On Christmas day Adam McKay’s Dick Cheney biopic Vice was released, with John Hillner (Law & Order) portraying George Bush Sr. After the ex-president’s Nov. 30 death, as accolades were heaped upon George Herbert Walker Bush even before his cadaver was cold I wondered who were they talking about? The effusive eulogizing reminded me of Ted Rall’s August 28 column headlined “Please Speak Ill of the Dead.” The columnist/cartoonist wrote: “‘Too soon!’ That was a standard response to my criticisms of John McCain following his death… ‘Do not speak ill of the dead.’ This dictum, attributed to the 6th century BCE philosopher Chilon of Sparta, may be appropriate at your uncle’s funeral… Public figures are different.”

The environmental policy centerpiece of the incoming Democratic House of Representatives has ignited tremendous grassroots enthusiasm.
 

The environmental policy centerpiece of the incoming Democratic House of Representatives is what’s now known as “The Green New Deal.” But it’s already hit deeply polarizing pushback from the old-line Democratic leadership. And it faces divisive jockeying over the future of nuclear power.

The Green New Deal’s most visible public advocate, newly elected twenty-nine-year-old U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Democrat of New York, has laid out a preliminary blueprint advocating an energy economy meant to be based entirely on “renewable” and “clean” sources. According to a report in The Hill, fossil fuels and nuclear power are “completely out” of her plan.

Of the United Nations’ 18 major human rights treaties, the United States

To make our city government work for the benefit of everyone, Yes We Can Columbus has been advocating for campaign finance reform since 2016. Currently, candidates for Columbus Mayor, City Council, City Attorney, and City Auditor are permitted to receive unlimited campaign cash from wealthy individuals and corporations. Candidates favored by the rich can afford to pay for more air time, canvassing, campaign literature, and yard signs than candidates who depend on the smaller donations that ordinary citizens can afford.

The well-heeled candidates win, because they have more money to sway public opinion. After the election, their wealthy donors expect favors in return. And they get them.  

An even playing field is essential for a healthy democracy, where working class people have a say in decisions that affect them. But the idea has had no traction with Mayor Ginther and the current City Council, who were elected under the current pay-to-play system.

Oppression has many layers and one of the most significant and difficult to overcome is internalized oppression. This conditioning, operating on conscious and subconscious levels, leads us to choose what hurts us because we’ve been taught to believe that we have no other options.

For those of us conditioned as passive enablers of white supremacy, we don’t tend to enter the fight in earnest until we feel we have skin in the game. It wasn’t until Mike Brown’s killer Darren Wilson didn’t even get indicted by the grand jury that I realized I was also a piece and the entire game was rigged. The realization left me so disturbed that I physically felt compelled to action. It wasn’t until much later that I understood that my inability to see the humanity in my own people from the point of a life being taken, rather than the point of an institution “failing,” was contributing to the problem of action without movement.