Are WE The Refugees?

We start this week out with a song...

The Chorus of This Land is My Land 

(Reworked for the Modern Age)

by Coast Watcher

This land is your land, this land is my land. From California…
 
Er, no, sorry.

What?

California has decided it's had enough of the United States. It got together with Oregon, Washington state, Alaska and the Canadian province of British Columbia to form a new nation called Pacifica. It now has one of the largest economies in the world. Hawaii is making noises about joining it too.

Huh. Okay. To the New York island…
 
Ah, again, sorry.

What now?

Due to rising sea levels caused by climate change, the New York Island no longer exists. It's all underwater.

Good grief! Okay then. From the redwood forests?
 
Er, no. Trump sold the redwood forests to Georgia Pacific. They were used to make seven billion toilet rolls and a nice desk for David Koch.

Seriously? What about the rolling Gulf Stream waters?
 
Ah, er, sorry, no. They're heavily polluted by agricultural run-off mixing with all the oil spills. Nowadays the Gulf waters don't so much roll, as gloop.

(Singer tosses the song sheets over her shoulder and walks away muttering)

Bio: Coast Watcher often waxes comically poetic to deal with the stress of living in the modern world.

 ***

Are We the Refugees?

by Still Bernin'

Human beings are being displaced in record numbers. Climate change, drone bombings, wars for oil, land grabs, natural disasters, economic disparities--the list goes on and on. Indigenous peoples are pushed off their lands or killed so others can steal and profit from their resources. Employment opportunities dry up and cause many to leave their homes and head to where they hope the jobs are. The one-percenters grow richer at others' expense. Misery is the order of the day.

If everyone is "on the move," then those who wish to remain rooted in one place are old fashioned. Americans who try to live in a world patterned after

the eighteenth or nineteenth century, while denying the reality of the twenty-first, are destined to be disappointed. Like the rest of humanity, they must move on. "Make America Great Again" says their red baseball caps. Doesn't the tag in the hat's interior that says "made in China" tell you the world has moved on and left America in the dust?
 
If rising ocean levels and the futility of endless wars for the remains of dead

dinosaurs doesn't convince those stuck in the past that we must move on or die as a people, then what will? It's the basic problem with Trump's vision of America--it's locked into a timewarp. Sadder still, it's not even the real past.

When was the United States ever "great" for all of its people? Slavery for African-Americans existed until the 1860s, and, when comparing current wages of whites and people of color with the same level of training and education, it could be argued slavery continues to this very day. Women couldn't vote until 1920. Children worked in dangerous jobs in factories until little over a hundred years ago. Gays and lesbians couldn't legally marry in most states until a few years ago. The indigenous peoples of the Americas have never felt things were "great" for them since Europeans landed in 1492.

The Trump version of America is an imaginary one where rich, white males are forever on top and everyone else is happily jitterbugging away, gladly giving up their civil liberties. And for what? It's not like an average American will profit off the tax breaks for billionaires, and it appears social programs will continue to be slashed, leaving many working poor, elderly and disabled persons in the lurch. Can any sane person truly consider that a happy scenario?
      

America has moved and is still moving, but where are we moving to? Are we moving away from the slavery that is capitalism and toward an egalitarian utopia that democratic socialism can provide? Away from the consumerism that eats our souls and rots our sense of compassion? Away from placing the price on a human life at a mere $1.05 (activist David Hogg's estimation derived from the amount of money Senator Marco Rubio received from the NRA divided by the number of Florida students)? Away from the idea that health care is a privilege only the wealthy can enjoy?
 

Will Americans who want to oppress those who are different from them be forced to become refugees instead? If we don't force these immoral types out of our society, will we all suffer for their lack of compassion? The more our elected officials treat the homeless, the displaced and the poor with impunity, the more likely Americans will get a taste of our own medicine. We could be denied sanctuary when we need it because of rising oceans. The wall that Trump wants to build around our country could be used to contain us from others who have had enough of our rotten attitude. 

We will become the unwanted people among peoples. We will be the refugees nobody wants.

I have a strong feeling that the cliche, "You can dish it out, but you can't take it," is going to be heard by Americans a lot more in the near future. It serves us right if we continue to support the current regime's policies toward the environment, refugees and the poor.

Articles to make you think:
The Gig Economy Celebrates Working Yourself to Death https://www.newyorker.com/culture/jia-tolentino/the-gig-economy-celebrates-working-yourself-to-death

An End to Protections for Undocumented Youth

https://readersupportednews.org/news-section2/318-66/49297-trumps-easter-wish-an-end-to-protections-for-undocumented-youth

Weapons for Anyone--Donald Trump and the Art of the Arms Deal

https://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/49301-focus-weapons-for-anyone-donald-trump-and-the-art-of-the-arms-deal

Bio: Still Bernin' is moving on and marching toward a better future for all peoples. It's time we put capitalism to rest and embrace democracy through democratic socialism.

***

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You can donate via Paypal at http://paypal.me/camatthews

Power to the people and not the corporations!

***

Donald Trump and his army of anti-immigrant forces are tearing apart the United States’ refugee resettlement program. Call and ask Congress: #WhereRTheRefugees? >>

In September, the Trump administration set the lowest ever refugee admissions goal: 45,000 refugees for this fiscal year. Now, they’re not even meeting their own pathetically low standard. Halfway through the fiscal year, the Trump administration has resettled under 10,000 refugees into the United States — WAY less than half of their underwhelming goal.
This is not who we are as Americans.

Thousands of refugees are now in life-threatening limbo while the Trump administration continues its heartless and xenophobic agenda. What’s more, many refugees are fleeing American bombs devastating their countries or American-fueled climate change and famines destroying their homes and livelihoods. America has a black-and-white moral responsibility to open its doors, not slam them shut. 

So Win Without War is joining a coalition of refugee and humanitarian activists to flood phone lines today — and we need your voice. If we can drive enough calls to Congress in one day about the Trump administration’s historic failure on refugee admissions, we can pressure our Members of Congress to hold the Trump administration accountable for admitting the refugees they promised.

Call and ask your Members of Congress: #WhereRTheRefugees? 

The United States refugee resettlement program is reserved for only the most vulnerable populations fleeing war, climate change, inequality, and persecution. They undergo the most extensive selection, security vetting and medical screening processes of any travelers to the United States. But the Trump administration continues to spread their hateful agenda by refusing to accept refugees who have already been promised resettlement, imposing refugee bans disguised as “extreme vetting,” and choosing dangerous anti-refugee advisors like John Bolton.

Make no mistake: the Trump administration’s actions directly threaten the lives of thousands of refugees, devastate families, and undermine our American values. What’s more, they make a mockery of our responsibility to welcome those fleeing horrors--- many of which are the direct result of America’s endless wars in their home countries. But together, we can fight against these unjust, cruel policies and work towards an America where all are welcome.

Tell Congress: This country was built from the contributions of refugees and immigrants. Don’t let Trump wash our legacy away. The US must honor its promises to accept refugees fleeing life-threatening situations.

Thank you for working for peace,
Aubrey, Mariam, Cassandra, and the team at Win Without War

***

No no no no no.

1,400 Palestinians were injured and 18 were killed in Gaza - nonviolent protesters shot by Israeli soldiers during the #MarchForReturn on Friday. 

The Israeli military evidently believes that any time Palestinians assert their basic rights in any way, they will be considered violent, and met with deadly violence. This cannot stand.

SIGN OUR OPEN LETTER TODAY:
We will not sit quiet while the IDF murders Palestinians demanding their rights.

It feels impossible that this should be true. Like Sharpeville, Selma, or Kent State, again and again into 2018. 

Because I know in my heart that the right to peaceful protest is sacrosanct. The biggest and boldest mobilizations of my lifetime are rolling into the streets. It’s a truly beautiful thing.
 
These protesters - people just like you and me - prove that there’s another way, one we have to recommit to today.

I think the only way truly forward is to recognize that there is a root cause: 70 years of Nakba.

After all, that’s the reason 15,000 people were marching in the first place. 

The catastrophe of Palestinian dispossession and expulsion by the Israeli government has gone on 70 years too long. And the #MarchForReturn is about making good on the undeniable, basic right of Palestinians, and all people, to live freely in their homelands. 

Please sign here and share - as widely and quickly as you can.

It was difficult to sit through a Passover seder Friday night with family that doesn't yet share my outrage at Israel’s aggression. But that’s what makes this community at JVP all the more important to me today as a place I can bring my full heart - and where we’re all working together for real and lasting peace.

Onward,
Rabbi Alissa Wise
Deputy Director

1. http://7amleh.org/2018/03/05/7amleh-releases-new-racism-index-exposing-heightened-israeli-online-incitement-against-palestinians/

***

From Rainforest Action Network:

The numbers are in, and they are infuriating.

In spite of deadly impacts to communities and climate, big banks actually increased their financing to extreme fossil fuels last year. And they are hoping you won’t notice.

See the findings from our new report, and let the banks know that we won’t let them get away with this.

Each year, RAN and our partners grade the world’s big banks, and calculate how much money they are funneling to extreme fossil fuels — some of the most climate-intensive and destructive energy sources, which must be phased out quickly. Many of the dirtiest, riskiest projects wouldn’t happen without billions in bank funding.

In 2017, some banks, especially in France and the Netherlands, started to wake up to reality, and made policy improvements. But unfortunately, overall financing for extreme fossil fuels still went up. 

It’s simple. Without funding, these projects would never happen. Click here to take action and demand banks stop funding destructive projects and companies.

Here are just some of the findings of the new report, titled Banking on Climate Change: Fossil Fuel Finance Report Card 2018:

• JPMorgan Chase (Chase Bank) was already the biggest financier of extreme fossil fuels on Wall Street, but now the bank has doubled down, increasing that amount by over $4 billion last year. Chase is making a quick profit instead of supporting communities and the planet.
• All of the Canadian banks increased their shameful financing, sending more money to destructive tar sands oil extraction and pipelines. Together, they more than doubled their financing.
• While some have announced exciting oil and gas policies, most European banks are heading in the wrong direction on coal. Combined, their financing to the deadly, climate-polluting coal sector was $2 billion higher than the previous year.

With news like this, it’s time to step up the pressure. I hope you’ll join me in sending a clear message to JP Morgan Chase and its friends that we will not stand for funding the past. 


Alison Kirsch
Climate and Energy Program and Research Coordinator
Rainforest Action Network

***

Late last year, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) caved to corporate interests and voted to strip internet users of their rights to choose what they do, where they go and whom they connect with online. Without these Net Neutrality protections, large phone and cable companies are now able to block, throttle and slow access to sites and services at will.

The FCC's massively unpopular decision has sparked a national movement to demand the return of real Net Neutrality. Millions of people across the political spectrum are taking action in the streets, at their statehouses, outside the FCC and before Congress.

Mayors are taking action, too. Mayors Bill de Blasio of New York, Ted Wheeler of Portland and Steve Adler of Austin recently called on all other U.S. mayors to join them in a Cities Open Internet Pledge, which requires all internet providers with whom they do business to follow a strong set of Net Neutrality principles. Within a week, more than 20 mayors took the pledge (see below)!

Urge your mayor to stand for Net Neutrality. Send an email to your mayor, asking them to sign the Cities Open Internet Pledge -- and join the national movement for an open internet!

In solidarity,
Andrea Miller
Executive Director


In just 2 weeks, thousands of people will gather around the world in support of science.  Are you ready? 

If you’ll be joining us in Washington D.C., the day will start at 9 am with teach-in and expo tents on the National Mall at 15th and Constitution NW.  Then it’s time to get your signs ready for the 12:30 pm rally and 3 pm march! All this week we’ll be announcing speakers and musical guests leading up to the big event.

Joining a local event? Check out marches around the world at marchforscience.com/2018. 

To support the March for Science, visit us here. Help drive this movement forward!

Not Another Brick in the Wall

Not Another Brick in the Wall

by Cindy A. Matthews

"All in all, you're just another brick in the wall." --Pink Floyd

2016 was a year of protest in the US. Every week there was some kind of a protest--from Democracy Spring to Ferguson to Standing Rock... 2017 promises more of the same. A helluva lot more. With Trump's narcissistic personality disorder, we're assured of  protests from day one.

This is a good thing. It demonstrates that more Americans are awake and aware of what is going on in their government and their society. It demonstrates people care passionately about causes, and they are willing to sacrifice their time, energy and safety (and possibly their lives) to make a better world for all people. It exemplifies the old adage: "When the going gets tough--the tough get going."

But how do we continue to fight the good fight when day after day the forces of the evil empire of oligarchs seem to grow?  The wall of the oligarchy's wealth grows higher and higher, until one day it might actually manifest itself in a physical wall, such as the one they want to build along the US-Mexican border. They want to wall all others out and wall us, the slave laborers, in. They want us to become the lowly bricks in their wall of conglomeration and incorporation, to bolster the endless profits which fly into their tax-free, off-shore bank accounts. 

We ordinary workers are to become passionless and faceless as bricks, without the means to see the whole structure of the oligarchs' greed and selfishness. Once we're cemented into their "wall of shame," we will become like their stone hearts, cold and unfeeling. We won't ever strive to change our world. We will become dead to its and our own suffering. That's the way the oligarchs like it. 

A recent speaker at Our Revolution in Northwest Ohio told us the story of an individual who refused to become yet another brick in the oligarchs' wall. Tish O'Dell lives in a nice suburb of Cleveland, Broadview Heights. This small city is fortunate enough to have ninety fracking wells and their accompanying fracking wastewater ponds full of toxic chemicals. (Yes, that's 90 fracking wells and not 9!) Residents reported many illnesses and earthquakes, but no one in government took their side against the frackers. Tish didn't give up. She organized community members, and they protested and worked hard to amend their city charter to ban fracking within the city limits. The charter initiative passed. 

Of course, a higher court later struck the amendment down, but its legacy remains. There have been no new fracking wells drilled in Broadview Heights since their charter was amended.  The fracking industry knows the people of Broadview Heights won't take another invasion of their town lying down. The people of Broadview Heights have built their own "wall" and together they stand as "living bricks" to prevent further degradation of their town by the oligarchs of the fracking industry. 

Better still, other Ohio cities have followed their example to ban fracking. The spread of fracking has been slowed. While it may not be seen as a total victory, it's a battle won in the opening salvo of a war to protect the people's health and safety.

In this coming year of protests, keep the example of Tish and her community in mind. Your small steps can make a difference, so get out there and protest and work for change. Start fighting the battle your town, group or organization truly believes in. Build a "wall of resistance" against the greed of the oligarchs. 

To quote Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party: "We are the change we've been looking for." That means us. We've gotta change things for the better. Remember what Bernie Sanders said? Not me Us.

Don't let the fascistic oligarchs use you and cast you onto the faceless brick pile of their wall of avarice. Throw your brick of community through the window of their souls. Smash their greed! Expose their corruption! Fight for the greater good! The political revolution needs all the bricks of change it can get. 

Be the change, and we'll see you on the front lines.

And now, we take a look across that mythical wall proposed by Trump and what we could learn from our fellow human beings south of the border...

A Look Across Trump’s Wall
by Dirk Droll

a.k.a. Beanstock

http://bibliolist.com/candidate-financials/

  
Are you dreaming about Trump’s proposed wall on our southern border? In the light of our dying or dead democracy up here in the United States, it can be quite interesting to look south.

While we are held hostage by a bee's nest of corruption, built and upheld by robber billionaires and their utterly corrupt minions in the political and journalistic classes who are part of the gentry and middle nobility in our quasi-feudal society, our neighbors in the south are showing us what can happen when the people get utterly disgusted and angry enough to act.

In recent years,  our war-mongering and regime-changing oligarchs were preoccupied elsewhere (especially the Middle East because of its delicious oil--yum!), although one must note our Hillary-supported 2009 military coup of a democratically elected government in Honduras [article 1][article 2][article 3] . Some of our southern neighbors managed to make progress on the path to democracy from which we could learn something. 

Two examples: Recently, Guatemala’s corrupt president was forced out of office and jailed, and, at the moment, Venezuela (much decried as a commie country under Chavez in our corporate media) actually has it written in its constitution that the people (yes, the people, not unreliable representatives on a gravy train) can impeach the president and trigger an automatic election. All they need is enough signatures. Imagine that!

If you examine just how much our oligarchs and their wholly-owned government meddle south of our border, one has to essentially look upon Latin American nations as unrecognized states in our union. And, impressively, despite of our federal government’s reprisals, these southern brothers and sisters in our jointly suffered plight make advances towards democracy we could learn from. 

Perhaps, instead of Trump’s wall, we should build a highway?

BIO: Dirk Droll writes the thought-provoking Beanstock's World blog. Read it and follow him at https://beanstocksworld.wordpress.com/

The following related news items will raise eyebrows and blood pressure...

http://readersupportednews.org/news-section2/318-66/41231-sources-trump-will-ask-congress-not-mexico-to-pay-for-border-wall 

 From The Guardian:
"In Trump we see a perfect fusion of the two main uses of celebrity culture: corporate personification and mass distraction. His celebrity became a mask for his own chaotic, outsourced and unscrupulous business empire. His public image was the perfect inversion of everything he and his companies represent. As presenter of the US version of The Apprentice, this spoilt heir to humongous wealth became the face of enterprise and social mobility. During the presidential elections, his noisy persona distracted people from the intellectual void behind the mask, a void now filled by more lucid representatives of global capital."   https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/dec/20/celebrity-corporate-machine-fame-big-business-donald-trump-kim-kardashian



It's time... 

We'll be seeing you in the coming weeks in the streets, in the state houses, at the inauguration, on the pipelines routes... The time is now. We are the change we've been looking for. We are the Revolution. Don't become another brick in the wall--smash it! (And be sure to share your stories and photos with us at Our Revolution Continues. We like to know what all you've been doing.)

The following parody of Pink Floyd's The Wall gives us a fuller picture of "Trump's wall" and why we need to stop it before it can be built. 

Power to the people--not the oligarchy!