Old Fucking Punk @lwriemen@librem.one

Patterns of thinning of Antarctica's biggest glacier are opposite to previously observed

Using the latest satellite technology from the European Space Agency (ESA), scientists have been tracking patterns of mass loss from Pine Island -- Antarctica's largest glacier.

Young People Don’t Support Biden. Why Does the Establishment Still Think He’s the Most “Electable”?

And so, we begin the Roaring 2020s with war, assassination and firestorms on a burning Earth. We know it will be a decisive decade. What remains to be seen is whether, here in the United States, “We the People” break with the rule of the corporate oligarchy and take measures to ensure a democratic future on a habitable planet. The window of opportunity to save the world has become a narrow slit. Will we make it through?

That will be determined in no small measure by the 2020 General Election, which is shaping up to be a three-way race in a two-party system.

First, we have the Republican Party, its fealty fully pledged to President Donald Trump. The Christian Right loves that he is stacking the courts with culture warriors. The corporate Right likes that he cuts taxes and guts environmental regulations. And white nationalists like his racist theatrics and the gratuitous cruelty of his immigration policies.

Second, we have the Democratic Party’s progressive wing and its standard bearers Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders. Their populist calls for a redistribution of wealth and an expansion of a social democratic welfare state—tuition-free public college, Medicare for All, the Green New Deal—resonate with a growing number of voters.

Third, we have the Democratic establishment. It has hitched its wagon to the concept of “electability,” which national polls reveal to be a top concern of Dems. In other words: Who can beat Trump? These centrist Democrats and their allies in the corporate media vehemently oppose any meaningful attempts to redistribute wealth and power. Bereft of appealing policy proposals to inspire the base, they have weaponized “electability,” using it to limit the range of possible candidates, both in demographics and ideology. It is also employed as a cudgel against any transformative policy, the argument being that Big Change will spook independent voters—and thereby help reelect Trump—completely ignoring the potential of big ideas to turn out voters otherwise likely to sit out.

Their candidate is Joe “Electable” Biden. Their candidate’s main policy expert is Bruce Reed, who accompanies Biden on the campaign trail. As architect of President Bill Clinton’s 1996 so-called welfare reform, Reed coined the “end welfare as we know it” slogan. A former CEO of the now-defunct Democratic Leadership Council, Reed left his post in 2010 to serve as executive director of President Barack Obama’s National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, which unsuccessfully attempted to reduce the deficit by cutting cost-of-living increases for Social Security recipients.

Why Biden is so electable—a 77-year-old candidate who stepped onto the national stage in 1972 as the junior senator from Delaware and has twice run (and lost badly) for president—is never explained. A 1995 video has surfaced of Biden speaking in favor of a GOP-sponsored balanced-budget amendment. “When I argued that we should freeze federal spending, I meant Social Security as well,” he bragged. “I meant Medicare and Medicaid. I meant veterans’ benefits. I meant every single solitary thing in the government. And I not only tried it once, I tried it twice, I tried it a third time, and I tried it a fourth time.” And his backing of the Iraq War has rightly dogged him: As CNN reported, at a January 4 event in Des Moines, Iowa, “Biden again dishonestly suggests he opposed the Iraq War from the beginning.”

Is it any wonder that young people are not flocking to the Biden campaign? In a December 2019 poll of Iowa voters, only 6% of likely Democratic caucus-goers between 18 and 34 supported Biden, while 55% supported Warren or Sanders. For a Democratic Party establishment truly concerned with electability—now and in the future—that is the poll to pay attention to. 

Why Centrist Democrats Can’t Get to Bernie Sanders

Centrist Democrats find themselves in a quandry: the more they attack Bernie Sanders, the more that voters support him. If only there was a solution.

New species of Allosaurus discovered in Utah

A remarkable new species of meat-eating dinosaur, Allosaurus jimmadseni, was just unveiled. The huge carnivore inhabited the flood plains of western North America during the Late Jurassic Period, between 157-152 million years ago, making it the geologically oldest species of Allosaurus, predating the more well-known state fossil of Utah, Allosaurus fragilis.

Fungal diversity and its relationship to the future of forests

Researchers predict that climate change will reduce the diversity of symbiotic fungi that help trees grow.

New York: Join @STOPSpyingNY on January 29 as they discussion NYPD's use of the Gang Database. They will be joined by New Yorkers that have been affected by the database and look to #EndtheDatabase. https://www.eff.org/event/stop-x-radtech-voices-gang-database

Scotland Is on Track to Hit 100 Percent Renewable Energy This Year, Slàinte Mhath!
https://earther.gizmodo.com/scotland-is-on-track-to-hit-100-percent-renewable-energ-1841202818 #climatechange #climatecrisis

James Thindwa, a Man Who Did What Needed to Be Done—And Said What Needed to Be Said

In These Times lost a friend on January 19, with the passing of James Thindwa (1955–2020), a prominent Chicago community organizer and a long-time member of our board of directors.

James was born in Harare, Zimbabwe, grew up in Blantyre, Malawi, and at the age of 18 came to America to attend Berea College in Berea, Ky. Modeled after Oberlin College, Berea was the first interracial and coeducational college in the South.

In a moving tribute to him, James’ wife, the historian Martha Biondi, wrote:

His passionate commitment to fighting for social justice and his belief in the power of ordinary people to change their lives, and our world, will live on in the rich legacy he imparted to so many. …

A lifelong activist and champion of human rights, James fought in numerous struggles, including the anti-apartheid movement, immigrant rights movement, antiwar movement and many campaigns for racial justice. James was a firm believer in the responsibility of government to tax the rich, defend the rights of workers, and provide free health care for all and robust support for the elderly. He refused the lure of cynicism and despair his whole life. He instilled in so many young organizers a fervent belief in the power of personal and social transformation.

Professionally, James was best known as a community and labor organizer, as Lee Sustar, a Chicago activist, writes in Jacobin. James served as the executive director of Chicago Jobs With Justice and, most recently, as a national organizer for the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), where he worked to bring the Chicago Teachers Union model of bargaining for the common good to AFT locals across the Midwest. 

James was also a gifted writer; In These Times regularly turned to him when events of the day demanded a dose of political sanity. In the past decade, James wrote 26 articles for In These Times, including several editorials.

What follows is a sampler of times James said what needed to be said:

In January 2013, following President Barack Obama’s speech at his second inauguration, James noted what Obama did not say but should have said. In “Obama’s Progressive Agenda: Missing a Main Ingredient,” he wrote, in part:

Notwithstanding Obama’s welcome and reassuring political posture in this moment, his wish list for progressive transformation is lacking a key item. The president has shown no interest in seriously defending organized labor and union rights, even as Michigan, the “cradle of the labor movement” was instantaneously flipped into a “right-to-work” state. And this followed brazen attacks on workers in Wisconsin, Ohio and Indiana by GOP governors in the service of corporate elites seeking a return to unfettered capitalism and unbridled exploitation of workers. …

The right to organize is a core Democratic (and democratic) principle. It serves a fundamental social justice purpose, is universally recognized, and is indispensable to a healthy democracy. Why are these considerations not compelling enough for the president to pick up this cause? …

Reviving the primacy of labor rights will require all partners in the progressive movement to develop political savvy and the wherewithal to defend this endangered civil right. For a Democratic president to declare a new progressive renewal without labor rights at its center is an embarrassment for Democrats, and a betrayal of the rich history of the country’s populist social movements. Pay equity, the workers' rights issue Obama has focused on, is an important but safe issue for him. After all, who really can oppose this? But pay equity is not a substitute for union rights. Where union organizing can raise wages for all workers, pay equity simply guarantees equal treatment. The workers can be equal in poverty.

In August 2016, following the Democratic National Convention that chose Hillary Clinton as the party’s standard bearer, James took on Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) and his fellow members in the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) in “The Black Political Establishment Should Never Have Given Hillary Clinton a Blank Check.” Today, with Lewis and a number of other members of the CBC jumping on the Joe Biden bandwagon, his essay remains just as relevant. He wrote, in part:

During a Congressional Black Caucus Political Action Committee (CBC PAC) endorsement session for Hillary Clinton, Georgia congressman and movement veteran John Lewis questioned Sanders’ civil rights bona fides, declaring, “I never saw him. I never met him.”

Why would Lewis take this odd tack, which discounts the contributions of multitudes who participated in the struggle without having personally met him? Because, of course, Lewis and the CBC were not mounting a real effort to substantively engage Sanders on racial politics. They were stumping for Clinton.

… But that support is part and parcel of a decades-long encroachment of neoliberalism and its gospel of market infallibility on black politics, and on the Democratic Party in general….

Neoliberalism has also neutralized the passionate advocacy long a feature of black leadership. Few black leaders beat the drum against the Democrats’ rightward drift, even though the party’s abandonment of the working class disproportionately affects black communities. …

The black political establishment has fallen prey to the same corporate influence as the rest of the Democratic establishment. In 2010, the New York Times reported that the CBC Foundation, the nonprofit arm of the CBC, raised $53 million over a five-year period, much of it from corporate donors—Big Pharma, telecom and financial industries. Most went to finance leisure activities such as glitzy conventions, golf and casino junkets, and underwriting the foundation’s headquarters. …

Rashad Robinson, executive director of the activist group Color of Change and a critic of the CBC, terms such practices “civil-rights washing …

A real debate within the black community over whom to support would have signaled to Clinton and the Democratic establishment that the days of taking black folks for granted are over. … t would have aligned Black America with the global anti-elite political revolt currently underway. … Instead of using the Sanders challenge to make the candidates compete for black votes, the black establishment effectively awarded Clinton a no-bid contract. Sweetheart deals are as bad in politics as in commerce.

One of the things that most frustrated James, was a tendency on some parts of the Left to discount the importance of electoral politics or to call for the establishment of a third party. As he saw it, building popular movements went hand-in-hand with electoral activism.

In October 2016, as the general election loomed, James wrote “The Luxury of Opting Out of This Election.” He wrote, in part:

 [F]ew topics have generated more spirited discussion among its readers and writers than how the Left should relate to the Democratic Party: whether to challenge the neoliberal establishment from within or to build a competing political structure from without. This is an old debate, but carries more relevance and urgency today than ever, given the rise of a neofascist Republican presidential nominee.

A core mission of left movements is to promote the interests of working-class and marginalized communities. Yet for many such communities, this debate is far removed from everyday realities.

People whose livelihoods can turn with an election don’t have the luxury to wait for a messianic third party—or a political revolution, for that matter—to rescue them. As just one example, for those making minimum wage, this election could make the difference between their pay plummeting (if Trump carries through on abolishing the federal floor of $7.25 per hour) or doubling (if Hillary Clinton makes good on the Democratic Party platform promise, pushed through by the Sanders campaign, to raise the minimum to $15). On purely humanitarian terms, progressives must help ensure relief for vulnerable communities by voting without apology for the candidate—yes, Hillary Clinton—who will embrace a minimum wage hike. …

Since its founding, In These Times has championed an inside-outside strategy of political engagement—pushing the Democratic Party left by working through the electoral system while simultaneously building popular movements. That strategy works. Outside, the climate movement forced President Obama to cancel the Keystone XL pipeline in November 2015. Inside, the Sanders campaign pushed Clinton to abandon her support for the pro-corporate Trans-Pacific Partnership. Should Clinton be elected, it will be up to the progressive movement, mobilizing on the outside and organizing on the inside, to encourage her to tack to the left, rather than, as was her husband’s wont, to the right.

Here at In These Times, we pledge to continue to help build a national progressive movement by reporting on conditions on the ground and providing a forum to share strategies, solutions and lessons learned. As In These Times’ 40 years on the beat demonstrate, we are up to this historic challenge.

James, a principled internationalist, did not believe “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” He was particularly skeptical of those on the Left who, rather than condemn political persecution and violations of human rights wherever they occur, establish a hierarchy of oppressors, excusing despotic governments merely because their leaders oppose Washington’s imperial designs. In August 2018, James took up the subject of creeping fascism in “We Can Criticize U.S. Imperialism and Oppose Putin, Too.” He wrote, in part:

Some on the American Left feel the attention given to the Trump-Putin alliance and the ongoing Mueller investigation is problematic. The incredible phenomenon of a president who behaves like a Russian intelligence asset—his inability in Helsinki to criticize Russian interference in U.S. elections when asked—makes for riveting television. But critics argue the outrage expressed by many progressives toward Putin is overblown and hypocritical. The wall-to-wall media coverage, they say, distracts from underreported crises locally and globally, including racist police violence, nuclear proliferation, domestic voter suppression, the war in Syria and so on.

Critics also suggest the focus on the Mueller investigation comes at the expense of a potential focus on American warmongering. They remind us that the United States also interferes in other countries’ elections, and contend that people of color in the United States are so besieged with other concerns that Trump’s Russian connections are of little interest or import. But as progressives, we should be able to walk and chew gum at the same time.

Those on the Left who criticize Russian interference and Putin’s authoritarian posturing—his xenophobia, racism, homophobia and sexism—are simply being consistent, resisting the bad “campist” habit of confusing principled anti-imperialism with reflexive support for Washington’s antagonists.

… A truly internationalist Left must persist in resisting reactionary global actors everywhere.

James’ voice in In These Times will be sorely missed. But like his organizing strategy and the influence it had on many, the words James wrote will survive through the people who read and reflected on his essays. His is a legacy In These Times is honored to have contributed to.

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

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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 […]

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https://gizmodo.com/apples-fancy-browser-privacy-tech-may-do-more-harm-than-1841176956 #bigtech #purism #privacy

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

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