Native Boarding Schools Led to Death and Destruction

 https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/08/30/us/native-american-boarding-schools.html

Biden’s NLRB Brings Workers’ Rights Back From the Dead

Biden’s NLRB Brings Workers’ Rights Back From the Dead: A decision last Friday makes union organizing possible again.

March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, 2023.

 

The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom

by Peter Dreier.

"50 Years After the March on Washington, What Would MLK March For Today?" Washington Post, August 22, 2013.   The March on Washington, where King delivered his great "I Have a Dream" speech, took place on August 28, 1963.  I wrote this article in 2013 to celebrate the march's 50th anniversary.  If he were alive today, King would be fighting for the same causes - peace, women's reproductive health, affordable housing, desegregation, immigrant rights, gun control, and others.  

 Asante-Muhammad and Chuck Collins, "We Still Have a Dream," Sun-Sentinel, August 27, 2023   Black Americans have endured the unendurable for too long. Sixty years after the famed March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, where Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., gave his landmark “I Have a Dream” speech, African Americans are on a path where it will take 500 more years to reach economic equality.  Our country has taken significant steps towards racial equity since the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and ‘60s. But growing income and wealth inequality over the last four decades has supercharged historic racial wealth disparities, slowing and even reversing some of those gains. Sixty years without substantially narrowing the Black-white wealth divide is a policy failure. But just as federal policy helped create the racial wealth gap, it can also help close it. The op-ed column by Asante-Muhammad and Chuck Collins is a summary of their report, "Still A Dream: Black Economic Inequality 60 Years After the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom," which looks in detail at the state of that racial and wealth divide and recommends policy reforms that would substantially narrow it within one to two generations.

Peter Dreier. 2023.

 

https://www.dsanorthstar.org/blog/march-on-washington-for-jobs-and-freedom-2021

 

 

RS Seminar- Economic Crisis: Four Stages of a Coup

RS Seminar- Economic Crisis: Four Stages of a Coup:   Robert Reich,   Trump’s attempted coup against the United States continues. We are now in Phase 3. Phase 1 was his refusal to concede the ...

The Constitution Prohibits Trump From Becoming President Again

 

J. Michael Luttig and Laurence H. Tribe  August 19, 2023 The Atlantic The only question is whether American citizens today can uphold that commitment.

, Illustration by Jared Bartman / The Atlantic. Sources: Chip Somodevilla / Getty; U.S. National Archives and Records Administration.

As students of the United States Constitution for many decades—one of us as a U.S. Court of Appeals judge, the other as a professor of constitutional law, and both as constitutional advocates, scholars, and practitioners—we long ago came to the conclusion that the Fourteenth Amendment, the amendment ratified in 1868 that represents our nation’s second founding and a new birth of freedom, contains within it a protection against the dissolution of the republic by a treasonous president. This protection, embodied in the amendment’s often-overlooked Section 3, automatically excludes from future office and position of power in the United States government—and also from any equivalent office and position of power in the sovereign states and their subdivisions—any person who has taken an oath to support and defend our Constitution and thereafter rebels against that sacred charter, either through overt insurrection or by giving aid or comfort to the Constitution’s enemies. The historically unprecedented federal and state indictments of former President Donald Trump have prompted many to ask whether his conviction pursuant to any or all of these indictments would be either necessary or sufficient to deny him the office of the presidency in 2024. Having thought long and deeply about the text, history, and purpose of the Fourteenth Amendment’s disqualification clause for much of our professional careers, both of us concluded some years ago that, in fact, a conviction would be beside the point. The disqualification clause operates independently of any such criminal proceedings and, indeed, also independently of impeachment proceedings and of congressional legislation. The clause was designed to operate directly and immediately upon those who betray their oaths to the Constitution, whether by taking up arms to overturn our government or by waging war on our government by attempting to overturn a presidential election through a bloodless coup. The former president’s efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election, and the resulting attack on the U.S. Capitol, place him squarely within the ambit of the disqualification clause, and he is therefore ineligible to serve as president ever again. The most pressing constitutional question facing our country at this moment, then, is whether we will abide by this clear command of the Fourteenth Amendment’s disqualification clause. We were immensely gratified to see that a richly researched article soon to be published in an academic journal has recently come to the same conclusion that we had and is attracting well-deserved attention outside a small circle of scholars—including Jeffrey Sonnenfeld and Anjani Jain of the Yale School of Management, whose encouragement inspired us to write this piece. The evidence laid out by the legal scholars William Baude and Michael Stokes Paulsen in “The Sweep and Force of Section Three,” available as a preprint, is momentous. Sooner or later, it will influence, if not determine, the course of American constitutional history—and American history itself. Written with precision and thoroughness, the article makes the compelling case that the relevance of Section 3 did not lapse with the passing of the generation of Confederate rebels, whose treasonous designs for the country inspired the provision; that the provision was not and could not have been repealed by the Amnesty Act of 1872 or by subsequent legislative enactments; and that Section 3 has not been relegated by any judicial precedent to a mere source of potential legislative authority, but continues to this day by its own force to automatically render ineligible for future public office all “former office holders who then participate in insurrection or rebellion,” as Baude and Paulsen put it. Among the profound conclusions that follow are that all officials who ever swore to support the Constitution—as every officer, state or federal, in every branch of government, must—and who thereafter either “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” against the Constitution or gave “aid and comfort to the enemies” of that Constitution (and not just of the United States as a sovereign nation) are automatically disqualified from holding future office and must therefore be barred from election to any office. Regardless of partisan leaning or training in the law, all U.S. citizens should read and consider these two simple sentences from Section 3: No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability. The Fourteenth Amendment was promulgated and ratified in the context of postbellum America when, even after losing the Civil War, southern states were sending men to Congress who had held prominent roles in the Confederacy or otherwise supported acts of rebellion or insurrection against the United States. The two of us have long believed, and Baude and Paulsen have now convincingly demonstrated, that notwithstanding its specific historical origin, Section 3 is no anachronism or relic from the past; rather, it applies with the same force and effect today as it did the day it was ratified—as does every other provision, clause, and word of the Constitution that has not been repealed or revised by amendment.

AOC and the Squad’s List of Left-Wing Accomplishments Is Quite Long

  

AOC and the Squad’s List of Left-Wing Accomplishments Is Quite Long

 

BY

BRANKO MARCETIC

As with any elected official, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the Squad should be criticized when needed. But left-wing vitriol is unwarranted: it ignores the Squad’s many progressive accomplishments and their legislation’s aid to activist campaigns.

JACOBIN. 

WE POST THE JACOBIN PIECE HERE.

HTTPS://WWW.DSANORTHSTAR.ORG/BLOG/AOC-AND-THE-SQUADS-LIST-OF-LEFT-WING-ACCOMPLISHMENTS-IS-QUITE-LONG

It’s tough being a member of the “Squad” these days. Once the darlings of the American left, the group of progressive and socialist House members that includes Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, Jamaal Bowman, and others are as likely to be savaged these days from the Left as they are from the Right. Popular YouTube commentators regularly denounce them as “sellouts,” protesters interrupt their meetings calling them warmongers, and even committed socialists question what the point of the Squad has been.

The lion’s share of this ire has been trained on Representative Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), who’s faced relentless criticism since winning office from all sides, sometimes over substantive issues (once failing to show up for an Amazon union rally, casting a vote that denied railworkers the ability to strike), sometimes over remarkably petty ones (conciliatory rhetoric, the positioning of her hands while being arrested).

Much of this was crystallized in a recent critical analysis of Ocasio-Cortez’s record in New York magazine by Freddie deBoer, who charged she has drifted “from radical outsider to Establishment liberal,” making mere “token gestures of resistance to solidify the illusion that she is a gadfly,” and argued that her and the rest of the Squad’s entry into Congress has been entirely fruitless.

Read more.

https://jacobin.com/2023/08/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-aoc-the-squad-left-criticism-policy-accomplishments

 

Photo

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez speaking in front of the US Capitol, 2022. (Nathan Posner / Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

It Took a Village in Georgia

  

It Took a Village to Try to  Seize the American Presidency 

 

On the NS blog 

https://www.dsanorthstar.org/blog/it-took-a-village-to-try-to-seize-the-presidency

 

With 19 indicted conspirators and 30 unindicted conspirators, there are now almost as many Republicans caught up in Fulton County’s wheels of justice as there are Republican candidates for president. At some point, we may want to indict those candidates (among whom only Chris Christie and, lately and reluctantly, Mike Pence have noted that Trump appears to have broken the law), too. On the charge of contributing to the erosion of American democracy, any number are guilty as sin.
by Harold Meyerson 

Congressman Kevin Kiley Supports Massive Cuts to Schools. Do You?

 

Americans are still recovering from the ripple effects of the pandemic, particularly our most vulnerable populations. Students still have a vast array of social, emotional and academic needs as they head back to school, and workers are re-entering a changing workplace. On top of that, the need for accessible healthcare is only growing. Now is not the time for Congress to make massive cuts to the programs we depend on, but that’s exactly what many Republicans are trying to do. It’s up to us to spread the word to make sure our communities know what’s at stake.   Click here to write a letter to the editor of your local newspaper; you can potentially reach thousands of people with this simple action that takes just minutes of your time. Here’s what you need to know about the House Republicans’ appropriations bill. It would:  Cut $63.8 billion from public K-12 education—a 28 percent decrease from 2023 funding and the lowest possible funding for the Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies bill since 2008.  Cut Title I funding by 80 percent, which could force a nationwide reduction of 220,000 teachers from classrooms serving low-income students. This would make our already unsustainable nationwide shortage of educators even worse.  Eliminate programs for English language learners (Title III), supports for educators (Title II-A), social and emotional learning grants, Promise Neighborhoods and Magnet Schools.  Cut funding for community schools—schools that serve not just students but their families.   Decimate funding for job training, cancer research, health initiatives for mental health, addressing the opioid crisis, eliminating HIV/AIDS, and more.   Continue the Republicans’ attacks on women’s health by cutting programs to support maternal health, eliminating programs that provide contraception and health services, and adding amendments to push their draconian agenda to ban abortion and make reproductive healthcare harder to access.  It’s up to us to spread the word and show lawmakers that the public refuses to allow our educational institutions to be attacked by political extremists. At the AFT, we’re working to ensure that every child has what they need to thrive. Our Real Solutions for Kids and Communities campaign is all about focusing on students’ loneliness, learning loss and literacy. But our communities must understand who is trying to cut vital education and community programs—because it takes resources to support educators and school staff.  We need your help to do that. Please write a letter to the editor and spread the word. In unity,  Randi Weingarten  AFT President

School Funding

50 Years Older and Deeper in Debt

The Shaky Foundations of U.S. School Funding

By Stan Karp

Illustrator: Boris Séméniako

Reproducing Inequality Instead of Eradicating It

The process of remaking school funding in the United States begins with understanding how the current system reproduces inequality instead of eradicating it.

In most countries the right to education is enshrined in the national constitution and supported by a centralized, national funding system. The patchwork U.S. system of local property taxes and 50 separate state funding systems makes it an outlier. As with voting rights, the lack of strong federal protections provides room for less transparent and less equitable state and local systems. 

https://rethinkingschools.org/articles/50-years-older-and-deeper-in-debt/