Protest Reports

The progressive activist group RootsAction.org announced today the launch of “No Honeymoon” -- a sustained campaign that will mobilize grassroots pressure on Joe Biden from across the country.

With an email list of 1.2 million supporters nationwide, RootsAction backed Bernie Sanders in the primaries before conducting its #VoteTrumpOut campaign that reached millions of mostly progressive voters in swing states during the summer and fall.

RootsAction said on Wednesday: “The ‘Vote Trump Out’ campaign always had a second part to it -- ‘Then Challenge Biden.’ We are now fulfilling that commitment by organizing throughout the United States for a truly progressive agenda.”

The group’s NoHoneymoon.org website, unveiled on Wednesday, invites activists “to join with RootsAction to push back against the destructive forces of corporate power, racial injustice, extreme income inequality, environmental assault and the military-industrial complex.”

This we know for sure about Chicago ’68:

Mayor Richard J. “Boss/Big Dick” Daley was 100% responsible for the “police riots” at the pivotal Democratic Convention that helped elect Richard Nixon and prolong the war in Vietnam for an inexcusable 7 more years.

Daley did this by denying our Constitutional rights — some 15,000 of us, who came to “peaceably assemble” demanding a “redress of grievances” from the war’s prime perpetrators.

Had Daley acted with any sense or grace, he’d have granted our legal right to a daily march/rally permit, plus the ability to camp in Grant and Lincoln Parks (where else were we supposed to go?).

Certainly some among us might’ve broken a few windows and caused some havoc anyway. Certainly some among us were agents paid to do just that.

But mostly we were in Chicago to peacefully march, make our points against that horrible war in Vietnam, tell the Democratic party to CEASE AND DESIST. We figured also to smoke some dope, hear some music, and then go back home to work for peace, justice, and a totally transformed American way.

Thus far, people in 187 countries have signed this pledge:

Free Press advises voters that it is too late to vote by mail. Secretary's of State in Wisconsin, Arizona, and other officials have gone on record.

NPR reports It May Be Too Late To Mail Back Your Ballot. Election Officials Stress Other Options” by Sam Gringlas. Quoted from this article:

"We are too close to Election Day, and the right to vote is too important, to rely on the Postal Service to deliver absentee ballots on time," Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson wrote in a statement on Tuesday. "Citizens who already have an absentee ballot should sign the back of the envelope and hand-deliver it to their city or township clerk's office or ballot drop box as soon as possible."

O’odham sacred land and water protectors held  ceremony this morning at a border patrol checkpoint on unceded O’odham homelands to pray for sacred sites and graves demolished by the racist border wall. Border Patrol and Arizona State Troopers and Department  of Public Safety attacked them with tear gas and rubber bullets, hitting at least one O’odham in prayer in the chest with rubber bullets and arresting at least eight Native Americans on Indigenous Peoples’ Day. 

Indigenous Peoples’ Day 2020; Highway 85, Hia Ced O’odham lands (Arizona) - 

Donald Trump and Joe Biden were athletes who got deferments and dubious medical-based exemptions to participating in the mass slaughter of Vietnamese, Laotian, and Cambodian men, women, and children.

The common criticism of one or the other of them, based on partisan loyalty, is that he should have participated in mass murder. Questioning this notion results, most often, in ad hominem attacks against the questioner: but you weren’t there, you can’t know what you would have done, etc.

But we know what thousands of young men did: they refused to go. Many chose not to use available deferments, preferring to refuse to go.

On October 8th, you’ll be able to screen online the film The Boys Who Said No.

Why would people risk 5 years in prison to take a stand against mass murder?

Were they all losers and suckers, as Trump might claim?

In the spirit of Protest Reports, the Free Press reprints this from:

Charlie Pierce, who cut his teeth writing sports:

I always found [NBA coach Doc Rivers] a smart and aware human being, the son of a Chicago cop. He met his wife, Kris, when they were students at Marquette together. Kris is white. When they were dating, her parents’ home and auto were vandalized. While he was in San Antonio, his house was burned to the ground. He’s been there. He’s seen things. And, on Tuesday night, he turned his history loose.

"It’s amazing we keep loving this country and this country doesn’t love us back."