Old Fucking Punk @lwriemen@librem.one

The Latest Perversion of Martin Luther King Jr.? Invoking His Legacy to Defend Means-Testing.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s memory casts a long shadow over the month of January, and sadly offers opportunities for the most eager of politicians to tag in one of history’s great moral heavyweights for their pet projects and causes.

For those who share King’s social-democratic convictions, that makes it especially important to call nonsense on efforts to scramble his radical legacy into something more popular—and benign—than it ever was during his actual life. Without it, the “Disneyfication” of King will surely continue. 

Take social programs. In last week’s Democratic debate, former South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg was asked about his rejection of free universal higher public education in favor of his more modest program. Buttigieg saw an opportunity to invoke Dr. King’s legacy, and he took it:

The Poor People’s Campaign is marching on Iowa right now, calling on us to talk about this issue more...We gotta be making sure that we target our tax dollars where they will make the biggest difference. And I don’t think subsidizing the children of millionaires and billionaires to pay absolutely zero in tuition at public colleges is the best use of those scarce taxpayer dollars.

What Buttigieg is implying here is that means-tested programs are more progressive than universal ones, enlisting King’s memory to make his point. King is summoned whenever someone hoists up the revived Poor People's Campaign—a multiracial, working-class movement against poverty which King set in motion. 

It’s obvious why you’d do this. King may have been widely loathed in his final years, but he’s now among the most admired figures in the same country that did everything it could to make his life an unbearable hell. Tapping any aspect of his memory throws moral weight behind a politician’s arguments. 

The Democratic Party establishment is more than happy to take this tack amid its ongoing clash with its progressive base. One of the key fault lines in that conflict has been over competing visions of social policy. On one side, moderates like Joe Biden, Amy Klobuchar and Pete Buttigieg favor means-tested programs, where benefits only flow to those who can prove they are deserving enough. On the other, progressive leaders like Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar insist that core aspects of a dignified life shouldn’t be hawked on the market, but guaranteed to all. 

As for King and his fellow leaders in the Poor People’s Campaign, we don’t have to wonder what they’d think. They chose a side: universal programs all the way down. 

History is clear on this. The egalitarian vision offered by King and his socialist pals like Bayard Rustin and A. Philip Randolph included blunt calls for programs like universally guaranteed housing, income, healthcare and education. And today’s Poor People’s campaign, the one Buttigieg name-dropped, has been clear about its priorities. Its website includes a literal list of demands. “Guaranteed annual incomes” and “full employment.” “Free tuition at public colleges and universities” and “single-payer universal health care.” “Fair and decent housing for all.”

Dishonesty about these positions damages the integrity of anyone who we’re told represents the Very Serious wing of the Democratic Party. Whatever centrists pleading for moderation tell themselves, they are not on the side of King or the Poor People’s Campaign. 

So what made King and so many other progressive icons go all in for universal programs? 

As historian Thomas F. Jackson convincingly shows in From Civil Rights to Human Rights: Martin Luther Luther King Jr. and the Struggle for Economic Justice, King’s political convictions were forged alongside a “pilgrimage to Christian socialism.” Witnessing “the tragic poverty of those living around me,” King wrote of his childhood, taught him “that the inseparable twin of racial injustice was economic injustice.” He eventually came to call for a “radical redistribution of political and economic power” and expressed deep skepticism towards the entire “capitalistic economy.” Over time, “King’s disillusionment with the fragmented and unequal welfare state” had only “strengthened his democratic socialism.” 

That last point is important. One of the great symbols of that “fragmented” and dysfunctional status quo, past and present, is the means-tested program. On the surface, means-testing sounds like a surefire way to guarantee benefits go to those who need them most. But this argument collapses under scrutiny. For starters, making people prove that they’re poor enough to receive benefits in a society where the poor are already treated terribly is cruel and humiliating, and many people understandably decide to avoid our country’s nasty treatment of welfare recipients. Then there’s the thick maze of paperwork and bureaucracy you’re forced to navigate, leaving behind millions who predictably don’t have the damn time. And because right-wingers in political leadership daydream about starving the poor and sometimes find liberals craven enough to join them, means-tested programs are always a hair-trigger away from being blown to smithereens. 

Universal programs, meanwhile, suffer from none of this insufferable complexity. Just think of public libraries and parks, available to all. When funded through progressive taxation, where the wealthy pay a significantly larger share of their income than the working-class, these programs can reduce inequality and improve people’s lives at the same time. And because public schools, parks, libraries and quasi-universal programs like Social Security benefit the whole of society—and are typically beloved by all—they are much harder to cut or otherwise undermine. 

The case for universal programs is obvious. Dr. King and the Poor People’s Campaign saw it clearly: they are convenient, reliable and durable as hell, improving people’s lives while freeing them to do more of what they love. 

Thomas F. Jackson wrote of King’s deepening “commitments to democratic socialism” in the face of political moderation that failed to meaningfully address the material suffering of poor and working-class communities of color. That meant there was no room for clunky, humiliating and needlessly complex means-tested programs. 

King’s legacy, and the Poor People’s Campaign’s unfinished work of building popular support for a more egalitarian society, should be broadcast across every corner of the country. But it should be the actual record. As the writer Marc Lamont Hill reminds us, far from being a universally-beloved political figure, King was a “Black radical anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist, revolutionary Christian who died as an enemy of the State.”

A Group of Homeless Black Mothers Just Took On a Giant Real Estate Developer—And Won

For 58 days, four homeless black mothers lived with their children in a vacant 3-bedroom house in West Oakland, California.

Now, after a court battle, weeks of rallies with supporters and a militarized eviction, the mothers—Dominique Walker, Misty Cross, Tolani King and Sharena Thomas—can claim a stunning victory.

The mothers, organized under the name Moms 4 Housing, earned national media attention during their occupation for drawing clear line between the actions of real estate speculators and the human cost of the deepening housing crisis. Their message and method are already yielding results.

After the moms’ eviction from the home, California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf announced new emergency initiatives to address homelessness. And on January 20, six days after their eviction, Moms 4 Housing got news they called “a huge win”: the real estate investment firm that owns the house agreed to sell it to the mothers through a local nonprofit land trust.

“We weren’t expecting any of this—we were expecting attention, but not nationally, not globally,” says Cross. “In the beginning, we were just expecting to be able to talk to these [owner] folks about negotiating a price for the home. We were expecting things to go smoothly. It wasn’t as easy as we thought.”

The difference between real estate and a home

Wedgewood Inc., the Redondo Beach-based real estate investment firm that owns the house the mothers occupied at 2928 Magnolia St., purchased it in July 2019 at a foreclosure auction for $501,078 cash before leaving it empty. Moms 4 Housing moved into the house on November 18, after the moms learned it was vacant through their work for the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE). In the agreement announced on January 20, the City of Oakland said Wedgewood had made a good faith promise to sell the house to the Oakland Community Land Trust for “a price not to exceed the appraised value.”

The Oakland Community Land Trust (OakCLT) is a nonprofit that acquires land and makes it permanently available as affordable housing to low-income communities. Once the sale is finalized between Wedgewood and the OakCLT, Moms 4 Housing will be able to move back into the house and make payments to live there based on an affordability scale predicated on income, says Oakland City Councilmember-At-Large Rebecca Kaplan.

Carroll Fife, director of ACCE’s Oakland office, which supported Moms 4 Housing in their occupation of the home, said that she thinks Wedgewood decided to sell the house out of a fear that activists would occupy other vacant homes it owns around the country. 

“The pressure is coming from all over the state,” Fife says. “And we told the public that Wedgewood is in 18 states and said, ‘Community, what do you wanna do?’”

After Moms 4 Housing moved in, Wedgewood faced increasing scrutiny over the fact it owns at least 125 homes in the Bay Area and specializes in flipping a huge volume of homes. Housing speculators like Wedgewood often purchase houses at foreclosure auctions in cash (something most individuals cannot do). They also often leave those houses empty if they think they could make more money if the market price increases down the line.

Wedgewood did not respond directly to questions about the timing or nature of the deal. In an email statement from PR agent Sam Singer, the company said it works to “improve the neighborhoods” where it acquires properties, and that the house’s sale “is a step in the right direction in helping to address Oakland’s homelessness and housing crisis.”

But advocates say fixing Oakland’s housing crisis must move beyond investors making vacant units available to address the legacy of racism in America, particularly in the real estate industry.

In her new book Race for Profit: How Banks and the Real Estate Industry Undermined Black Ownership, author Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor describes how federal policy after the end of redlining in the 1960s continued to encourage the real estate industry to discriminate against black homeowners through policies of “predatory inclusion.” These policies included selling subpar housing to African Americans under exploitative terms.

And this history is especially salient in the previously redlined neighborhood of West Oakland, situated in the middle of the most expensive metro area in the country.

“[Moms 4 Housing] highlights the particular nature of the housing crisis in Northern California where the costs of rents and certainly homeownership have dramatically outpaced the rate of inflation and the average wages and salaries of ordinary people in the area,” said Taylor. “This, of course, has a disproportionate impact on African-American families who suffer from greater rates of unemployment, under-employment, poverty and, as a result, housing insecurity.”

But Taylor said the mothers’ movement can provide a model for the rest of the country, regardless of rent prices. “Moms 4 Housing have refocused the national debate on the need for housing justice, and have sharply and clearly articulated a roadmap for achieving some of it.” 

Town business

Oakland’s housing crisis is in dire need of a solution. In 2019, the city estimated that 4,071 people were living on the street, in vehicles or in shelters—an increase of 47% in two years. A 2017 survey of self-reported data to EveryOne Home shows that nearly 70% of homeless individuals in the City of Oakland are black, while the city’s total black population has dwindled in recent years down to 28%. And there are very real consequences to living on the street: In 2019, 137 unhoused people died in Alameda County. Meanwhile, U.S. Census data estimates that there are just under 6,000 empty homes in Oakland.

Cross and Walker are both from Oakland, and say they tried to use the city’s existing support systems to access housing, but weren’t able to find anything stable for them and their children. Both mothers have jobs. However, the minimum wage in the city is $14.14 an hour, and the “housing wage” that a family would need to earn to afford an average 2-bedroom apartment in the city is $40 an hour, says Nikki Fortunato Bas, an Oakland city councilmember who has been working closely with Moms 4 Housing.

Among a wide slate of proposed policies, Bas says she is working on requiring land trusts and co-ops get the first chance to purchase vacant land before real estate investors—a policy the city's January 20 announcement said Wedgewood endorsed.

However, Bas said that she’s concerned the city government won’t make meaningful change on the housing crisis any time soon without an “all-hands-on-deck” mentality.

“While I am hopeful, I am very aware that the pace at which government moves,” Bas says. “Until impacted communities actually feel a change, the type of organizing that the moms have been doing, the type of attention they have been drawing, is very needed to keep the pressure on decision-makers at every level of government.”

Cross says the Moms 4 Housing movement is about more than finding four mothers a place to stay, so their pressure campaign will not stop. She also said the four mothers all have found secure housing arrangements since the eviction, but wants the focus to remain on their larger fight to make housing a human right—not just under international law, but under California state and federal law, which could require passing a constitutional amendment.

“Everybody deserves to be housed, whether you have drug abuse, whether you have a jail history,” says Cross. “We’ll pursue any option that makes housing a human right.”

And on Monday, soon after receiving the news of the Magnolia house sale, the mothers were back out pushing for change at Oakland’s “Reclaim MLK” event. They helped lead a march of hundreds of protesters from City Hall to the Alameda County Sheriff’s office seven blocks away.

Outside the sheriff’s office, Walker told her story of returning to Oakland after years living in Mississippi. She said she didn’t recognize the city, seeing thousands of people living on the streets and many of her friends and family displaced out of the city.

But looking out over the crowd, she smiled and said, “This is the Oakland I remember.”

Is Cristina Tzintzún Ramirez the Future of Texas?

Back in 2013, I was looking to write a big piece about a highly successful workers’ center that hadn’t received national press. Several labor professor friends recommended Workers Defense Project (WDP) in Austin, Texas. I flew down to meet with Cristina Tzintzún Ramirez, WDP’s executive director. I found her whip smart, a born organizer and an inspiring speaker. She took the helm of the then-tiny WDP while a senior at the University of Texas, helping it transform into a force to be reckoned with. The WDP brought national attention to the fact that Texas construction workers have the highest on-the-job death rate in the nation, and then in Austin won Texas’ first municipal ordinance requiring rest and water breaks for construction workers. It got Apple and other companies to guarantee workers on their Austin construction projects receive raises, safety training and workers’ comp, not required in Texas. Tzintzún Ramirez proved adept at working with undocumented workers, union leaders, construction industry execs and lawmakers.

Next, she founded and quickly expanded Jolt, a group to mobilize young Latinos in politics. Several top aides in Beto O’Rourke’s 2018 Senate campaign then pressed her to run in 2020 against longtime Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn, a stalwart Trump supporter. They talked her into it. (Disclosure: I have donated $200 to her campaign.)

I recently spoke with Tzintzún Ramirez about how a labor organizer with a progressive agenda might defeat a GOP heavyweight in Texas. The interview has been edited and condensed.

Steven Greenhouse: How has being a labor and community organizer prepared you to run for Senate?

Cristina Tzintzún Ramirez: I have spent a decade and a half thinking about how to make policy solutions for real-life problems that politicians often didn’t even know existed. I learned how to build coalitions. I learned how to raise resources for campaigns. I learned how to work around the clock to win—because the only thing I have that those in power don’t have is time, and the knowledge that you can defeat powerful people by building movements of ordinary people.

Steven: At WDP and Jolt, you developed a reputation as a fighter for Latinos. How would you assure all Texans you will fight for them?

Cristina: I don’t think that disqualifies me to be Texas’ next senator—I think it makes me uniquely qualified. The things that Latino families want are the exact things that every other family wants: Making sure the education system is affordable and accessible. Making sure people have good, living-wage and safe jobs. Making sure families can be together. Making sure our democracy works for everyone.

Steven: What are some ways you would work to help white and African-American communities?

Cristina: We have a senator, John Cornyn, who only wants to represent the interests of one ethnic group, one income bracket and one gender: the interests of white wealthy men.

I want to be the senator for everyone. I stand up for Medicare for All because I believe it is the best way to have the highest quality healthcare and to make sure every single American can go to the doctor. I want to tackle the student debt crisis and make sure every single Texas family can send their children to college or trade school. I want to make sure that Texas becomes a leader in transitioning our economy to green energy in a way that creates millions of great jobs for Texans.

I was really proud of my work at the Workers Defense Project. I brought union and non-union workers together, immigrants and American-born together, black, brown and white together to pursue their common interests.

I understand the way Republicans use racism and xenophobia and sexism to distract us. That’s how they get away with not giving us healthcare. That’s how they get away with divestment from our education system. That’s how they get away with an economy that doesn’t work for everyone.

Steven: The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee has endorsed one of your 11 opponents, M.J. Hegar, presumably thinking a centrist Air Force veteran has the best chance. Why would a progressive like yourself fare better?

Cristina: There are two strategies to change Texas. One of them has been tried for 20 years and failed every single time—which is to run a moderate Democrat to try and swing white Republican voters.

The other strategy is to embrace the state’s diversity. We are a state that is majority people of color, a state with a long populist tradition, where progressives are hungry for change. Beto O’Rourke was the most progressive statewide candidate I can remember, and he got closer than anybody. In our Senate campaign, we try to speak to everyone—the Black Lives Matter movement, Latino and immigrant communities, the LGBTQ community.

Everybody knows that you don’t win in Texas unless you drive up voter turnout among Latino voters. No Democrat wins without us. Yet there are Democrats running who don’t want to speak to us, who don’t want to fight for us.

There are some people in Washington who think that they know Texas better than Texans. We will prove them wrong on Election Day

Steven: Cornyn will no doubt have a huge campaign chest. How will you defeat him?

Cristina: Republicans know if they lose Texas in 2020, it’s game over for them nationally. So I think every single dirty trick will be played in this race.

Unseating the second-most powerful Republican in the Senate doesn’t come without hard work or substantial resources. It’s my intention to raise those resources from small-dollar donors across the country who understand what’s at stake in Texas. Texans have the ability to change the course of not just our state’s history, but our entire country’s history, when we flip Texas.

Steven: What do you hope to achieve in the Senate?

Cristina: A state as large as Texas can dream big because we are big. I want to position Texas to be a leader in our nation’s transition to renewable energy. We are already the largest wind energy producer. I want to make us the largest solar energy producer and create nearly two million green jobs in Texas—good jobs—over the next decade.

I want to tackle income inequality. In Texas, we work more hours than most people in other states. Yet most Texans struggle to get by.

The other big issue is Medicare for All. In Texas, we have the highest uninsured rate in the country: one in six. Even Americans with health insurance struggle to pay their co-pays, deductibles, premiums. This past week my son was in the hospital twice, and we had a $500 co-pay.

Steven: Texas’ economy has been built in large part by fossil fuels. How do you persuade Texans that the Green New Deal is good for them?

Cristina: As Texans, we don’t run away from big problems. We take them head on. I see climate change as a big problem, but I also see it as a real opportunity, especially for Texas. John Cornyn opposes the Green New Deal because he says it’s too expensive, but he doesn’t calculate the catastrophic cost of doing nothing—the cost for our economy and our environment, and the human cost and suffering, which is incalculable.

No state has more to gain or lose than Texas. Texas has 250,000 workers in the oil, gas and mining industries and 233,000 workers in advanced energy, which will outpace the oil and gas industry in the next few years. So it’s just basic common sense for Texas to support the Green New Deal.

Steven: I deliberately haven’t asked whether it’s hard running with a 3-year-old son—I imagine male candidates don’t get that question.

Cristina: I don’t mind you asking, because it’s the truth. Deciding whether to run was hard. I know that, when men run, they get thanked for their sacrifice of being away, but when women like me run, we get villainized as bad mothers

But I think I could be a great senator and a great mother. I’m running with my little guy, Santi. I taught him how to hand out flyers and say “Vota Mama.” He likes to do that at all the events.

When I’m going out and fighting for the policies and solutions I believe are in the best interest of Texans and Americans—doing that with my son next to me, I know I’m fighting for his future as well.

TODAY: Join us for a rally in Los Angeles to #SaveDotOrg! https://www.eff.org/events

The More Shameful the Scandal, the More a Politician’s Supporter

An odd byproduct of political tribalism is the fact that scandals have actually become a positive, a way to rally the base into showing up at the polls and making campaign donations.

Corporate Crap That Doesn’t Kill Bernie Just Makes Him Stronger

            On January 19th the New York Times oddly co-endorsed Senators Elizabeth Warren and Amy Klobuchar for the Democratic presidential nomination. Two days later, the key New Hampshire primary showed Warren down four points. Bernie Sanders’ surge continued. What happened?             To the extent that they ever did, the editorial boards at corporate-owned media outlets […]

Apple's Fancy Browser Privacy Tech May Do More Harm Than Good
https://gizmodo.com/apples-fancy-browser-privacy-tech-may-do-more-harm-than-1841176956 #bigtech #purism #privacy

Maybe These Davos Guys Have Some Good Ideas About Climate Change (They Do Not)
https://earther.gizmodo.com/maybe-these-davos-guys-have-some-good-ideas-about-clima-1841181110 #climatechange #climatecrisis

What if a single parking ticket carried a fine of up to a year's salary? What if there were no way to know consistently how much the fine would be before you got it? Something very close to this scenario is a reality in copyright law. #CopyrightWeek https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/01/key-fixing-copyright-ending-massive-unpredictable-damages-awards

R.I.P. James Thindwa, Friend and Comrade

If you lived in Chicago over the last two decades and came anywhere near labor circles — or just about any struggle for social justice at all — chances are you met James Thindwa, who passed this month after a long illness. And if you were a senior fighting for decent living conditions, a striking worker needing support, or a charter school teacher needing a union anywhere in the United States, you benefited from James’s hard work.

It's happening. People are becoming aware of the #privacy implications of services around them and are voting with their feet.

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/01/23/23andme-lays-off-100-people-ceo-anne-wojcicki-explains-why.html

This is so fucking stupid...

https://news.softpedia.com/news/germany-to-pay-microsoft-nearly-900-000-to-secure-outdated-windows-528945.shtml

In a world where everything must be "connected", this means ever more eWaste (and wasted developer time) when companies inevitably pull the plug. Since the software and protocols are proprietary, customers can't revive them or switch services.

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/01/smart-scale-goes-dumb-as-under-armour-pulls-the-plug-on-connected-tech/

Carbon Dioxide Reached a New High in Humanity's Existence
https://earther.gizmodo.com/carbon-dioxide-reached-a-new-high-in-humanitys-existenc-1841175734 #climatechange #climatecrisis

Make big #polluters pay for mass #tree #planting, officials say | #Environment | The Guardian

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jan/23/make-big-polluters-pay-for-mass-tree-planting-officials-say

#UK #FossilFuels #GreenhouseGases #Pollution #GlobalWarming #ClimateChange

Yup, as excellent #FOSS options like NextCloud + OnlyOffice emerge, it's increasingly unpalatable handing profit-motivated monopolies (with a decades of predatory tactics and lock-in user exploitation) *full* control of your biz's, org's, customers', or *your country's* data. Ditch MSO 365 & Google Docs.

My man lands the coveted Archer endorsement
@Bernie2020 #Bernie2020
https://youtu.be/iHzQ39n2dtw