing group Moms for Liberty in The Progressive. First, the recently formed organization gathered plenty of publicity as a fearsome force censoring books, accusing teachers of “indoctrinating” students, attacking anything in the schools that acknowledged the existence of gay students or families, and opposing teachers unions. The Moms launched with a big budget, more than anyone could gather at a bake sale. But came the school board elections of 2023, and their candidates took a shellacking. Recently came news that one of their prominent co-founders, Bridget Ziegler, was caught in a sex scandal—a threesome—and the organization was publicly humiliated.

Maurice Cunningham wonders how this checkered organization will survive.

He writes:

On June 30, 2023, a Washington Post headline declared “Moms for Liberty didn’t exist three years ago. Now it’s a GOP kingmaker.” On November 10, 2023, after a raft of school board elections across the country, the Post ran another headline: “Voters drub Moms for Liberty ‘parental rights’ candidates at the ballot.” Moms for Liberty (M4L) not only didn’t make any kings, it didn’t even make many school board members. What happened?

The pre-election headline reflected the messaging skills that M4L has carefully honed to make itself more palatable. By November, however, the reality on the ground became clear.

To learn the origins and context of this group, open the link and read on. The article doesn’t mention the Ziegler sex scandal. Cunningham wrote about that in an article in the Tampa Bay Tribune, but it’s behind a paywall. The Moms are on a downhill slide as a result of their election losses, followed by Bridget’s bisexual tryst. Her ex-friends removed her name from the Moms website.

Categories Bigotry, Censorship, Cruelty, Dark Money, Democracy, DeSantis, Elections, Extremism, Failure, Florida, Freedom to Read, Gender, Hypocrisy

Robert Hubbell: Two Heroes of Democracy: “They Stood Their Ground”

By dianeravitch
December 18, 2023 //
18

Robert Hubbell wrote about two women who refused to be intimidated by the MAGA cult: Ruby Freeman and her daughter Shaye Moss. Despite death threats and harassments, they stood their ground. Guiliani will appeal the verdict.

He writes:

Jury Awards Ruby Freemen and Shaye Moss $148 million in damages against Rudy Giuliani for defamation.

The damages award of $148 million against Rudy Giuliani encapsulates the madness, frustration, and perseverance that define the lives of millions of activists during the American era of The Big Lie. It is tempting to characterize Giuliani’s defamation of Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss and their hard-won victory as a metaphor for Trump’s political arc over the last seven years.

But what happened to Freeman and Moss is not a metaphor. It is the cold, hard reality that slaps each of us in the face every day as we are assaulted by lies heaped upon lies. Not everyone is a direct victim of the lies like Freeman and Moss, but we are all victims, nonetheless.

The point of the lies is not (only) to injure Trump’s enemies, it is to erode trust in the system until there are no guardrails left—hoping to create chaos in which the most depraved believe they have an advantage over those still ruled by conscience, decency, and fealty to the rule of law.

Trump and his enablers tell outlandish lies because they know that media outlets will dutifully repeat the lies in headlines and news alerts, reserving tepid skepticism for paragraphs buried deep in their coverage. 

Direct victims like Freeman and Moss are viewed as expendable collateral damage. Their names and addresses are shared in dark corners of the web so Trump’s followers can make threats even he dares not voice (in public).

The full weight of Trump’s malevolent organization was directed at Freeman and Moss. But they did not buckle. Two women who were motivated to help fellow Georgians vote in a free and fair election stood their ground. 

Their reputations were smeared by the sitting President of the United States, the Georgia legislature, Fox News, One America Network, Steve Bannon, Rudy Giuliani, and millions of users on Twitter, Facebook, and other social media platforms. 

A preacher and a rap star’s publicist teamed up to urge them to falsely confess to non-existent crimes—saying it was the only way to stop the ugly death threats. The FBI’s unhelpful response was to advise them to “Move out of your homes.”Despite tens of thousands of vile threats, no one was arrested, investigated, charged with crimes, or sued for defamation.

At least not at first.

But the guardrails held. Because Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss stood their ground. 

Because they stood their ground, Democrats on the January 6 Committee allowed them to tell their story to the nation.

Because they stood their ground, the rap star’s publicist and the preacher were indicted in Fulton County, Georgia for “solicitation of false statements and influencing witnesses.”

Because they stood their ground, the former president was indicted for lying about the 2020 election. The indictment specifically alleged that the former president was responsible for the campaign to smear Freeman and Moss—lies that were part of his conspiracy to defraud the United States. (See indictment, ¶ 26.)

Then, Freeman and Moss sued Rudy Giuliani for defamation. He did his best to derail and delegitimize the civil claim for damages. But he failed. The guardrails held. All because Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss stood their ground.

Two women who wanted to help people vote in Georgia stood their ground against fancy lawyers and paid liars, a depraved president and corrupt legislators, and a news ecosystem determined to sell as much soap for as long as possible by repeating the baseless claims about Freeman and Moss.

Two women who stood their ground. That is all it took for the guardrails to hold.

It was not easy. Their stance took courage and faith. They suffered mightily. But they persevered. They are heroes of American democracy.

There can be nothing more hopeful than their example—and their victory—to remind us of the power within each of us to maintain the guardrails of democracy. Those who sow chaos in the hope that the most depraved among us will win by brute force are wrong.

People are drawn to those who promote conscience, decency, and fealty to the rule of law—especially during times of turbulence and distress.

Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss prevailed over Giuliani (and Trump) the moment they reported for work on November 3, 2020—because they joined tens of thousands of other Americans in becoming the guardrails of democracy that ensured a free and fair election.

Concluding Thoughts.

Every American who is taking action to defend democracy is like Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss. The work may not seem glamorous. But counting ballots in Georgia on November 3, 2020, was tedious work—until it became a nation-defining moment that tipped the balance of a contested election.

We will never know which letter, text, door knock, or donation will become a tipping point. But some of them surely will. Indeed, because a tipping point always sits atop every action that preceded it, every letter, text, door knock, or donation contributes to the tipping point. Like Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, you are part of the guardrails of democracy.

S

Categories Accountability, Courage, Cruelty, Democracy, Disruption, Elections, Fascism, Fraud, Lies, Trump

North Carolina: Sampson County’s Environmental Nightmare

By dianeravitch
December 16, 2023 //
3

Billy Ball’s blog, “Cardinal & Pine,” tells the horrifying story of the poisoning of people in Sampson County, North Carolina, and the malign neglect of the state’s officials. Most of those poisoned by the foul environment are Black and poor.

He writes:

NORTH CAROLINA — A dead vulture hangs by its feet, tied to a street sign on Chesters Road in Sampson County.

It’s there because locals believe the decomposing scavenger will deter other vultures. Sometimes, especially in the summer, the carrion birds descend like a plague on the Snow Hill area of Sampson County, a predominantly Black community that’s within retching distance of the largest landfill in NC. When it’s hot and humid in the summer, the vultures are so thick that the trees look black.

The birds are the least of locals’ worries.

The 85-acre landfill smells like hell. It gets in your lungs and steals your breath. On a bright, clear day, it can give you a headache and make you nauseous. When it’s hot, humid, or rainy, the smell is overwhelming.

Worse still, the landfill—which ranks second in the nation for emissions of the greenhouse gas methane—is contaminated with PFAS. PFAS are synthetic compounds used in nonstick pans, firefighter foam, cosmetics, and other products. It’s linked to cancers, birth abnormalities, high cholesterol and other ailments, but until this year, the US Environmental Protection Agency was silent on regulating it.

In March, EPA Administrator Michael Regan, who’s from NC, called it “one of the most pressing environmental and public health concerns in the modern world.”

The federal regulations, which wouldn’t go into effect until 2026, are late but not unwelcome. Testing in almost 50 water systems in NC has reportedly found high levels of PFAS over the last five years. That’s the case in about 45% of the nation’s drinking water, according to federal regulators. It attacks your thyroid, your liver, and your kidneys. And it’s an open question what treatment systems are best for filtering out this “forever chemical,” so named because it doesn’t break down in the human body or the environment.

PFAS pollution is just one of the crises here. Sampson County—population 58,000— is beset by environmental nightmares, locals say. There’s the landfill, the poultry and pork farms (including the massive Chinese-owned Smithfield Foods plant), and multiple industrial operations that locals say are noisy, ugly, and making them sick.

There are a few dozen hogs per person. To dispose of the waste, farms have been spraying it onto fields. Neighbors say it’s giving them respiratory problems. There’s science behind it, including studies from 2018 and 2022 that found people living close to animal farming operations are more likely to get sick, sometimes very sick.

A small UNC-Chapel Hill study published in 2020also found PFAS in surface water around the landfill.

The well water that thousands of people here depend on—particularly in the poorer, rural areas—is making them sick too, locals say. But unlike other areas of the county, which have gradually been connected to the county water system, most of the low-income folks have been left to protect themselves against rust, iron, arsenic, and other harmful things that are turning up in their well water.

Michigan has Flint. North Carolina has a lot of Flints, and the biggest might be Sampson County.

‘You can’t win for losing’

“We have a story to tell in Sampson County and nobody’s paying any attention to us,” says Sherri White-Williamson.

White-Williamson is a native of the area, the daughter of two high school teachers—one a World War II veteran who taught her to get involved in her community. She worked for the EPA and other federal offices before returning to Sampson County. Now, she leads a local nonprofit called Environmental Justice Community Action Network (EJCAN). She has her work cut out for her.

EJCAN is helping state officials find locals in the Snow Hill area—not to be confused with the incorporated town of the same name in nearby Greene County—who could benefit from a $1 million grant from President Biden’s administration. The grant’s meant to test the well water and, possibly, help find a solution. If anything, it’s just a start.

Testing in this broad, eastern NC county has been slow. State officials are looking for volunteers. They’ve gone door-to-door. But many don’t trust the scientists and regulators showing up. They also don’t trust what comes out of their taps. If they have the money, which many of them don’t, they rely on bottled water.

The NC Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) and researchers have confirmed PFAS contamination in the area, although state regulators have not made a final determination on the source. Most are pointing at the privately-operated landfill, which is known to have PFAS in it. For now, the state’s administering bottled water to homeowners with polluted water, although PFAS contaminants aren’t just harmful in drinking water. They can also travel through the air.

Then there are the pigs. Smithfield Foods and other hog farms make up a powerful economic force around here. Pork accounts for more than 6,100 jobsin Sampson County and Smithfield is the largest single employer in the county.

The people who live next to hog farms might be miserable, but the political pull of pork is immense. When locals began winning huge multi-million dollar jury awards from hog farmers working for Chinese-owned Smithfield, Republican state legislators intervened on the farmers’ behalf, rewriting statutes to all but ban such lawsuits.

“You can’t win for losing,” White-Williamson says when talking about the state legislature.

Please open the link and keep reading to finish the post.

Categories Accountability, Cruelty, Environment, Ethics, Evil, Failure, North Carolina, Racism

Billy Townsend: Christian Ziegler is the Perfect GOP Leader for Florida. What about Bridget?

By dianeravitch
December 12, 2023 //
4

Florida blogger Billy Townsend agrees with me: Christian Ziegler should not resign as leader of the GOP in Florida. Sure, he was involved in a sex scandal. Sure, he’s a dictator. But he’s the perfect face for the party of Ron Ziegler (a wannabe dictator) and Trump (also a wannabe dictator who’s had his share of sex scandals).

We disagree about Bridget. He thinks she should resign from the Sarasota school board. I want her to stay so she can defend gay students.

Categories Bigotry, Cruelty, DeSantis, Fascism, Florida, Republicans, Trump

Guiliani Trial Begins Today in Georgia

By dianeravitch
December 11, 2023 //
16

Rudy Guiliani admitted that he defamed two Georgia election workers by accusing them of fraudulently switching ballots. The two are mother and daughter Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss. As a result of his repeated accusations on national television, which were repeated by Trump, calling them out by name, the pair were subjected to continual threats, harassment, and intimidation. They are suing Guiliani for a sum between $15.5 million and $43.5 million. Jury selection begins today.

The showdown between the financially strapped Giuliani and the two temporary poll workers he baselessly accused of ballot tampering in 2020 will highlight a major court battle over false claims that became central to former president Donald Trump’s efforts to stay in power and is now at the heart of two criminal cases against him.


U.S. District Judge Beryl A. Howell has already found Giuliani liable for more than a dozen defamatory statements against Ruby Freeman and Wandrea ArShaye “Shaye” Moss, who are mother and daughter, leaving a jury of eight only to decide how much he should pay in damages for violent threats and harassment the pair received. Howell previously ordered Giuliani to pay the women $230,000 in legal fees and sanctions for failing to turn over relevant information. She said those failures, combined with Giuliani’s own admissions, compelled her to rule without a trial that he defamed both women, intentionally inflicted emotional distress on them as part of a civil conspiracy, and owes punitive damages.

If you want to hear the details of what happened to them, watch this clip from the Rachel Maddow show. In addition to hearing their story, you will also hear testimony from the #2 official at the Justice Department, Richard Donahue, who testified to the January 6 Commission that he met with Trump and told him that the Justice Department had investigated all his claims of election fraud and found no evidence for them.

Categories Accountability, Cruelty, Elections, Extremism, Georgia, Justice, Lies, Trump

Robert Kagan: Will Trump End Democracy?

By dianeravitch
December 11, 2023 //
36

Over the past week, there was a surge of articles about the danger that Donald Trump poses to our democracy. Trump ratcheted up his threats to punish his enemies and to replace the civil service with Trump loyalists. When his admirer Sean Hannity asked him point blank whether he intended to be a dictator—expecting he would say “of course not”—Trump responded he would be a dictator “only on the first day,” when he would command the completion of the border wall with Mexico and “drill, drill, drill.” Trump’s rhetoric no longer sounds like a normal candidate. But he was never a normal candidate.

Some commentators noted that his threats were unprecedented, yet they barely caused a ripple. He said that certain generals who served him yet denounced him deserved to be executed. What would the press have done if Obama had made such a statement? It would have been front-page news for days, not a blip. Trump has normalized threats of violence. His base has come to expect promises of violence from him. He doesn’t disappoint them.

In his first term, he reached out to some who were not in his personal orbit. He won’t make that mistake if there is a next time.

The article that generated the most attention was written by Robert Kagan in The Washington Post, titled “A Trump Dictatorship Is Increasingly Ibrvitable. We Should Stop Pretending.”

Kagan was a noted neoconservative but left the GOP in 2016 because he couldn’t accept Trump. His recent article is 7,500 words. I read it late at night and couldn’t sleep. Kagan’s article laid out the case that Trump will win the nomination; that no elected Republican will stand up to him; that he stands a good chance of being re-elected; and that if he is, he will surround himself with toadies and wreak havoc on our democracy. He predicted, as the title says, that Trump would have no guardrails, no respect for the norms of the Presidency, and no regard for the Constitution.

He said that would use the Justice Department to harass and punish his enemies.

A few quotes from his article:

Let’s stop the wishful thinking and face the stark reality: There is a clear path to dictatorship in the United States, and it is getting shorter every day. In 13 weeks, Donald Trump will have locked up the Republican nomination.

Once Trump sweeps Super Tuesday, he writes, Republicans will fall in line behind him and so will big donors. All of the other GOP candidates except Chris Christie will endorse him.

Meanwhile, Biden will have trouble unifying his party. The news media love to run stories about disenchanted Democratic voters who will stay home. Biden faces challenges from third-party candidates, including Jill Stein, Robert Kennedy Jr., and possibly a No Labels candidate like Joe Manchin.

Trump “enjoys the usual advantage of non-incumbency, namely: the lack of any responsibility. Biden must carry the world’s problems like an albatross around his neck, like any incumbent, but most incumbents can at least claim that their opponent is too inexperienced to be entrusted with these crises. Biden cannot. On Trump’s watch, there was no full-scale invasion of Ukraine, no major attack on Israel, no runaway inflation, no disastrous retreat from Afghanistan. It is hard to make the case for Trump’s unfitness to anyone who does not already believe it.”

Trump enjoys some unusual advantages for a challenger, moreover. Even Ronald Reagan did not have Fox News and the speaker of the House in his pocket. To the degree there are structural advantages in the coming general election, in short, they are on Trump’s side. And that is before we even get to the problem that Biden can do nothing to solve: his age.

Trump also enjoys another advantage. The national mood less than a year before the election is one of bipartisan disgust with the political system in general. Rarely in American history has democracy’s inherent messiness been more striking. In Weimar Germany, Hitler and other agitators benefited from the squabbling of the democratic parties, right and left, the endless fights over the budget, the logjams in the legislature, the fragile and fractious coalitions. German voters increasingly yearned for someone to cut through it all and get something — anything — done. It didn’t matter who was behind the political paralysis, either, whether the intransigence came from the right or the left.

Today, Republicans might be responsible for Washington’s dysfunction, and they might pay a price for it in downballot races. But Trump benefits from dysfunction because he is the one who offers a simple answer: him. In this election, only one candidate is running on the platform of using unprecedented power to get things done, to hell with the rules. And a growing number of Americans claim to want that, in both parties. Trump is running against the system. Biden is the living embodiment of the system. Advantage: Trump…

If Trump does win the election, he will immediately become the most powerful person ever to hold that office. Not only will he wield the awesome powers of the American executive — powers that, as conservatives used to complain, have grown over the decades — but he will do so with the fewest constraints of any president, fewer even than in his own first term.

What limits those powers? The most obvious answer is the institutions of justice — all of which Trump, by his very election, will have defied and revealed as impotent. A court system that could not control Trump as a private individual is not going to control him better when he is president of the United States and appointing his own attorney general and all the other top officials at the Justice Department. Think of the power of a man who gets himself elected president despite indictments, courtroom appearances and perhaps even conviction? Would he even obey a directive of the Supreme Court? Or would he instead ask how many armored divisions the chief justice has?
Will a future Congress stop him? Presidents can accomplish a lot these days without congressional approval, as even Barack Obama showed. The one check Congress has on a rogue president, namely, impeachment and conviction, has already proved all but impossible — even when Trump was out of office and wielded modest institutional power over his party.

Another traditional check on a president is the federal bureaucracy, that vast apparatus of career government officials who execute the laws and carry on the operations of government under every president. They are generally in the business of limiting any president’s options. As Harry S. Truman once put it, “Poor Ike. He’ll say ‘do this’ and ‘do that’ and nothing at all will happen.” That was a problem for Trump is his first term, partly because he had no government team of his own to fill the administration. This time, he will. Those who choose to serve in his second administration will not be taking office with the unstated intention of refusing to carry out his wishes. If the Heritage Foundation has its way, and there is no reason to believe it won’t, many of those career bureaucrats will be gone, replaced by people carefully “vetted” to ensure their loyalty to Trump.

Trump might decide he wants a third term. Who will stop him? The Constitution? The 22nd Amendment? The Congress? Not likely.

Trump as President will pursue those who tried to stop him. He pledged in his Veterans Day speech to “root out the Communists, Marxists, Fascists, and Radical Left Thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our Country, lie, steal, and cheat on Elections, and will do anything possible, whether legally or illegally, to destroy America, and the American Dream.” Note the equation of himself with “America and the American Dream.” It is he they are trying to destroy, he believes, and as president, he will return the favor.

What will that look like? Trump has already named some of those he intends to go after once he is elected: senior officials from his first term such as retired Gen. John F. Kelly, Gen. Mark A. Milley, former attorney general William P. Barr and others who spoke against him after the 2020 election; officials in the FBI and the CIA who investigated him in the Russia probe; Justice Department officials who refused his demands to overturn the 2020 election; members of the Jan. 6 committee; Democratic opponents including Rep. Adam B. Schiff (Calif.); and Republicans who voted for or publicly supported his impeachment and conviction.

But that’s just the start. After all, Trump will not be the only person seeking revenge. His administration will be filled with people with enemies’ lists of their own, a determined cadre of “vetted” officials who will see it as their sole, presidentially authorized mission to “root out” those in the government who cannot be trusted. Many will simply be fired, but others will be subject to career-destroying investigations. The Trump administration will be filled with people who will not need explicit instruction from Trump, any more than Hitler’s local gauleiters needed instruction. In such circumstances, people “work toward the Führer,” which is to say, they anticipate his desires and seek favor through acts they think will make him happy, thereby enhancing their own influence and power in the process.

Prepare for a new McCarthyism as Trump and his MAGA lackeys go after the “anti-American” Democrats whom he calls “”Communists,””Marxists,” “Fascists,” and “vermin.”

How will Americans respond to the first signs of a regime of political persecution? Will they rise up in outrage? Don’t count on it. Those who found no reason to oppose Trump in the primaries and no reason to oppose him in the general are unlikely to experience a sudden awakening when some former Trump-adjacent official such as Milley finds himself under investigation for goodness knows what. They will know only that Justice Department prosecutors, the IRS, the FBI and several congressional committees are looking into it. And who is to say that those being hounded are not in fact tax cheaters, or Chinese spies, or perverts, or whatever they might be accused of? Will the great body of Americans even recognize these accusations as persecution and the first stage of shutting down opposition to Trump across the country?

Kagan says that the odds of a Trump dictatorship are growing by the day. In 2016, it was completely improbable that a man such as trump would win the Republican nomination, and completely unlikely that he would win the Presidency. And it was unthinkable that when he lost in 2020, he would insist that he won in a landslide, and even crazier that his base would believe the Big Lie. Republicans will cower in fear before him; Democrats will protest, maybe take to the streets, but Trump will invoke the Insurrection Act to shut them down.

Who will have the courage to stand up to Trump when the risk is not just losing your political office but arrest, detention, public humiliation, and the loss of your freedom?

Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Censorship, Character, Corruption, Cruelty, Democracy, Elections, Fascism, Republicans, Trump

Virginia: The Long Forgotten Story of the Danville Massacre of 1883

By dianeravitch
December 9, 2023 //
4

Many states have passed laws that ban the teaching of accurate history. Sometimes these laws ban “divisive concepts,” some ban anything that might cause students to feel uncomfortable, some find other language to warn teachers and textbook publishers to omit the shameful events of the past, especially the racist treatment of people of color.

In Florida, where the state went to great lengths to whitewash the teaching of Black history, one man has devoted himself to telling the truth. That man is Dr. Marvin Dunn. Dr. Dunn was a keynote speaker at the annual conference of the Network for Public Education. In the meanwhile, you can read his book A History of Florida Through Black Eyes.

In response to Dr. Dunn’s moving presentation, a friend of NPE sent me the following article about the Danville Massacre of 1883. We now know that Reconstruction was a period of impressive racial progress. Formerly enslaved people voted, opened small businesses, and asserted their newly won rights.

But the former Confederates found this rebalancing of racial relationships intolerable. The Danville Massacre put an end to a period of reconciliation and installed Jim Crow, cancelling out the gains of Reconstruction.

The author of the article could not remember learning about this important event in the state’s history.

Learning the truth about history doesn’t make children uncomfortable. It makes them informed.

Categories Accountability, Censorship, Cruelty, Extremism, Fake, History, Virginia

Randi and Sharon in Israel Speaking of Compassion and Sorrow and the Path Forward

By dianeravitch
November 26, 2023 //
20

Randi Weingarten and her wife, Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum, flew to Israel to commiserate with friends and to sit shiva for the nation. They express a strong commitment to both Israelis and Palestinians and a hope that they can one day live in peace as neighbors, in two independent states. They speak out against the Netanyahu government, whose harsh policies towards Palestinians have intensified hatred. They recognize the brutality of the October 7 massacre without qualification. I am not a Zionist but their views and mine are aligned. Neither terrorism nor indiscriminate bombing of civilians brings peace closer.

The progressive publication Haaretz interviewed them:

Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum has traditionally had few qualms about being a member of a minority – as a lesbian rabbi, it is practically her brand. But in the days and weeks following the start of the Israel-Hamas war, she says it has been her identity as a liberal Zionist that has made her feel like a member of a minority.

Kleinbaum is the spiritual leader of New York’s Congregation Beit Simchat Torah, the world’s largest LGBTQ synagogue. The space she and wife Randi Weingarten have long occupied – as high-profile American-Jewish leaders who are deeply connected to Israel, but also outspoken advocates for Palestinian rights and opponents of the occupation – is not a comfortable place to be right now.

Even within the pioneering congregation Kleinbaum has led for more than 30 years, she says the atmosphere is tense and full of “tremendous anxiety,” as the war continues with no clear resolution in sight…

“You know, the LGBT world is so focused on non-binary thinking. We’ve rejected the binary about sexuality, we’ve rejected the binary about gender identity,” Kleinbaum notes. “And yet at the same time, so many in this world have adopted a very binary approach to Israel-Palestine issues.”

Her community, she adds, is not at all immune from the expectations of conflict in American culture, in which “the good guys are always weak and the bad guys are strong. And people want a two-hour Hollywood movie in which at the end of it, the good guys overcome and vanquish the bad guys, the lights go up and you walk outside. The message I keep bringing to the congregation is that life is not a Hollywood movie.”

She tries at every opportunity, she says, to explain to those on both extremes that simple solutions are not available, and “there is not a good guy or a bad guy; there is not one victim and one perpetrator.”

That message is not always welcome. In far-left progressive circles, there are those who “believe that Israel kind of deserved what it got” on October 7 and “what Hamas did was an act of justified violence.” The fact that she “completely rejects and totally condemns” such views has made some “very angry” with her, Kleinbaum says.

At the same time, she says others are upset with her “because I continue to insist on the full equality of the Palestinian people, and I continue to stand against the occupation. I will continue to stand by the truth that I’ve said forever and is not new: Israel cannot oppress people.”

Union head Weingarten says she often finds herself in a similar position. “On the same day, I will be criticized by someone from AIPAC for being a Palestinian lover, and criticized by somebody from one of our local union branches that I have not spoken out strongly enough against Israel.”

She has been slammed in union circles for standing up for Israel’s right to defend itself, including during a AFL-CIO meeting that The New York Times described as a “raw” debate among top union officials on the Israel-Hamas conflict. She was accused by the far left of “green-lighting Zionist war crimes.”

Kleinbaum and Weingarten spoke to Haaretz on the second day of a Thanksgiving week trip to Israel, following breakfast with members of what they call their “Israeli family”: Israelis who were members of Kleinbaum’s synagogue during stints in New York, former congregants who made aliyah and other friends.

The couple note that during their last visit, in April, their friends were wearing pro-democracy T-shirts protesting the proposed judicial overhaul. Now these same people wear T-shirts with photographs of hostages on them. Like so many other Israelis, their friends have suffered losses, and some had stopped by on their way to or from 30-day memorials of loved ones killed on October 7.

“We’re so horrified and condemn what Hamas did in the strongest and most horrific terms, and we feel like we’re making a shivah visit to the whole country,” Kleinbaum says…

Both women felt they needed to be in Israel now, Kleinbaum says, “to absorb the energy here and really listen to the perspective of people who are here and to … pay our shivah call after the biggest pogrom that has happened to the Jewish people since the Holocaust – and, just as importantly, also listen to Palestinian voices inside of Israel, and to listen to the voices that are fighting for shared society.” They intend to take those views back to New York.

“We have to keep telling the deep truths that those of us who are progressive Zionists understand: that there is no future except a shared future. And we have to keep reinforcing the message that this is the land with two peoples, two very complicated peoples, and that we continue to hope for a future in which both peoples can live with justice and peace and security,” Kleinbaum says.

She admits she doesn’t know where events will lead, but right now it “feels like we’re at an inflection point not only for the State of Israel, for Palestinians and Israeli Jews, but for the Jewish people. It feels like we’re at a very significant moment of Jewish history, including for Diaspora Jewish life…”

Both recognize that the failed leadership of Netanyahu and his cabinet of far-right ministers has alienated many progressive Jews.

Weingarten says “polls bear out that the Democratic Party is still supportive of Joe Biden’s approach to Israel and Gaza,” but there is still considerable pressure from those harshly critical of the amount of force used by the Israel Defense Forces, mounting calls for a unilateral cease-fire, along with a faction that does, in fact, challenge Israel’s right to exist.

Much of this, she believes, is a direct result of the images coming out of Gaza, and Israel’s decision not to widely circulate images of the horrors of October 7 in real time. Because of that decision, “the trauma, the massacre and the pogrom is just not well known and not understood in the same way as what happened to the [Gazan] hospitals” and the “sheer amount of death” in Gaza…

Biden is “a staunch ally of Israeli democracy and also supports Palestinians: he doesn’t support Israel to the detriment of the Palestinians, even though people accuse him of that. And if the Israeli right really doesn’t understand this, then they are really threatening the future of President Biden’s support. Because he cares deeply about Palestine; he cares about both people. That’s why he has said over and over again that there has to be a two-state solution,” Weingarten says…

And despite the fact that “extreme voices are the loudest right now and people are looking for simple solutions,” there are more people that share common ground with the president – particularly in America’s Jewish community.

“I believe that the majority of American Jews are actually looking for this vision,” Weingarten says. “They want to hear that they can stand with Israel, and stand with the rights of Palestinians. They don’t have to choose. And yes, today it’s a very narrow place to be. But I reject the binary that forces a simple choice. And even though it’s not an easy place to be, I believe if we keep standing in this place and pushing the message out there, more and more people will join us.”

Categories Bigotry, Cruelty, Extremism, History, International, Religion

Jason Garcia: DeSantis Planned Bigger Punishments for Disney

By dianeravitch
November 22, 2023 //
8

Jason Garcia is an investigative journalist who blogs his scoops at “Seeking Rents.” In this episode, he writes about Governor Ron DeSantis’s plan to heap more punishment on the Disney Corporatuon for daring to criticize DeSantis’s “Don’t Say Gay” law.

DeSantis went to war against the state’s biggest employer to demonstrate that no one should disagree with him. If there is one word that best describes Ron DeSantis, it is this one: VINDICTIVE.

Garcia writes:

Just before 9 p.m. on a Friday night late in this year’s session of the Florida Legislature, a Republican member of the House of Representatives suddenly introduced a measure taking aim at the theme-park industry.

The eleventh-hour amendment would have given state regulators the power to conduct ride inspections at Florida’s biggest theme parks — and stripped them of a longstanding carveout in state law that exempts a few industry giants from having to abide by the same ride-safety rules as smaller attractions.

The measure was filed by Rep. Lawrence McClure, a Republican from near Tampa. But records show McClure got the idea from someone else: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, the soon-to-announce presidential candidate who was searching for ways to escalate a personal feud with the Walt Disney Co. that DeSantis has used to draw national attention to himself.

An email obtained in a public-records request request shows that an aide to DeSantis sent the precise language for the amendment to McClure’s office just a few hours before McClure filed it.

[To read the text of the amendment, open the post.]

Now, nothing ever come of this: McClure quietly withdrew the amendment less than 24 hours later. He presumably did so with the governor’s blessing, since DeSantis never said peep about it in public. (Both the Governor’s Office and McClure declined to answer any questions about this.)

But the episode reveals a few important points about DeSantis’ nearly two-year-long crusade against Disney, which began after the company criticized an anti-LBGTQ+ law that DeSantis signed in March 2022 and cut off campaign contributions to politicians in Florida.

First, it shows how DeSantis and his staff try to cover their tracks.

The DeSantis aide who sent the proposed amendment to McClure’s office didn’t say anything in the email that might betray what it was about. He provided the language in the form of a scanned image of a hard copy that had been highlighted by hand. And the attachment was identified only by what appears to be an automated filename assigned to it by the scanner.

It’s the sort of email someone might send when they’re trying to make sure it won’t get picked up in a future electronic keyword search — like the kind that gets conducted in response to a public-records request or as part of discovery during litigation.

This email only turned up in one of Seeking Rents’ public-records requests because the request sought all communications between certain staffers in the Governor’s Office and the Florida House of Representatives during the 2023 session — rather than only emails related to specific topics.

(Note that Disney, which is now suing DeSantis, recently accused some of the governor’s political appointees of dragging their feet on discovery.)

Second, the exchange is also another example of DeSantis’ willingness to burn millions in taxpayer money trying to squeeze Disney.

In addition to the proposed amendment, the email from the governor’s office also included a request for another $2.5 million in public money — including another $1 million to spend on lawyers, on top of the millions the Legislature has already given him.

Third, this illustrates the limit of how far DeSantis — or at least the Florida Legislature — is willing to go when it comes to punishing Disney.

Because the proposal the Governor’s Office sent McClure — the one that McClure immediately filed but then quickly withdrew — would have affected all of Florida’s big theme parks.

Yes, it would have taken away Disney’s exemption from ride inspections. But it also would have taken the same exemption away from Universal Orlando, SeaWorld Orlando, Busch Gardens Tampa Bay, and Legoland Florida, too.

That was apparently a bridge too far in Tallahassee.

In fact, just a few days later, DeSantis held his now-infamous news conference at Disney World where he threatened to build a state prison on the property. During that event, DeSantis told reporters he was working on a plan to strip Disney of its exemption from ride inspections.

But the governor made sure to note that only Disney would be affected.

“Under the proposed legislation, would Disney still be conducting its own inspection of rides, along with Universal, SeaWorld and Legoland” asked Mike DeForest, a reporter at WKMG, the CBS affiliate in Orlando.

“No, I don’t think so,” DeSantis responded. “I think what it’s going to be — and, you know, talk to the Legislature because I don’t even know that the draft is final on this particular thing — but I think what it is is that these inspections will be required for amusement parks within special districts. And, as you know, those [other] parks are not necessarily within special districts.”

And that reveals the fourth and most important truth about DeSantis’ war on Disney: He’s lying about the whole thing.

The governor has repeatedly claimed that he’s fighting for good-government reform — to eliminate Disney’s “corporate kingdom” and make the company “live under the same laws as everybody else.”

But all he’s really doing is attacking a company that criticized him, stopped giving him money, and became a convenient culture-war target for a politician desperate to out-Trump former President Donald Trump in the race for the Republican nomination for president.

Ron DeSantis has gleefully gone after Disney in a variety of ways — from seizing Disney World’s government district to asserting control over the giant resort’s monorail. And Republican leaders in the Florida Legislature have willingly enabled it all.

But this governor and Legislature apparently draw the line at anything that might also disturb other big donors — like Universal Orlando.

It may not surprise you to learn that Universal and its parent company, Comcast Corp., have spent roughly $5 million on campaign contributions just in the five years since DeSantis was elected governor, according to campaign-finance records. Universal has also showered more than $1 million in free park tickets, hotel rooms, meals and other entertainment on Florida politicians.

That includes roughly $900,000 in cash and $400,000 in freebies for the Republican Party of Florida — which DeSantis campaign strategists once described as “interchangeable” with DeSantis’ own political operation. It also includes nearly $50,000 just to McClure and his own political committee.

This is why, by the way, Florida politicians have for years turned a blind eye as Universal abuses a tax break that was supposed to help Florida’s poorest urban communities.

Please open the link to finish reading about DeSantis’s unethical war against Florida’s largest employer.

We now know for sure, writes Garcia, that DeSantis had only one goal here: Claiming a pound of flesh from Mickey Mouse.

Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Cruelty, DeSantis, Economy, Ethics, Extremism, Fascism, Florida, Freedom of Speech, Funding

Hillary Clinton: Hamas Must Go

By dianeravitch
November 17, 2023 //
53

Hillary Clinton wrote in The Atlantic about why Hamas must go. It is a barrier to any future peace, she writes. It is a terrorist organization that has consistently blocked a two-state solution. It shamelessly uses the Palestinians as human shields. As the Washington Post recently documented, the massacre of October 7 was intended by Hamas to provoke an overwhelming Israeli military attack, which was sure to turn public opinion to the Gazans and eclipse any memory of the savage murders, rapes, and brutality of October 7. And for maximum impact, the Hamas terrorists wore body cams to document their atrocities.

She wrote:

One morning in November 2012, I knocked on the door of President Barack Obama’s suite in the Raffles Hotel in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, so early that he was barely out of bed. I had an urgent question that could not wait for the president to finish his morning coffee: Should we try to broker a cease-fire in Gaza? Then, like now, the extreme Islamist terror group Hamas had sparked a crisis by indiscriminately attacking Israeli civilians. Israel had responded with air strikes, and a ground invasion of Gaza appeared imminent.

The president and I debated whether I should leave Asia, fly to the Middle East, and try to negotiate a halt to the fighting before the situation escalated further. The reason to go was clear: Stopping the violence would save lives and prevent the conflict from spiraling into a wider regional war.

The reasons not to go were more nuanced but also compelling. President Obama and I were both wary of suggesting that Israel did not have a right and a responsibility to defend itself against terrorists. If Hamas did not face consequences for its attacks, it would be emboldened to carry out more. We also knew Hamas had a history of breaking agreements and could not be trusted. For that matter, neither side seemed ready to pull back from the brink. Diplomacy is all about leverage and timing. If I tried and failed to negotiate a cease-fire, it would reduce America’s credibility in the region and lower the likelihood that we could reengage successfully later.

In the end, we decided the risks were worth it. I headed to the region and began intense shuttle diplomacy among Israel, Egypt, and the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank. Late into the night in Cairo, I went line by line through a proposal I’d worked out with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem. The Egyptians were on the phone with Hamas leaders in Gaza. Finally, I was able to announce that all parties had agreed to a truce.

On the long plane ride home, I asked my aide Jake Sullivan, who is now President Joe Biden’s national security adviser, if Hamas was abiding by the agreement we’d just struck. So far, he told me, the answer was yes. I was relieved that we’d prevented further bloodshed, but I worried that all we’d really managed to do was put a lid on a simmering cauldron that would likely boil over again in the future.

Unfortunately, that fear proved correct. In 2014, Hamas violated the cease-fire and started another war by abducting Israeli hostages and launching rocket attacks against civilians. Israel responded forcefully, but Hamas remained in control of Gaza. The terrorists re-armed, and the pattern repeated itself in 2021, with more civilians killed. This all culminated in the horrific massacre of Israeli civilians last month, the worst mass murder of Jews since the Holocaust.

This history suggests three insights for the current crisis and the future of this complex and volatile region. First, October 7 made clear that this bloody cycle must end and that Hamas cannot be allowed to once again retrench, re-arm, and launch new attacks—while continuing to use people in Gaza as expendable human shields. Second, a full cease-fire that leaves Hamas in power would be a mistake. For now, pursuing more limited humanitarian pauses that allow aid to get in and civilians and hostages to get out is a wiser course. Third, Israel’s long policy of containment has failed—it needs a new strategy and new leadership.

For me, Israel and Gaza are not just names on a map. I have grieved with Israeli families whose loved ones were abducted or killed in terrorist attacks. I have held the hands of the wounded in their hospital beds. In Jerusalem, I visited a bombed-out pizzeria and will never forget it.

I have also been to Gaza. I have talked with Palestinians who have suffered greatly from the conflicts of the past decades and dream of peace and a state of their own. Before Hamas seized power, I met women using microloans from the United States to start new businesses and become breadwinners for their families, including a dressmaker who—because she was finally able to buy a sewing machine—could send her two daughters to school. My decades of experience in the region taught me that Palestinian and Israeli parents may say different prayers at worship but they share the same hopes for their kids—just like Americans, just like parents everywhere.

That is why I am convinced Hamas must go. On October 7, these terrorists killed babies, raped women, and kidnapped innocent civilians. They continue to hold more than 200 hostages. They have proved again and again that they will not abide by cease-fires, will sabotage any efforts to forge a lasting peace, and will never stop attacking Israel.

Hamas does not speak for the Palestinian people. Hamas deliberately places military installations in and below hospitals and refugee camps because it is trying to maximize, not minimize, the impact on Palestinian civilians for its own propaganda purposes. The humanitarian crisis in Gaza is heartbreaking—and every death means more blood on Hamas’s hands.

So the Biden administration is correct not to seek a full cease-fire at this moment, which would give Hamas a chance to re-arm and perpetuate the cycle of violence. Hamas would claim that it had won and it would remain a key part of Iran’s so-called axis of resistance.

Cease-fires freeze conflicts rather than resolve them. In 1999, the Serbian dictator Slobodan Milošević called for a cease-fire in Kosovo, where NATO air strikes were trying to stop his brutal campaign of ethnic cleansing. It was a cynical attempt to preserve Serbia’s control of Kosovo, and the Clinton administration continued bombing until Milošević’s forces withdrew. Today, global allies of Russian President Vladimir Putin call for a cease-fire in Ukraine because they know freezing the conflict will leave Russia in control of large swaths of Ukrainian territory that it seized illegally. Putin could reinforce his troops and then resume the conflict at a time of his choosing.

In 2012, freezing the conflict in Gaza was an outcome we and the Israelis were willing to accept. But Israel’s policy since 2009 of containing rather than destroying Hamas has failed. A cease-fire now that restored the pre–October 7 status quo ante would leave the people of Gaza living in a besieged enclave under the domination of terrorists and leave Israelis vulnerable to continued attacks. It would also consign hundreds of hostages to continued captivity.

Cease-fires can make it possible to pursue negotiations aimed at achieving a lasting peace, but only when the timing and balance of forces are right. Bosnia in the 1990s saw 34 failed cease-fires before the Clinton administration’s military intervention prompted all sides to stop fighting and finally negotiate a peace agreement. It is possible that if Israel dismantles Hamas’s infrastructure and military capacity and demonstrates that terrorism is a dead end, a new peace process could begin in the Middle East. But a cease-fire that leaves Hamas in power and eager to strike Israel will make this harder, if not impossible. For decades, Hamas has undermined every serious attempt at peace by launching new attacks, including the October 7 massacre that seems to have been designed, at least in part, to disrupt progress toward normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia. (Those negotiations also aimed to bring important benefits for Palestinians.)

By contrast, the humanitarian pauses advocated by the Biden administration and tentatively accepted by the Israelis can save lives without rewarding Hamas. There is precedent: During previous wars in Gaza, Israel and Hamas agreed to a number of pauses so that relief could get into the area. Recent conflicts in Yemen and Sudan have also undergone brief humanitarian pauses. Whether for hours or days, breaks in the fighting can provide safety to aid workers and refugees. They could also help facilitate hostage negotiations, which is an urgent priority right now.

Rejecting a premature cease-fire does not mean defending all of Israel’s tactics, nor does it lessen Israel’s responsibility to comply with the laws of war. Minimizing civilian casualties is legally and morally necessary. It is also a strategic imperative. Israel’s long-term security depends on its achieving peaceful coexistence with neighbors who are prepared to accept its existence and its need for security. The disaster of October 7 has discredited the theory that Israel can contain Hamas, ignore the legitimate aspirations of the Palestinian people, and freeze Israeli control over Palestinians forever.

Going forward, Israel needs a new strategy and new leadership. Instead of the current ultra-right-wing government, it will need a government of national unity that’s rooted in the center of Israeli politics and can make the hard choices ahead. At home, it will have to reaffirm Israeli democracy after a tumultuous period. In Gaza, it should resist the urge to reoccupy the territory after the war, accept an internationally mandated interim administration for governing the Strip, and support regional efforts to reform and revive the Palestinian Authority so it has the credibility and the means to reassume control of Gaza. In the West Bank, it must clamp down on the violence perpetrated by extremist Israeli settlers and stop building new settlements that make it harder to imagine a future Palestinian state. Ultimately, the only way to ensure Israel’s future as a secure, democratic, Jewish state is by achieving two states for two peoples. And in the region, Israel should resume serious negotiations with Saudi Arabia and others to normalize relations and build a broad coalition to counter Iran.

For now, Israel should focus on freeing the hostages, increasing humanitarian aid, protecting civilians, and ensuring that Hamas terrorists can no longer murder families, abduct children, exploit civilians as human shields, or start new wars. But when the guns fall silent, the hard work of peace building must begin. There is no other choice.

Categories Accountability, Cruelty, Evil, Extremism, Hillary Clinton, International
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