Old Fucking Punk @lwriemen@librem.one

How a Sewer Socialist City May Push Democrats Left in 2020

Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett announced March 11 that, for the first time in its history, the city will host the 2020 Democratic National Convention.

In some ways, the choice was obvious. Wisconsin is a swing state whose demographics—in terms of race, ethnicity, income, education and neighborhood composition—closely reflect those of the United States as a whole. And the memory of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 snub is still fresh in the minds of many Midwesterners: During Clinton’s presidential campaign, her team (led by Robby Mook) decided that Wisconsin was such a safe Democratic stronghold, Clinton wouldn’t need to visit. She lost Wisconsin by around 23,000 votes.

The Democratic Party has clearly learned from this 2016 mistake as it considers strategies to turn battlegrounds like Wisconsin blue. But one can also make the case that, in choosing Milwaukee, the party is honoring the city’s unique political history. Milwaukee is the only major U.S. city to have elected three socialist mayors: Emil Seidel, Daniel Hoan and Frank Zeidler. They held office for a collective 38 years (between 1910 and 1960) and helped earn Milwaukee a reputation for being, as Time magazine reported in 1936, “perhaps the best governed city in the U.S.”

Mark Jefferson, executive director of the Republican Party of Wisconsin, seized upon this history as an opportunity to redbait: “No city in America has stronger ties to socialism,” he said in a statement about the 2020 Democratic convention. “And with the rise of Bernie Sanders and the embrace of socialism by its newest leaders, the American Left has come full circle. It’s only fitting the Democrats would come to Milwaukee.”

Jefferson was being snarky, but he’s arguably correct. Nearly all the Democratic presidential candidates have included policies in their campaign platforms that harken back to the city’s legacy of “sewer socialist” mayors (a phrase coined in 1932 that refers to the superlative public works projects created by Milwaukee socialists). Milwaukeeans didn’t seem particularly bothered by the term, though. “Yes, we wanted sewers in the workers’ houses,” Mayor Emil Seidel wrote in his 1944 memoirs, “but we wanted much, oh, so very much more than sewers. We wanted our workers to have pure air; we wanted them to have sunshine; we wanted planned homes; we wanted living wages; we wanted recreation for young and old; we wanted vocational education; we wanted a chance for every human being to be strong and live a life of happiness.”

Tom Perez, chair of the Democratic National Committee, seemed to suggest that Milwaukee’s progressive politicians embodied the party’s best impulses, stating at the March 11 press conference, “Where you hold a convention is a very strong statement of your values … of who we are as a party, and who and what we’re fighting for.”

Perez, whose wife grew up in the Milwaukee suburbs, is likely well aware of the city’s socialist history. His own politics around socialism are less clear: A well-respected labor secretary under President Barack Obama, Perez beat out the Left’s preferred candidate for DNC chair, Congressional Progressive Caucus co-chair Keith Ellison, who was endorsed by the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), the Progressive Democrats of America, Friends of the Earth Action, Unite Here and many other progressive organizations.

The Milwaukee chapter of the DSA, for its part, intends to leverage the city’s history to elevate democratic socialists—in particular, Bernie Sanders. They’re even thinking of leading a series of socialist history tours for politicians and delegates, with stops at local landmarks such as Turner Hall and the Riverwest Public House. In the meantime, residents continue to express interest in joining the chapter, which has seen its membership surge since the 2016 election. 

As more and more Democratic voters, especially millennials, identify as democratic socialists, it feels momentous that Milwaukee, with its proud “sewer socialist” past, will be hosting the Democratic convention. Candidates vying for the nomination will have to ask themselves: Will they embrace socialism, or run from it?

The socialist movement in Milwaukee has its beginnings in the mid-1800s, when German immigrants began moving to the city in droves. Many of them had been vocal supporters of the revolutions of 1848—a series of failed uprisings led by middle-class people who wanted to bring democracy to Europe’s remaining monarchies—and they brought their liberal ideas with them as they settled in Brew City. Yet those ideas may never have gained real traction if it weren’t for German-born Milwaukee socialists, such as the socialist newspaper editor Paul Grottkau, who helped spearhead a citywide strike in the spring of 1886. 

In 1886, Grottkau was among the founders of Milwaukee’s Eight-hour League, a group of workers dedicated to shorter workdays. That same year, Polish laborers began meeting at a local church to organize a general strike in protest of their 10-hour workdays. Together, they recruited thousands of people to join their cause.

On May 2, around 14,500 protesters marched through the streets of Milwaukee, chanting and waving banners. Tens of thousands of spectators turned out. According to a 1910 article in the Milwaukee Free Press, “Reports came in thick and fast that in all parts of the city uprisings were taking place and that large bodies of laboring men were marching toward the manufacturing plants intent on rioting and destruction.”

Afraid that the local police would not be able to control the crowds, Wisconsin Gov. Jeremiah Rusk dispatched the state militia to subdue them. By the time his troops reached the city, protesters had shut down every major factory in the metro area, save for the Bay View Rolling Mills, whose managers had insisted on keeping it open. On May 5, around 1,500 protesters—including many women and children who had joined the strikers—marched toward the factories, intent on convincing the workers there to shut them down.

When the marchers neared the militia, they stopped. But Major George P. Traeumer, anticipating violence from the protesters, ordered the soldiers to fire at will. At least five people were killed, including a 13-year-old, and many more injured. The bloody retaliation brought the 1886 strike to an abrupt end. In the months that followed, the public began to empathize more with the socialists who helped organize the strike. 

When Grottkau was convicted of inciting a riot and sentenced to a year in prison, he leveraged all the media attention he was receiving to announce a run for mayor of Milwaukee. He didn’t win, but he helped popularize working-class causes like public ownership of utilities and the elimination of graft in local government, leading the way for the successful electoral campaigns of other socialists.

In 1904, Emil Seidel became one of nine socialists to join Milwaukee’s city council as an alderman. In 1910, Seidel became the first socialist to win a mayoral race in a major U.S. city, with about 6,500 more votes than the next candidate. That same year, socialists carried 14 of the city’s 23 wards. 

Seidel became interested in progressive politics and Marxism while studying woodcarving in Berlin. From 1910-12, he established the first public works office in the city. Seidel also closed many of Milwaukee’s gambling parlors and brothels and created a public parks system. And he infuriated both Democrats and Republicans by cracking down on political corruption.

Dems and the GOP collaborated to beat out Seidel in 1912 by jointly endorsing a different candidate, but many other socialists managed to hold onto public office and continued to push for progressive reform. One of them was Daniel Hoan, who was elected Milwaukee’s city attorney in 1910. While holding that office, he pushed the country’s first worker’s compensation law through the state legislature and helped Seidel reduce corruption in the local government by making their processes streamlined and transparent. Hoan gained enough popular support to mount a successful mayoral campaign in 1916 and held the office for 24 years.

Hoan established a public bus system and the nation’s first public housing project and successfully steered Milwaukee toward public ownership of its stone quarry, streetlights, sewage disposal system and water purification system. Hoan created a program to make textbooks free for local students and another to administer free vaccines. He is still widely considered one of the most altruistic mayors in American history.

The most recent Milwaukee mayoral socialist, Frank Zeidler, held office from 1948 to 1960. His biggest achievement as mayor was incorporating many suburbs into the city, nearly doubling Milwaukee’s size and tax base (which forestalled the urban blight that had begun to plague cities that failed to incorporate their suburbs, like St. Louis, around the same time). Zeidler was also a staunch advocate for civil rights legislation and helped push for the establishment of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. 

Near the end of his time in office, Zeidler released an “Inner Core Report,” a study describing Milwaukee’s inner-city conditions with a detailed plan to improve the city’s increasingly strained race relations. The suggestions, which could have helped prevent much of the redlining that would eventually transform Milwaukee into one of the most segregated cities in the United States, were largely ignored by his successor. 

The greater legacy of Milwaukee’s socialist politicians is still palpable today. Milwaukee’s public parks system is one of the most extensive in the country. Its public beaches (in the early 1900s, wealthy Milwaukeeans bought up most of the city’s lakefront property—socialists then poured sand and soil into the harbor in front of their land to create several public beaches) draw crowds every year. 

Milwaukee’s socialists also seem to have influenced later generations of progressive politicians, such as Robert La Follette, a left-wing Republican who became governor of Wisconsin and founded The Progressivemagazine.

Current members of Milwaukee DSA certainly see themselves as present-day sewer socialists. Member Brandon Payton-Carrillo, 35, says he draws inspiration from the pragmatic approach to local government adopted by Seidel, Hoan and Zeidler. Payton-Carrillo hopes his chapter can leverage the 2020 DNC convention to shine a spotlight on DSA campaigns like Get the Lead Out, a coalition formed to pressure Milwaukee politicians to remove lead from the city’s drinking water. “That bottom-up grassroots experience is the foundation of Milwaukee socialism,” he says.

When Bernie Sanders and the rest of the Democratic candidates arrive in Milwaukee in July 2020, the world will be waiting to see how they articulate their vision for a better future. If any of them point to Milwaukee’s sewer socialists, and the way they governed their city, the world will be listening.

Excellent work, Brother

This London Firm Helps the Wealthy Hide Assets – or Steal Them. Luckily We Have 15 Years of Their Client Communications.

by Barrett Brown

https://quitter.im/url/2791485

A glacier is dead. A monument will tell visitors whose fault it was
https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2019/07/25/glacier-is-dead-now-monument-tells-future-visitors-whose-fault-it-was/ #climatechange #climatecrisis

#Anonymous    #FuckDonaldTrump    #FuckICE   #FuckThePolice    #ACAB


Watch as these Trump I.C.E Nazi SS Obergruppenführer FuckFace motherfuckers smash a car window to drag a father away from his family.

Better watch out, you racist, Nazi PIG motherfuckers, because people will eventually begin to fight back.

I'm so fucking over these low-life Nazi cunts!.


https://twitter.com/nowthisnews/status/1154172660026355713

More than £1bn of #food wasted before reaching #supermarkets – study | #Environment | The Guardian

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jul/25/food-waste-farms-before-reaching-supermarkets-wrap-study

#Waste #UK

Gotta Hand It To Them

The market regulates itself!

EFF Extensions Recommended by Firefox

Earlier this month, Mozilla announced the release of Firefox 68, which includes a curated "list of recommended extensions that have been thoroughly reviewed for security, usability and usefulness." We are pleased to announce that both of our popular browser extensions, HTTPSEverywhere and PrivacyBadger, have been included as part of the program. Now, when you navigate to the built-in Firefox add-ons page (URL: about:addons), you'll see a new tab: "Recommendations," which includes HTTPS Everywhere and Privacy Badger among a list of other recommended extensions. In addition, they will be highlighted in Add-ons for Firefox and in add-on searches.

What does this mean for users who already have our extensions installed? If you initially installed them from addons.mozilla.org or the recommendation list, it means that there will be a slight delay after we update the extensions while Mozilla reviews the new versions for security, utility, and user experience. If you installed the self-hosted extensions directly from eff.org without going through Mozilla, you'll get the updates right away after a routine automated check. Either way, you can rest assured that EFF has audited every piece of software we release for security and performance problems.

We're thrilled that Mozilla is highlighting privacy and security-focused extensions, and greatful that HTTPS Everywhere and Privacy Badger are included in that list.

As Puerto Rico Erupts in Protests, “La Junta” Eyes More Power

While la junta and its supporters have painted the Puerto Rican government as financially irresponsible, the board itself is no paragon of fiscal restraint.

The post As Puerto Rico Erupts in Protests, “La Junta” Eyes More Power appeared first on The Intercept.

The FTC-Facebook Settlement Does Too Little to Protect Your Privacy

EFF is disappointed by the terms of the settlement agreement announced today between the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and Facebook. It is grossly inadequate to the task of protecting the privacy of technology users from Facebook’s surveillance-based system of social networking and targeted advertising.

This settlement arises from the FTC’s 2012 settlement order against Facebook, concerning the company’s deceptive statements about user privacy. Facebook violated the 2012 FTC order through its role in the Cambridge Analytica scandal, which violated the privacy rights of millions of Facebook users.

Today’s FTC-Facebook settlement does not sufficiently protect user privacy. For example:

The agreement does not limit how Facebook collects, uses, and shares the personal information of its users. It is not enough for the agreement to require Facebook to conduct its own privacy review of new products; that just empowers Facebook to decide its own collection, use, and sharing practices.
The agreement does not provide public transparency regarding how Facebook collects, uses, and shares personal information, or how Facebook implements the FTC settlement. It is not enough for only Facebook and the government to have this information.
This agreement does nothing to address Facebook’s market power in social networks and internet advertising, and may risk cementing Facebook’s market power.

These deficiencies are not cured by the $5 billion fine against Facebook. For a company the size of Facebook, this is not an effective deterrent against future violations of user privacy.

If the FTC were serious about putting a dent in the privacy problems created by Facebook’s targeted advertising business model, it could have taken aim at two of Facebook’s biggest sources of information: data brokers and third-party tracking.

Some provisions of the settlement agreement are positive. For example, it requires Facebook to delete existing face recognition templates, and bars Facebook from creating new ones, absent the user’s informed opt-in consent. Also, the settlement bars Facebook from using phone numbers provided by users to enhance their security (i.e., for two-factor authentication) for advertising purposes. Unfortunately, the settlement does not address Facebook’s other egregious abuses of user phone numbers, including exposing two-factor authentication numbers to public reverse lookup, and vacuuming up “shadow” contact information that users never gave to Facebook in the first place.

Taken as a whole, this settlement is bad news for consumer privacy. But this is bigger than Facebook. Its surveillance-driven targeted ad business model is common across the web. To protect user’s privacy rights, we need solid consumer data privacy legislation.

Causes of multidecadal climate changes

A new reconstruction of global average surface temperature change over the past 2,000 years has identified the main causes for decade-scale climate changes. The new temperature reconstruction also largely agrees with climate model simulations of the same time period. This suggests that current climate models accurately represent the contributions of various influences on global climate change -- and are capable of correctly predicting future climate warming.

Scientific consensus on humans causing #GlobalWarming passes 99% | #Science | The Guardian

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2019/jul/24/scientific-consensus-on-humans-causing-global-warming-passes-99

#ClimateChange #Environment

Activists Camped at Hawaii’s Mauna Kea Face Government Opposition as They Attempt to Block Telescope Construction on Sacred Land

Gov. David Ige gave law enforcement more authority to remove activists and ensure delivery of materials to the Thirty Meter Telescope construction site.

The post Activists Camped at Hawaii’s Mauna Kea Face Government Opposition as They Attempt to Block Telescope Construction on Sacred Land appeared first on The Intercept.

A New Study Found that 15,000 People Died Because Their State Didn’t Expand Medicaid

Approximately 15,600 people died between 2014 and 2017 as a result of their states refusing to expand Medicaid coverage under the Affordable Care Act, according to a new working paper by the National Bureau of Economic Research. The ACA promised to expand Medicaid coverage to individuals whose income was at or below 138 percent of the […]

House Intelligence Chairman Blasts Trump’s “Disloyalty to Country”

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) offered a striking review of President Donald Trump at the hearing with Special Counsel Robert Mueller on Wednesday, accusing him of “something worse” than criminality: “Disloyalty to country.” “Your investigation determined that the Trump campaign—including Trump himself—knew that a foreign power was intervening in our election and welcomed […]

30,000+ US lives could be saved by reducing air pollution levels below current standard

Research findings show significant human health benefits when air quality is better than the current national ambient air quality standard. The estimate of lives that could be saved by further reduction of air pollution levels is more than thirty thousand, which is similar to the number of deaths from car accidents each year.

The Only Thing to Say About Boris Johnson, Prime Minister

Alex Norris on the UK’s new leader.

The Protests in Puerto Rico Against Gov. Rosselló Are About Life and Death

Police donning anti-riot gear—many with their names and badge numbers covered—used teargas, pepper spray, rubber bullets, and batons to dislodge protesters from the streets surrounding the Puerto Rican governor’s mansion in Old San Juan on Wednesday evening. Earlier that day, tens of thousands assembled at the Capitol building before marching to the governor’s mansion to demand the resignation of Governor Ricardo Rosselló. This marked the fifth day of protests and a significant escalation in police violence against civilians. A series of leaked chat conversations involving the governor and other members of his inner-circle provided an unlikely spark that ignited mounting frustrations with the abuses of local elites and the colonial government. 

Last Tuesday, a small trove of messages from a private chat between Rosselló and a number of high-ranking officials sent on the encrypted messenger service Telegram were leaked to the press. The messages showed Rosselló and members of his administration using derogatory language to mock political rivals. Although the 11 pages of the chat initially released were damning on their own, Puerto Ricans were shocked by what they read when the Center for Investigative Journalism released a total of 889 pages to the public on Saturday.

The full leaked chat—although there are rumors that more leaked chats involving additional members of the Rosselló team could be on the way—demonstrated the utter contempt and disregard that the political ruling class has for the people of Puerto Rico. The chat paints Rosselló and his inner circle as little more than a pack of overgrown frat boys. The men in the chat engage in all manner of homophobic, transphobic, and misogynist “locker room talk,” calling political opponents putas (whores) and mamabichos (cocksuckers), commenting on women’s bodies, and insulting feminists and members of the LGBTQ+ community. While this alone is certainly worthy of condemnation, protesters are not taking to the streets because of the profanity in the chats. Rather, protesters are situating the chats within a broader context of structural violence, degradation, and exploitation that mark contemporary Puerto Rican society.

The combined catastrophes of the island’s debt crisis and Hurricane María have forced Puerto Ricans to endure an onslaught of both symbolic and material violence that must be negotiated on a near daily basis. From a surge in police killings and repression to rampant government corruption to the regular insults emanating from the colonial government, Puerto Ricans are confronted with constant attacks on their communities, bodies, mental health, and very humanity. The leaked chats painfully show how the current political formation in Puerto Rico, and the economic and political elites who sustain it, devalue life and facilitate the premature deaths of Puerto Ricans—particularly those who occupy the most vulnerable positions in society. The rhetoric and attitudes of the governor and his closest allies captured in the chat are ones that promote harm and death in myriad ways, from the outright incitement of violence to the promotion of a neoliberal politics of deadly neglect. This is something that protesters have been clear about since the beginning of the protests, although the mainstream media, and particularly U.S. based outlets, have narrowly framed the story around the governor and his associates’ inappropriate language and conduct. To suggest that thousands upon thousands from across the political spectrum are pouring into the streets with an intensity that has not been seen in years over foul language minimizes the ways that, for Puerto Ricans, these protests are quite literally about life and death.

It’s not just that Rosselló and others in the chat referred to women as putas and gatitas (kittens)—it’s that they did so in a context where feminist organizers have been calling on the governor to declare a state of emergency to deal with high rates of gender-based violence for over a year. The governor, when asked about the misogynistic, homophobic, and transphobic language used throughout the chat, said that he was overworked and blowing off steam. But as feminists in Puerto Rico are quick to note, dozens of women have been killed at the hands of stressed out men who were just blowing off steam. The governor’s words aren’t just profane— as he has repeatedly refused to address the high rates of violence that women and queer people confront in Puerto Rico, they translate into lives lost. As Vanessa Contreras Capó, a spokesperson for the Colectiva Feminista en Construcción put it, “His attack was not that he called us ‘whores,’ ‘kittens,’ or any other macho epithet; the governor’s attack is that he still has not declared a state of emergency against gender violence.”

In one of the most disgusting exchanges in the chat, the “brothers,” as the participants refer to themselves, made light of the unprocessed bodies that accumulated in the Office of the Medical Examiner following Hurricane María. In response to comments made by Rosselló’s chief of staff Ricardo Llerandi, Rosselló notes in the chat that they have to work to bury the story—“Hay que matar esa historia rápido” (We have to kill that story quickly). Former chief financial officer and the governor’s representative to the Financial Oversight Board, Christian Sobrino, then replies, “Now that we're on that subject, do we not have a corpse to feed our crows? They clearly need attention.”

As numerous studies have shown, thousands lost their lives as a result of government ineptitude following Hurricane María. Yet the dead emerge in the chat as little more than a problem of optics. The punchline of this macabre joke drives home what many Puerto Ricans already knew—that their lives mattered little to the local government or Washington, and that their deaths mattered only insofar as they represent a problem to be managed. The past couple of days have seen protesters outside of the governor’s mansion holding signs with the names of loved ones who died as a result of the crisis provoked by Hurricane María. These protestors connected the chat’s disrespect of the dead to the larger structural violence of the Rosselló administration’s mishandling of the recovery, as well as its efforts to cover up the true scale of the disaster. For Puerto Ricans, this wasn’t just a crude or distasteful joke—it was proof of the callousness and disdain for the public with which elites govern.

For Puerto Ricans, the leaked chat was only the latest reminder of the ways that their lives are devalued and their futures circumscribed by both colonial rule and the avarice of local elites. Protesters are speaking out against the content of the chats, but they also are voicing a set of much broader demands to fundamentally reshape Puerto Rican society. People are demanding a life-affirming and more just society as they fill the streets of Old San Juan. They are demanding an end to the austerity measures that have already caused great suffering and threaten the ability of future generations to remain in Puerto Rico and live a dignified life. They’re demanding an audit of the island’s $124 billion debt and the dissolution of the Financial Oversight Board, which critics slam for deepening Puerto Rico’s colonial relationship with the United States. They’re demanding that government officials be held responsible for acts of corruption and profiteering that further deplete public funds and strip nurturing institutions of necessary resources. They’re demanding a future where lives are valued and deaths are mourned.

What the chat makes clear is that the current political arrangement cannot provide that future for Puerto Ricans. That’s why people are taking to the streets—not only to demand Rosselló’s resignation, but also to clearly express that the current political situation is unacceptable. Wednesday’s protest was one of the largest in recent history and some are even likening the protests of the past few days to the mobilizations to eject the U.S. Navy from the island municipality of Vieques. Indeed, the protests have brought together an important cross-section of Puerto Rican society speaking to widespread discontent with the current political situation.

Tellingly, one of the most galvanizing figures of the protests has been El Rey Charlie, who mobilized motorcycle and four track enthusiasts to join the protests and wage audio warfare against the governor by revving their engines outside of the governor’s mansion at night. El Rey Charlie has successfully brought working class Puerto Ricans who are often ignored by both political elites and activists into the heart of these protests. On Wednesday night, El Rey Charlie and his crew rode through working class neighborhoods and public housing communities encouraging people to join their caravan to the governor’s mansion. Just as a motorized cavalcade of an estimated 3,000-4,000 people were about to ride into Old San Juan, the police declared the protest over, said the constitution no longer applied, and started to forcibly remove people from the area, nearly causing a stampede.

Protesters have committed to remain in the streets until Rosselló resigns despite threats from police commissioner Henry Escalera to defend the “democratic” government of Puerto Rico “to the last drop of blood.” It’s not clear what exactly will come next, as the governor refuses to step down in the face of mounting protests. Still, one thing is certain: For people taking to the streets, Rosselló and the elite boys’ club that he represents have no future in Puerto Rico.

This story first appeared at NACLA.

The Just Transition for Coal Workers Can Start Now. Colorado Is Showing How.

This past May, Colorado’s Democratic governor Jared Polis signed a series of new environmental bills into law, with the enthusiastic backing of the state’s labor movement. Legislation ranged from expanding community solar gardens to establishing a “Just Transition” office for coal-dependent communities.

Robert Mueller’s Testimony So Far

Lieu: “The reason again that you did not indict Donald Trump is because of OLC opinion stating you cannot indict a sitting president, correct?” Mueller: “That is correct.” pic.twitter.com/yemIYmMkmb — Brian Beutler (@brianbeutler) July 24, 2019

Read Robert Mueller’s Full Opening Statement Before the House Judiciary Committee