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If you can do activism, do it around policies in a principled manner, and steer clear of elections.

If you can do funding, fund principled activist organizations, not political candidates.

If you must divert your energies and money into elections, I have a recommendation for how best to do it (not that you’ll necessarily listen to me, having already ignored my first two paragraphs, but what the heck):

Part of getting better governance out of Washington, D.C., will have to come from shifting power back from the White House to the Congress and putting better people into the Congress.

The coming election for the White House has, as always, an even worse lesser-evilism problem than it had the time before. The lesser evil is a bit too evil for a bit too many people. Some want to pinch their nose and go for it anyway. Others want to try for something better next time by, for once, withholding votes that have certainly not been earned. Others would support lesser-evil voting if not for the fact that so many who engage in lesser-evil voting develop symptoms of lesser-evil thinking and behaving and cheerleading on a long-term basis.

Well, he deserved to die, didn’t he? He fought, he ran, he grabbed the cop’s taser and fired it. And he was intoxicated, apparently. And he was blocking traffic.

“If an officer is hit with that Taser, all of his muscles will be locked up, and he’ll have the inability to move and to respond,” said a Georgia county sheriff, referring to the killing of Rayshard Brooks in Atlanta on June 12. “This was a completely justified shooting.”

Completely. Justified.

AFTER THE WI-OH-GA PRIMARY FIASCOS:

How to Avert a Fall Coup

Emergency Election Protection 2020
Info-Webinar on Zoom & Facebook Live

This webinar means to provide activists, organizers, citizens with core information on the conduct of the 2020 elections  

Wed., June 17, 3:00 -4:30pm Eastern / noon-1:30 Pacific

600 people have now signed a petition in Charlottesville, Va. at http://bit.ly/cvillepeace

Almost all of the signers are from Charlottesville.

The petition is addressed to the Charlottesville City Council and reads:

We urge you to ban from Charlottesville:
(1) military-style or “warrior” training of police by the U.S. military, any foreign military or police, or any private company,
(2) acquisition by police of any weaponry from the U.S. military;
and to require enhanced training and stronger policies for conflict de-escalation, and limited use of force for law enforcement.

Here are some of the comments people have added when they signed:

I join in with many Black leaders in this community to call for a demilitarization of our police force and the defunding of resources that should be better spent on other public services.

Militarized police encourages brutality and excessive force. We need to go the other way.

In 1953 author Simone de Beauvoir asked Must We Burn De Sade? regarding the French Marquis and his sadomasochistic books. Today, as the twin plagues of Covid-19 and police brutality disproportionately ravage African Americans, we’re likewise asking: Must Gone with the Wind be gone?

On June 10 - the birthday of Hattie McDaniel, who won one of the 1939 epic’s eight Oscars, including Best Picture - HBO Max blew GWTW off the streaming service’s lineup. As statues of historical figures linked to slavery and racism are being razed, removed and defaced at Bristol, London, Montgomery, Richmond, Boston, Philadelphia, Louisville, Barbados, Antwerp, Belgium and beyond, the question is being raised: What should be done about televised/ cinematic systemic racism and bigoted, Confederate TV/movie monuments, like GWTW?

Here’s the text of a new bill in Congress: PDF.

Here’s a petition from Code Pink promoting it.

Needless to say, this is the best bill introduced into Congress in decades.

Here’s the ending:

“Congress supports moves to reduce the priority given to war in our foreign policy and our current war-based national economy by using significant cuts, up to $350,000,000,000 as detailed above, from current budget plans, while using the funds to increase our diplomatic capacity and for domestic programs that will keep our Nation and our people safer.”

The details above in the text of the bill include:

(1) eliminating the Overseas Contingency Operations account and saving $68,800,000,000;

(2) closing 60 percent of foreign bases and saving $90,000,000,000;

(3) ending wars and war funding and saving $66,000,000,000;

Senator Bernie Sanders has finally done something that some of us thought would give his presidential campaign a big boost four years ago, and again this past year. He’s proposed to introduce legislation to move a significant amount of money from militarism to human and environmental needs (or at least human needs; the details aren’t clear, but moving money out of militarism is an environmental need).

Better late than never! Let’s make it happen with an overwhelming show of public support! And let’s make it a first step!

Unless election protection activists rise up, primary election disasters in Wisconsin, Ohio, and Georgia could signal the death of American democracy this fall.

In all three states, gerrymandered Republican legislatures successfully sabotaged attempts to stage free and fair elections. They specifically targeted communities of color with mass disenfranchisement and degrading mistreatment at the polls.

In Wisconsin, attempts to deal with the coronavirus with Vote by Mail and reasonable postponements were aggressively assaulted by legislative fiat and partisan court decisions.

Recognizing the danger of having large numbers of people vote in person, in long lines and crowded conditions, Wisconsin’s Democratic governor, Tony Evers, moved the state’s planned primary back to June. Plans were in place to make sure the state’s Vote by Mail systems would function properly, that there was plenty of time to get ballots out to voters and back to the election boards, and that there were sufficient polling stations with enough personnel to handle problems that needed to be solved in person without backups and machine failures.

As protests recently erupted in response to the killing of George Floyd, we saw something that truly epitomized the American experience. Police in cities around the country responded to protests against police brutality with (surprise!) police brutality. Yes, in a time when everything seems like an Onion headline, seeing police respond to the protests with such profound force became a window into what’s been normal for American minorities for decades. Our country’s criminal justice system is steeped in systemic racism, where bigoted policies are codified and enforced with a well-funded, militarized apparatus. The only bright side is that now it’s finally being exposed for what it is.

Over 200 people have quickly signed a new petition in Charlottesville, Va. at http://bit.ly/cvillepeace

Almost all of the signers are from Charlottesville.

The petition is addressed to the Charlottesville City Council and reads:

We urge you to ban from Charlottesville:
(1) military-style or “warrior” training of police by the U.S. military, any foreign military or police, or any private company,
(2) acquisition by police of any weaponry from the U.S. military;
and to require enhanced training and stronger policies for conflict de-escalation, and limited use of force for law enforcement.

Here are some of the comments people have added when they signed:

We need to set a good example.

I fully support this petition.