Category: Power to the People
Bernie’s getting ready to run
Of course he would. I hope he does it:
Sanders, who is the longest-serving Independent in congressional history, would have to officially register as a Democrat before he could run in the 2016 Democratic presidential primary. But he says he hasn’t yet made up his mind for sure if he’ll run, and he has time yet. One thing he is sure of: He’d make a better President than Hillary Clinton.
Clinton, he says, “is a very, very intelligent person, no question about it. But, I don’t know what her political future is, whether she’s going to run. I don’t know what she’s going to say. But, if you talk about the need for a political revolution in America, it’s fair to say that Secretary Clinton probably will not be one of the more active people.”
And a political revolution is exactly what Sanders believes this country is crying out for: “What we need is a political revolution in which grassroots America—and that is primarily working people who are fighting for their lives right now economically—have got to come together to make everybody understand that we are the majority of the American people and not the Koch brothers and not Sheldon Adelson, and not the other billionaires today who have huge influence over the economic and political life of the nation. And that’s not easily done. It’s easier to talk about it than do it.”
In a wide-ranging interview, TIME sat down with the 72-year-old potential presidential hopeful for more than 45 minutes to examine his call to political arms, marijuana legalization (he’d be the first senator to endorse recreational use), the expansion of Social Security and many more issues.
The kids are alright
http://youtu.be/-pWLNoRZ9mg
Obama’s legacy will be as the president who let it all happen so he could get reelected:
More than 300 anti-Keystone XL protesters were arrested Sunday afternoon outside the White House in the latest push by environmentalists to convince the Obama administration to reject the Canadian oil pipeline.
The student-led protest, organized by XL Dissent, started with a rally at Georgetown University. The students marched from there to the White House — with a stop at Secretary of State John Kerry’s house along the way.
Students from 80 colleges participated in Sunday’s event, and another protest will be held on Monday in San Francisco, said Aly Johnson-Kurts, a freshman at Smith College and one of the organizers of the event.
“The youth really understand the traditional methods of creating change are not sufficient … so we needed to escalate,” said Johnson, shortly before she was arrested at the White House.
An organizer estimated the crowd at about 1,200 people. U.S. Park Police could not immediately provide a count of those arrested Sunday afternoon.
Organizers held civil disobedience training on Saturday to ensure that the demonstration went peacefully.
The crowd marched down H Street, holding banners and chanting songs. Some wore painter’s scrubs with black paint on them — “hazmat suits” with oil — while others held signs with slogans like “Keystone XL: pipeline to hell” and “Keep your oil out of my soil.”A tide of energy undulated through the crowd as speaker after speaker got up to encourage them to risk arrest.
“I want you to know how important what you’re doing is,” Chris Wahmhoff, a member of the Michigan Coalition Against Tar Sands and candidate for the U.S. Senate, told the crowd, holding a block of oil sands in his hand. “The sick people in Michigan, the sick people in Canada, they’re looking to you.”“They say we are too young to make a difference, but we are proving them wrong, right here, right now,” Earthguradians Youth Director Xiuhtezcatl Martinez said to the cheering crowd.
“I think when the public sees college students coming out and getting arrested,” he said to POLITICO later, “people can say the youth came out. We were here. Because our generation will be the most impacted by whatever decision is made by the government.”
Back to the old days
Sooner or later, this kind of oppression will cause people to rise up. Not yet, apparently:
After a fairly tame first 10 days of the Olympic Games — at least by Russian protest standards — members of Pussy Riot were briefly detained Tuesday in connection with a theft in their hotel. The highest-profile members of the punk rock collective, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alekhina, were freed along with seven others after questioning by police.
Within 24 hours, however, the anti-Putin protesters staged staged an impromptu performance. Six band members, including one man, donned their signature ski masks and took to the streets of Sochi. But before the show even began, several Cossack militia members stifled the music, with one appearing to pepper spray Tolokonnikova and another beating several women with a horse whip, according to the Associated Press.
The Cossacks continued their violent attack, throwing Tolokonnikova to the ground, tearing the balaclavas from several women, beating them with whips and ripping the guitarist’s instrument from his hands to toss it in the trash. Cossacks have a long history in Russia, helping lead the country’s imperial expansion by serving in the cavalry under czarist rule, according to The Washington Post. They have reemerged in southern Russia after nearly disappearing in the communist era.
Decorating Dianne’s front steps
Code Pink thought Dianne Feinstein’s house needed a little sprucing up, which I thought was pretty thoughtful!
Your librul media
Oddly enough, they didn’t think to cover this:
Somewhere between 80 to 100,000 people from 32 states turned out to protest four years of drastic state Republican initiatives in Raleigh, North Carolina, on Saturday.
The “Moral March on Raleigh,” organized by Historic Thousands on Jones Street (HKonJ), marched from Shaw University to the state capitol to push back against the “immoral and unconstitutional policies” of Republican Gov. Pat McCrory during the 2013 NC General Assembly session. Since North Carolina Republicans took over both legislative chambers in 2010, legislators have eliminated a host of programs and raised taxes on the bottom 95 percent, repealed a tax credit for 900,000 working families, enforced voter suppression efforts, blocked Medicaid coverage, cut pre-Kindergarten funding, cut federal unemployment benefits, and gave itself the authority to intervene in abortion lawsuits.
Activists have gathered at weekly protests, called ‘Moral Mondays,’ in North Carolina since 2013 as a way to give voice to individuals whose rights were under attack by the Republican-controlled legislature.
While there were no reported arrests in Saturday’s protest, hundreds of nonviolent protesters were arrested during last year’s Moral Monday events.
Comcast hearings in Philadelphia
Via the Media Mobilizing Project:
Have something to say to Comcast? From concerns about your cable prices to demands that they pay their fair share, now’s our chance to be heard.
Every fifteen years, the City of Philadelphia and Comcast negotiate special contracts called “franchise agreements” in order to provide cable services in Philadelphia, America’s fourth biggest cable market (1). In exchange for their right to provide cable access and earn massive profits from our communities, the franchise agreement requires Comcast to “give back” a portion of their profits to support the public.
Comcast’s previous franchise agreement expires in 2015. The City has begun to collect public input on what Philadelphians want from Comcast in order to inform their negotiations and craft a new franchise agreement. If we want a deal that truly benefits the people of Philadelphia, we need to tell the City what our communities need to thrive.MMP has created a guide to help you understand this process – so we can provide the City with input that will make an impact.
Click here to read the guide, and tell Philadelphia what our communities demand from Comcast.
Comcast has outsized power in a Philadelphia still suffering under economic crisis. The company earned over $64 billion in revenues in 2013 (2), while they lobbied to stop hundreds of thousands of Philadelphians from getting access to paid sick days (3). Comcast joined Governor Corbett and the Chamber of Commerce on a push to shutter and privatize Philly’s public schools (4). The ratio for CEO pay to average employee pay at Comcast is 370:1 (5). And they pay little in a city and state that needs much – a nationwide corporate-income tax rate of only 3.4% in a state where our average rate is 9.99% (6).
Continue reading “Comcast hearings in Philadelphia”
A new mayor in town
I’m sure Bill DeBlasio will disappoint us at some point, but damn, I’m pretty happy about this:
The image is surreal. Newly elected New York mayor Bill de Blasio, wearing a broad and slightly goofy smile, dwarfs the infinitely vilified outgoing mayor Michael Bloomberg, who seems somewhat bemused himself.
For 12 years it was Mayor Bloomberg, standing at the forefront of a national education reform movement, who overshadowed Bill de Blasio and his progressive ilk. Bloomberg considered New York the “ poster child” of free-market education reform as he seized mayoral control of the district, closed nearly 200 “failing schools” and opened about that many charters.
But as de Blasio settles into office, his administration has already dealt major blows to one of Bloomberg’s sacred cows. Late last week, newly appointed schools chancellor Carmen Fariña announced that the Department of Education would redirect $210 million from charter schools and independent nonprofits to fund de Blasio’s pre-kindergarten initiative.
The surprise announcement reflects educational priorities in upheaval. The millions in question had been earmarked by the former administration to help clear space for new and expanding charter schools in the coming five years. Instead, Fariña plans to divert the funds to priorities like de Blasio’s flagship initiative, the pre-kindergarten programs sold largely as a remedy for inequality.
Contagious
Seems like medical marijuana is all the rage these days!
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) came out in favor of medical marijuana Thursday in a Las Vegas Sun interview, becoming one of the highest elected officials in the U.S. government to give his support.
“If you’d asked me this question a dozen years ago, it would have been easy to answer — I would have said no, because [marijuana] leads to other stuff,” Reid was quoted as saying. “But I can’t say that anymore.”
“I think we need to take a real close look at this,” he added. “I think that there’s some medical reasons for marijuana.”
Although it remains illegal under federal law, polls show that most Americans support medical marijuana. And Attorney General Eric Holder announced in August that the Department of Justice would not interfere, at least at first, as states that have legalized weed for adults create their regulatory regimes — a dramatic policy shift from federal authorities’ targeting of medical marijuana dispensaries that were legal under state law.
US ‘superweeds’ epidemic shines spotlight on GMOs
They blinded us with science!
US ‘superweeds’ epidemic shines spotlight on GMOs (via AFP)
The United States is facing an epidemic of herbicide-resistant “superweeds” that some activists and researchers are blaming on GMOs, an accusation rejected by industry giants. According to a recent study, the situation is such that American farmers…