[mpen-dayton4] FW: "TPP update: Your pressure is working!" & "To tackle inequality, we must ..." & "How do we build a people's movement?" & "Signature needed, Ray: Fire Officer Eric Casebolt" and more
FYI. Best, Munsup
P.S. "He who dares not offend cannot be honest" - Thomas Paine
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· FW: TPP update: Your pressure is working!
· FW: Eight Democratic members of Congress just saved TPP, but we can stop it today
· FW: FW: June 24, 2015 - RCKC Seminar on "Comfort Women" Issues at KAYF
· FW: John McCain, Jeff Flake: Stop the giveaway of sacred Apache land to Resolution Copper Mining
· FW: To tackle inequality, we must ...
· FW: #9, and this one is a biggie
· FW: How do we build a people's movement?
· FW: inequality
· FW: McKinney police violence
· FW: Signature needed, Ray: Fire Officer Eric Casebolt
· FW: Tomgram | The Geopolitics of American Global Decline
· FW: The Purpose State Secrecy Serves
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From: Murshed Zaheed; Deputy Political Director, CREDO Action from Working Assets
Subject: TPP update: Your pressure is working!
You just dealt a “staggering blow”
to President Barack Obama’s trade agenda.
In what is being called by the press a “staggering blow to President Barack Obama's trade agenda,” Democrats voted down a package of bills that would have given President Obama Fast Track authority for the TPP.
Most dramatically, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi announced in a speech before today’s key vote that she was voting against the president’s trade package in its current form. The media reported that conventional wisdom on Capitol Hill was that her speech was “an ominous sign for trade proponents.”
The failure of the White House to win a key vote to advance Fast Track Authority for the TPP shows that the hundreds of thousands of CREDO members who spoke out against job-killing trade deals are making a big difference despite an all out effort by Wall Street lobbyists, the Chamber of Commerce, and the White House to ram this through.
In the last 24 hours, CREDO members have crushed congressional phone lines pouring in 7,000 calls, including hundreds of calls directly to the office of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. CREDO activists in San Francisco also helped organize a major demonstration at Leader Pelosi’s district office on Wednesday:
If it wasn’t for your activism, the White House would have already succeeded getting Fast Track authority to ram through the TPP.
But, this fight is far from over. Republican leaders John Boehner and Paul Ryan will attempt to hold another vote next week to revive the trade package that contains TPA. Get ready to fight back even harder against this corporate power grab when it comes up again next week.
CREDO will continue to fight against Fast Track and any treaty that puts the rights of multinational corporations over the rights of the American people. You’ll be hearing from us with more opportunities to take action.
Thank you for standing with us. Your activism is making a difference.
From: Paul Hogarth; Daily Kos
Subject: Eight Democratic members of Congress just saved TPP, but we can stop it today
We know Congress will vote on Fast Track today—and that they are dangerously close to having the votes to pass it—but we actually almost killed it yesterday.
We are so close to defeating this secret corporate trade deal, and the real vote is today. Please pick up the phone and call your Congress member—urging them to vote “no.” You can leave this message to your representative:
Congress is voting TODAY on Fast Track. As a constituent, I am counting on you to represent me and vote “no.” It is wrong to ram through a secret corporate trade deal that will undermine basic worker protections. If you do not vote to defeat it, I will remember where you stood come re-election time.
After you have completed the phone call, please fill out the feedback form to let us know how it went.
In a procedural vote to advance trade promotion authority, the U.S. House last night eked out a bare 217-212 majority. With virtually all Democrats voting “no,” Speaker John Boehner was unable to deliver enough Republican votes—until 8 Democrats showed up and voted “yes.”
The 8 House Democrats who voted to save a secret corporate trade deal were Earl Blumenauer (OR-03), Gerry Connolly (VA-11), Jim Cooper (TN-05), Henry Cuellar (TX-28), John Delaney (MD-06), Eddie Bernice Johnson (TX-30), Ron Kind (WI-03) and Rick Larsen (WA-02.) If not for these eight, Fast Track would already be dead—and we would not have to send you this e-mail, asking you to help finish the job.
The Fast Track vote is scheduled for today, and members of Congress are under a lot of pressure from corporate lobbyists. Please pick up the phone & leave this message to your representative:
Congress is voting TODAY on Fast Track. As a constituent, I am counting on you to represent me and vote “no.” It is wrong to ram through a secret corporate trade deal that will undermine basic worker protections. If you do not vote to defeat it, I will remember where you stood come re-election time.
We can defeat Fast Track today—so regardless of which party your Congress member belongs to, please make this call. And if your member is one of the 8 House Democrats, give them a piece of your mind—and tell them voting “no” today will help undo the damage.
After you have completed the phone call, please fill out the feedback form to let us know how it went.
Can’t make a phone call? Please send a quick email to your member of Congress by filling out this form.
From: Korean American Data Bank
Subject: June 24, 2015 - RCKC Seminar on "Comfort Women" Issues at KAYF Featuring Professor Pyong Gap Min
On Wednesday, June 24, 2015, the Research Center for Korean Community will host a seminar at Korean American Youth Foundation in Flushing. RCKC's director, Professor Pyong Gap Min, will give a talk titled "The Emergence of the 'Comfort Women' Issue and Survivors' Breaking Silence in the Early 1990s." He will discuss a number of issues related to Korean victims of Japanese military sexual slavery during World War II. Recently, this tragic issue has been prominent again in U.S. and Korean media with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's recent visits to the U.S. and to shrines of Japanese war criminals.
The seminar will take place from 6:30 PM to 8:30 PM. Food and refreshments will be provided. Korean American Youth Foundation's address is 163-07 Depot Road, Flushing, NY 11358 (near 163rd Street and Northern Boulevard).
Click the link below to read an article written by Professor Min that was published in the journal Gender and Society:
Korean "Comfort Women": The Intersection of Colonial Power, Gender, and Class
From: MARGARET PETERS
Subject: John McCain, Jeff Flake: Stop the giveaway of sacred Apache land to Resolution Copper Mining - Please sign and share
Hey, I just signed the petition "John McCain, Jeff Flake: Stop the giveaway of sacred Apache land to Resolution Copper Mining" and wanted to see if you could help by adding your name. Our goal is to reach 1,500 signatures and we need more support. You can read more and sign the petition here:
https://www.change.org/p/john-mccain-jeff-flake-stop-the-giveaway-of-sacred-apache-land-to-resolution-copper-mining?recruiter=668629&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=share_email_responsive
From: Robert Reich via MoveOn.org Civic Action
Subject: To tackle inequality, we must ...
To prevent the rise of a new aristocracy, we need to raise the estate tax—a tax on inherited wealth. And we need to do it now.
The richest 1 percent of Americans hold 42 percent of our nation's wealth.1 We haven't seen this concentration of wealth since the Gilded Age of the late 1800s. Raising the estate tax on the wealthiest Americans is one way to fight back against growing inequality.
Yet some lawmakers in Congress actually want to eliminate the tax on inherited wealth.
Well, that's just crazy. What if Congress restored the estate tax to the level it was in the late 1990s? Watch Raise the Estate Tax to see how much revenue that would generate, and what that new revenue stream could fund.
Raise the Estate Tax is the latest in the "Big Picture" series I'm working on with MoveOn. And MoveOn members will campaign together on the ideas that we're all most excited about.
If you believe we need to tackle growing inequality—and we need to do it now—you won't want to miss watching and sharing this video.
This is the eighth idea in our "Big Picture" series. In case you missed the first seven, once you've watched Raise the Estate Tax, be sure to check out the rest of the videos. Remember, by watching and then sharing individual "Big Picture" videos, you're showing that you're excited about a particular idea—which will help us hone in on what to work on in the coming months.
Source:
1. "How Unequal We Are: The Top 5 Facts You Should Know About The Wealthiest One Percent Of Americans," Think Progress, October 3, 2011
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=304637&id=118938-1195276-lFaScAx&t=2
Want to support our work? We're entirely funded by our 8 million members—no corporate contributions, no big checks from CEOs. And our tiny staff ensures that small contributions go a long way. Start a monthly donation here or chip in a one-time donation here.
From: Robert Reich via MoveOn.org Civic Action
Subject: #9, and this one is a biggie
Here's a big-picture idea: instead of investing in dirty fuels, let's start charging polluters for poisoning our skies and then invest the revenue so that it benefits everyone.
Every ton of carbon that's released into the atmosphere costs our nation between $40 and $100, and we release millions tons of it every year.1,2 Businesses don't pay that cost. They pass it along to the rest of us—in the form of more extreme weather and all the costs to our economy and health resulting from it. What's worse, we've actually invested more than $6 trillion in fossil fuels since 2007.3 Yikes!
Watch Make Polluters Pay to see what would happen if our nation divested from carbon polluters, made the polluters pay a price to pollute, and then collected the money.
Make Polluters Pay is the latest in the "Big Picture" series I'm working on with MoveOn. And MoveOn members will campaign together on the ideas that we're all most excited about.
If you're looking for a win-win when it comes to tackling climate change, you won't want to miss watching and sharing this video.
This is the ninth idea in our "Big Picture" series. In case you missed the first eight, once you've watched Make Polluters Pay, be sure to check out the rest of the videos. Remember, by watching and then sharing individual "Big Picture" videos, you're showing that you're excited about a particular idea—which will help us hone in on what to work on in the coming months.
Source:
1. "Social Cost of Carbon Pollution Fact Sheet," CostofCarbon.org, April 2014
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=304698&id=119508-1195276-LA7krlx&t=1
2. "World carbon dioxide emissions data by country: China speeds ahead of the rest," The Guardian, January 31, 2011
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=304699&id=119508-1195276-LA7krlx&t=2
3. "G20: fossil fuel fears could hammer global financial system," The Telegraph, April 29, 2015
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=304700&id=119508-1195276-LA7krlx&t=3
Want to support our work? We're entirely funded by our 8 million members—no corporate contributions, no big checks from CEOs. And our tiny staff ensures that small contributions go a long way. Start a monthly donation here or chip in a one-time donation here.
From: The Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II; President of the North Carolina NAACP
Subject: How do we build a people's movement?
A DIFFERENT KIND OF MOVEMENT
How do we build a people’s movement?
We start with vision. Prophetic moral vision seeks to penetrate despair, so that we can believe in and embrace new futures.
In North Carolina, we had a movement that had already reformed the voting laws before Obama was on the ballot—an interracial, intergenerational, anti-poverty, pro-labor fusion movement that was challenging even Democrats to be more committed to a moral vision.
Since the social, political, and economic system of slavery was defeated by progressive Northern white families aligning with hundreds of thousands of African slaves and freed people in the South in 1865, The Nation has fought to repair the deep breaches this system created in the human family of the nation. Today, when Southern legislatures have fallen to Tea Party zealots, the need for a Southern-oriented anti-racism mass movement is greater than ever. The Nation will continue to play an important role in building this movement in the South, and explaining it to the rest of the nation.
We need a transformative movement—state-based, deeply moral, deeply constitutional, pro-justice. We need to build for the long term, not around one issue or campaign.
We need the kind of language that’s not left or right or conservative or liberal, but moral, fusion language that says:
• | It is extreme and immoral to suppress the right to vote. | ||
• | It is extreme and immoral to deny Medicaid to millions of poor people, especially when denied by people who have been elected to office and receive their own insurance through that office. | ||
• | It is extreme and immoral to raise taxes on the working poor and cut earned-income tax credits, especially in order to slash taxes for the wealthy. | ||
• | It is extreme and immoral to shut off people’s water in Detroit. | ||
• | It is extreme and immoral to end unemployment compensation for those who have lost jobs through no fault of their own. | ||
• | It is extreme and immoral to resegregate and underfund our public schools. | ||
• | It is mean, it is immoral, it is extreme to kick hardworking people when they are down. |
That’s not just bad policy. It’s a violation of the common good and a disregard for human rights. In fact, this kind of philosophy is rooted in the policies of immoral deconstruction. If you look at these policies carefully, they are historically inaccurate, they are constitutionally inconsistent, they are morally indefensible, and they are economically insane.
The day is over for quick political platitudes. The day is over for little campaign slogans. We’ve got to build a movement.
We’ve got to think more deeply. It’s going to take more than a few texts, and a few e-mails. We must engage in action that shifts the center of political gravity in this nation. And we’ve got to do it state by state. And we’ve got to say—no matter who’s in Congress, or who’s in the general assemblies of our state, or who’s in the governor’s mansion, or who’s in the White House—we are demanding higher ground.
We’ve got to say you don’t have enough political power to vote us away, you don’t have enough insults to talk us away, and to the Koch brothers, you don’t have enough money to buy us away.
From: Andrew Tierman
Subject: inequality
A review by one progressive economist and inequality scholar, of the book of another of the same: Thomas Piketty reviews Anthony Atkinson's new book, "Inequality: What can be done?" - Andrew Tierman
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2015/jun/25/practical-vision-more-equal-society/?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=NYR+Piketty+India+BuzzFeed&utm_content=NYR+Piketty+India+BuzzFeed+CID_1c27040a113be40b9b309128618b587a&utm_source=Email%20marketing%20software&utm_term=A%20Practical%20Vision%20of%20a%20More%20Equal%20Society
From: lillie jackson
Subject: FW: McKinney police violence
Fire Officer Eric Casebolt!
1. "'He shoved me and started pulling my braids': Bikini-clad girl, 15, tells how veteran cop pulled his gun and slammed her to the ground as he is blasted as racist over pool party raid,'" Daily Mail 6-08-2015, 2. See reference 1. 3. "WATCH: McKinney, Texas Cop Pulls Gun on Unarmed Black Teens at Pool Party," Heavy 06-07-2015 4. "Longtime McKinney Officer Blasts Police Conduct At Pool Party, Says Department Has A Race Problem," ThinkProgress 06-08-2015 5. "Girl at Texas pool party: "It was about race," CBS news 06-08-2015 6. "Black Girls Matter: Pushed Out, OverPoliced and Underprotected," African American Policy Forum, 2015 |
From: tbacane
Subject: FW: Signature needed, Ray: Fire Officer Eric Casebolt
Eric Casebolt (the ex-officer involved) has resigned. Charges should be filed against this man for his conduct and abuse that he demonstrated, and to the city that was responsible for his training and conduct. Casebolt's resignation is a ploy to keep his pension, weapon and the possibility of employment in another department, none of which should be allowed!
-----Forwarded Message-----
Last Friday, McKinney law enforcement responded to a call from white residents that a group of Black teens, 13-16 years old, attending a pool party “did not have permission to be there.”
Upon arrival, Officer Eric Casebolt violently arrested, verbally assaulted and physically attacked a number of teens, including 15-year-old Dajerria Becton who was body slammed, pinned to the ground and put in handcuffs while unarmed and wearing a bikini. Casebolt then drew his gun at the teens who came to Dajerria’s rescue. A 14-year-old boy is also unjustly facing charges for "interfering with police duty and evading arrest."
No person who treats another human being — let alone children — in such an abusive, life-threatening manner can be a police officer. Sign the petition from Color of Change and Daily Kos urging local officials to fire Officer Casebolt and charge him with battery and assault immediately.
McKinney law enforcement and Officer Casebolt's violence against these teens highlight the systemic abuse, injustice and criminalization that Black girls and women face at the hands of law enforcement every day. Police treated all of the Black teens unjustly, but the gender and racial stereotypes underlying their behavior are highlighted when Officer Casebolt spoke to the group of Black girls. "Stop running your mouth" and "get your a***** out of here," he shouted to the group of teenage girls in bathing suits before violently grabbing Dajerria by the hair, slamming her head into the pavement, and digging his knee into her back while she laid face down in the grass. In addition to Officer Casebolt, the other 11 police officers who stood by and allowed this violence to continue must be held accountable and Attorney General Lynch should launch a full investigation into the discriminatory policing practices of the McKinney Police Department.
This is not the first time an individual's racial prejudice has led to tragic police violence targeting a Black person. John Crawford, Tamir Rice, and Yuvette Henderson were all killed in recent months after 911 calls from people racially profiling them as a threat. It's a systemic problem — dehumanizing racial stereotypes about Black girls and boys as “inherently wrong” "criminal" and “out of place” in white spaces continue to rule the daily lives of Black people.
Join Color of Change and Daily Kos in demanding Mayor Loughmiller and District Attorney Greg Willis fire and charge Officer Casebolt with assault and battery for his brutal and discriminatory actions.
From: Judy Burnette
Subject: FW: Tomgram | "The Geopolitics of American Global Decline: Washington Versus China in the Twenty-First Century"
" .... For even the greatest of empires, geography is often destiny. You wouldn’t know it in Washington, though.
America’s political, national security, and foreign policy elites continue to ignore the basics of geopolitics that have shaped the fate of world empires for the past 500 years.
Consequently, they have missed the significance of the rapid global changes in Eurasia that are in the process of undermining the grand strategy for world dominion that Washington has pursued these past seven decades. .... "
Read Intro and the complete article below.
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From: TomDispatch
The Geopolitics of American Global Decline
Washington Versus China in the Twenty-First Century
By Alfred W. McCoy
For even the greatest of empires, geography is often destiny. You wouldn’t know it in Washington, though. America’s political, national security, and foreign policy elites continue to ignore the basics of geopolitics that have shaped the fate of world empires for the past 500 years. Consequently, they have missed the significance of the rapid global changes in Eurasia that are in the process of undermining the grand strategy for world dominion that Washington has pursued these past seven decades.
Click here to read more of this dispatch.
From: khalfani718
Subject: The Purpose State Secrecy Serves
http://www.privacysos.org/node/1752
The purpose state secrecy serves,
from SEAL Team 6 down to Boston Police
The New York Times has published a long, detailed history of the Navy's special operators in SEAL Team 6, also known as the Special Warfare Development Group, or by its insider name, DEVGRU. This paragraph caught my attention.
The unit’s advocates express no doubts about the value of such invisible warriors. “If you want these forces to do things that occasionally bend the rules of international law,” said James G. Stavridis, a retired admiral and former Supreme Allied Commander at NATO, referring to going into undeclared war zones, “you certainly don’t want that out in public.” Team 6, he added, “should continue to operate in the shadows.”
That perfectly sums up the mentality in the US National Security State, from the most elite Navy SEALs all the way down through the FBI, and increasingly, to our local police.
Just last week, the Boston Police Department and FBI killed a man in a confrontation in Roslindale, Massachusetts. The cops have said that Usaama Rahim was plotting to kill police officers, although they never prepared an arrest warrant for him. Instead of preparing to arrest him by obtaining a warrant and sending a tactical team to do it safely, a few plainclothes JTTF officers shot him dead after approaching him to have what they describe as a 7am chat in a CVS parking lot. The Feds say the FBI and BPD were following him 24 hours a day during the week preceding his killing. But asked how Rahim initially came to the attention of investigators, Boston police commissioner William Evans said he cannot say. That information, he says, is "classified."
When we hear claims like this, it's crucial to recall what purpose secrecy usually serves in the security context. The truth of the matter was spelled out in unusually frank terms by the former NATO commander quoted in the NYT story about special operators cited above. "If you want these forces to do things that occassionally bend the rules of...law, you certainly don't want that out in the public."
That's an unacceptable approach to foreign war fighting. It borders on the authoritarian here at home. And we cannot lose sight of the connection between the two.
Assuming general tolerance for official secrecy regarding forever wars abroad won't trickle down to the domestic policing space is a fool's errand. We now see clearly what that trickle down means in Boston. Police and FBI killed a man, and now they're saying National Security prevents them from talking about why. That should send a chill down your spine.
End of MPEN e-Newsletter
posted by lucas at 10:26 PM
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