Friends,
I tuned into a NO TO NATO webinar on July 7 because I respect the three activists, Ann Wright, Paki Wieland and Joe Gerson, who made presentations. I did not expect much of value to surface during the webinar. However, Joe made the obvious observation – we must deal with a fascist takeover of the USA. And another issue which demands our attention is climate chaos which could make the planet uninhabitable in ten years. Why waste time marching against NATO at a time when Putin is invading non-NATO countries? Let us deal with the most important crises first, and later deal with NATO.
74 million people voted for a fascist, Donald Trump, in 2020. And if you have followed the January 6 hearings, you should notice that almost all of the witnesses are Republicans. Unfortunately, a number of the witness, including Bill Barr, said they would vote for Trump in 2024. Please, I urge you to focus your efforts on bringing democracy to the USA. I assume in the 1930s, a majority of the Spanish people never thought they would lose their Republic. Unfortunately fascist members of the military thought otherwise.
Surely fascism could not take hold in the USA. Read Sinclair Lewis’ IT CAN’T HAPPEN HERE to get another perspective. Kagiso, Max
Members of the House Select Committee hearing to Investigate the January 6th Attack sit under a screen showing former US President Donald Trump and an excerpt of a phone call he had with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in the aftermath of the US Presidential Election, during the fourth hearing by the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the US Capitol in the Cannon House Office Building in Washington, DC, on June 21, 2022. (Photo: Roberto Schmidt/AFP via Getty Images)
Let's Be
Clear: The Battle Before Us Is Democracy vs. Autocracy
America needs a national pro-democracy
movement to stop the anti-democracy movement now underway.
July 8, 2022 by robertreich.substack.com
Democracy is not just under attack in America. In some states, it’s being lost.
Supreme Court
Justice Louis Brandeis once suggested that states could serve as laboratories
of democracy, but these states are more like laboratories of autocracy.
Take
Wisconsin. The GOP has so successfully rigged state elections through
gerrymandering that even when Democrats get more votes, Republicans win more
seats. In 2018, Republicans won just 45% of the vote statewide,
but were awarded 64% of the seats.
Wisconsin is
one of several states where an anti-democracy movement has taken hold — but it
wasn’t always this way.
In fact,
Wisconsin pioneered the progressive era of American politics at the start of
the twentieth century — with policies that empowered workers, protected the
environment, and took on corporate monopolies. State
lawmakers established the nation’s first unemployment insurance, workers’ compensation,
and strict child labor laws.
Teddy
Roosevelt called the state a “laboratory for wise … legislation aiming to secure
the social and political betterment of the people as a whole.”
But for the
last decade, Wisconsin has become a laboratory for legislation that does the
exact opposite.
After
Republicans took control in 2010, one of the first bills they passed gutted workers' rights by dismantling
public-sector unions — which then decimated labor’s ability to support pro-worker
candidates.
This move
aligned with the interests of their corporate donors, who benefited from weaker
unions and lower wages.
This new
Wisconsin formula has been replicated elsewhere.
Republicans in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and North Carolina won a minority of votes in
2018, but still won majorities in their state assemblies thanks to
gerrymandering.
In Texas,
Ohio, and Georgia, Republicans have crafted gerrymanders that are strong enough to create supermajorities capable of
overturning a governor’s veto.
Even more alarming, hundreds of these Republican state
legislators, “used the power of their office to discredit or try
to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election,” on behalf of Donald
Trump.
How did this
happen? Put simply: years of careful planning by corporate interest
groups and their radical allies.
And the
corporations enabling these takeovers aren't just influencing the law — their lobbyists are literally writing many of the bills that get
passed.
This political
alliance with corporate power has given these Republican legislatures free rein
to pursue an extreme culture war agenda — one that strips away rights that
majorities of people support — while deflecting attention from their corporate
patrons’ economic agendas.
Republicans
are introducing bills that restrict or criminalize
abortion. They’re banning teachers from discussing the history of racism in this country.
They are making it harder to protest and easier to harm protestors.
They are punishing trans people for receiving gender-affirming care and their doctors for
providing it.
But it doesn’t
have to be this way. There are still laboratories of democracy where true
public servants are finding creative ways to defend the rights of us all.
Elected
officials in Colorado and Vermont are codifying the right
to abortion. California lawmakers have
proposed making the state a refuge for transgender youth and their families.
And workers across the country are reclaiming their right to
organize, which is helping to rebuild an important counterweight
to corporate power.
But winning
will ultimately require a fifty state strategy — with a Democratic Senate
willing to reform or end the filibuster to codify Roe v. Wade, protect voting
rights, and protect the right to organize nationwide.
America needs
a national pro-democracy movement to stop the anti-democracy movement now
underway — a pro-democracy movement committed to helping candidates everywhere,
including in state-level races.
This is where
you come in. Volunteer for pro-democracy candidates — and if you don't have
time, contribute to their campaigns.
This is not a
battle of left vs. right. It is a battle between democracy and autocracy.
© 2021 robertreich.substack.com
Robert Reich, is the Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley, and a senior fellow at the Blum Center for Developing Economies. He served as secretary of labor in the Clinton administration, for which Time magazine named him one of the 10 most effective cabinet secretaries of the twentieth century. His book include: "Aftershock" (2011), "The Work of Nations" (1992), "Beyond Outrage" (2012) and, "Saving Capitalism" (2016). He is also a founding editor of The American Prospect magazine, former chairman of Common Cause, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and co-creator of the award-winning documentary, "Inequality For All." Reich's newest book is "The Common Good" (2019). He's co-creator of the Netflix original documentary "Saving Capitalism," which is streaming now.
Donations can be sent
to Max Obuszewski, Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 431 Notre Dame Lane, Apt. 206,
Baltimore, MD 21212. Ph: 410-323-1607; Email: mobuszewski2001 [at]
comcast.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/
"The master class
has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles.
The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject
class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their
lives." Eugene Victor Debs
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