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First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me. —Martin Niemöller This quote is attributed to the prominent German pastor Martin Niemöller. It is sometimes mistakenly referred to as a poem. After World War II, Niemöller openly spoke about his own early complicity in Nazism and his eventual change of heart. His powerful words about guilt and responsibility still resonate today.
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 The results of the U.S. election have left many of us in shock and we want to take a minute to honor our outrage, our grief and our fears. But as human rights defenders, we cannot afford to let the moment paralyze us. During the first Trump administration, we witnessed firsthand the horrific violence inflicted upon our communities: the racial violence, the brutality of family separation, the Muslim bans, and attempts to decimate asylum. In this second term, we are expecting the trauma and rights’ violations to escalate. The crisis we face is not new. A massive deportation machine has been built over years of racially discriminatory policing, designed to criminalize, scapegoat, and label migrants as a security threat. These securitization narratives provide the physical and ideological infrastructure for Trump to normalize the deportation of millions of people. The key elements include an expansive immigration police force, a heavily fortified border, and a rapidly expanding surveillance infrastructure that enables data-sharing and collaboration between local police forces and ICE. All of these factors, along with an expanding network of both private and public prisons, contribute to the detention of immigrants under inhumane and deplorable conditions. The dangerous normalization of this system means that we are facing not only unjust immigration policies, but an existential threat to human rights—one that we must fight with every ounce of courage and capacity that we have. [email protected]  A New Wave of Movements Against Trumpism Is Coming
Mark Engler and Paul Engler Our job is to translate outrage over his agenda into action toward a truly transformational vision. Originally Published in Waging Nonviolence For many of us, the immediate aftermath of Donald Trump’s decisive electoral victory has been a time of deep despair and mourning. There has been plenty of commentary trying to make sense of Trump’s win and the factors that led to it. But no analysis changes the fact that the outcome represents a serious blow to our most vulnerable communities, a sharp setback for causes of economic and social justice, and a profound challenge to whatever semblance of democracy America has been able to secure. We have lived through it before, and it feels even worse the second time around. It is right that we take this as a moment to grieve. But even amidst our feelings of sorrow or hopelessness, we can recognize that political conditions are not static. As we step out of our grieving and look ahead, there are reasons to believe that a new social movement cycle to confront Trumpism can emerge. And in making this happen, we can draw on lessons from what has worked in the past and what we know can be effective in confronting autocrats. Our job will be to take advantage of the moments of opportunity that arise in coming months to hold the line against Trump’s authoritarianism — and also link them to a vision for creating the transformative change we need in our world. Here’s why we can expect a new wave of movements to arise. Different strategies for change can work together Trump is a trigger. Read more. https://forgeorganizing.org/article/new-wave-movements-against-trumpism-coming 25 Points on Trump's 2024 Win: What Happened, Why, and What Next? We don’t yet have all the facts about the election. But we have enough information to examine some of the most important aspects and at least start to answer some key questions. PETER DREIER Nov 08, 2024Common Dreams Key point: Trump got roughly the same number of votes in 2014 than he did in 2020. Harris got about 10 million votes less than Biden did in 2020. The Republicans didn’t win this election so much as the Democrats lost it. Questions: Why? Was this something that the Harris campaign could have done differently? What is the problem with the Democrats’ voter outreach/turnout strategy? Is it solvable? 4. There are many hard truths we have to face if we're to move our country in a better direction. Trump is a fascist, but most Americans are not fascists. Even so, more than half of those who voted, voted for a fascist, mostly over their concerns over the economy, and next most important over immigration. There's no doubt that Trump has an emotional hold on a large number of Americans, who either forgive him for his personal flaws (liar, rapist, felon, grifter, corrupt businessman, etc) or don't think they are actually flaws. Many Americans who are angry about the state of the country or their own circumstances revel in a candidate who focuses on his grievances and promises to solve their problems, even if his often vague policy ideas will make their lives worse. Trump is a unique figure in the history of American politics—a demagogue, the leader of a personality cult, and pathological liar. So it is hard to evaluate this election and compare it with other elections, because doing so tends to normalize what should be causes for outrage. Even so, we can analyze this election to understand how Trump won the White House, and how the Republicans took back the Senate. We don't yet know whether the Republicans will hold onto their House majority.\ 5. Post-election polls show that the most important issue, by far, was the economy and prices. In the AP post-election survey, 37% of voters thought the economy was "excellent" (7%) or "good" (30%), while 64% of voters thought that the economy was "not so well" (40%) or "poor" (24%). By a margin of 50% to 41%, more Americans think Trump—who inherited his father’s real estate empire and lost billions in bad investments and bankrupt businesses—would be better than Harris at handling the economy. This despite the fact the American economy is currently the best in the world and is improving, that wages are going up faster than prices, and that unemployment is at a record low. Many polls show that most Americans don't give Biden credit for the improving economy. In fact, many blame him for what they perceive as a "bad" economy. Trump kept repeating that the economy is terrible and media let him get away with his lies, as Steve Greenhouse reported for The Guardian. Thirty-nine percent of voters ranked the economy as the most important issue. Among those who said that this was their biggest concern, a large margin (60%) voted for Trump, according to an AP survey. This anomaly showed up in Missouri, where about 58.5% of voters voted for Trump while, at the same time, 58% voted for Proposition A, which will hike the state’s minimum wage to $15 an hour and guarantee paid sick leave. Trump is against raising the federal minimum wage and against paid sick leave, while Harris is for both of them. But obviously many Missourians voted for Trump AND Proposition A. 6. Immigration ranked #2 as a top concern. One-fifth (20%) of voters said that immigration was the most important issue in the election. 88% of those voters voted for Trump. Trump's racist stereotyping and scapegoating of immigrants was effective. This was his most fascist demagogic issue and it worked. It appears that Trump paid no political price for his lies about Haitian immigrants in Ohio, his lies about immigrants involved in higher crime rates than other Americans, or other lies he used to demonize immigrants. Nor did he pay a price for his failure, in his first term, to build a border wall and get Mexico to pay for it. https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/25-points-on-trump-s-2024-win-what-happened-why-and-what-next The Resistance Starts Now
I still have faith in America, but we must mobilize to protect those at risk if Trump achieves his worst impulses. ROBERT REICH NOV 06, 2024 Friends, I won’t try to hide it. I’m heartbroken. Heartbroken and scared, to tell you the truth. I’m sure many of you are, too. Donald Trump has decisively won the presidency, the Senate, and possibly the House of Representatives and the popular vote, too. I still have faith in America. But right now, that’s little comfort to the people who are most at risk. Millions of people must now live in fear of being swept up by Trump’s cruel mass deportation plan – documented immigrants, as he has threatened before, as well as undocumented, and millions of American citizens with undocumented parents or spouses. Women and girls must now fear that they’ll be forced to give birth or be denied life-saving care during an ectopic pregnancy or miscarriage. America has become less safe for trans people – including trans kids – who were already at risk of violence and discrimination. Anyone who has already faced prejudice and marginalization is now in greater danger than before. Also in danger are people who have stood up to Trump, who has promised to seek revenge against his political opponents. Countless people are now endangered on a scale and intensity almost unheard of in modern America. Our first responsibility is to protect all those who are in harm’s way. We will do that by resisting Trump’s attempts to suppress women’s freedoms. We will fight for the rights of women and girls to determine when and whether they have children. No one will force a woman to give birth. We will block Trump’s cruel efforts at mass deportation. We will fight to give sanctuary to productive, law-abiding members of our communities, including young people who arrived here as babies or children. We will not allow mass arrests and mass detention of anyone in America. We will not permit families to be separated. We will not allow the military to be used to intimidate and subjugate anyone in this country. We will protect trans people and everyone else who is scapegoated because of how they look or what they believe. No one should have to be ashamed of who they are. We will stop Trump’s efforts to retaliate against his perceived enemies. A free nation protects political dissent. A democracy needs people willing to stand up to tyranny. How will we conduct this resistance? By organizing our communities. By fighting through the courts. By arguing our cause through the media. We will ask other Americans to join us – left and right, progressive and conservative, white people and people of color. It will be the largest and most powerful resistance since the American revolution. But it will be peaceful. We will not succumb to violence, which would only give Trump and his regime an excuse to use organized violence against us. We will keep alive the flames of freedom and the common good, and we will preserve our democracy. We will fight for the same things Americans have fought for since the founding of our nation – rights enshrined in the constitution and Bill of Rights. The preamble to the Constitution of the United States opens with the phrase “We the people”, conveying a sense of shared interest and a desire “to promote the general welfare”, as the preamble goes on to say. We the people will fight for the general welfare. We the people will resist tyranny. We will preserve the common good. We will protect our democracy. This will not be easy, but if the American experiment in self-government is to continue, it is essential. I know you’re scared and stressed. So am I. If you are grieving or frightened, you are not alone. Tens of millions of Americans feel the way you do. All I can say to reassure you is that time and again, Americans have opted for the common good. Time and again, we have come to each other’s aid. We have resisted cruelty. We supported one another during the Great Depression. We were victorious over Hitler’s fascism and Soviet communism. We survived Joe McCarthy’s witch-hunts, Richard Nixon’s crimes, Lyndon Johnson’s Vietnam war, the horrors of 9/11, and George W Bush’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. We will resist Donald Trump’s tyranny. Although peaceful and non-violent, the resistance will nonetheless be committed and determined. It will encompass every community in America. It will endure as long as necessary. We will never give up on America. The resistance starts now.  Justifiable fury at the loss of innocent lives in Gaza shouldn’t lead to the destruction of millions of innocent lives here at home. by Harold Meyerson October 31, 2024 With polls showing that Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are running even in nearly every swing state, this election will turn on the decisions of very small subsets of voters. One of those subsets surely isn’t contemplating voting for Trump, but may end up electing him anyway. I refer to those voters so understandably appalled by Israel’s war on Gaza and the toll it’s taken in innocent lives that they may not vote, or vote for Jill Stein, as a way of protesting the Biden administration’s continued provision of arms for Netanyahu’s war, and Harris’s refusal to cleanly break with that policy. It’s by no means clear how not voting for Harris will stop Israel’s destruction of Gaza and the attendant slaughter of innocent lives. It is perfectly clear, however, that it will imperil millions of innocent lives right here in the USA should it lead to a Trump victory. I refer to the immigrants among us whose forced deportation is the fundamental plank in Trump’s platform, the one issue he stresses in every one of his otherwise disjointed speeches, the sine qua non of his pledge to make America great again. To accomplish that deportation, he’s made clear he’d order the National Guard to sweep through immigrant-heavy neighborhoods, and might well order the Army to clear out areas like the Bronx, East Los Angeles, and Chicago’s West Side as well. The government’s count of undocumented immigrants in the U.S. is roughly 11 million, but Trump and JD Vance routinely inflate that number to 20 million or more. And even in the very, very, very unlikely event that deportations are confined just to the truly undocumented, they would still separate immigrant parents from citizen children, and banish Dreamers—undocumented immigrants brought here as children by their parents—to countries that are utterly alien to them. At minimum, the process will destroy hundreds of thousands of families and devastate entire communities. The toll in innocent lives—not killed, but effectively crippled—will be huge. And this is the most predictable consequence of a Trump victory. His demonization of immigrants is the central message of his campaign, and a campaign (inevitably entailing some violence) to deport them follows as the night the day. I don’t doubt that those campaigns will meet serious resistance in our cities, as those opposed to them will take to the streets in very large numbers. I also don’t doubt that the ranks of those demonstrators will include some of those whose opposition to the U.S. military aid that has enabled Israel’s war on Palestinians impelled them not to vote for Kamala. After all, if they’ve refused to vote for Harris due to their revulsion and rage at the loss of innocent lives, the assault on immigrants will likely lead them to feel comparable revulsion and rage. It’s by no means clear, however, that those imperiled immigrants will welcome those Harris-abstainers to the ranks of their supporters. They may reason—actually, they almost surely will reason—that progressives who didn’t vote for Harris didn’t think that the innocent lives of the immigrants among them mattered very much. Some of them might even conclude that those Harris-refuseniks didn’t give a flying fuck about them. This is something that voters infuriated by U.S. Gaza policy and still wrestling with how to vote might want to think about. https://prospect.org/blogs-and-newsletters/tap/2024-10-31-refusing-vote-for-harris-mass-immigrant-deportations/ Also listen to an update to Timothy Snyder’s On Tyranny. Update audio https://snyder.substack.com/p/on-tyranny-right-now-audio
Sanders 10/29/2024 I understand that there are millions of Americans who disagree with President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris on the terrible war in Gaza. I am one of them. While Israel had a right to defend itself against the horrific Hamas terrorist attack of October 7th, which killed 1200 innocent people and took 250 hostages, it did not have the right to wage an all out war against the entire Palestinian people. It did not have the right to kill 42,000 Palestinians, two- thirds of whom were children, women and the elderly, or injure over 100,000 people in Gaza. It did not have the right to destroy Gaza's infrastructure and housing and health care systems. It did not have the right to bomb every one of Gaza's 12 universities. It did not have the right to block humanitarian aid, causing massive malnutrition in children and, in fact, starvation.  Francesca D'Annunzio
October 21, 2024 Texas Observer The Lone Star State is home to millions of undocumented residents and members of mixed-status families critical to the state’s economic success, yet Texas leaders are cheering on Trump anyway. “This article was originally published by the Texas Observer, a nonprofit investigative news outlet and magazine. Sign up for their weekly newsletter, or follow them on Facebook and X.” Former President and current presidential candidate Donald Trump has promised, if elected, to implement the “largest deportation in the history of our country.” If such an operation were carried out, a second Trump regime could target around 11 million undocumented people in the United States. Trump’s running mate, vice presidential candidate JD Vance, has suggested starting with 1 million deportations a year—a figure that dwarfs the total reached in any year of Trump’s presidency or that of Barack Obama. The proposal has become a rallying cry for Trump’s base, with supporters brandishing matching signs at rallies reading “Mass Deportations Now.” Texas is home to some 1.6 million undocumented immigrants—second in the United States only to California—and another roughly 1.4 million U.S. citizens in the state live with at least one undocumented family member, per studies in recent years. Unauthorized workers form the backbone of crucial sectors; in the construction industry, up to 50 percent of laborers building the state are undocumented, according to a 2013 survey by the advocacy organization Workers Defense Project. All this means Texas would be uniquely disrupted by Trump’s plans, with the tearing apart of mixed-status families placing a possibly massive burden on the state’s meager social services systems, and the exiling of a chunk of its workforce imperiling the economic development and affordability known as the so-called Texas Miracle. Yet Texas’ statewide Republican leaders are full-throated backers of a Trump return to the White House, leaving dissenters within the immigrant and business community and Democratic Party to advocate for millions of Texas families, workers, and consumers. Trump has said that his deportation scheme would follow the “Eisenhower model”—an apparent reference to the 1950s immigration raid and roundup deportation program “Operation Wetback,” named after a racist slur. The raids, which lasted around a year, rounded up hundreds of thousands of Mexicans—including Mexican Americans—who were rounded up by truck, train, boat, and plane and deported. Around two decades prior, up to 2 million were deported, again including U.S. citizens, in a yearslong effort known as “Mexican Repatriation.” In an email to the Texas Observer, Democratic Congressman Joaquin Castro said Trump’s proposal was also a threat to Latino U.S. citizens. “The last time the United States launched a mass deportation effort … U.S. citizens of Hispanic descent were rounded up and sent to Mexico—a place that many had never been before. The mass deportations that Trump is proposing would be devastating for our economy and dangerous for American Latinos.” Stan Marek, CEO and owner of the Houston-based construction enterprise Marek Family of Companies and a cofounder of Texans for Sensible Immigration Policy, told the Observer that mass deportations would exacerbate an existing construction labor shortage. Plus, he added, there is no easy, reliable way for employers to verify someone’s immigration status—and there has not been any significant immigration reform or citizenship pathway created for undocumented people since Congress passed the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986. Marek, a lifelong moderate Republican, instead proposes a mass work authorization plan to protect immigrant workers from the possibility of employer exploitation, increase the labor force, and ensure workers can pass background checks and pay federal income taxes. “There hasn’t been any way for a worker, a blue-collar worker, to come into this country and get a job legally since 1986,” Marek said, referring to the Immigration Reform and Control Act. (Some short-term temporary and seasonal work visas for blue-collar workers do exist.) Now, Marek said, we have a situation where we have millions of undocumented in this country, “and now we’re totally dependent on it because we need them.” Beyond construction, heavily undocumented workforces labor in agriculture, food processing, house cleaning, and other industries. “Immigrants exist across our economic spectrum. They’re everywhere. They’re us,” said Jaime Puente, director of economic opportunity at the progressive think tank Every Texan. “When we talk about eliminating them from our society, it’s like not just talking about cutting off a finger. We’re talking about cutting off entire legs from the thigh down.” Nationwide, the shock would be on par with the Great Recession of 2008, according to economic projectionsfrom the American Immigration Council. And, despite claims of politicians like Trump and Vance, “Mass deportations are not going to lead to more Americans getting jobs,” said Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, senior fellow at the American Immigration Council. “There’s no evidence for that whatsoever.” In a recent X post, Trump announced more details of his envisioned machine for deportations and targeting transnational crime: He wants to invoke the Alien Enemies Act of 1798—the same law that formed the basis of the executive order that put Japanese Americans in internment camps during World War II. The likely scale would be much more massive than the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, when approximately 112,000 people were displaced, said Reichlin-Melnick. And some civil liberties may have to head for the chopping block to achieve Trump’s goals. Presently, Reichlin-Melnick explained, the United States does not have a system designed to find undocumented individuals who are not already on the government’s radar. Immigration Customs and Enforcement (ICE) does not know the identities and addresses of the majority of undocumented people. In order to carry out a mass deportation operation, agents would need to go out into communities around the country to find people—who are not already on their radar—and round them up. “You create a surveillance society in order to root out millions of people, because there’s really no other way to do it,” he said. “Creating an apparatus to hunt down and identify millions of undocumented immigrants would require turning the United States into a police state.” ICE raids impact more than just immigrant families, according to Caitlin Patler, a researcher at the University of California, Berkeley focused on the detentions and deportation pipeline. These operations are “traumatizing for entire communities, whether somebody’s directly impacted or not,” she said. “Your kid would go to school and next to them there would be an empty desk.” Raids also negatively impact the health of children whose families have been targeted for detention or deportation. Patler said even unborn children have been impacted, and her work has found the following outcomes: children having trouble sleeping, trouble eating, crying uncontrollably, and “clinging to their remaining parent, refusing to leave the house because they’re so scared that the other parent will disappear or be taken from them in the same way that the first parent was,” she said. “You can see a very clear pattern of worsening health among people exposed to the deportation and detention systems.” The fear of a raid, detention, or deportation also pushes immigrant and mixed-status families to avoid interacting with law enforcement. University of Colorado Denver professor Chloe East said that creates problems for police, who rely on community members for tips and interviews when solving crimes. Economically, however, there is one sector that would likely flourish under a mass deportation regime: the prison industry. Texas is already home to some of the nation’s largest immigration detention centers, many of which are operated by private, for-profit companies. If deportations increase, the feds would likely build or lease even more space for the detainees. Because Trump has proposed mobilizing troops for immigration enforcement, mass military camps also aren’t out of the question, said Bob Libal, an Austin-based consultant at Human Rights Watch who has worked on immigrant detention issues for years. “I thought the idea of favorably talking about Japanese internment was over in this country,” Libal said. “And yet—here we have people talking about the utilization of mass deportations in a positive light. And frankly, that should terrify everyone living in Texas, whether you’re an immigrant or not.” Francesca D'Annunzio is a Roy W. Howard investigative reporting fellow at the Texas Observer.D’Annunzio has reported on topics ranging from deportations in the Dominican Republic, Christian nationalism, US-Mexico border colonias, right-wing sheriffs, to zoning and housing policy in Texas. Her work has been published or syndicated in The Guardian US, The Dallas Morning News, Religion News Service, The Global Investigative Journalism Network, The Texas Standard, and The Arizona Republic, among others. She received her master’s in investigative journalism from the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University and is an alumna of the Arabic Flagship and Humanities programs at The University of Texas at Austin. She is proficient in Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, and Arabic. Texas Needs an Observer. Become a sustaining member to ensure that our mission can continue. https://www.texasobserver.org/how-mass-deportations-would-devastate-texas/ www.texasobserver.org/how-mass-deportations-would-devastate-texas/  Henry Wallace. Vice President of the U.S. 1941-1945
The dangerous American fascist is the man who wants to do in the United States in an American way what Hitler did in Germany in a Prussian way,” Wallace wrote in his landmark essay “The Danger of American Fascism,” published in The New York Times Magazine on April 9, 1944. Wallace’s thoughts and words are even more relevant today than they were then. Here are additional excerpts: A fascist is one whose lust for money or power is combined with such an intensity of intolerance toward those of other races, parties, classes, religions, cultures, regions, or nations as to make him ruthless in his use of deceit or violence to attain his ends.… The American fascist would prefer not to use violence. His method is to poison the channels of public information. With a fascist the problem is never how best to present the truth to the public but how best to use the news to deceive the public into giving the fascist and his group more money or more power.… It has been claimed at times that our modern age of technology facilitates dictatorship. What we must understand is that the industries, processes, and inventions created by modern science can be used either to subjugate or liberate. The choice is up to us.… The American fascists are most easily recognized by their deliberate perversion of truth and fact. Their newspapers and propaganda carefully cultivate every fissure of disunity, every crack in the common front against fascism. They use every opportunity to impugn democracy. They use isolationism as a slogan to conceal their own selfish imperialism.… They claim to be superpatriots, but they would destroy every liberty guaranteed by the Constitution. They demand free enterprise but are the spokesmen for monopoly and vested interests.… Still another danger is represented by those who, paying lip service to democracy and the common welfare, in their insatiable greed for money and the power which money gives, do not hesitate surreptitiously to evade the laws designed to safeguard the public from monopolistic extortion.… Monopolists who fear competition and who distrust democracy because it stands for equal opportunity would like to secure their position against small and energetic enterprise. In an effort to eliminate the possibility of any rival growing up, some monopolists would sacrifice democracy itself…. Their final objective toward which all their deceit is directed is to capture political power so that, using the power of the state and the power of the market simultaneously, they may keep the common man in eternal subjection. Wallace saw the connection between Hitler’s preachments about racial “purity” and the language of Southern segregationists who spoke of a master race. “Those who fan the fires of racial clashes for the purpose of making political capital here at home are taking the first step toward Nazism,” he warned. And “the second step toward fascism is the destruction of labor unions.” To avert the rise of American fascism, Wallace argued that America must champion “the democracy of the common man,” embracing “not just the Bill of Rights but also economic democracy, ethnic democracy, educational democracy, and democracy in the treatment of the sexes.” Detroit, MI – New polling of UAW members and member households across key battleground states demonstrates strong support for Kamala Harris over Donald Trump, with Harris’ lead over Trump surging in the last month. The poll, conducted among union members in key swing states—Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona, and Nevada—shows Harris leading Trump by 22 points. These results underscore the impact of the UAW’s most ambitious political program in decades, which has engaged 293,000 active and retired members, as well as their families, in battleground states. The union’s comprehensive outreach program, aimed at connecting with every member, has been crucial in building support for Harris. In addition to a robust phone, text and mail program, UAW members are engaging in conversations at worksites and within their communities. In Michigan, they have participated in an intensive door-to-door campaign, reaching over 200,000 union households so far. Among members who reported hearing from the UAW about the presidential election, Harris’ lead over Trump grows to 29 points. These numbers highlight the effectiveness of the union's aggressive strategy to inform members about the candidates' positions on key economic issues, including protecting overtime pay, overhauling harmful trade deals, preventing offshoring, expanding retirement security, and taking on corporate greed. Polling data also show significant movement among key demographics. Among white UAW members without a college degree—a group that has leaned towards Trump in recent elections—Harris now holds a five-point lead. "When members hear directly from other members about what’s at stake and which candidate will have their backs, we’re able to break through," said UAW President Shawn Fain. "By engaging our members and highlighting the issues that matter – their paychecks, their families, and their futures -- the union makes a real difference.” Fain added, “The candidates’ track records speak for themselves. Harris has been in our corner in tough fights. Trump’s been a scab who passed NAFTA 2.0 and wants to bust unions. When you break it down like that and reach members in one-on-one conversations, the choice for president becomes clear.” Additional Poll Findings:
The UAW’s plan to win stems from the vision that launched 2023’s Stand Up strike and movement. By putting out the facts, uniting the working class, and letting members lead the way, the UAW’s “Stand Up, Speak Up, Show Up” campaign has mobilized a mass campaign to defeat corporate greed at the ballot box. American Friends Service Committee
As we face anti-immigrant rhetoric from politicians and the media, here are five tips you can use to talk about immigration and build support for welcoming communities. At AFSC,[ American Friends Service Committee] we welcome all people no matter where they were born, or when or how they choose to migrate. We know that immigrants make our communities stronger, and we value the many contributions of immigrant leaders and organizers. We also know that as soon as we turn on the news in the U.S. today, we will be bombarded with anti-immigrant messages. And in this election season, the national conversation about immigration has only gotten worse. Fortunately, the majority of people in the U.S.—74%—actually do want an immigration system that welcomes people and treats them with dignity. And there are effective messages we can use to break through the noise and vitriol of this moment. Whether you’re having dinner with family who disagree on politics or responding to a friend on social media, here are five tips to change someone’s mind about immigration in the U.S. These tips are the results of research from AFSC and others, such as the ACLU, Goodwin Simon Strategic Research, and The Opportunity Agenda. 1. Always start with shared values. Whenever you start a conversation on a touchy subject, lead with something you and your listener both value. That creates space in their minds for open conversation. For example, start with a message like “Everyone deserves a chance to build a good life for themselves and their families.” That helps frame a conversation on immigration with people who may never have met anyone from outside the U.S. but who share widely held values like freedom and opportunity. 2. Focus on our shared humanity and the diverse contributions that we all make to our communities. We are all human. We all contribute to our communities. We all love our friends and family. And we all make mistakes. Talking about each other as full, complicated, messy humans—including immigrants—humanizes people and cuts through the demonizing rhetoric we see in the media. Many times, pro-immigrant conversations focus on the economic contributions that immigrants make to communities. It’s important to go beyond these messages to talk about the kinds of contributions we all make to our communities. We’re not just workers but also neighbors, friends, family members, and more. This kind of messaging helps humanize everyone’s complexities and contributions, including immigrants. 3. Address listeners’ fears indirectly. It’s important to acknowledge people’s fears, which can be exacerbated by misinformation in the media. Some of these fears have nothing to do with immigrants. But we can also provide accurate information and real stories of immigrants that can help people work through those fears. AFSC is just one of many organizations that welcomes newcomers, supports immigrants as they pursue efforts toward residency and citizenship, and advocates to keep families together. You can indirectly address people’s fears by describing some of these efforts. 4. Model the change you want to see. Telling stories about your personal growth or how you have changed your own mind gives your listener permission to be open-minded. It also serves as a roadmap for how to grow, too. Try sharing a story from your own life about meeting someone from another country and getting to know them as a full person, quirks and all. Show how you interacted with each other in some way. That might include helping each other at work or volunteering together in your community. Talk about how you grew or evolved in your own thinking as a result. 5. If your listener isn’t listening, talk past them to the people who are. Even if someone doesn’t agree with you right away, it doesn’t mean you haven’t planted a seed in their mind—or in the minds of other listeners. To cut through the noise this election season, tell a story that starts with a shared value, focus on our shared humanity, calm someone’s fears, and, ultimately, show how you have grown. Want to learn more about how to talk about immigration? Watch our webinar on how to have "hard conversations" about immigration from our recent webinar series. American Friends Service Committee October 18, 2024. https://afsc.org/news/how-talk-about-immigration-election-season? For more information see.Carnegie Foundation. https://www.carnegie.org/our-work/article/15-myths-about-immigration-debunked/ 2021. Adopted. 2023. DSA Policy on Immigration and Immigrant Workers. 2023 convention. https://www.dsanorthstar.org/blog/call-to-the-convention-defend-immigrants-rights Our North Star building a united front is here; North Star: Defeat MAGA/Fight for Democracy Action Opportunities List of opportunities: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1cRIJsSJwtF72ckJ8QLQu5cDCGnoeh5OIIjwqRkDKdBg/edit?usp=sharing In the swing state of Nevada, the Harris campaign needs the Vegas hotel union’s ‘army’ to overcome Donald Trump.
BY HAROLD MEYERSON OCTOBER 21, 2024 LAS VEGAS – When we met in his office at the sprawling and somewhat ramshackle Las Vegas headquarters of Culinary Union Local 226 last Monday, a day when the New York Times averages of the polls in the seven swing states had Kamala Harris leading Donald Trump in Nevada by less than 1 percent, Ted Pappageorge wasn’t buying it. Expand “We don’t really believe the polls,” said Pappageorge, who’s the secretary-treasurer of Culinary, as the local is commonly called. “Trump’s people generally under-poll, and if we had an election today, I think Trump wins.” “But it’s not today,” he continued. “We’ve got three weeks to go and the Culinary army is out there, going to knock on hundreds of thousands of doors and talk to hundreds of thousands of people.” In the context of actually existing American politics, the designation of his canvassers as an army is not an overstatement. With 60,000 members—the vast majority of them housekeepers and the wait and kitchen staffers at Las Vegas’s mega-hotel/casinos—Culinary may well be the largest local union of any kind in the United States. For several decades, hundreds of its members have taken an election leave from their jobs to knock on the doors of local registered voters and engage them in discussions of the candidates. It’s a full-time job. For a few, it lasts the better part of an election year; for some, it runs from summer to Election Day; and for the rest of the 400-plus who walk the precincts, it’s a monthlong gig for seven days a week. In the pandemic year of 2020, when candidates and parties and outside groups and even other unions all eschewed canvassing, Culinary—almost all of whose members were jobless as the hotel/casinos had shuttered their doors—fielded canvassers who still went out in force, masked with special gear devised by epidemiologists. By Election Day, they’d contacted fully half of Nevada’s Black and Latino voters, and one-third of the state’s Asian voters, too. UNITE HERE, Culinary’s national union, canvassed in three states in 2020: Arizona, Nevada, and Pennsylvania. Joe Biden won them all, which produced the margin of victory in the Electoral College. The day after I met with Pappageorge, Culinary’s 425 full-time canvassers packed themselves into a hall for a rally as they embarked on the final three weeks of the campaign. They heard from leaders of some far-flung UNITE HERE locals (New Orleans, Anchorage), who’d come to Vegas to help out; in turn, those visitors called out some other UNITE HERE members who’d arrived from non-swing states to help push Nevada into Harris’s column. Once again this year, Nevada is one of three swing states where UNITE HERE locals are mounting efforts almost comparable to Culinary’s. More than 400 UNITE HERE members are now canvassing in Pennsylvania (most in Philadelphia, some in Harrisburg) and Arizona (most in Phoenix, some in Tucson). In those states, though, a higher share of the full-time canvassers come from out of state than in Nevada, where Culinary has numbers that the other states can’t match. The Philly canvassers are a mix of locals and members from New York, Baltimore, Washington, and Atlantic City; those in Arizona include Angelenos, San Diegans, and sundry Texans. All told, UNITE HERE now has roughly 1,500 full-time precinct walkers in those three swing states, a figure that will rise to 2,000 by the campaign’s final week. By the metric of person-hours worked, its operations in those three states are the largest of any kind those states will see. The union also is fielding smaller operations in seven other states, focusing on races like Sen. Sherrod Brown’s very tight battle for re-election in Ohio, and swing House districts in California and New York. That said, the work of the precinct walker ain’t what it used to be. Knocking on Doors A report in response to our Web meeting. See post below. Mijente PAC has about 75 people knocking on Latino doors full-time in Georgia, following a "civic engagement" non-partisan door-knocking educational campaign about elections and their importance since January carried out by non-profit GLAHR. which is formally not involved in Mijente PAC's anti-Trump campaign, although most of the people Mijente has hired are local GLAHR activists. I believe there is a similar mijente Latino campaign in North Carolina. in addition to the one Duane mentioned in Arizona. The one in Georgia is perhaps the strongest because of GLAHR's community roots (we're celebrating a quarter century of organizing this year). And because similar Georgia campaigns in 2020 and 2022 were decisive in Biden's razor-thin electoral college victory in GA and his preserving a Democrat majority in the Senate in 2022. Georgia has an immigrant Latino population that overwhelmingly arrived since 1990,and especially in the construction boom for the 1996 Atlanta Olympics which continued for years afterwards., The 2010 census surprisingly showed that HALF of GA Latinos were U,S.-born -- and their median age was 11. And this has to do with the central lesson I learned in my two decades at CNN, as the lead producer in the Spanish-language operation for pre-election polls and especially election night exit polls. Elections in the United States are NOT decided by who "the people" vote for, but by which people vote. Jose Perez.  Campaign in 1994 in California   North Star Webinar. ( and a meeting) The Case for Engaging in the Immigration Battle and contributing to the Fight Against Trump and MAGA Republicans. The Border, Immigration, Dog Whistle Politics and Political Reality. Videos, updates from the border, and strategy. Sunday, October 20, 2024. 2 PM Pacific. 5 PM Eastern. Presented by North Star Caucus. Speaking. Oct 20,2024. Via video recording. Kamala Harris, Donald Trump, Ian Haney-Lopez. Host; Duane Campbell. DSA. Over 50 years in the immigration struggles. Also speaking. Participants/Dialogue Members of the North Star community. Join Zoom Meeting https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84624125150?pwd=9dm2OaZaBOm68ikY8XgfK60QGHIM6J.1 Meeting ID: 846 2412 5150 Passcode: 000357 Community members may request participation link here. [email protected] By Paul Garver - 14/10/2024 One month before the November Presidential election, its outcome remains unpredictable. There are simply too many unknown variables. The Harris -Walz Democratic ticket will surely win the national popular vote by a wide margin, as was also the case for Democrats in 2016 and 2020. Seven swing (or purple) states are hotly contested (Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Nevada, Arizona, North Carolina, Georgia). Both parties are focusing their advertising and personal campaign appearances on those “battleground” states, where the likely victory for either side will be slender. Current polling in these states indicate a very tight race. Michigan poses an especially difficult challenge for Harris-Walz. Michigan is home to a substantial Palestinian-American community, where the pro-Palestinian Uncommitted movement remains frustrated with the failure of Harris to make a decisive break with Biden’s unconditional military support for Netanyahu. Palestinian-American U S Congressperson Rashida Tlaib [representing the Detroit area] is the most visible political spokesperson for Palestinian rights. She supports Harris-Walz because Trump’s election would be even more catastrophic for Palestinians, but in a close election, abstention by campus activists and the Arab-American communities could swing Michigan to Trump. Pro-Palestinian activists are still looking for some indication from Harris that she will pay more than lip service to curbing Israeli attacks that are killing civilians in Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon. Responding to this danger, Senator Bernie Sanders and UAW President Shawn Fain, both strong advocates for embargoing U S offensive military weapons to Israel, a key demand of the Uncommitted movement, campaigned recently on the campus of Michigan State University. Both campaigns face serious challenges in the other swing states. A minority of the conservative Republican leaders who survived the MAGA takeover of the Republican Party support Harris. Conversely, parts of the electorate that normally support Democrats in national elections appear to be wavering. Polling reported by the National Center for Working Class Politics indicates a yawning gender gap. Men of all educational levels and races are much more likely to support Trump than women with comparable demographics. This may be simple misogyny. (Why else would the Firefighters Union refuse to endorse Harris after endorsing Biden?) Predictably Harris-Walz are campaigning hard towards the “center” on immigration and military policy, while Trump-Vance are doubling down on spreading canards about Haitians eating your family pets, and announcing plans for mass deportations of migrants and refugees. It is not likely that the electoral results will be clear before January 2025. A core problem for Democrats is that its candidates not only have to win a majority in the Electoral College, but must do so by wide enough margins that the corrupt pro-Trump Supreme Court majority cannot throw contested elections to Trump. Most of the sane US Left are increasingly aware that the imperfect US democracy must be defended against the MAGA threat in November and the ensuing months. Most progressive organizations and unions are trying to mobilize their memberships to canvass, phone bank and write postcards to voters in the swing states. DSA is divided, with some ideologically ultra -left caucuses asserting that the election does not matter to socialists, while many individual members of DSA are participating in the electoral mobilizations of progressives. The most pragmatic DSA caucuses have created a campaign called “Socialism Beats Fascism” which is using webinars and social media to mobilize for down ballot elections and referenda in the swing states. DSA’s National Elections Commission is organizing phone banks for down ballot DSA candidates in Georgia and Michigan, which should have the practical impact of fighting MAGA while skirting the internal challenges of DSA endorsing the national Democratic ticket (which would probably not be welcomed by the Democrats). One month ahead of the November election I will venture a guess. The Democrats should win a slender majority in the national House of Representatives, while the Republicans may eke out a slight majority in the Senate. Harris-Walz will win enough of the swing states to achieve the 270 electoral votes needed to win a majority of the Electoral College. I think this will happen not because of any major ideological shift, but because women will defend their reproductive freedoms, and because Trump is becoming increasingly weird on the campaign trail – even more rambling, incoherent and forgetful than before. However, Trump will not concede the election, and will try every legal and illegal means to usurp power in January 2025. The ensuing chaos may be greater than in January 2021. Nevertheless, the US military high command and national security apparatus is not likely to intervene in support of a MAGA semi-coup even if legitimated by a Supreme Court majority. But a national U S government capable of effectively addressing the urgent underlying national and global challenges may not emerge from these elections. I think that the U S will emerge from the November elections with Trump and the MAGA movement stymied, but without a clear progressive mandate. This requires no crystal ball. The Republican Party remains the tool of an amoral solipsistic demagogue who is pursuing his personal interests – mainly staying out of prison – with no fixed general political principles. Vance is a younger smoother scion of this MAGA cult who dangerously may believe in the ultra-reactionary program of the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025. On the other hand, the Democratic Party, though its Convention celebrated cultural unity and extricated itself from a failing Biden presidential bid, still lacks a coherent political program capable of unifying the diverse working and middle classes into a governing bloc. And the U S Left remains too fragmented and/or mesmerized by illusions of a Leninist messiah to provide a backbone for a new majority democratic left coalition. But in the short run at least, I think we will muddle though another four years with most of our democratic rights and constitutional framework intact. Paul Garver is a member of Democratic Socialists of America In the most consequential election in our lives, I’m happy to report that we spent last week on the campaign trail working hard for Kamala and progressive candidates. On Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday we were in Texas, on Thursday and Friday we were in Nevada, and on Saturday and Sunday we were in Michigan. We spent a lot of time traveling on planes and cars - but it was worth it. We drew large and enthusiastic turnouts, are reaching undecided voters and are expanding our grassroots movement.
Texas In my view, Texas has huge political potential, and there are some great people in the state who are working hard to turn it progressive. And let’s be clear. If that happens it will transform politics in America. In San Antonio we had a great event with Congressman Greg Casar - one of the outstanding young progressives in Congress. We were joined by an old friend of mine, Congressman Lloyd Doggett. At the University of Texas, Austin we were joined by Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez who, as usual, did a great job in firing up the standing room only crowd. Beto O’Rourke who, 6 years ago, came within 2 points of defeating Senator Ted Cruz, also spoke. And by the way, Beto is now heading up a very strong and effective voter registration campaign which could make all the difference in Texas. While we were in Austin I joined Congressman Casar and members of the Austin City Council in addressing a rally in support of workers at a local Hyatt hotel who are facing strong and illegal opposition from the corporation as they attempt to form a union. I had the opportunity to chat with two very brave workers there who were fired for their union activities. At the University of Texas at Austin with Beto, Lloyd, Greg and Alexandria In East Austin, Texas with Hyatt hotel trade unionists Nevada In Las Vegas we had a great town meeting with Congressman Steven Horsford. Hundreds of people came out to discuss housing policy — an issue that’s on the minds of Nevadans as they face the greatest shortage of affordable housing for low-income earners in the country. We also discussed health care, prescription drugs and the war in Gaza. On Friday morning Congressman Ro Khana and I joined a room full of Harris- Walz volunteers. They understand, as I hope all of us do, that in the next month we’ve got to knock on doors, make phone calls, and talk to our friends and neighbors about how we can increase the voter turnout and defeat Trump. In Las Vegas, Nevada at a community town meeting Michigan The last state on this trip was Michigan, where we held events in Warren, Saginaw, Grand Rapids, and East Lansing. The polls suggest that Michigan is up for grabs and could well decide who becomes the next president. We started off in Warren, where I was joined by UAW president Shawn Fain for a rally against corporate greed. Shawn is one of the leading progressive trade union leaders in America and has not only helped win an excellent contract for his members, but is inspiring workers all across the country to stand up and fight for their rights. I then traveled to Saginaw, where a large crowd joined me in demanding that we have a government and an economy that works for all, not just the people on top and wealthy campaign contributors. Finally, on Sunday, we held two more town halls with the Harris-Walz campaign in Grand Rapids and East Lansing. The turn outs were great and people are fired up. Our trip ended with me joining a picket line in Detroit with Teamster workers who are on strike against Marathon Oil. At a town hall in Saginaw, Michigan With UAW president Shawn Fain in Warren, Michigan In the last month of this campaign all of us have got to do everything possible to see that Donald Trump is defeated and Kamala is elected. We cannot have in the White House someone like Trump who is a pathological liar, someone who is undermining American democracy, someone who thinks that climate change is a “hoax” and someone who believes that women do not have the right to control their own bodies. We also have to fight hard to see that Democrats control the House and the Senate. Later this week, I will be hitting the campaign trail again. If we’re in your community, please join us. If not, join us online when we livestream. In solidarity, Bernie For how you can be involved, see the two posts below. The Border, Immigration, Dog Whistle Politics and Political Reality. Videos, updates from the border, and strategy. Plus, Break out rooms to promote open discussion/dialogue. Sunday, October 20, 2024. 2 PM Pacific. 5 PM Eastern. Presented by North Star Caucus. Via video recording. Kamala Harris, Donald Trump, Ian Haney-Lopez. Speaking; Host; Duane Campbell. DSA. Over 50 years in the immigration struggles. Also speaking. NS Participants/Dialogue Members of the North Star community. Community members; Request participation link here. [email protected] [email protected]  The Battle Ahead: Latino Civil Rights vs. Project 2025
Prepared by Adriana Varea, Ari Kittrie, and Joaquin Macias, LULAC Policy and Legislation Fellows Introduction The 2025 Mandate for Leadership, The Conservative Promise, more publicly recognized as “Project 2025” is a roadmap for the first 180 days in office for a conservative presidency. It was drafted by The Heritage Foundation, which is a right-leaning, conservative think tank based in Washington, D.C. charged with crafting policies that align with the Republican party. The Heritage Foundation gave the first Mandate for Leadership to Reagan to “repair the executive branch” after Jimmy Carter’s presidency. Former President Trump has recently distanced himself from Project 2025 by tweeting: “I know nothing about Project 2025. I have no idea who is behind it. I disagree with some of the things they’re saying and some of the things they’re saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal. Anything they do, I wish them luck, but I have nothing to do with them.” (@realDonaldTrump) However, this was refuted by a 2022 statement from former President Trump: “[The Heritage Foundation] is a great group, and they’re going to lay the groundwork and detail plans for exactly what our movement will do and what your movement will do when the American people give us a colossal mandate to save America.” (Bennen, 2024) Additionally, several authors, editors, and contributors of Project 2025 have previously worked for the Trump administration. Roughly 64% of policy recommendations from the 2016 Mandate for Leadership were either implemented or taken into consideration by the Trump Administration in 2017 (The Heritage Foundation). In this article, we will outline ten specific ways in which Project 2025 disproportionately negatively impacts Latino civil rights. 1. Establish a Unitary Executive Branch 2. Mass Deportations “Prioritizing border security and immigration enforcement, including detention and deportation, is critical if we are to regain control of the border.” (Project 2025, pg. 135) Project 2025 plans to repeal parts of the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008 to allow for the large-scale use of detention facilities to mass incarcerate migrants. It also will change Title 8 of U.S. Code § 1226 to require mandatory detention for unauthorized migrants caught within the U.S. interior (pg. 150). To compound this, Project 2025 will also increase Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) capabilities by removing all sensitive zones where ICE personnel are prohibited from operating, allowing for raids in schools, churches, and businesses (pg. 142). Project 2025 calls to authorize state and local law enforcement to participate in immigration and border security actions (pg. 150). Through deputizing local law enforcement, there will be a lack of oversight and accountability, allowing for abuses of the system that would disproportionately hurt the Latino community. Additionally, Latinos would have a more difficult time receiving impartial hearings and legal representation, especially because detainees are not entitled to public defenders as criminal defendants are. To compound upon this, the Supreme Court Case Loper Bright Entreprises vs. Raimondo, which repealed the Chevron Deference, has the potential to take immigration hearings away from the United States Immigration and Citizenship Services and shift them to the local courts. These local courts notoriously have long backlogs and a limited understanding of immigration policies and laws, which would force Latinos to have long and unjust trials. 3. Cutting Off Legal Immigration “Victimization should not be a basis for an immigration benefit.” (pg. 144) “If CISOMB continues as a DHS component, a policy should be issued that prohibits CISOMB from assisting illegal aliens to obtain benefits. Currently, approximately 15 percent–20 percent of CISOMB’s workload consists of helping DACA applicants obtain and renew benefits, including work authorization. This is not the role of an ombudsman.” (Project 2025, pg. 166) Project 2025 proposes to cut down on legal immigration by limiting interim immigration into the United States. For example, it calls for an increase in visa application fees. It plans to limit the issuance of H-2A and H2-B visas for seasonal agricultural workers, as well as the complete elimination of T and U visas meant to protect trafficking or crime victims who are actively cooperating with law enforcement as a witness (pg. 612, 141). Project 2025 calls to remove and deport all Temporary Status designations for migrants whose home countries are considered unsafe to live in (pg. 145). Finally, Project 2025 will phase out DACA for the over 500,000 recipients by eliminating staff time for reviewing and processing renewal applications which will make it very hard for DACA recipients to renew their status given the proposed lack of staff present to do so (pg.145). And More Project 2025 https://lulac.org/project_2025/ We will have a North Star webinar on this topic on Oct.20, 2024. Watch this site for details. and on our Electoral Fight Back site below. Our building a united front is here; North Star: Defeat MAGA/Fight for Democracy Action Opportunities List of opportunities: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1cRIJsSJwtF72ckJ8QLQu5cDCGnoeh5OIIjwqRkDKdBg/edit?usp=sharing Our strategy is here. https://www.dsanorthstar.org/our-strategy.html
DSA and the broader Left must join forces to confront the international rise of authoritarianism. Together we should work to build a center-left coalition in defense of democracy. DSA must jettison a growing tendency towards a “go it alone” approach that devalues coalition work and glosses over the importance – indeed, the necessity – of a center-left coalition to defend democracy from neo-fascism. Our building a united front is here; North Star: Defeat MAGA/Fight for Democracy Action Opportunities List of opportunities: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1cRIJsSJwtF72ckJ8QLQu5cDCGnoeh5OIIjwqRkDKdBg/edit?usp=sharing We have a new addition. Volunteer opportunities around the nation. *** KAMALA HARRIS/TIM WALZ CAMPAIGN on-going volunteer opportunities kamalaharris.org https://txt.democrats.org/c7b4  Bill Fletcher Jr. Excerpts from a longer piece,, Which brings us to the Cornel West campaign and other third-party bids during the 2024 election cycle. What is the essence of such ventures? If one is interested in building a struggle for power, one does not begin by running a presidential campaign, and certainly not a campaign with no organized base and no possibility of victory. If, however, one is concerned more with asserting one’s beliefs and expressing one’s frustration and antipathy toward the existing system, one can view a campaign for the presidency as an ongoing platform to both hear oneself talk, and to try to captivate and entertain an audience. Such politics become, not the politics inherent in a struggle for power, but the politics of self-expression. The objective becomes expressing one’s views, anger, etc., rather than seeking to achieve anything. In effect, it becomes the politics of defeat, in that one has no plan, knows one cannot win, and therefore cries out in hopelessness. The West campaign and other third parties will virulently object. They will assert they are taking a stand against the two-party system of the capitalist class, against imperialism, against the criminality of the US support for Israeli genocide. And they will be correct! They are. Yet, they have neither plan nor sufficient organization to transform their assertions into political power. Thus, they can only rely on magical thinking in the hopes—and this is a best-case scenario—that their plea to the masses will resonate and result in a great wave of revulsion against the system, thrusting them into office…alone. …. The political moment Leaving aside, for a moment, that minor parties in the USA have rarely been successful due to the undemocratic nature of the US electoral system, the actions of the Cornel West campaign and other third parties would be comical if less were at stake. And there have been times when comedians have run for president to make a satirical statement, such as Pat Paulsen. Current third-party candidacies, including West and Jill Stein, either ignore or deny the dangers inherent in the current moment. West, for instance, acknowledges the dangers of a Trump victory but asserts, in part due to the Israeli genocide in Gaza, that there was no difference between Trump and Biden and, apparently, no difference between Trump and Harris. Stein’s views carry on from the historic and, unfortunately, dogmatic stand of the Green Party on the need for formal political independence from the two-party system. None of them are coming to grips with the dangers on the horizon. There is nothing, for instance, on the Harris side that is comparable to the plans of the MAGA movement such as Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s hatched idea for a rightwing authoritarian overhaul of the US government. There is nothing comparable on the Harris side to proposals such as the American Legislative Exchange Council’s ongoing work to advance a Constitutional Convention to alter the US Constitution in favor of business and the Christian Right. Nothing. One cannot conclude ignorance on the part of any of these campaigns. One cannot imagine that any of these campaigns believe that progressive politics and policies will survive a second Trump presidency. Or perhaps they do? As many of us have heard over the months, there are those who believe that Trump will not be so bad and, yes, there will be suffering, but we will come through it. Read the entire piece. https://liberationroad.substack.com/p/the-cornel-west-campaign-third-parties? Statement by National DSA
Solidarity with Springfield’s Haitian Community: DSA’s Statement on Anti-Immigrant Violence September 17, 2024 DSA condemns in the strongest possible terms the hateful lies promoted by Donald Trump, J.D. Vance, and other Republican officials targeting Haitian immigrant communities in Springfield, Ohio. These lies have led to ongoing school and hospital closures over bomb threats, smashed windows, acid thrown on cars, death threats, and the canceling of beloved local cultural events due to safety concerns. The goal is clear: Trump’s lies intend to incite violence and harassment against working-class immigrant communities, not just in Springfield, but toward Black people living all over the country. In the lead up to their second term, he’s touting plans to launch mass deportations targeting millions. The far-right wants to divide and conquer the working class by using xenophobia and racism to pit workers against one another in a race to the bottom. Democrats, including presidential candidate Kamala Harris, have enabled this rhetoric by remaining silent about the attacks on Springfield, while also affirming her plans to expand border policing. This is nothing less than appeasement to growing fascist anti-immigrant rhetoric. The Presidential debate last Tuesday made clear that Trump’s hateful Project 2025 agenda would be catastrophic for the working class, both at home and abroad. Opposing the far right, as represented by the Republican Party under Trump’s neo-fascist leadership, is a necessity for the working class and for our movement. The truth is that working people everywhere have a common humanity and shared struggle against the exploitative capitalist economic system, which is the real root cause of the increasing precarity and insecurity in our society. DSA is fighting for a world where all people live together in peace, regardless of race, ethnicity, or national origin. Immigrants are welcome here. People everywhere are hurting, struggling to pay bills, buy groceries, and live beyond paycheck to paycheck. But this is not because of the immigrants who are living in this country: our suffering is due to the insatiable greed of the billionaire class. We will stand against anti-immigrant hate anywhere and everywhere it appears, and we continue to fight against the greed of billionaires like Donald Trump and the lies they tell to keep us from achieving working class solidarity. ---------- -------------- ----------- National DSA has made the statement above. Most of the statement is a good statement of the situation and policy. https://www.dsausa.org/statements/solidarity-with-springfields-haitian-community/ The following part of the statement is in error. Democrats, including presidential candidate Kamala Harris, have enabled this rhetoric by remaining silent about the attacks on Springfield, while also affirming her plans to expand border policing. This is nothing less than appeasement to growing fascist anti-immigrant rhetoric. See here for the errors. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/17/us/politics/harris-trump-haitian-migrants-pets.html This unfortunate view is also in error. This is nothing less than appeasement to growing fascist anti-immigrant rhetoric. We propose that DSA members unite with others on the left in a popular front to participate in the effort to defeat the growing anti fascist movement as advanced by the Republican – MAGA movement and the 2024 effort to elect Donald Trump as President . Here are ways you can join with other North Star members in building our electoral effort. ** North Star: Defeat MAGA/Fight for Democracy Action Opportunities opportunities: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1cRIJsSJwtF72ckJ8QLQu5cDCGnoeh5OIIjwqRkDKdBg/edit?usp=sharing Trump’s claims about immigrants "pouring into our country" from prisons and mental institutions, as well as his baseless accusations of widespread "migrant crime"1, are not only false but dangerous.   LULAC Response to Presidential Debate on September 10
Washington, D.C. — Last night’s debate highlighted the need for both candidates to focus on the issues that matter most to Americans, not on falsehoods, distractions, and hysteria. The League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) strongly condemns the xenophobic and inflammatory comments made by former President Donald Trump during last night's debate. His rhetoric on immigration not only misrepresents the facts but also promotes fear and division, unfairly targeting immigrant communities, particularly Latinos. We are encouraged by Vice President Harris’s commitment to delivering bipartisan immigration reform in Congress, which would uphold our nation’s dedication to addressing the humanitarian crisis at our southern border, tackle the root causes of displacement abroad, and strengthen our homeland security. We urge Vice President Harris to maintain her commitment to the critical goal of creating a more fair and humanitarian immigration system. LULAC remains committed to advocating for the rights of all Latinos and immigrants, and we will continue to stand against divisive rhetoric that seeks to undermine the progress we have made. We urge the American public to reject hate and instead focus on the positive role that Latinos and immigrants play in building a stronger and more united nation. Donald Trump’s Xenophobic Comments on Immigration Trump’s claims about immigrants "pouring into our country" from prisons and mental institutions, as well as his baseless accusations of widespread "migrant crime"1, are not only false but dangerous. These comments are rooted in fearmongering and are designed to vilify immigrants as threats to American society. Such rhetoric only serves to harm the Latino community, a vital part of the fabric of the United States. Let’s be clear: Donald Trump’s hateful rhetoric is not just inflammatory—it’s dangerous. It incites division and violence, and it ignores the tremendous contributions that immigrants, particularly Latinos, make to this country every day. One of the most egregious examples is Trump’s false and outrageous claim that immigrants are “eating pets” in American towns. This statement has no foundation in truth. Not only is it completely baseless, but it also serves as a reprehensible attempt to dehumanize immigrants by spreading ridiculous and harmful lies. Fact-checkers have already debunked this claim, and it is nothing more than an insult to the hard-working immigrant communities who contribute so much to this country2. |
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