Jimmy Tobias at The Nation writes—Dispatches from the Urban Resistance, from Philly to Albuquerque and beyond:
Sometimes the constant barrage of bad news is enough to make you want to stay in bed. Forever. […]
Fortunately, many people have kept on all the same and, thanks to their tireless advocacy and activism, there are signs—recent signs—that a better America may yet emerge out of the crisis. Remember the beginning of November—November 8, to be exact?
That’s when progressives, socialists, and other grassroots forces swept to victory at the ballot box. From New Mexico and New York to Minnesota and Montana, they took seats on school boards, in state legislatures, in city halls, and elsewhere. And they did it by offering concrete solutions to people’s daily problems.
In Virginia, Danica Roem campaigned on a platform to fix her community’s local highway, Route 28. Her relentless focus on practical concerns helped her unseat her socially conservative opponent—a man so far to the right he’s been described as “the culture war’s four-star general”—and become the first openly transgender person in history to take a seat in the Virginia House of Delegates. In Somerville, Massachusetts, a slate of socialists and progressives ran local campaigns that homed in on the need for affordable and alternative housing models there. Together, they won seven seats on that city’s Board of Alderman. In Philadelphia, the longtime civil-rights lawyer Larry Krasner became the district attorney after running a race that addressed the devastating problem of mass incarceration in that city. He promised to oppose the death penalty, end cash-bail payments and treat addiction as a medical problem rather than a crime, and voters turned out for him in droves.
Collectively, the message of these campaigns and others like them was this: Government, and especially local government, can improve lives; it can constrain the power of the rich and empower working people; it can make the world better and fairer and easier. It can, in short, serve a function completely at odds with the diabolical vision of a cruel and corrupt government advanced by Trump.
The truth of that message is everywhere to be observed. This month alone, progressive leaders and organizers across the country offered some compelling examples. From education policy to police reform to immigrant defense, governments of the small-d democratic persuasion made progress a reality. [...]
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QUOTATION
“The arrogance and brutality of empire are not repealed when they temporarily get deployed in a just cause.”
~MIchael Kazin, 2008
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On this date at Daily Kos in 2011—CEO likens union contract to cancer in American Crystal Sugar lockout:
Workers at American Crystal Sugar remain locked out after four months—and a recording of company CEO Dave Berg speaking to shareholders on Nov. 7 demonstrates very clearly what the workers are up against.
Berg describes a friend who was feeling unwell and, after going to the doctor, had a 21-pound tumor removed. He continues:
I’m not saying a labor contract is cancer, but it affects you, it will drag you backward, you can’t do what you need to do. And I’m not saying we’re trying to get rid of the labor contract, we are not about union-busting. Take that one home with you, we are not about union-busting, but we can’t let the labor contract make us sick for ever and ever and ever. We have to treat the disease and that’s what we’re doing here.
(The recording was made available by the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers union.)
I don't know about you, but speaking for me, when the CEO of a company that has locked out its workers and hired replacement workers despite safety problems starts off with "I'm not saying a labor contract is cancer" in the midst of comparing his company's labor contract to cancer, his subsequent claim that "we are not about union-busting" starts to feel a little disingenuous.
On today’s Kagro in the Morning show: The Trump “Friends & Family” tax heist rumbles on, and the once-champions of “regular order” are nowhere to be found. More and more people wake up to Trump’s mental illness, even offering “I-word” explainers. More on O’Keefe’s history of sex predation.
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