Democracy
- Fellow Workers
- The Past Didn’t go Anywhere
- The Internationale
Romney Admits Push to Ban TikTok Is Aimed at Censoring News Out of Gaza | Common Dreams
A discussion between U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Sen. Mitt Romney over the weekend included what one critic called an “incredible mask-off moment,” with the two officials speaking openly about the U.S. government’s long-term attempts to provide public relations work for Israel in defense of its policies in the occupied Palestinian territories—and its push to ban TikTok in order to shut down Americans' access to unfiltered news about the Israeli assault on Gaza.
It’s frustrating (though not surprising) to see the distorted media presentation of violence at the Pro-Palestinian protests on campuses last week. Most notably the UCLA protest where police did nothing as masked Pro-Israel counter “protestors” attacked the student encampment Tuesday night. Democracy Now! has excellent coverage.
Even worse that Biden referenced the violence without any clarification that the student encampment, a stationary protest, was generally very peaceful to that point.
The counter protesters moved in and attacked with tear gas and a variety of weapons. By all accounts many of the attackers were not students. Nor was the first such attack but just the last and most intense.
From Democracy Now:
We get an update from the University of California, Los Angeles, where police in riot gear began dismantling a pro-Palestinian encampment early Thursday, using flashbang grenades, rubber bullets and tear gas, and arresting dozens of students. The raid came just over a day after pro-Israel counterprotesters armed with sticks, metal rods and fireworks attacked students at the encampment. The Real News Network reporter Mel Buer was on the scene during the attack. She describes seeing counterprotesters provoke students, yelling slurs and bludgeoning them with parts of the encampment’s barricade, and says the attack lasted several hours without police or security intervention.” UCLA is complicit in violence inflicted upon protesters,” wrote the editorial board of UCLA’s campus newspaper, the Daily Bruin, the next day. Four of the paper’s student journalists were targeted and assaulted by counterprotesters while covering the protests.
Violence AGAINST Anti-War Student Protesters Escalates Across The US - YouTube
Sam parses through yesterday’s mass escalation of violence against anti-war student protesters on college campuses across the US, with the NYPD sending a SWAT team to infiltrate the Student occupation of Harold Hall, and police in LA allowing a pro-Israel violent mob assault UCLA protesters, also expanding on the absurd and constant attempts to completely misrepresent these campus protests and the student activists behind them.
The Preacher and the Slave - Wikipedia
“The Preacher and the Slave” is a song written by Joe Hill in 1911. It was written as a parody of the Christian hymn “In the Sweet By-and-By”. Copying or using the musical style of the hymn was also a way to capture the emotional resonance of that style of music and use it for a non-religious purpose.
The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW, also commonly known as the Wobblies) concentrated much of its labor trying to organize migrant workers in lumber and construction camps. When the workers returned to the cities, the Wobblies faced the Salvation Army, which they satirized as the “Starvation Army”, who were said to have tried to drown out IWW with their religious music. Hill had first encountered the Salvation Army in Sweden when he was a child.
The lyrics:
Verse 1 Long-haired preachers come out every night Try to tell you what’s wrong and what’s right But when asked about something to eat They will answer with voices so sweet:
Chorus You will eat (You will eat) bye and bye (Bye and bye) In that glorious land above the sky (Way up high) Work and pray (Work and pray), live on hay (Live on hay) You’ll get pie in the sky when you die (That’s a lie!)
Verse 2 And the starvation army they play And they sing and they clap and they pray Till they get all your coin on the drum Then they tell you when you are on the bum
Chorus You will eat (You will eat) bye and bye (Bye and bye) In that glorious land above the sky (Way up high) Work and pray (Work and pray), live on hay (Live on hay) You’ll get pie in the sky when you die (That’s a lie!)
Verse 3 Holy Rollers and jumpers come out They holler, they jump and they shout Give your money to Jesus they say He will cure all diseases away See country shows near Chesterfield Get tickets as low as $20 You might also like
Chorus You will eat (You will eat) bye and bye (Bye and bye) In that glorious land above the sky (Way up high) Work and pray (Work and pray), live on hay (Live on hay) You’ll get pie in the sky when you die (That’s a lie!)
Verse 4 If you fight hard for children and wife Try to get something good in this life You’re a sinner and bad man, they tell When you die you will sure go to hell
Chorus You will eat (You will eat) bye and bye (Bye and bye) In that glorious land above the sky (Way up high) Work and pray (Work and pray), live on hay (Live on hay) You’ll get pie in the sky when you die (That’s a lie!)
Verse 5 Working folk of all countries unite Side by side we for freedom will fight When the world and its wealth we have gained To the grafters we’ll sing this refrain:
Chorus You will eat (You will eat) bye and bye (Bye and bye) When you’ve learned how to cook and how to fry (and bake a pie!) Chop some wood, ‘twill do you good And you’ll eat in the sweet bye and bye (That’s no lie!)
There comes a time when the operation of the machine is so odious that you cannot even tacitly participate. You’ve got to place your bodies on the gears, the wheels, all the mechanism. And you’ve got to indicate to those who own it and those who run it that unless you are free, the machine will be prevented from working at all. - Mario Savio
Quoted by Utah Phillips in track Unless you are free on album Fellow Workers
We in the US have forgotten so much about our own history. It’s been sterilized with the dangerous bits removed.
Recommended Music: Utah Phillips and Ani DiFranco
Billy Bragg
International Worker’s Day - Wikipedia
Today is International Worker’s Day, known as Labour Day in most countries. The date was originally chosen by the American Federation of Labor to commemorate the strike that ended in the Haymarket Massacre
It’s a day for, among other things, solidarity with protests
Some don’t seem to understand the connection between universities and Israel and the divestment demands of the student protests. Three links that may help:
Cornell student suspended over Gaza protest speaks out - YouTube
Across many American universities - student protesters have set up encampments on their campuses and are calling for their universities to withdraw investment from companies with links to the Israeli military.
The challenge colleges face with student demands for Israeli divestment | PBS NewsHour
Protests show no signs of letting up and universities are handling their respective situations differently. Columbia University warned of mass temporary suspensions, state troopers were called in at Texas and nearly 300 people were arrested at other schools over the weekend. Geoff Bennett has perspectives from student protesters and discusses their demands of divestment with Charlie Eaton.
Divestment was also used against South Africa to help end apartheid: Wikipedia
Disinvestment (or divestment) from South Africa was first advocated in the 1960s in protest against South Africa’s system of apartheid, but was not implemented on a significant scale until the mid-1980s. A disinvestment policy the US adopted in 1986 in response to the disinvestment campaign is credited with playing a role in pressuring the South African government to embark on negotiations that ultimately led to the dismantling of the apartheid system.
Americans have long described their government as being democratic. But an honest look at the history and evolution of the government here tells a very different story. The April 29, 2024 episode of the The Majority Report with Sam Seder includes interview with Ari Berman, national voting rights correspondent at Mother Jones, to discuss his recent book Minority Rule: The Right-Wing Attack on the Will of the People—and the Fight to Resist It..
“Minority Rule” serves as a culmination of his reporting on modern-day efforts at the GOP’s undemocratic takeover and how they play into an ever-shifting battle between democracy and elite rule.
Stepping back, Berman looks to America’s inception and the central role the US Constitution played in bolstering the US’ constraints on popular rule, with institutions like the Senate, Supreme Court, and Electoral College all serving to act as checks to the people’s power of democracy and federalism.
Moving forward, Abe walks Sam and Emma through some of the major periods of democratic progress and (largely racist) backlash in US history, including reconstruction’s shift towards a multi-racial democracy and the following minoritarian overthrow in the South that established Jim Crow rule, and the major progress made under the Civil Rights Movement – which saw a variety of voting-right legislation passed over the 1970s – and the GOP’s reaction that we’re still dealing with today. Parsing deeper into this latter era, Berman looks at the role played by folks like Pat Buchanan in pushing the GOP back toward their project of minoritarian rule, establishing the blueprint of the GOP’s takeover of the undemocratic institutions of US politics and the establishment of a network of think tanks and foundations to shape the generations to come. After an extensive conversation on how the politics (and normalization) of Pat Buchanan paved the way for a Donald Trump presidency, grounded in culture war and white resentment, and how the GOP’s takeover of Wisconsin politics at the outset of the 2010s provided an easy laboratory for anti-democratic policy, Berman wraps up the interview with a plea for the Democratic Party to recognize and strategize against these institutional threats to US democracy, and how refusing to do so paves the way for the likes of Donald Trump.
Yesterday Manton shared a recent post by Manuel Moreale The web is not dying – Manu:
Let’s imagine we ban TikTok. And Facebook. And Instagram. And Threads. And all the other huge platforms. There would still be one global town square left. It’s called the web. The web itself IS the global town square.
That’s all well and good BUT while many of us love blogs and a more open web what about the people who rely upon TikTok and the corporate social media? I’m not one of them. I left FB years ago and stopped using Instagram several years ago. I don’t use TikTok. But the world is bigger than me.
I think we should be careful in our idealistic statements about the open web, the small web, etc. The corporate web, for all its many downsides, still serves billions of people that are not us. While it’s full of misinformation, TikTok is being used by a whole generation to keep up on current events. And let’s be honest, if our concern is misinformation and bias, those can be found on the social media owned by US companies like Facebook, Instagram and Xitter. Not to mention that the corporate news sites: Fox News, CNN, MSNBC all have their own bias and agenda which translates into what and how “news” is presented.
Another quote from Moreale’s post:
Sure, it’s a lot harder to reach a million people if you have to start from your own little corner of the web. But you know what? Tough shit.
That statement comes from a position of priviledge. The small indy web is largely dominated by white, middle class straight men and good for them that they have their place on the internet. Meanwhile TikTok and the corporate social media is far more diverse because it’s more accessible and that’s important to remember.
TikTok is not just funny memes and entertainment. Its users are sharing current events often as they unfold, often the news ignored by corporate media because it’s not the “News that’s Fit to Print”. Just one of many, Code Pink who have been covering the movement to protest Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza, shared this post from outside the White House Correspondents' Dinner:
@codepinkalert NOW: Protestors are SHUTTING DOWN the entrance to the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. Western media spreads false anti-Palestinian narratives to justify Israel’s violence and oppression against the Palestinian people. At the same time, they refuse to report on Israel's atrocities. The WHCD is nothing more than a celebration and endorsement of the administration’s actions. That is not journalism. That is complicity. SHAME on the “journalists” who refuse to tell the truth about the genocide the United States & Israel are committing. We will not be silent in the face of propaganda.
♬ original sound - CODEPINK
For all of their problems, TikTok and other corporate social media have been especially important in social justice struggles. From MeToo to Black Lives Matter to any other important movements in the US or internationally, this isn’t something the small indy web can do yet.
I’m all for growing the Indy web but let’s remember how everyone else who is not us is using the web. Grow your awareness beyond yourself enough to know that sites like TikTok are not just being used for trivial attempts at viral humor but that they are being used in meaningful ways by people who have less priviledge than you.
Project 2025, the policy substance behind Trump, reveals a radical plan to reshape the world
In April 2022, conservative American think tank the Heritage Foundation, working with a broad coalition of 50 conservative organisations, launched Project 2025: a plan for the next conservative president of the United States.
The Project’s flagship publication, Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise, outlines in plain language and in granular detail, over 900-plus pages, what a second Trump administration (if it occurs) might look like. I’ve read it all, so you don’t have to.
Religious extremists do not accept or respect boundaries. They want to control it all and this is just a taste of what they want.
With This Week’s Abortion Case, Supreme Court Faces Grim Reality of Overturning Roe – Mother Jones
Just weeks after the Supreme Court ended the Constitutional right to an abortion in the summer of 2022, Mylissa Farmer arrived at a hospital in Joplin, Missouri after her water broke at about 18 weeks pregnant. The doctors agreed that the fetus had no chance of survival and that she needed to end her pregnancy to avoid sepsis, hemorrhage, or even death. But instead of helping to induce labor or perform an abortion, they urged her to go to another state for care: Under Missouri’s just-triggered abortion ban,they couldn’t provide the care she needed until she was in labor or her health deteriorated and her life was in peril.
Columbia University is colluding with the far-right in its attack on students | The Guardian
In her willingness to unleash state violence against student protestors, Minouche Shafik proved herself to be a willing ally to extremists…
To that end, she made only tepid defenses of academic freedom, instead favoring wholehearted condemnations of the protestors, assents to bad-faith mischaracterizations of the students as antisemitic and genocidal, and public, apparently on-the-spot, personnel decisions that removed some pro-Palestinian faculty and staff from their positions.
The footage of the Nazi youth camps along the east coast is chilling as is the footage of the fairly large events. Fast forward to 2020 and Trump getting nearly 47% of the popular vote. How many millions are ready to support fascism in 2024?
Nazi Town, USA | Full Documentary | PBS - YouTube
In February 1939, more than 20,000 Americans filled Madison Square Garden for an event billed as a “Pro-American Rally.” Images of George Washington hung alongside swastikas, underlining the organizers' belief that Nazism was entirely consistent with American ideals.
The Perserverance of Dignity – Abolition Media
The Zapatistas of Chiapas, Mexico have been working for 30 years to create and expand real, local democracy.
Young Liria nodded excitedly with a smile that lit up her face like the Mayan sun. Her small frame rocked back and forth with emotion. She had been at the 30th anniversary celebration of the EZLN in the Caracol of Dolores Hidalgo, and still vibrated with the energy of it. Along with thousands of her peers, she witnessed as people from around the globe streamed into the remote canyons of Chiapas to celebrate, and to listen to the Zapatista youth as they enacted their stories before an international audience. She witnessed for the first time the global reach of their movement that her grandparents and parents had built, and that she, should she choose to, would be charged with carrying on.
Not a surprise that the Fascist Party in attempting to limit democracy in Missouri.
Lawmakers, in a panic over the prospect that voters might overturn their abortion ban, are moving at what for them amounts to lightning speed on a constitutional amendment to make it harder to pass initiative petitions in Missouri.
Lots of planning for November and post election: How Viktor Orbán Conquered the Heritage Foundation | The New Republic
Last week, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán made waves by flying to the United States to meet with Donald Trump—but not with sitting president Joe Biden. It was, at a minimum, a severe breach of diplomatic protocol, and one that threatens to unravel Budapest’s strained relations with Washington even further. Even Biden himself commented on the meeting, saying that Orbán—an authoritarian who has effectively unwound Hungarian democracy—was “looking for dictatorship.”
The GOP is Fascism now.
Walberg, a fundamentalist former Christian pastor, once ran the homophobic, far right Moody Bible Institute in Chicago while supposedly representing a Michigan district, Walberg is against everything— a woman’s right to choose, the Affordable Care Act, gay marriage, and any attempt to counter the climate crisis. He went to Uganda to voice support for that country’s Anti-Homosexuality Act, which prescribes executions for gay people.
America is built on settler colonialism, slavery and white supremacy. For decades we’ve supported Israel in its constant breaking of international laws and now, genocide.
If we refuse to end our complicity in genocide what are we? I see a pattern here.
But do go on about democracy.
I see a lot of white middle class Democrats on social networks proclaiming that the only way to save democracy this year is to vote for Biden.
Have you ever protested in the street, how often and will you do so again if necessary?
Democracy is not just voting.
How and why did the US get to this?
Trump’s talk of seeking “retribution” against foes, including some he’s branded “vermin”, has coincided with plans that Maga loyalists at rightwing thinktanks are assembling to expand the president’s power and curb the DoJ, the FBI and other federal agencies. All of it has fueled critics’ fears that in a second term Trump would govern as an unprecedentedly authoritarian American leader.
‘Openly authoritarian campaign’: Trump’s threats of revenge fuel alarm | The Guardian
The answer is in front of us. For decades we’ve allowed ourselves to be redefined from citizen to consumer. Whatever interest in self governance we may have had in the past has been drained away as we’ve allowed ourselves to be distracted by entertainment, shiny things, comfort, convenience. Our planet burns, people starve or go without medical care, children are shot in their schools. And yet we go about daily life, prioritizing our own happiness. We’ve forgotten how to be active citizens.
There should be no such thing as “activism” or “activists”. Those words are fucking ridiculous. They exist because most citizens don’t want to do the job of citizenship. “We the people” is a fucking farce and has been for a long time. Our “democracy” was broken from the start (designed by the privileged for the maintenance of priviledge) but it’s only gotten worse. And now here we are, divided, frustrated, angry but still unwilling to do the work of participatory, active citizenship.
Look in the mirror if you want to see why we are at the threshold of authoritarianism. What have YOU done to stop it? Oh, me? No, what can I do? Nothing I can do.
Our attitude is always that the problems are caused by others. Corrupt government. Greedy corporations. Welfare recipients that don’t want to work. The list goes on. There’s always someone to blame. But it’s never us and our lack of commitment to citizenship.
The truth is most Americans don’t actually seem to want democracy.
We like to pretend we do. We allow ourselves to think America is the “home of the free, land of the brave” blah, blah, blah. But that’s just nonsense in 2023. It’s arrogance, hubris and lazy patriotism.
The truth is we don’t want to do the work of democracy. And no, not just voting. That’s the most minimal expression of what is a fairly hollow politics. I’m talking about the day-to-day practice of self governance. Of being a part of neighborhoods, communities, towns. Of being connected.
Democracy is going to city council and school board meetings. It’s calling your county commissioner to express concerns because you’re taking an interest in the happenings of your community. It’s noticing a problem on your street or in your neighborhood and taking an interest in fixing it. A broken sidewalk, dangerous intersection, a lack of bike racks, a neighbor in need. It’s being a part of community and caring about it the same as we care about ourselves or our children. Community is home.
Being an active citizen means extending and practicing empathy outside of ourselves and our tiny bubble of family. It’s understanding that our lives and well being are intertwined with those of our neighbors. Our neighbors are next door, down the street, in the next town over, in the next county over and the next country over. Next door or across the planet, we are all connected and this truth is increasingly obvious. What we and our government does impacts the planet and our fellow humans.
Being a citizen means taking personal responsibility. It means making a point of noticing problems and taking charge as though we are the only ones on the scene. In some cases our actions are individual and are not the immediate solution but are symbolic at least, an expression of care and making an effort to do ones part. But our individual actions as citizens can and should be followed with social actions when we ask for help to do the job. Citizenship is collective and cooperative.
We are the problem and cause of authoritarianism because we’ve forgotten what it means to take full responsibility for our freedom.
“Freedom is something you assume.Then you wait for someone to take it away from you. The degree to which you resist is the degree to which you are free.” - Utah Phillips
While I love that quote I would argue that freedom is intertwined with responsibility and we don’t assume it. We practice it, live it in our daily lives. It has to be renewed daily.
The support for Trump and authoritarianism is an expression of our decades of complacency and our lack of attention. It’s the accumulated frustration of people who know the government is broke and even an awareness on some level that capitalism is a fundamental part of the problem. And that frustration, intertwined with a lack of knowledge of our history, of working people being used and turned against one another, it makes for powerful mechanisms for control and manipulation.
Angry, frustrated people who have lost sight of the larger context of their role in the process of creating the collective good. Alone and separated rather than connected in community. That’s what he’s given them. He’s given them a connection, a feeling of empowered. And combined it with people to be angry at. We all know the idea of divide and conquer. He embodies the largely negative, back-stabbing reality tv show culture that put him in people’s homes and helped him got to this point.
He’s given his supporters a mission, something to thrive in. They feel necessary, useful, powerful and connected.
Connected. His movement overlooks his criminality and authoritarianism because they feel like they’re a part of something greater, a collective belonging. The fact that that something is based on authoritarianism goes unnoticed is, in part, due to the lack of historical understanding of authoritarianism.
The counter is a movement that promotes active citizenship in daily life.