Showing posts with label communism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label communism. Show all posts

Tuesday, June 21, 2022

Eat The Rich, Feed The Poor (And Other Revolutionary Recipes)

 

"When the people shall have no more to eat, they will eat the rich." —Jean Jacques Rousseau, 1793

Eat The Rich, Feed The Poor (And Other Revolutionary Recipes)

by Redd Phlagg

So many depressing headlines hit my inbox this past week that they not only made my head spin, they made my entire worldview spin. It became ever more apparent to me that we can no longer afford to wait for the bought-off ruling establishment to take action to save our planet and its peoples. It's time. We the Workers, the little people, the 99% must get off our backsides and grab the reigns of our runaway climate catastrophe and social collapse before it's too late.

Americans need to feed our poor, tax our rich, and make certain that the narcissistic behavior that got us in these desperate straits in the first place doesn't ever return. We need to stop allowing ourselves to become distracted by the silly antics of the duopolists in DC who do only as they're told by their corporate masters. And we need to start yesterday.

A recent study found that 338,000 Americans died due to COVID-19 because our government couldn't take steps to implement Medicare For All or a similar universal single-payer system to provide them needed health care. That's one in every three of the one million plus Americans who contracted and died from the coronavirus and its variants. That's roughly the population of many medium-sized US metropolitan areas, including the one where I live, all gone. Needlessly.

COVID-19 has caused a million and counting deaths in the US. Since these deaths are spread across the country, you might not have noticed so many missing persons yourself but future generations most definitely will. American children will ask what happened to their parents, grandparents, cousins, aunts, uncles, teachers, friends, babysitters, and even siblings as they grow up. What will we tell them?

Out of the one million plus Americans who have died since 2020 because of the pandemic, what percentage of them could have been saved? If the public's health and safety were the main priority of the ruling establishment rather than making profits for shareholders in the health insurance industry, Big Pharma, and the like how many could have lived? I feel that almost every American who caught COVID could have been saved if they could have received immediate treatment, free of charge, and weren't forced into situations that put their health at risk. There was no scientific reason to stop the lockdowns and force workers back out into low-paying service industry jobs (such as restaurant workers and hotel maids) so soon. In doing so, the politician-puppets of the oligarchy also forced these struggling workers' children back into daycares and public schools where the virus is extremely transmissible and proven deadly for teachers and students alike.

Universal Basic Income (UBI) could have been given to all American families to stay home and stay safe with their children until the virus died out. In countries that implemented such policies, the spread of COVID and its variants was much less, and their death tolls practically non-existent. Putting people over profits means that people win at least another day to live.

But, once again, the establishment duopoly sat on their backsides in Washington DC and moaned about how keeping people safe at home was hurting "the economy." They said this with a straight face while spending billions on the most bloated military budget ever passed in the history of humankind. They continued saying this while starting a proxy war to flush even more money down the drain so they could get rid of a natural gas competitor in Europe (i.e., Russia). No matter what label they give themselves--Republican, Democrat, "The Squad", Bernie Sanders even--these politician-puppets demonstrate by their actions that the profits of the military-industrial complex are infinitely more important than the lives of the vast majority of Americans.

Insult upon insult is dumped upon the poor and working classes' shoulders. We're forced to suffer the consequences of the duopolists' bad decisions to take on a fellow nuclear power with oil reserves and resources the Western powers envy. We're paying for it every day at the gasoline pump, grocery store, and pharmacy. But to "red and blue" alike it's okay if the working classes grow poorer trying to survive because… well, "democracy" is at stake. Democracy in an already corrupt corner of the world ruled by fascists who took over in a coup in 2014 with the help of our CIA? What larks!

Why do We The People, the working classes continue putting up with this disgusting behavior? Why are these millionaire-idiots still in office wearing smug smiles on their faces? Could it be they've militarized our local police departments to such an extent that they know they can keep us poor folks in our place if we rise up?

I realize now that not every American realizes who is putting them through each and every fresh hell because our freedom of the press has been seriously curtailed. Revealing the dirty secrets of American war crimes put one Australian journalist, Julian Assange, into jail with a threatened 170 year sentence for treason. Yes, it's treasonous to publish news stories that reveal American politicians and officials for the war criminals they are. And if the war criminals in DC can slap an insane charge of treason on a journalist doing his job, you can imagine the charges they've cooked up to slap on us if we dare take our pitchforks to the streets in protest.

 When the French rose up at the end of the 18th century to protest numerous injustices inflicted upon them, they didn't let the fear of the militarized police stop them from punishing the aristocracy who had created the hell they were living in. Marie Antoinette said, "Let them eat cake!" while the French people couldn't even afford to buy a loaf of bread. (Sound familiar?) The commoners responded with the right idea--they built the guillotine and deployed it. Yes, it's bloody and violent, but the detached head of a obscenely wealthy sociopath made their point quite well, don't you think?

Should struggling Americans do likewise? The guillotine dispatched quite a few members of the French establishment along with Marie Antoinette, but it saved many more who saw it as a symbol of how the workers wouldn't take any more shit from those who thought themselves "superior" to the working classes. These smart aristocrats buckled down and cooperated with the common folks, and France was changed. So the guillotine doesn't have to be used indiscriminately and widely to make its point. Just the thought that the abused people have no problems getting rid of their abusers can bring about change.

It's time for Americans to let the money-grubbing, duopolistic puppet-politicians know that our patience is wearing thin. It's time to stop wasting time arguing over "the lesser evil" and being distracted by their idle rich antics that have nothing to do with us and our lives. Whatever symbol We The People choose--the guillotine, the pitchfork, tar and feathers (our founders' favorite means of singling out sociopaths)--we need to post it everywhere. We need to post it along with the message that we are not inferior to those who hoard wealth and play God with our health and safety--and the health and safety of the planet and everyone else on it.

We The People, the workers, the commoners, the 99% are, in fact, their bosses. They need to do what we say or else. And we let them know in no uncertain terms they're going to be a head shorter if they don't.


Related Articles:

UN Food Chief Says Hell on Earth Looms From Hunger Crisis Triggered By Ukraine War  https://scheerpost.com/2022/06/18/un-food-chief-says-hell-on-earth-looms-from-hunger-crisis-triggered-by-ukraine-war/

"A Chilling Message to Journalists": UK Approves Assange Extradition to US https://truthout.org/articles/a-chilling-message-to-journalists-uk-approves-assange-extradition-to-us/

Medicare For All Could Have Prevented 338,000 Deaths in the US https://truthout.org/articles/medicare-for-all-could-have-prevented-338000-covid-deaths-in-the-us/

100 Million People In America Are Saddled With Health Care Debt https://popularresistance.org/100-million-people-in-america-are-saddled-with-health-care-debt/

"No Place For A Child" (The horrors child immigrants experience when they cross the southern border.) https://scheerpost.com/2022/06/18/no-place-for-a-child/

  "Revolting": Senate Panel Raises Biden's Bloated Military Budget By 45 Billion https://truthout.org/articles/revolting-senate-panel-raises-bidens-bloated-military-budget-by-45-billion/

US Secretly Reviews and Approves Israeli Airstrikes in Syria https://scheerpost.com/2022/06/17/report-us-secretly-reviews-and-approves-many-israeli-airstrikes-in-syria 

Chris Hedges: American Empire Is Finished (video) https://youtu.be/OW52qqlQiJQ 

The State of Politics From An Anti-Establishment Perspective (Direct Left Callin podcast) https://www.callin.com/episode/the-state-of-politics-from-an-anti-gQcWTfYQHQ

The Smear Campaign Against Independent Journalism (video) https://youtu.be/nkoIfWt4Z2k

New Global Movement Against Capitalism For Socialism https://popularresistance.org/international-peoples-assembly-new-global-movement-against-capitalism-for-socialism/


Seen on Twitter:

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In a near-future dystopian world, hope blossoms where mutual aid and democracy begins...

Zonta’s world is turned upside down when Jake arrives at the commune to investigate the disappearance of agents of the Authority. Can she persuade him to switch sides before the Protectors (antifascist fighters) take action?

Available now from Extasy Books: https://www.extasybooks.com/Where-the-Bodies-Lie 

Please buy direct from the small publisher and not via Amazon. Why? Amazon takes a huge percentage of the book's price and leaves very little for the publisher and author to share. Thanks.

 

Tuesday, June 7, 2022

Atrocity Propaganda and Narrative Control


Russian propaganda poses a much smaller threat to the western world than the various government agendas that are being rolled out under the justification of fighting Russian propaganda. --Caitlin Johnstone, The US Empire Will Be Defeated By the US Empire

Atrocity Propaganda and Narrative Control

 by C.A. Matthews

There's nothing nasty that's new under the sun. Really, there isn't.

Just when you thought you heard it all, another bit of "disinformation" from the US/NATO proxy war in Ukraine pops up and within a month it's revealed as the grotesque lie that it is.  (More on DHS's Disinformation Governance Board here.)

Human rights ombudsman Lyudmyla Denisova was Ukraine's top human rights official until it was revealed that she has been making up obscene stories of Russian soldiers raping defenseless women and children en masse. The Ukrainian parliament found her lurid storytelling to the Western mainstream media to be such an embarrassment and a liability to their cause that they kicked her out of office. 

According to Tyler Durden of ZeroHedge:

As has been the pattern in prior wars, whether in Syria or Libya, the media claims got more and more sensational and over-the-top as the conflict intensified, and as Western powers became more deeply involved, yet with no concrete or definitive proof.

But one consistent detail in the majority of the stories is that the aforementioned Ukraine human rights ombudsman, Lyudmyla Denisova, is often the central figure feeding Western correspondents the shocking rape stories. (...)

"Ukrainian lawmakers dismissed the country’s ombudsman for human rights, Lyudmyla Denisova, in a no-confidence vote on Tuesday, concluding that she had failed to fulfill obligations including the facilitation of humanitarian corridors and countering the deportation of Ukrainians from occupied territory," The Wall Street Journal reported late in the day.

"Lawmaker Pavlo Frolov said Ms. Denisova was also accused of making insensitive and unverifiable statements about alleged Russian sex crimes and spending too much time in Western Europe during the invasion," the report added.

Frolov said in a Facebook post announcing her dismissal as the country's top human rights investigator

"The unclear focus of the Ombudsman's media work on the numerous details of ‘sexual crimes committed in an unnatural way’ and ‘rape of children’ in the occupied territories that could not be confirmed by evidence, only harmed Ukraine."

 It's pretty amazing they shut Lyin' Lyudmyla down since she wasn't afraid of dumping "atrocity propaganda." Atrocity propaganda is a very effective weapon in the arsenal of professional propagandists. It has been used to push for increasing amounts of money and weapons to be given to Ukraine with no debate and little expectation of compensation.

Nothing makes Westerners more horrified and ready to open their wallets than a supposed "reliable source" (often an "anonymous" or insider source like Ms. Denisova or the CIA) spinning a narrative about newborn babies being kicked out of their incubators (Iraq War I) or soldiers being given massive doses of Viagra in order to rape the helpless populace to death (Libya) or huge stockpiles of "Weapons of Mass Destruction" (Iraq War II). 

Going back even further to World War I, it was posited that the German Kaiser's troops actually ate babies for dinner as they advanced into Belgium. Rape, child endangerment, and cannibalism definitely make for great attention-grabbing, pro-war headlines.

Why do our corporate-owned politician-puppets and their media lackeys put out such outrageous falsehoods? Why do they constantly whip up hatred of others such as the Russians, a people that most Americans don't see as being very different from ourselves? I think it's simply because the vast majority of Americans don't mind being lied to. Some might even enjoy having a scapegoat to blame for all the world's ills. 

Comfortable Americans will allow their emotions and intellect to be manipulated by the current government because somewhere, somehow they feel it will  benefit them not to go against the status quo.  Or perhaps it's simply because many Americans can't be bothered to double-check dubious tales the mainstream media feeds them since they have more important things to do--like watching professional sports or the latest Marvel movie release.

And so the US government and its cronies will keep lying to the public in order to keep pumping billions of dollars of weaponry into a faltering proxy war. The capitalists rest assured that their lies will never be called out because We the Workers are all too stressed and busy trying to survive to make a fuss. We're too confused to see that we're being played in order to make billionaires even richer.

Other examples of recent atrocity propaganda include newspaper headlines declaring, "Too high wages are causing inflation" which implies that wage cuts and a possible dropping of the federal minimum wage are in the works. Atrocity propaganda can include news stories about how it's good to lock up homeless persons for up to six years for camping because they cannot afford skyrocketing rents, thus creating  more "slave labor" for the for-profit prison system.

Lyudmyla Denisova may have gone the more salacious route with made-up tales of rape and child abuse, but mainstream media pundits casting doubt about who is at fault for our current hard times is every bit as atrocious. Blaming real-life homeless and dispossessed Americans for their current situation is as cruel and evil as labeling them "cannibals." Hatred is stirred up against the most vulnerable. They are turned into scapegoats, blamed and punished, rather than the actual criminals who put all of us into this untenable proxy war/economic meltdown situation. The wealthy one-percent, who profit immensely from the military-industrial complex, are never held responsible for their actions.

The current government narrative spin says it's working class Americans' fault that gasoline is averaging over $5+ a gallon. We're told we're experiencing food shortages because we won't work during a pandemic. Why are they dumping this atrocity propaganda onto our breaking backs? It's simple--the oligarchs want to keep us lowly workers subdued and confused. If we fall for their lies we'll accept ever-worsening conditions. If today things seem bleak and overwhelming, then we will never have the strength to take on these corrupt bastards and change things to make a better tomorrow.
Only by massive amounts of propaganda would people consent to unprecedented acts of economic warfare which directly hurt them and benefit them in no way, shape or form.  --Caitlin Johnstone

The abusive relationship we have with those in power must end. Reject the oligarchs' atrocity propaganda and the status quo's narrative control. Turn off the mainstream media outlets and turn on to the podcasters and independent journalists you can find via Rad Indie Media and the links below to gain a wider perspective. 

Once you know what's really happening in the world, then you can fight more effectively to make it a better place. We owe it to ourselves to take control of the narrative and tell these professional liars where to shove their atrocious propaganda.
 


Related Articles:

Ukrainian Official Behind Western Media Reports of Russian Atrocities Fired by Ukrainian Parliament  https://caitlinjohnstone.substack.com/p/ukrainian-official-behind-western?s=r

Ukraine Fires Own Human Rights Chief For Perpetuating Russian Troop "Systemic Rape" Stories  https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/ukraine-fires-human-rights-chief-perpetuating-russian-troop-systematic-rape-stories 

Guarding Democracy From News https://scheerpost.com/2022/06/03/guarding-democracy-from-news/ 

US State-Affiliated NewsGuard Targets Consortium News https://scheerpost.com/2022/06/03/u-s-state-affiliated-newsguard-targets-consortium-news/

People Who Defend Empire Narratives Are Really Just Defending Their Viewpoint From Destruction https://caitlinjohnstone.substack.com/p/people-who-defend-empire-narratives?s=r

The Rulers Are Losing Narrative Control (video) https://youtu.be/JYuSWarS4Pk 

The Power of Lies  https://scheerpost.com/2022/06/03/craig-murray-the-power-of-lies/

US Federal Reserve Says Its Goal is "To Get Wages Down" https://multipolarista.com/2022/05/24/us-federal-reserve-wages-inflation/

Tennessee Makes Public Camping for Homeless a Felony. Violators Could Face Up to 6 Years in Prison https://www.fox10phoenix.com/news/tennessee-makes-public-camping-for-homeless-a-felony-violators-could-face-up-to-6-years-in-prison 

The US Empire Will Be Defeated By the US Empire https://caitlinjohnstone.substack.com/p/the-us-empire-will-be-defeated-by?s=r 

Mass Psychosis -- How an Entire Population Becomes Mentally Ill (video) https://youtu.be/09maaUaRT4M 

Seen on Twitter:

 ***

In a near-future dystopian world, hope blossoms where mutual aid and democracy begins...

Zonta’s world is turned upside down when Jake arrives at the commune to investigate the disappearance of agents of the Authority. Can she persuade him to switch sides before the Protectors (antifascist fighters) take action?

Available now from Extasy Books: https://www.extasybooks.com/Where-the-Bodies-Lie 

Please buy direct from the small publisher and not via Amazon. Why? Amazon takes a huge percentage of the book's price and leaves very little for the publisher and author to share. Thanks.

 

 

Tuesday, June 8, 2021

No War But Class War

 

No War But Class War

by C. A. Matthews

Bourgeoisie (in Marxist thought) the ruling class of the two basic classes of capitalist society, consisting of capitalists, manufacturers, bankers, and other employers. The bourgeoisie owns the most important of the means of production, through which it exploits the working class  --The Free Dictionary

It's a funny word, but it's been receiving a lot more airtime lately. Is it because Americans are becoming more sensitive to income inequality, or is it because they themselves are suffering deprivations due to the pandemic? Either way, more people are openly discussing what they find unfair or unjust in our society and aren't afraid to use either bourgeoisie or the "C word."

No, not that "C word"--although often a discussion of communism comes after the mention of this particular C word. (And not that C word, either, for those who have their minds in the gutter.) The word I'm referring to is simply "class." And before you go off on a rant about how America is a "class-less society," let me ask you one question:

Where did you go to high school?

I learned the awesome power of this particular question when I lived in St. Louis, Missouri. Here's the scenario: You're introduced to someone in a conversation and then about nine times out of ten in the St. Louis area you are then asked, "So, where did you attend high school?" I found it an odd question as an adult long since graduated from high school, but I'm friendly so I shared the name of the high school I attended in Ohio. This threw the conversation for a loop usually, and I often got cross looks or simply ignored for the rest of the evening. But all too soon I learned why they asked me, a total stranger, this question, and why the answer was vitally important for the questioner to ask.

Americans tend to dress and speak alike no matter where or how they grew up. I'm not talking about regional dialects or accents. I'm talking about how difficult it is to tell what side of town a fellow American comes from if they dress similarly and use similar terminology to yours. So, we have to figure out another way to discover what "C word" another American belongs to without seeming too obvious. In St. Louis, it's as easy as asking which high school you went to since this gives the questioner the neighborhood you grew up in (true of both public and parochial schools there) and the approximate value of the home you grew up in, and, therefore, how much money your parents made to support your family.

Of course, if you admitted to attending a working class area high school, you could be shunned by those who attended schools in wealthier neighborhoods. That is the true power of the question. It helps separate Americans by class in a relatively quick and painless way. You didn't attend the "right" high school? Then the questioner knows that you're probably not going to fit in well with their bridge club or even know what golf is, let alone how to play it. For recent immigrants and people of color this question is a double insult, as the wealthier high schools are almost certainly populated with a majority of white, native-born students.

Please don't get hot under the collar when I tell you that America displays just as many classes as a Downtown Abbey episode. We all know it's true. Americans don't like to think of themselves as snobs, but we're as human as the rest of the world, and we like to put our inferiors in their place. We've just agreed among ourselves to pretend that we're not capable of such vulgarities as class consciousness.


American might be unique in the fact that there is such a thing as poor snobs as well as rich snobs here. I know because I am one. My favorite tale of how I first realized how much of a poor snob I am comes from my high school days. (Funny how secondary education keeps popping up, isn't it? Possibly this is where most of us first learn how we're "different" from the others who go on from there to attend Ivy League schools and drive luxury cars.)

There was only one high school in our city, one large public high school. This lead to some interesting interactions among students. I remember talking to a classmate at the end of an English class about where we were both planning on working in the summer. Most kids from our side of town worked part-time in the school year and full-time in the summer months. It's how we were able to afford new shoes, winter coats, and save up for college or trade school. 

Anyway, a third classmate entered our conversation and said something along the lines of, "Oh, I don't know what I'm doing this summer, too. Should I go to horse riding school or tennis camp?" The first classmate and I exchanged knowing glances of the variety of, "Yeah, wouldn't it be nice if the summer months were actually a time to have fun and go on vacations, right?"  We then returned to discussing the benefits of working at the local ice cream shack versus looking for more underpaid big chain fast food work located closer to the highway.

It was then that I realized how much I hated rich people--not necessarily my well-to-do classmate since she was a nice enough person, but how this idea of class kept us separated and how it kept working people from ever enjoying a life that our rich classmate took for granted that everyone else in our high school enjoyed.

Had she ever been to our side of town? Possibly not. Why would she leave her side? She had everything she needed on her wealthier side of town and could go out of town to the big city whenever she or her parents wanted to go. Working class kids just had to make do with what we had and stay put. That was our lot in life. End of story.


I take some hope in the fact that more and more Americans seem free to talk about class and income inequality and the lack of universal health care in 2021, but we still have a ways to go. We still need to discuss what concrete steps we're willing to take to destroy this system that condemns those without what our society calls "wealth" to a life of poverty, hunger, possible homelessness, and an early preventable death. If the founders were willing to risk it all for the "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" why aren't we?

"No war but class war" says the bumper sticker slogan. I think that's what it's going to take--an all out assault against the institutions that propagate the evil capitalistic class system in this country and the world. Voting out the corrupt billionaire supporters has proved impossible. The Citizens United ruling has taken away our voices since money is speech according to it. We will never be able to outspend the billionaires and their lackeys. We'll have to outsmart and out-fight them in the streets.

In other words, it's time for the pitchforks, folks. 

We can't keep pulling our punches. Speak out, speak loudly, and never give in to those who say it's not a fight worth winning. It is. Our planet is dying because of capitalism. We don't need to maintain the classes to survive. The system is killing us all. We need each other without these artificial divides.

All is not lost for the rich according to this short video--they can be taught to empathize! https://youtu.be/Pg5QFOuMoN8

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Howie Hawkins and Angela Walker, candidates for the Green Party nomination for president and vice president
 

Over 300,000 immigrants were deported in Biden’s first 100 days — a rate of deportations higher than any period under the openly anti-immigrant Donald Trump or under the “Deporter-in-Chief,” Barack
Obama.

The deportation machine of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) continues unabated. ICE and CBP defied Biden’s 100-day moratorium on deportations.
Predictably, these agencies targeted Black and Latino immigrants for deportation.

Biden partially rescinded Trump’s “Return to Mexico" policy for asylum seekers, but only for Latin Americans. Reflecting the longstanding anti-Black racism of US immigration policies, Haitians and Africans were excluded.

Black people have been flown by ICE without due process of their asylum requests to countries like Haiti, Cameroon, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo where the political violence means they may face death.

More Haitians were deported to Haiti in Biden’s first 100 days than in the last year of the Trump administration.

Biden has the legal authority to bring ICE and CBP into compliance with the law and his administration’s policies. These rogue agencies’ unions and members campaigned in uniform for Trump in open defiance the Hatch Act. ICE and CBP must be dismantled and replaced with a new agency that will uphold the law.

But Biden shows no appetite for that fight.

Instead, Biden submitted a moderate immigration bill to Congress on his first day in office, the U.S. Citizenship Act, which would leave ICE and CBP in place. It would provide immigrants in the U.S. before
2021 with a path to legal status and, after eight years, to citizenship. But it reinforces the racial biases in the criminal justice and national security systems toward Black, Latino, Muslim, Arab, Middle Eastern,
and South Asian people, who remain targeted for criminal and national security surveillance, discrimination, and arrest that would render them ineligible for legal status and citizenship.

In any case, if the Democrats in the U.S. Senate don’t eliminate the filibuster, no immigration reform will happen. 800,000 Dreamers and more than 20 million undocumented immigrants will continue to live
their lives in constant fear of deportation.

Meanwhile, Biden has continued Trump's "Title 42" public health authority to immediately expel people seeking asylum without due process.

The only exception is allowing the entry of unaccompanied minors, tens of thousands of whom are now stuck in some 200 facilities across two dozen states. Most of these detentions centers are unlicensed and riddled with neglect, abuse, covid, lice, and failure to help connect children with their families or vetted care providers.

While Biden has said he will not build more border wall, his administration is in the courts pursuing eminent domain proceedings that were initiated by the Trump administration against landowners at the border where more wall could be built.

Nor has Biden stopped the policy of co-opting local police into federal immigration enforcement, which has made racial profiling worse and undermined the trust and cooperation of immigrant communities
with local police in solving crimes.

The rule-or-ruin intransigence of the Republicans make them irrelevant to immigration reform—or any other reform. The Democrats in control of both houses of Congress and presidency are negotiating with themselves. They may try to blame the Republicans, but it is the Democrats who could but will not eliminate the filibuster by a simple majority vote in the Senate.

That is why we need the Green Party now more than ever.

We are working to help Greens build that alternative and advance the agenda we advocated during the presidential campaign, from immigration reform and student debt relief to Medicare for All and the Ecosocialist Green New Deal.

Please help us carry on this fight for justice, peace, and the environment with a donation today!

In Solidarity,

Howie Hawkins

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