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Convened by Harvey “Sluggo” Wasserman & Joel Segal
Engineer: Mike Hersh
Special thanks to Dr. Paul Zeitz and the COVID-19 response coalition
PRELIMINARY AGENDA:
NORTH CAROLINA: Amazing organizational progress; Hendersonville soliciting students to work polls at $15-20/hour? Joel Segal
Join Zoom Meeting: https://zoom.us/j/222255972
Meeting ID: 222 255 972
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Since we can't get together in person, we can gather for a couple hours on the second Saturday night of each month from 7-9pm on Zoom.
Speakers: Lynn Tramonte of the Ohio Immigration Alliance Miriam Vargas, in Sanctuary in Columbus Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman on the bribed nuke bailout and other environmental and election issues SPECIAL GUEST -- Greg Palast, New York Times best-selling author on his new book How Trump Stole 2020
Q & A included.
Submitted by fightback on Fri, 08/07/2020 - 10:27am
Bob interviews Asian American professor and activist Phil Tajitsu Nash about the 75th anniversary of Hiroshima-Nagasaki bombings, immigration, the pandemic, Trump and the pedagogy of the oppressed.
Former Columbus City Council Candidate Joe Motil states that it is finally time for construction industry leaders to begin addressing the racist, sexist, and homophobic environment on construction projects here in Central Ohio. Columbus Business First reported (Facebook data center construction halted in New Albany after "racist graffiti" found on site) today that Turner Construction halted work activities at the Facebook Data Center construction site in New Albany due to “racially charged graffiti” that was scrawled on six portable toilets on the site. The Facebook construction project is currently the largest project in Central Ohio.
The company said, “This is totally unacceptable. We suspended work to send a message about how serious we take this behavior and to provide time for every single person on the site to participate in anti-bias training. Work will resume when training is complete.”
Senator Rob Portman’s Office, 37 West Broad Street, Columbus, Ohio
On Friday, August 7, 2020, if no reasonable agreement is extended to the Federal Pandemic Unemployment Insurance, a group of concerned Ohio citizens will gather outside Senator Rob Portman‘s Columbus office. We will tell the Senator and the rest of the political establishment that we need to #savethe600! Hundreds of thousands of Ohioans are out of work from the crushing combination of a global pandemic and a collapsing economy that was already rigged to benefit the richest of the rich.
“Cutting off the $600 boost to unemployment benefits would be both cruel and bad economics.” Economic Policy Institute
In the next three months, a dozen states will determine whether Donald Trump wins another four years as president. Those swing states should be central to the work of progressives who are determined to prevent that outcome.
With so much at stake, we can’t afford the luxury of devoting time and energy to endless arguments about whether progressives should vote for Joe Biden if they live in California or New York, or Alabama or Alaska, or other states where the electoral votes are sure to all go to Biden or Trump.
What will matter are the swing states, generally understood this time around to include Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Michigan, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas and Wisconsin. (Also in play are “swing districts” in two states where the statewide winning candidate doesn’t automatically get all of the state’s electoral votes: Maine’s second congressional district and Nebraska’s second congressional district.)
30 large posters, with photos telling the story of the people in Hiroshima and Nagasaki on those fateful days in 1945, will be on display at the park, starting at 2pm; the program will begin at 6pm.
• We are a diverse group of people who share the common goals of ridding the world of the threat posed by nuclear weapons and bringing justice to communities that are affected by nuclear weapons testing, production and use. We recognize that people of color were the target of the 1945 bombs and subsequent bomb testing. We acknowledge the suffering of Japanese Americans ripped from their homes and placed in internment camps during the war.
What will it take for the idea of a two-state solution, which was hardly practical to begin with, to be completely abandoned?
Every realistic assessment of the situation on the ground indicates, with palpable clarity, that there can never be a viable Palestinian state in parts of the West Bank and Gaza.
Politically, the idea is also untenable. Those who are still marketing the ‘two-state solution’, less enthusiastically now as compared with the euphoria of twenty years ago, are paralyzed in the face of the Israeli-American onslaught on any attempt at making ‘Palestine’ a tangible reality.
As election 2020 draws ever closer, the flawed, easily gamed nature of the American quasi-democracy becomes increasingly visible, thanks, of course to Donald Trump, our Fluhrer wannabe, who sees no need to hide his contempt for any result in November other than his own victory.
Election theft could well be looming, in a number of ways, and it’s crucial to look at them. But first, I feel the need to point out that the theft is already well underway. Indeed, Part 1 is already finished. Have you noticed? There’s no candidate with a progressive vision in the race, even though public demand for such a candidate — Bernie Sanders, maybe someone else — has been swelling.
On the 75th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima, we are here to stand in solidarity with Hibakusha, the survivors of the atomic bombings, and say: No more Hiroshimas, no more Nagasakis — never again!
Gensuikyo, the Japan Council against Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs, says (at http://www.antiatom.org/intro_activity/solidarity.html): “「核兵器と人類は共存できない」「生きているうちに核兵器廃絶を」―これらは被爆者のねがいです。(“‘Kakuheiki to jinrui wa kyozondekinai’ ‘Ikiteiruuchini kakuheikihaizetsuo’ — korewa hibakushano negaidesu).” Hibakusha believe that “it’s impossible for humanity to coexist with nuclear weapons.” Their hope is to “see the abolition of nuclear weapons within their lifetime.” There are still some 190,000 Hibakusha. The average age of hibakusha today is over 82. We have only a few more decades to make their wish come true.
