Welcome once again to $27 Quotes — a weekly place where you can sit back, relax, enjoy some inspiring quotes and good music, and (most importantly) spend time gazing at a picture or two of foresterbob’s cat Noble Fur.
It’s gray and damp here today, but not thunderstormy at the moment so I should be able to get this typed and posted. So let’s start with tonight’s title quote.
Usually the title quote in these diaries comes from something said in the week before the diary posts. Tonight’s title quote comes from a bit farther back — 55 years farther back…
When you deal with men of ICE
You can't deal with ways so nice...
The quote, from 1964, is from Judy Collins’ version of the song “It Isn’t Nice” (by Malvina Reynolds and Barbara Dane), in which she sings about how when faced with horrible abuses like what’s going on now in the US concentration camps for immigrants and asylum-seekers we can’t keep silent or simply stand by and let the abuses continue:
It isn’t nice to block the doorway,
It isn’t nice to go to jail,
There are nicer ways to do it,
But the nice ways always fail.
It isn’t nice, it isn’t nice,
You told us once, you told us twice,
But if that is freedom’s price, we don’t mind.
...
Well, we tried negotiations
And the token picket line;
Mr. Charlie didn't see us
And he might as well be blind.
When you deal with men of ICE
You can't deal with ways so nice
But if that's freedom's price, we don't mind...
Here she is singing it. It’s a powerful song and a powerful message.
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And here are some related more-recent quotes
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I cannot forget what I saw at the border. I refuse to. It robs me of sleep and peace of mind. But it pales in comparison to the pain felt by families that have been robbed of their liberty, their rights, and the lives of their babies and loved ones. Close The Camps!
~ Ayanna Pressley
Kids are taken from their families under an American flag.
They are left to cough in cages, spread lice, and smell of mucus with bald eagle emblems emblazoned around them.
A few years from now, these thousands of children will grow to tell their story. We owe it to them to change.
~ Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
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These families need trauma support, case workers, clean water, adequate and nutritious food. Instead they have received a level of degradation we should be ashamed is occurring on American soil.
~ Ayanna Pressley
Seeking asylum is not illegal.
You know what is though? Spending money Congress didn’t give you to detain asylum seekers in private prisons.
These are human rights abuses, plain and simple.
~ Ilhan Omar
I want ICE to explain to me why they’re spending even more money on for-profit detention centers and secretly housing migrants in a facility so despicable that the Justice Department didn’t want to use it.
Private, for-profit prisons are rife with safety, health, and human rights concerns. We should abolish them altogether.
~ Elizabeth Warren
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ICE raids are expected to begin this Sunday, July 14.
These raids will dehumanize immigrants and tear families apart. This will not make our country any stronger. It will only traumatize children, destroy lives, and make our country less safe.
If you are an undocumented immigrant, please know that you are in my thoughts and that I will keep fighting to make our immigration system welcome all who seek a better life in our country.
~ Ilhan Omar
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Instead of agreeing to the directives and goals set by Congress, ICE has opened three new immigrant detention centers.
ICE is ALSO spending money that it hasn’t been given.
It is clear that ICE isn’t being held accountable; the agency must be abolished. We cannot be complicit in the militarization of our southern border.
People who come to our country in search of a better life should be treated with humanity and respect.
But right now people are being held in detention for profit, forced to live in unsanitary conditions, separated from their loved ones. This must end. ICE should be held accountable for its actions.
~ Ilhan Omar
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I’ve got a message for the Trump administration: When you physically abuse immigrants, sexually abuse immigrants, or refuse to supply immigrants with the medical care that they need, you break the law of the United States of America.
Trump may look the other way—but President Elizabeth Warren will not. I'll launch a task force in the Department of Justice to investigate the Trump administration’s criminal abuses at the border, and we’ll hold perpetrators accountable.
~ Elizabeth Warren
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Watch this video.
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Listen to the pain in Yazmin Juárez's voice.
Her baby died as a result of ICE's actions. There should no longer be any doubt that we need to close these camps and hold the perpetrators of these human rights abuses accountable.
Close the Camps!
~ Ilhan Omar
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And a closing word on civility:
When politicians talk about civility, please understand that so-called civility is often used to mask incredible oppression and very ugly policies.
~ Bernie Sanders
The Climate Crisis
Do not let anyone convince you that we lack the ability as a nation to address the climate crisis.
The problem we face is the lack of political will to take on the greed of the fossil fuel industry.
~ Bernie Sanders
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Frontline communities are already impacted by the climate crisis and environmental injustice. That’s why they’re named in the Green New Deal.
Fixing the pipes in Flint, cleaning the air in the Bronx and transitioning away from pipelines on reservations sets an example for our future.
~ Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
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Climate disasters that can cause death, displacement and suffering—unprecedented heatwaves, storms, and flooding—now occur at a rate of one per week.
If that is not an emergency, I don't know what is.
~ Bernie Sanders
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We should call our climate crisis what it is: an emergency. That’s why I support a climate emergency resolution, a Green New Deal, protecting our public lands and coasts from drilling, and other big, bold actions to tackle it.
~ Elizabeth Warren
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DC is flooded. It was 90 degrees in Alaska last week. Sea ice has shrunk to record lows in Antarctica. June was the hottest month ever recorded.
And today Trump is "touting" his environmental record.
We don't have time for more lies. We must address the climate crisis now.
~ Bernie Sanders
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We need a president who will work with leaders around the world and tell them: Instead of spending $1.5 trillion on weapons to kill one another, let's unite against our common enemy to address climate change and save the planet.
~ Bernie Sanders
Addressing the Climate Crisis, part 1
The Climate Crisis threatens our air, water, and health, but it could also trigger a global financial crisis. Rising sea levels, more extreme storms, and water shortages are just a few of the many threats to our economy.
It’s time to wake up and fight back against giant corporations that pollute our environment and make everyone else deal with the consequences. So I’ve got a bill to act on the climate with the language that giant corporations understand best: money.
I’m reintroducing my Climate Risk Disclosure Act with Sean Casten, Matt Cartwright, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to make public companies disclose their climate-related risks. Investors can hold corporations accountable for their role in the climate crisis and speed up the transition to a green economy.
~ Elizabeth Warren
Addressing the Climate Crisis, part 2
Today, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Bernie Sanders, and I unveiled our resolution to declare a Climate Emergency. This is about telling the truth about the climate crisis and the urgent, massive action needed to address it.
~ Earl Blumenauer [congressmember representing OR-03]
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Today I am joining Earl Blumenauer and Bernie Sanders in pushing Congress to acknowledge the climate emergency.
The US isn’t leading on climate, and we must. Let’s join the four leading nations and 740 local governments that have declared a climate emergency.
~ Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
I'm proud to join Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Earl Blumenauer, Bernie Sanders and several others on a joint resolution to declare a climate emergency.
The climate crisis IS an emergency and we must respond with the bold, immediate action that this moment requires.
~ Joe Neguse (congressmember representing CO-02)
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Climate Change is an emergency, full stop. This isn’t a partisan issue. All representatives should be treating Climate Change with the urgency Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, and Pramila Jayapal are.
~ Mark Ruffalo
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Today I introduced legislation in the senate declaring that climate change is a national emergency. Similar legislation was introduced in the house by Earl Blumenauer and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Anybody who does not appreciate that climate change is not only a national emergency but a global emergency really does not understand what's going on. And what the scientific community has told us is that we have all of 12 years in order to transform our enegy system away from fossil fuel to energy efficiency and sustainable energy or there will be irreparable damage done to this planet.
Our job right now is to have the courage to take on the fossil fuel industry who make billions and billions of dollars every single year destroying our planet, to take them on and in fact to transform our energy system away from fossil fuel to energy efficiency and sustainable energy.
This is a national emergency, the future of the planet is hanging on our decision about moving forward. Let's go forward together.
~ Bernie Sanders
And for those who enjoy listening to people say things for themselves, here’s the above quote in video form:
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Making the World a Better Place
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Our democracy should be governed by the people, not the highest bidder.
~ Ilhan Omar
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How can it be that we have enough money to give tax breaks to billionaires and spend more on defense than the next 10 countries combined, but we don’t have enough to make sure that every American child has a roof over their head and enough food to eat?
~ Bernie Sanders
In the richest country in the history of the world, no one should be living in poverty. It’s time to raise the current starvation level minimum wage to a living wage. It's time for Congress to pass the Raise the Wage Act to increase the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour.
~ Bernie Sanders
- Medicare for All.
- A Green New Deal.
- An end to mass deportation and human rights abuses at the border.
We are not fighting for the agenda of beltway elites. We are fighting for the people’s agenda.
~ Ilhan Omar
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The FTC just voted to let Facebook off easy with a $5 billion settlement for compromising the data of tens of millions of Americans and allowing our elections to be improperly influenced.
Let’s be honest: this settlement is a victory for Facebook. Just look to the markets. In the first 15 minutes after the settlement was reported, Facebook’s market value went up by more than $5 billion.
Facebook made $5 billion in profits in just the first three months of last year. The company is too big to oversee, and this drop-in-the-bucket penalty confirms that. The FTC should break Facebook up, plain and simple. Enough is enough.
~ Elizabeth Warren
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In 2008 Americans owed $611 billion in student debt.
In 2019, we owe $1.6 trillion.
Meanwhile some of the largest corporations pay $0 in taxes. And we still ask ourselves why the average American is in some much debt? This kind of corruption needs to stop.
~ Ilhan Omar
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Canceling all student debt would create up to 1.6 million jobs per year, boost the economy by $1 trillion over 10 years and close the racial wealth gap.
Canceling student debt is not only the moral thing to do — it is the economically smart thing.
~ Bernie Sanders
If you’d like to know more about Sanders’ plan for cancelling all student debt, and to see how it would create the jobs he talks about and boost the economy, here’s a link to an article Sanders wrote for Fortune explaining this in detail.
And here’s an excerpt from the article to get you started:
America Is Drowning in Student Debt.
Here’s My Plan to End It
The Federal Reserve reported that in 2014 alone, student loan debt prevented 400,000 young Americans from purchasing homes. Karthik Krishnan, a professor at Northeastern University who specializes in student debt, told CNBC last year that people with $30,000 in student loan debt are 11% less likely to start businesses than are those without debt.
“You do stand to see longer-term negative effects on people who can’t pay off their student loans,” Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell told Congress in March 2018. “It hurts their credit rating; it impacts the entire half of their economic life.”
Under our legislation to cancel all $1.6 trillion of student debt, the economy would get a boost of approximately $1 trillion over the next decade and up to 1.6 million new jobs would be created each year, according to a report from the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College. At the same time, millions of Americans would have the financial resources they need to buy new homes, buy new cars, or open up small businesses.
And for those who like to read plans on how to fix problems we’re facing, here are details of another good plan:
Through a toxic combination of malice and neglect, Donald Trump has declared war on the State Department. The department has lost 60% of its career ambassadors and 20% of its most experienced civil servants. And even before Trump, years of hiring freezes and spending cuts caused many talented diplomats to head for the doors.
That’s why I’ve got a plan to rebuild the State Department...
Here’s what we’ll do:
1. Grow a 21st century Foreign Service
Let’s be honest: our State Department is too small. Nearly 15% of Foreign Service positions abroad have been left unfilled for years, which increases workloads, damages diplomatic readiness, and contributes to burnout and low morale. Too few diplomats means missed opportunities to make important connections and develop a better understanding of foreign countries. The United States lacks a presence in nearly 40% of world cities with populations over 3 million, many in the rapidly growing Indo-Pacific region.
The Pentagon is nearly 40 times bigger than the State Department. This has real consequences for our presence abroad — when we refuse to invest in diplomatic solutions, our leaders often default to military action, instead of treating it like a last resort.
Our foreign policy should not be run out of the Pentagon. Under a Warren administration, it won’t be.
My plan will double the size of the Foreign Service and make sure that we have diplomatic posts in underserved areas around the globe.
I’ll also make sure that our Foreign Service reflects the America they serve. Today’s foreign service is 79% white and 65% male — and the nature of the recruitment process also limits the number of diplomats from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. That changes in a Warren administration. I’ll direct the State Department to correct the employment records of all employees fired or forced to resign in the past because of their sexual orientation — because everyone should be welcome to serve their country. I’ll dedicate recruitment resources to applicants from HBCUs and other minority-serving institutions, women’s colleges, and community colleges. And I’ll double the size of fellowships designed to recruit minority and low-income diplomats.
2. Professionalize our ambassadors and stop auctioning off American diplomacy to the highest bidder.
Trump has perfected the act of selling swanky diplomatic posts to rich donors. He may think a fat wallet and a big campaign check qualifies someone to represent our country abroad. I don’t.
Our State Department should not be for sale. I don’t spend my time at fancy closed-door fundraisers trading favors for money, and I’ll make my ambassadorial appointments based on only one thing: finding the most qualified person for the job.
That’s why I’m pledging to put America’s national interests ahead of campaign donations and end the corrupt practice of selling cushy diplomatic posts to wealthy donors — and I call on everyone running for President to do the same. I won’t give ambassadorial posts to wealthy donors or bundlers — period. And I’ll make sure that some of the most senior positions in the State Department, including at least one Deputy Secretary position and the Director General of the Foreign Service, are filled by experienced career ambassadors.
~ Elizabeth Warren
Running way late tonight, so must end there.