Earlier today, I posted the letter that Isabel Rose wrote to Ivanka Trump about her transgender daughter. It is a powerful and moving letter. It has gone viral. It has been reprinted in many places and today appeared in Harper’s Bazaar with photographs of Isabel, Sadie, her husband Jeff, and her other daughter Lily.
What a wonderful testament to a family’s love!
A group of former government officials, scholars, and activists have joined together to act as an informal “Shadow Cabinet,” for the express purpose of exposing and debunking Trump’s errors, mistaken policies, and alternative facts.
I am pleased to share with you that I was invited to be the Shadow Secretary of Education.
Laurence Tribe of Harvard Law School is the Shadow Attorney General.
Robert Reich, former Secretary of Laor, is the Shadow Secretary of Labor.
Laura D. Tyson, former head of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers, will be the cabinet member for treasury and trade.
To learn about the other members, follow @ShadowingTrump on Twitter.
Shadow Attorney General Tribe tweeted this morning: “Trump’s silence on Kansas or any other white supremacist attack speaks louder than his tweets.”
For more, follow @ShadowingTrump
There is a little-known group called “the Flippables,” created by smart young people to focus energy on state and local political races. They identify crucial down-ballot races and help the candidates that represent liberal, progressive values..
Over the past dozen years, Tea Party Republicans have concentrated on gaining control at the state and local levels. They have knocked out moderate Republicans, driving Republican policy to the far right.
Democrats have wrung their hands and lamented but that was fruitless. Republican governors now control most state houses and legislatures.
The Flippables showed their power in Delaware over the weekend, where the Democratic candidate Stephanie Hansen beat her opponent. If Hansen had lost, Republicans would have gained control of the Delaware Senate. Currently, Republicans control 25 states–governor and legislature–Democrats control only 6. Flippables raised $131,600 for Hansen, enough for her to compete and about half f what she raised.
https://apple.news/A6-ZAvvxMSq2id7gn7__M2Q
One-party control is not good for democracy, especially when that once-venerable party is now led by white nationalists who scapegoat religious and national groups and excoriate the free press.
I am sending money to the Flippables. I have also sent gifts to the ACLU, People for the American Way, and other important defenders of our rights and freedoms.
I just made a contribution to the campaign of Jon Ossoff, who is running for an empty Congressional seat in Georgia’s 6th District, vacated by radical conservative Tom Price, who joined Trump’s cabinet in charge of HHS, where he hopes to repeal Obamacare and stop funding Planned Parenthood. Jon has been endorsed by civil rights icon John Lewis.
A notice in my email:
Progress NC Action
Diane – We’re days away from losing 6 years of NCAA tournaments and the $250 million in economic activity they’ll bring to our cities, counties and state. It’s as if the state legislature, led by House Speaker Tim Moore and Senate President Phil Berger could not care less.
And now conservative politicians in Raleigh have rolled out a so-called “compromise” bill that would repeal HB2, and replace it with HB 2.0.
Click here to add your name and tell politicians in Raleigh to fully repeal HB2 and ensure protections for the LGBT community in NC.
http://act.progressnc.org/sign/repeal-hb2/?t=1&akid=2716.43714._kq2EW
Here’s what HB 2.0 does:
Prohibits cities from protecting transgender people in public facilities.
Local governments that enact nondiscrimination ordinances could have those policies overturned by a referendum.
State law would explicitly exclude LGBT people from nondiscrimination protections in housing and employment.
Sound familiar? HB 2.0 keeps the most discriminatory parts of HB2 in place and calls it a fix. Who do politicians in Raleigh think they are fooling? Governor Cooper, EqualityNC and progressives across the state have condemned the proposal, with EqualityNC calling it an unprecedented failure of leadership.
The NC Chamber of Commerce has come out in favor of it, but then again the Chamber was a big backer of the original HB2! So no surprise that they support HB 2.0.
Click here if you’re tired of the political games and want politicians in Raleigh to finally repeal HB2 in its entirety and guarantee protections to the LGBT community.
Time is running out and the ball is in Berger’s court. Will we get leadership, or more discrimination?
Sincerely,
Evan Degnan
Digital Director, Progress NC Action
NAACP NATIONAL PRESIDENT CORNELL WILLIAM BROOKS AND NC STATE PRESIDENT AND NATIONAL BOARD MEMBER REV. DR. WILLIAM BARBER TO ANNOUNCE BOYCOTT AT FRIDAY PRESS CONFERENCE AT NC STATEHOUSE
The NAACP Board of Directors announced a resolution calling for an international economic boycott of the state of North Carolina in response to actions of an all-white legislative caucus, which unconstitutionally designed racially-discriminatory gerrymandered districts, enacted a monster voter suppression law, passed Senate Bill 4 stripping the incoming Governor of power and passed House Bill 2. HB 2 is anti-transgender, anti-worker and anti-access to the state court for employment discrimination.
NAACP National President/CEO Cornell William Brooks and North Carolina State President and National Board Member Rev. Dr. William Barber II are holding a press conference today (Friday, Feb. 24th @ 11:00 am) at the NC General Assembly to discuss the economic boycott and rally supporters for direct actions against the legislators.
“True democracy remains a distant ideal that the racist actions of members of the NC state legislature continue to disgracefully push further and further out of the reach of the African-American community,” said NAACP President Cornell William Brooks.
“The NAACP refuses to accept this attack on democracy or the commoditization of bias against people due to racial or gender identity here in North Carolina or anywhere else around the nation. This we will fight against with all of our resources until we win.”
Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II, stated, “The actions of the all white caucus of extremists in our legislature and the former Governor are out of control. They have consistently passed legislation that is a violation of our deepest moral values, voting rights, civil rights and the fundamental principle of equal protection under the law.”
“The federal court ruled against their voter suppression and racially gerrymandered districts. We believe their attacks on the transgender community and attempt to strip the Governor of power will also be found unconstitutional. Their decision to block local municipalities ability to raise wages and their limitation of access to state courts are wrong and we must stand strong against any and all attempts to deprive citizens their rights ordained by God and guaranteed by the constitution,” said Rev. Dr. Barber, NAACP North Carolina State President. “What has happened in North Carolina makes this state a battleground over the soul of America and whether our nation is sincere about making democracy real for all people, not just those with the right bank account, right sexuality or right skin.”
According to the NAACP Board of Director’s Resolution:
“The National Board of the NAACP will explore such a North Carolina Boycott along with the NC State Conference until the NC legislature passes bills that accomplish the following (or until such results are achieved through the courts):
a) Undo racially gerrymandered districts and create fair election districts;
b) repeal the entire HB-2 law;
c) repeal SB-4 law passed in a special session called for another reason that stripped trained civil servants in County and State Election Boards from supervising elections;
d) repeal the requirement that litigants to appeal to the en banc Court of Appeals before they can file an appeal to the NC Supreme Court;
e) repeal legislation that stripped the current Governor of powers his predecessor enjoyed.
Be It Further Resolved that the National NAACP and the North Carolina NAACP will engage in a joint media and public education campaign regarding this decision.
And be it finally resolved that in light of the adoption by other states of similar laws that reflect racial gerrymandering, discriminatory voter identification laws and similar types of laws to redistribute political power to the detriment of racial and ethnic minorities or change the nature of the electorate, the National NAACP will engage in applying various forms of economic sanctions or other appropriate economic or direct action to address these types of discriminatory legislative or executive actions around the nation.”
Two weeks ago in their 11th Annual Moral March on Raleigh and HKonJ People’s Assembly the NC NAACP and their 200 coalition partners, drew close to 100,000 individuals to the state capital to protest against extremism in the NC General Assembly and Trumpism in Washington DC. It was then that Rev. Barber informed the gathering that the NC State Conference Executive Committee had voted unanimously to ask the National Board of the NAACP to grant permission for economic boycott, which the NAACP National Board of Directors recently approved in a resolution last weekend during their annual board meeting in New York.
Along with the NAACP, at least 200 additional organizations are planning to join them in the economic boycott of the state. The press conference will kick off the economic boycott, which will include several stages and escalation of protest. The NAACP will refuse to hold its convention in North Carolina and will reach out to other organizations to take similar stances.
Additionally, the NAACP will create an internal task force to examine the ways in which the economic boycott can be expanded throughout the state as well as replicated in other states that have enacted similar racist voter suppression laws and laws like HB-2 which discriminates against the LGBT community, transgender people, workers, municipalities wanting to increase their minimum wage, and those in need of state access to courts for employment discrimination.
To see the complete resolution visit the NAACP here: (http://live-naacp-site.pantheonsite.io/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Resolution-of-National-Board-as-Proposed-by-NC-State-Conference.pdf )
Now that we are enmeshed in a federal government run by so-called evangelicals, it seems appropriate to hear another interpretation of the phrase “What would Jesus do?”
Here it is in the Guardian, by Stephen W. Thrasher. This is not a time to “be nice,” he writes.
He begins like this:
As a social justice minded Christian, my favorite depictions of Jesus are from Matthew 21:12, when he is seen with a whip in his hand, flipping over tables in a rage and driving merchants from the temple. This is the Christ who speaks to me when I look at the mess that is contemporary America and ask myself “What would Jesus Do?”. He was a righteously furious Middle Eastern Jew, who’d been born while his mother was migrating and grew up to put the fear of God into capitalists, putting them on the run with a whip.
This Jesus is angry, and he’s a great role model for the American left, which has been cowed into thinking it must be passive and “nice” in the face of oppression.
Forgoing anger will not save us. Indeed, perhaps the only good thing about Donald Trump is that he’s allowed some wider consideration of what Audre Lorde called the “uses of anger” in mainstream left American discourse….
But for too long, a misinterpretation of Martin Luther King as never angry (when his speeches, marches and actions against poverty, racist labor exploitation and war were full of fury) , and the too-polite Barack Obama, have lulled the left into avoiding anger and its useful productiveness in demanding change.
No more. Trump – an angry, intemperate manchild who bullies whomever he can – has unleashed the left’s anger. And it’s high time we let it out.
Ken Previti proclaimed that today was #FakePresidentsDay 2017. He was not alone. There were demonstrations in many cities and communities, whose theme was “Not My President.” Republican Town Hall meetings were thronged with angry people.
For years, I have heard many people under the age of 50 complain regretfully that they were not around to participate in the protests of the 1960s. Now they have a chance. Not to protest a war (yet), but to protest what appears to be a rigged election (Trump’s term). To protest a series of executive orders. To protest an executive order closing our borders to seven Muslim-majority nations. To protest an unending series of lies expressed by the President or his surrogates (alternative facts). To protest the building of a wall on the southern border. To protest roundups of undocumented immigrants, some of whom had done nothing wrong. To protest the repeal of the Affordable Care Act. To protest daily attacks on the press.
Are the 1960s alive again?
Thank you, Betsy Deavos, for awakening the parents, teachers, and other concerned citizens about the risk of privatizing our public schools and handing them over to entrepreneurs and religious institutions.
We will fight you. We will stand together against your schemes and malevolent dreams. The public paid for our schools, and you can’t take them away.
The Network for Public Education and NPE Action will lead the fight.
Thanks to DeVos, our membership went from 22,000 to more than 300,00 and it is growing daily.
Help us push back.
RESIST!!!!!
Steven Rosenfeld of Alternet interviewed Jitu Brown about the coalition-building he is leading to fight for educational justice. Jitu is national director of the Journey for Justice, which fights for the rights of underserved black and brown children. Jitu is a member of the board of the Network for Public Education.
Jitu led the successful hunger strike at Dyett High School in Chicago, preventing its closure.
He says:
“I always say to people, we had to go on a hunger strike to win a neighborhood school in Brownsville. We had to risk our lives, literally. So I think what people have to realize as we organize, we can’t organize in a way that’s transactional. We can’t organize in a way like we’re insiders, because we are not—even if we think we are. We have to organize like we are fighting a system that is dead-set against making sure that black snd brown children receive a quality education. That’s my understanding. So if Journey for Justice collapsed tomorrow, I’m still going to be in the struggle, because that’d how we assess it.
“This is not about playing the inside-outside game. We have to have an organizing strategy that is determined. People have to be prepared to struggle and suffer a little bit. We call it organizing outside of the acceptable protest playbook. You start at the rallies. You start at the disruptions of meetings and things of that nature. But we have to be prepared to go further. I don’t say that in an arrogant way. We have to tighten our belt, put our big-boy and big-girl pants on, and realize that.
“Let me just share this with you. On the 25th day of the Dyett hunger strike, [during] which Mrs. Irene Robinson was hospitalized twice; while we were starving in Washington Park; while the former head of the Cook County Medical Association called it a public health crisis and urged the mayor to resolve it, that same day, Mayor Rahm Emanuel and CEO of Chicago School Board Forrest Claypool had a ribbon-cutting event at a school called Lincoln Elementary. A neighborhood school for wealthy whites close to De Paul University, and they gave them $21 million for a new annex that several of the parents didn’t even want. Parents from that school advocated [to] give that money back to the South Side and the West Side; we don’t need it, they do. But despite that, while we starved in Washington Park, they did a ribbon-cutting to give them $21 million. That tells me all I need to hear. That’s what you’re up against.
“You are up against a system that does not view black and brown children as valuable. And until we on the left acknowledge that—because we on the left don’t acknowledge that. And we have zero tolerance for that, for a system—like right now, as I’m talking to you, there’s an elementary school in Chicago on the north side where children get Mandarin Chinese, Arabic and Spanish. Every teacher has a teacher aide. They have a full-time nurse, social workers, speech therapist, drama teacher. At the same time, there are children on the Southside where children have to eat lunch under the stairs because the school is so crowded. There’s one teacher aide in the entire building. And a part-time Spanish instructor that they had to lose their librarian in order to get. See, that’s separate and unequal.
“And that’s co-equal to the right and it’s acceptable to the left. And until we are honest about that, and that’s what we are trying to do at Journey for Justice; build a multi-racial alliance that’s grounded in the principle of unity through self-determination. The issues that we bring forth have to be championed by all. Not watered down in order to make white people feel more comfortable—no. We have to face the ugliness, the ugliness of how race has expressed itself in this country. And nowhere is it more profound than in public education.”
The Trump administration proves what some of us long feared and suspected: the crackpot fringe of the right wants to dumb down the populace by eliminating funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the National Endowment for the Humanities.
These Yahoos hate education. They want the public to be raised in ignorance of science, history, and art. They want to eliminate funding for programs that educate the public. As long as you have a Bible, what more do you need?
Arts organizations across the country are rallying to save the meager amounts of federal funds that is available to supports the arts, humanities, and culture.
“As the news spread that the White House budget office had included the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the National Endowments for the Arts and the Humanities on a list of programs it was considering trying to eliminate, arts leaders at large and small organizations around the nation reacted with alarm — and began making plans to fight for their survival.
“The federal government plays a very small role in funding the arts, especially compared with other affluent countries. Together, the three programs that may be targeted account for less than one-tenth of 1 percent of annual federal spending. But even if the arts get only crumbs, administrators said, they are crumbs worth fighting for: much-needed money that supports community projects, new works and making the arts accessible to people in different parts of the country and to those who are not wealthy.
“And after years of culture-war debates in which conservatives took aim at the programs, questioning the value of some of the art that was publicly funded, arts groups are pressing the case that the federal money they receive supports organizations — and jobs — in all 50 states, both red and blue.
“The N.E.A. has a big impact in the middle of country — even more so, I suspect, than in urban areas where funding is more diversified,” said Martin Miller, the executive director of TheatreSquared, a regional theater in Fayetteville, Ark., that bills itself as the northwest part of the state’s only year-round professional theater.
“Losing the N.E.A. would mean that many smaller, mid-American arts companies couldn’t weather a recession,” he said, noting that the endowment supports both state and regional arts councils. “Losing these companies would mean fewer jobs, a lower quality of life and less local spending in the small towns that need it most.”
“Many arts officials said they were gravely concerned that the programs were back on the chopping block.
“It’s another example of our democracy being threatened,” the actor Robert Redford, the president and founder of the Sundance Institute, which helps filmmakers, said in a telephone interview. “Arts are essential. They describe and critique our society.”
“President Trump is already facing pressure from some of his allies to preserve the programs. Daryl Roth, a prominent Broadway producer (“Kinky Boots,” “Indecent”) whose husband, Steven Roth, is a Trump adviser, said that she opposed eliminating the programs and that she had expressed her view to the Trump administration and would continue to do so.
“The concept of ending federal funding to the N.E.A. and to the many nonprofit arts organizations, artists, writers, cultural institutions, museums and all recipients that would be affected is of course of grave concern to me,” Ms. Roth wrote in an email. “Arts education in the schools, theater groups, music and dance programs help revitalize local communities, both spiritually and economically, across the country.”
“The fate of the three organizations is still far from clear: An internal memo that circulated within the Office of Management and Budget last week, which was obtained by The New York Times, noted that the list of programs targeted for elimination could still change. Officials at both of the endowments said they had not received any official word from the White House. But the programs have long been in the cross-hairs of conservatives.
“Romina Boccia, a fellow at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, said Congress should eliminate federal arts grants altogether. “The minuscule portion of art funding that comes from the federal government does not support the arts in any meaningful way; rather, it distorts the art market toward what is politically acceptable,” she said. She also questioned the need for the federal government to support public broadcasting.
“But arts administrators around the nation said in interviews that culture had enjoyed bipartisan support in recent years, and that they were hopeful their elected officials could be persuaded to keep the programs. They began making plans last month to make the case for the arts to their audiences, their well-connected board members and Congress.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 