The ad says: With Father’s Day right around the corner, we’re sure you’re
already thinking about what to get the fathers and father figures in your life.
Even if it hasn’t crossed your mind yet, we’ve got your back -- and front! Our
Tax March t-shirts are American-made, super-soft, fit dads of all shapes and
sizes.
Another says: Next Weekend: Classic Star
Wars Film Gets an Adult Makeover at The Warfield.
 |
| The Caption reads "Bawdy burlesque to Star Wars. |
This is America in the trumpfirst century.
But a headline (from Common Dreams) gets real: ‘Thousands
arrested nationwide as Poor People’s Campaign Demands ‘End to the War Economy.'”
The article cites the Pentagon budget “which [steals] resources that could be
used to provide healthcare and food [not to mention housing] to the poor at
home [while] killing innocents abroad, and quite frankly it’s killing us, too,
because it’s a vast mechanism of upward wealth transfer. A recent publication addressing that very issue is titled: Stop Thief!: the Commons, Enclosures and
Resistance (by Peter Linebaugh). And Kathy Kelly’s report, Scourging Yemen, where starvation and
disease have been enlisted as weapons of war, tells it like it is, and can be read here.
And steal it does.
Almost every outing, I discover new settlements of tent cities in the
town in which I live. In another decade, our cities will vie with those of 80s
India: Bombay, especially. How did they get that way? What historical
processes, created such a desperate housing crunch? Meantime, here is the pie
chart representing the administration’s Discretionary Budget request for 2019:
How hard does the American worker have to work to pony up
taxes in support of this Gargantuan war programme? More than workers of most
industrialized countries, American workers produce the greatest amount of goods
for the maximum numbers of working days.
If
the American worker worked as little as
Norwegian and Danish workers, he or she would enjoy nearly 2.2 months of paid
vacation. Instead American labor
works way more than, say, Denmark’s while suffering huge levels of inequality,
poverty and material deprivation.
Conclusion: Stealing from poor Americans is like taking
candy from a baby. But some of us get it. According to Common Dreams, the Poor People’s
Campaign unveiled a series of demands last month ahead of launching its 40 days
of action, rolling over more than 30 states:
“We demand a stop to the privatization of the military
budget and any increase in military spending. We demand a reallocation of
resources from the military budget to education, healthcare, jobs, and green
infrastructure needs, and strengthening a VA system that must remain public.”
Surely modest, routine demands appropriate to any industrialized country not
owned by oligarchs and governed by elites, especially those who prefer to lose
an election rather than go against the interests of the bankers and
corporations that buy their sycophancy year after year.
“The really critical
thing,” wrote Howard Zinn, “isn’t who’s sitting in the White House, but who’s
sitting—in the streets, in the cafeterias, in the halls of government, in the
factories. Who is protesting, who is occupying offices and demonstrating—those
are the things that determine what happens.” Does it seem to you as though
Capitalism is not working for you? And that it may be time to create whole new
systems for making things work sustainably?
In “Needed
Now: A Real and Radical Left,” Chris Hedges advises investing “our energy
in building parallel popular institutions to protect ourselves and to pit power
against power…including unions, community development organizations, local
currencies, alternative political parties, and food cooperatives” a list which
should be expanded to include state and city banks, cooperative production
through worker owned coops, with a vision based in harmony, rather than
exploitative of the natural environment.
We need a serious Left, one not atomized by identity
politics, and capable of sticking around for the very long and steep haul.
To join the Poor People’s Campaign. Visit wilpfus.org/
Petition congress to stop Trump from attacking North Korea
by going to https://www.change.org/p/u-s-house-of-representatives-stop-trump-from-attacking-north-korea
Petition congress to stop Trump from starting a nuclear war
by going to http://act.winwithoutwar.org/sign/sign-petition-tell-congress-stop-trump-starting-nuclear-war/
Toffiq al-Bihani has been stuck in Guantanamo for 16 years
without charge or trial.
Congress attempts to shut down war plans for Iran with an
amendment now attached to the national Defense Authorization Bill.
Following the worker revolt there, Google ends drone
technology contract with the Pentagon.
Nationwide #KeepFamliesTogether rallies demand the
administration halt cruel border separation of parents and children policy.
Stockton CA Michael Tubbs, the nation’s youngest mayor experiments with a universal basic income.
Chile joins Kenya and Morocco becoming the first Latin
American country to ban plastic bags,
Iran enacts massive and meaningful drug reform.
Toshiba withdraws from South Texas nuclear power plant
project.
Mid American Energy becomes first investor-owned utility in
U. S. to generate renewables equivalent to 100% of its customers’ annual use.
Despite intense opposition from big polluters backed by the
global north at the recent international meeting in Germany to advance the
Paris Agreement, activists helped pressure the EU to side with people and with
climate justice.
Congress introduces legislation to protect California
swordfish industry.
Costa Rica’s new president, Carlos Alvardo, announces a ban
on fossil fuels, placing his country as a major trailblazer in the fight
against climate change.
The 2018 Freedom Flotilla arrives in Gaza with desperately
needed food! medical supplies! and other aid!
In a win for sustainability, reducing military costs, and
promoting water security, the House Armed Services Committee unanimously
approved Rep. Salud Carbahal’s water amendment.
Prosecutors drop charges against a half dozen people the
government had sought to imprison for decades for their roles in planning an
anti-Trump march.
Former felons nationwide use their past connections with the
incarceration system to restore voting rights to the disenfranchised.
Andy Tsege is pardoned after nearly four years on death row
in Ethiopia and rejoins his family in London.
The nation’s largest union of federal workers files suit
against the administration over an EO that seeks to deny workers the right to
job site representation.
Despite fierce lobbying from ISPs, net neutrality bill
passes in California.
Candidates backed by the Sanders revolution achieve early
success in the primaries.
The Virginia Senate votes to expand Medicaid and provide
health care to nearly 400,000 Virginians.
The California State Assembly votes for the first time to
require Ethnic Studies as a statewide graduation requirement.
Illinois ratifies the Equal Rights Amendment, making it the
37th state to do so.
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