Ford Candidly Describes Alleged Kavanaugh Assault, Thought She'd 'Accide...

Dr. Christine Blasey Ford's testimony today took our breath away. She was unwavering, compelling, courageous, and powerful—over hours in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee. And yet, the Republicans are still pushing to confirm Brett Kavanaugh—with a committee vote scheduled for tomorrow morning!

Dr. Blasey Ford has done everything in her power. Now it is up to us—and we have to move fast! Can you show up at noon on Friday at the closest office of one of your senators? Across the country, outside Republican and Democratic offices, people are gathering—and together, we will say, "I believe Dr. Blasey Ford! The Senate must reject Brett Kavanaugh!"

Click here to find the Senate office nearest to you. (If there is no nearby office or if you can't make it in person, take a photo of yourself with a protest sign and post it on social media with hashtags #BelieveSurvivors and #StopKavanaugh.) You can also click here to join the national Facebook page for these actions. 

Wear black, and bring signs (you can download some here), with messages such as "Believe Survivors" and "Stop Kavanaugh"—as well as, if you wish, handwritten letters, and pictures or photos of the people you're fighting for. When you arrive, look for other protesters so you can stand together. These are rapid-response gatherings, without much time to prepare—so they'll be scrappy, and that's OK. You should gather together to take photos of all of you standing with your signs and post them on social media with hashtags such as #StopKavanaugh and #BelieveSurvivors. Then go into the office to deliver the message to your senators that they have a responsibility to believe survivors, block this frenzied and offensive process, and stop Kavanaugh!

We're working with allies including Indivisible, Planned Parenthood, NARAL, the National Women's Law Center, UltraViolet, CREDO, and MomsRising, and many more, to help build these gatherings on short notice—and we know that MoveOn members, friends, family, and neighbors will show up in communities around the country. Because we all experienced outrage watching the older white men of the Republican Party dismiss Dr. Blasey Ford and push ahead with their relentless and brazen power grab.

Where Are the Children ?

Donde están los Niños?

Thank you!  All who participated in the Families Belong Together marches across the nation.  Thank you for showing up!  It is a tremendous statement. 

Having worked in the immigration fight for years, this is a peak moment.  It is humbling to see the millions and the families uniting to find the children taken by ICE.  Thank you for standing with the immigrants’ rights movements.  
See Sacramento Bee video.

https://www.sacbee.com/latest-news/article214134039.html#emlnl=Afternoon_Newsletter

 

It was a reminder that, for all the chaos and cruelty of those in power, a massive and growing movement exists in every corner of the nation that still believes in fundamental decency. It was a reminder that—at the ultimate wellspring of power in the American political system—the core values of we, the people blaze, undiminished, indivisible.

 

The horror that so many of us feel about the devastating policies of our government won't go away due to a march. But we are here, we are ready to fight, and we won't go away. This administration hopes to crush our will to resist. Today, we made clear that they will fail. 

 

In the days ahead, we'll be sharing more actions we, together, can take next to build upon this momentum, end these terrorizing and traumatizing policies, hold abusers accountable, and reunite families. Our movement needs to:

• Keep up the heat on decision-makers everywhere. We'll organize more in-person actions to create pressure to reunite families, close family prisons, and end indefinite detention—working with Indivisible, the National Domestic Workers Alliance, and other organizations.
• Hold corporations accountable for profiting off this system—companies such as Wells Fargo must be held accountable for their role in funding family separation infrastructure.
• Rein in the excesses of the brutal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers who are terrorizing communities and tearing apart families across the country.

And we need to make sure everyone who is eligible registers to vote—a critical way to get involved with all the issues that matter to all our communities and families. 

 

More on all of that soon. Watch your email for opportunities to take action, or join MoveOn's SMS list to get text messages with alerts about clear, impactful actions by texting FAMILY to 668366. 

NYT Editorial Board

The marches taking place across the country this weekend are really about the soul of America. Forcibly separating children from their parents is not about “deterrence,” or the legal technicalities of law, or illegal immigration, or anything else President Trump has claimed to justify his latest and most odious outrage. It’s about “Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation,” to borrow from the Declaration of Independence.

No, the United States does not have clean hands: It has tolerated many inequities and atrocities throughout its history, toward Native Americans, blacks, Japanese and women, among others. Yet against that is the tradition in American law, culture and practice to defend the weak, to welcome the other, to give refuge to the oppressed and to refuse to acquiesce when a government acts against basic dictates of conscience.

The Trump administration has committed a gross offense. It is the duty of every decent American to demand that it promptly reunite these children with their parents.

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Sacramento Student Demonstrations Today

Join Us on March 1 Day of Action

CSU –Sacramento. Rally at Noon

U.C. Davis.  Teach In.

To Demand that the California Government:

Fully fund public education, which is a public good and is the cornerstone of a democratic society, a vibrant economy, and the social and intellectual development of every individual.

Fully fund social services, which to a large part provide a crucial safety net for the most vulnerable members of society and therefore serve as a measure of society's moral standard.

Thousands of U.S. college students will walk out of class Thursday in a coordinated day of protest against what may be another year of significant higher-education budget cuts by state legislatures.

Young Democratic Socialists  at UC Davis   mobilized to participate in protests during National Student Debt Week, Feb.27- March 2, across the country.   Cornel West joined in the effortAction. http://vimeo.com/37209329

Demonstrations and violence in Oakland

While thousands marched to support OCW in Oakland, a group of less than 200 anarchists stepped on the media coverage and encouraged police repression.

This is how the AFL-CIO reported on the march on their blog:http://blog.aflcio.org/2011/11/03/occupy-oakland-unions-march-together/

“More than 7,000 Occupy Oakland protesters, union members and community and faith activists peacefully rallied against Wall Street greed, bank foreclosures and for good jobs yesterday in one of the largest demonstrations since the Occupy Wall Street movement began last month.

The Alameda County Labor Council endorsed the Day of Action and encouraged local unions and union members to take part. Many of the union members who joined in the action took unpaid time off work to make their voices heard. Unions also worked with the city government, the Oakland school system and other employers to make leave arrangements.

London Protest of budget cuts grows to 400,000

Anti-Cuts March Swells to 400,000

 London hosts largest protest since Iraq war as

    workers and public demonstrate against

    government spending cuts  Guardian (UK)  March 
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/gallery/2011/mar/26/thousands-march-against-cuts-in-pictures

Around 400,000 people have joined a march in London to

oppose the coalition government's spending cuts.

In what looks like being the largest mass protest since

the anti-Iraq war march in 2003, teachers, nurses,

midwives, NHS, council and other public sector workers

were joined by students, pensioners and direct action

supporters, bringing the centre of the capital to a

standstill.

Tens of thousands of people streamed along Embankment

and past police barriers in Whitehall. Feeder marches,

including a protest by students which set off from the

University of London in Bloomsbury, swelled the crowd,

which stretched back as far as St Paul's Cathedral.

The biggest union-organised event for over 20 years saw

more than 800 coaches and dozens of trains hired to

bring people to London, with many unable to make the

journey to the capital because of the massive demand

for transport.

In Support of the Iranian Demonstrators

HURSDAY, JUNE 25, 2009
Open letter of support to the demonstrators in Iran!

This morning Ayatollah Ali Khamenei demanded an end to the massive and forceful demonstrations protesting the controversial result of last week's election. He argued that to make concessions to popular demands and 'illegal' pressure would amount to a form of 'dictatorship', and he warned the protestors that they, rather than the police, would be held responsible for any further violence.
Khamenei's argument sounds familiar to anyone interested in the politics of collective action, since it appears to draw on the logic used by state authorities to oppose most of the great popular mobilisations of modern times, from 1789 in France to 1979 in Iran itself. These mobilisations took shape through a struggle to assert the principle that sovereignty rests with the people themselves, rather than with the state or its representatives. 'No government can justly claim authority', as South Africa's ANC militants put it in their Freedom Charter of 1955, 'unless it is based on the will of all the people.'
Needless to say it is up to the people of Iran to determine their own political course. Foreign observers inspired by the courage of those demonstrating in Iran this past week are nevertheless entitled to point out that a government which claims to represent the will of its people can only do so if it respects the most basic preconditions for the determination of such a will: the freedom of the people to assemble, unhindered, as an inclusive collective force; the capacity of the people, without restrictions on debate or access to information, to deliberate, decide and implement a shared course of action.
Years of foreign-sponsored 'democracy promotion' in various parts of the world have helped to spread a well-founded scepticism about civic movements which claim some sort of direct democratic legitimacy. But the principle itself remains as clear as ever: only the people themselves can determine the value of such claims. We the undersigned call on the government of Iran to take no action that might discourage such determination.
Peter Hallward
Middlesex University, UK.
Alberto Toscano
Goldsmiths College, UK.
This letter is also signed by:
Alenka Zupancic, Institute of Philosophy of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts
Alexander Garcia Duttmann, Goldsmiths College
Etienne Balibar, Paris X, Nanterre, and University of California, Irvine
Eyal Weizman, Director, Centre for Research Architecture, Dept. of Visual Cultures
Goldsmiths, University of London
Judith Butler, University of California, Berkeley
Noam Chomsky, Institute Professor (retired), MIT, Cambridge MA USA
Philip Pettit, University Center for Human Values, Princeton University
Rada Ivekovic, Prof., Collège international de philosophie, Paris.
Slavoj Žižek, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia and the European Graduate School
Duane Campbell, Calif. State University -Sacramento
and hundreds more

And, the International Federation of Trade Unions


Iran Day of Worker Solidarity Action
Will Be Organized As Repression Continues

Brussels

The ITUC, EI, ITF and IUF today expressed their
solidarity with the many Iranian workers who have
joined the demonstrations in the streets to call for
respect for their fundamental democratic rights.
Protests for democracy in Iran, organized by trade
unions, will be held in countries around the world
tomorrow.

"The violence against those demonstrating for democracy
has left many people dead and several hundred injured.
This heavy repression of peaceful demonstrations and
lack of respect for human rights is completely
unacceptable," said ITUC General Secretary Guy Ryder.
Trade unions across the world have been appalled at the
Iranian authorities' targeting of independent trade
union action in recent years, with workers attacked and
arrested for demonstrating peacefully for workers'
rights, most recently on 1 May as they attempted to
hold a peaceful May Day rally at Laleh Park in Tehran.
Repression of fundamental rights has now intensified
and widened, with particularly violent reaction by
security forces to the many demonstrations in the wake
of the election, and the arrest of hundreds of people."