Roxanne kicked the conversation off with her post on how the right consistently disparages progressive policy as “radical” despite those policies being widely popular. We also covered the root causes of white male misogyny, racism, and xenophobia.
In brief,
Nick Estes, Red Nation Author at Collected Works, 202 Galisteo, Santa Fe Monday August 12 at 6pm. Estes is the author of The Red Deal, an indigenous peoples plan for the climate crisis. I posted a link to it yesterday, but didn’t emphasis enough just how insightful it is. It puts in historic context the current indigenous struggle for sovereignty. The Red Deal is a MUST READ. Tonight, Estes will be discussing his new book Our History is the Future. Click here to read The Red Deal.
Actions and Events in Support of Indigenous Populations. Unfortunately, the Cocteau event is sold out. But the march on Aug. 17, 2-4pm is an important way to show support for indigenous populations and indigenous rights.
A Look Back at Last Week’s Posts
Roxanne’s post got a very wide readership and then was published in Sunday’s New Mexican. What was far less widely read was the important follow up post that was published on Thursday. I’d say that this past week offered up three MUST READs: 1) If Generosity & Kindness Guided Policy, Our Tax System Would be Progressive and Our Taxes would Serve Our Communities, Not Corporations; –the Thursday blog 2) The Red Deal by Nick Estes; and 3) Rebecca Solnit’s Our Forever War: how white male hegemony uses violence to cling to power. Brief summaries of last week’s posts follow with links to each post.
If Progressives Are “Radical,” America is “Radical” From Roxanne Barber
Tuesday, August 6. For far too long, the right has controlled how the political conversation is framed, much to their advantage. Roxanne refutes the labels and frames commonly used by the right to disparage ideas embraced by most Americans. The post was published as a My View by the Santa Fe New Mexican yesterday. Click here to read the full post from Roxanne.
If Generosity & Kindness Guided Policy, Our Tax System Would be Progressive & Our Taxes Would Serve Communities, Not Corporations
Thursday, August 8. This post followed up on Roxanne’s discussion of the use of language. It posed the question: Is it radical for government to organize our communal resources to effectively benefit the majority? Is it radical to use our resources to care for the sick, educate our children, protect our planet and support our seniors as they age? It also described how corporations and the wealthy have taught us that helping individuals makes them lazy and weak, while subsidizing corporations makes for a stronger economy. While research shows that they are wrong on both counts, they still hold sway. Why? Click here to read the full post. I strongly encourage our readers to review this post if they missed it. For some reason it was not opened by as many folks as is typical.
What Is Wrong With White Males?
Saturday, August 10 Your Weekend Reading. Just as we are now offering up a series of important video on Sundays, on Saturdays, we will post links to some of the better articles I have read during the past week in researching for blog content.
In this post we link to an article on emerging efforts to quash dissent in the US, making protests against ICE, white supremacists, racists, and climate atrocities illegal, a chilling prospect to say the least. We also provide a link to Rebecca Solnit’s brilliant article on how the US has been at war since its first steps in North America and that this war has continued with US efforts to control slaves and slaughter and deracinate the indigenous people. She then explores how that national policy is manifest not just in white racists, but too many white males. Brilliant article. Click here to read the full post.
Sunday at the Movies: Stephen Colbert, Tom Steyer and Nick Estes
Sunday, August 11. Sunday Stephen Colbert took on the NRA, Trump, and US inability to address gun violence…one of his best lampoons. Then a look at Tom Steyer, Dem. presidential candidate. And closing with Nick Estes, author of The Red Deal and Our History is the Future. In this Democracy Now interview, Estes talks about the Red Deal and oppressive US policy imposed upon indigenous peoples. Very good interview. Click here to review the full post.
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This is kind of excruciating to watch. Here we have one of our corporate media outlets, one that built engagement, and allowed, no encouraged. vile racists comments and extremist ideology back in 2015 framing this. https://www.abqjournal.com/1352493/prep-not-session-politicking-needed-to-fight-domestic-terror.html
The same with the other newspaper, the local one. They supported dumpf, because he was “good for business.” They left out the Racism, just like the rest mass media. Dumpf’s was known, and documented, back in the 1980s. Our local corporate media normalized dumpf and the extremism. On a day with no dumpf news, they ran an article about him in the sports pages. He stiffed on of his caddies and instead gave him “business advice.” They ran a heart warming story, justifying not tipping an employee, and instead offering something more valuable, business advice. They barely covered Sanders, except to slam him, and his people.
The thread of white supremacy and denial in our local community, Santa Fe, has not been acknowledged or identified. It is the dark and dirty secret, here in river city. I doubt the Egolf is fully aware of all of the facts, after all he has normalized it, and enabled it too, in the spirit of “Bi Partisanship. Our local politicians ignored it, or exploited it, for decades. It is hard to tell what will be Enough here. Children are living in fear from gun violence and white supremacy, that should have been enough to call a Special Session. That was enough, back in 2014.
I don’t think our governor wants to expose the disgusting underbelly, or turn over any rocks to see what crawls out. After all dumpf has made a lot of people even more wealthy, the stock market is still appears to be doing good. That and their corporate benefactors are holding back on Impeachment too. Fascism is good for business. Ya gotta love the Neo Liberals always framing things in a positive light.
Gutting the Endangered Species Act, and targeting a whole race of people, was not the only thing on the agenda.
https://www.abqjournal.com/1353158/trump-to-promote-turning-natural-gas-into-plastics-in-pa.html
It is scary how cowed people are around here. I realized that people are either too afraid to protest, the police response to the Entrada Protest, a while back, showed how our system works. Our under funded courts, and the DAs office and the attorney general as well, did not see a problem with police lying in order to make an arrest or incite violence. That was with witnesses and video, but people round here know that this is a common occurrence. The Racism and White supremacy angle was not explored, it was as if it never happened. It showed the extreme response the police would use to suppress any kind of protest.
Not one person has asked if our local police were involved in White Nationalist or Extremist websites or groups. This stuff was really blatant back in 2015, and immediately after the 2106 election. I can no longer get access to these sites, It was too disgusting to monitor them, and of course local politicians ignored it, or engaged in it. Denial has been really effective for them.. No local journalists would track it down either. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/apr/01/intelligence-law-enforcement-report-leftwing-terrorists-charlottesville We don’t have access to what our local police departments are up to, even though they are supposed to be working for the community.
The governor is having a Summit, the public is not invited, which includes the very police departments that engage in racist and misogynistic online activities. The very same ones that believe that “Antifa” is more dangerous than white nationalist, Nazis or whatever else they go by. https://www.policeone.com/Crowd-Control/articles/484694006-Portland-braces-for-far-right-rally-counterprotest/
Our local news media is still portraying “both sides” They always include a little red meat for the Trumpsters. Today, the message was that the governor is not protecting schoolchildren, https://www.santafenewmexican.com/news/local_news/what-the-governor-has-is-a-failure-to-communicate/article_18b1ac87-e4e0-5307-bf6a-61cdd03490fa.html Not offering overtime to off duty cops in schools is somehow more important than banning assault weapons, or background checks. This is another distraction by the right wing, in line with the false narrative of “arming teachers,” and turning schools into bunkers. No doubt off duty cops should be paid well, but our schools have been underfunded due to race, and there have been “incidents” with police and school security officers.
Once again Umair Haque describes the global issues, https://eand.co/why-the-megacapitalist-global-economy-america-made-is-imploding-397a1d3ab791 The stock market looks like it might tank, perhaps that will get the corporate democrats engaged, but the denial is still palpable. This article explains the complacency which manifested as “bi partisanship: during the last legislative session, https://theintercept.com/2019/08/13/koch-brothers-third-way/ Groups like Think New Mexico, and Rio Grande Foundation, and various conservative organizations had more money, than the people. Thanks to Citizens United, money is equal to speech.
Michael Moore had a really good take on it all. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lGYFRzf2Xww&feature=youtube Then there is this, https://www.propublica.org/article/fbi-domestic-terrorism-arrest-data
Protests are bad for business, even when those businesses are actively engaging in undermining democracy, and profiting from the human rights violations and inhumane treatment at the Border and in our neighborhoods. https://www.theverge.com/2019/8/12/20802893/whole-foods-employees-amazon-ice-protest-palantir-facial-recognition Nobody around here is paying attention. This story got suppressed too, https://www.theverge.com/2019/8/9/20798416/amazon-foxconn-china-labor-laws-teenager-work-overtime-echo-kindle-investigation Sanders took on this mega monopoly, the only politician who has and then got attacked by the media for making a statement about Bezos’s newspaper. Of course the corporate media left out the context. https://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=750800062
Years ago we could trust NPR but they work for the corporations too. Amazon is making plenty of money, there are no Anti Trust laws anymore. Nobody talks about Boycotting, and there are too many monopolies, and they are too much in control for an effective Boycott.