HILARIOUS! — INSIDE THE DEMOCRATIC SOCIALIST ANTIFA COMMUNIST CABAL

 

Well, here it is — what some most fear about democratic socialism all laid out in vivid horrifying images. And you can't say that Bernie Sanders, Zohran Mamdani, Howard Zinn, Martin Luther King, Jr., Albert Einstein, and other democratic socialists didn't warn us. And here I am, a democratic socialist, but never truly understanding what that really meant. So I am grateful for the clarification. Hahaha!!!

Laughter is good for the heart, mind, body, 

and soul. Enjoy! 😂🙏💜 Molly

https://www.dsausa.org/

Celebrating 16 Years With My Beloved

 

Celebrating 16 Years With My Beloved

These images from over our 16 years together are reminders of the deep blessings, medicine, and gifts of love. 

This has not been an easy journey for me to truly undefend my heart and allow the vulnerability and trust, the lessons and accountability, the healing and courage, and the commitment to the deep work that an enduring and expansive love asks of us. And yet, this is the opportunity that I have experienced in connecting with a soulful partner committed to doing his own work and sharing this amazing path of shedding our delusions and releasing our old wounds and deep fears which so often inevitability emerge when we open our hearts deeply to another human being.

Today I am aware that I will be forever grateful for the profound blessings and synchronicity and grace which brought Ron and myself to the little coffee shop in Portland where we first met on November 11th, 2010. And what kids we were then at 59 and 62 and soon to be finding ourselves falling head over heals in love. 

And, of course, there were also bumps and setbacks and scary and painful places — and especially in our early days — which sent each of us off to therapy and other resources of support. As Jack Kornfield has written about, "first the ecstasy, then the laundry." So true!

Gratefully, there was also already much healing work that we had each done before we ever met. And there was more to do. Of course. It is often too easy to be triggered into acting in ways which unknowingly sabotage exactly that which we most yearn for — something which I have certainly done in my past. Life can be so humbling. And scary. And we are all human and it is not easy to be human and to keep our hearts open.

This is what our intimate relationships call us into — the courageous territory of further working with our old triggers and trauma, of assuming greater accountability and embodying deeper compassion, and of deepening and expanding the ongoing sacred journey of unburdening ourselves of our old wounds and learning how to undefend our hearts.

And Love is always the greatest medicine. 

I write this today with the deepest love and gratitude to my beloved husband. Over the years, Ron and I have sought and received the support we each needed to recognize and heal those sabotaging fearful old wounded places that served to obstruct true intimacy and an expansive and deepening love. And we never gave up when things got really scary and hard.

And through this sacred process, we have been empowered to bring the nourishment and the safe ground, the commitment and courage, the vulnerability and compassion, the courage and kindness, and the wisdom and abiding love needed to increasingly support ourselves and each other in growing into more and more of the wholeness and beauty of who we most truly are.

There is no greater gift that we humans can give to each other and ourselves. It takes courage to recognize and own and heal the old wounds and seek whatever support we need to do so. It takes deep commitment and courage to risk vulnerability and authenticity, to be honest and open-hearted, to trust and love another human being. And when we have found those who grace us in such profound ways on our human journeys, we have been blessed with life's greatest treasure.

And I will forevermore treasure my beloved Ron.  🙏💜 Molly

Howard Zinn: Veterans and Dissent at the War Memorial

For Veteran's Day. This is something that I am 

moved to share every year. Howard Zinn is a national

and international treasure. His legacy lives on.

— Molly

For Veterans Day, we highlight this article, “Dissent at the War Memorial,” written by Howard Zinn for The Progressive in 2004. Asked to speak on a panel called, “War Stories,” Zinn said, “I don’t want to honor military heroism–that conceals too much death and suffering. I want to honor those who all these years have opposed the horror of war.”

This is followed by additional resources for learning and teaching about war.

_______________

By Howard Zinn Website

As I write this, the sounds of the World War II Memorial celebration in Washington, D.C., are still in my head. I was invited by the Smithsonian Institution to be on one of the panels, and the person who called to invite me said that the theme would be “War Stories.” I told him that I would come, but not to tell “war stories,” rather to talk about World War II and its meaning for us today. Fine, he said.

I made my way into a scene that looked like a movie set for a Cecil B. DeMille extravaganza—huge tents pitched here and there, hawkers with souvenirs, thousands of visitors, many of them clearly World War II veterans, some in old uniforms, sporting military caps, wearing their medals. In the tent designated for my panel, I joined my fellow panelist, an African American woman who had served with the WACS (Women’s Army Corps) in World War II, and who would speak about her personal experiences in a racially segregated army.

I was introduced as a veteran of the Army Air Corps, a bombardier who had flown combat missions over Europe in the last months of the war. I wasn’t sure how this audience would react to what I had to say about the war, in that atmosphere of celebration, in the honoring of the dead, in the glow of a great victory accompanied by countless acts of military heroism.

This, roughly, is what I said: “I’m here to honor the two guys who were my closest buddies in the Air Corps—Joe Perry and Ed Plotkin—both of whom were killed in the last weeks of the war. And to honor all the others who died in that war. But I’m not here to honor war itself. I’m not here to honor the men in Washington who send the young to war. I’m certainly not here to honor those in authority who are now waging an immoral war in Iraq.”

I went on: “World War II is not simply and purely a ‘good war.’ It was accompanied by too many atrocities on our side—too many bombings of civilian populations. There were too many betrayals of the principles for which the war was supposed to have been fought.

“Yes, World War II had a strong moral aspect to it—the defeat of fascism. But I deeply resent the way the so-called good war has been used to cast its glow over all the immoral wars we have fought in the past fifty years: in Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Grenada, Panama, Iraq, Afghanistan. I certainly don’t want our government to use the triumphal excitement surrounding World War II to cover up the horrors now taking place in Iraq.

“I don’t want to honor military heroism—that conceals too much death and suffering. I want to honor those who all these years have opposed the horror of war.”

The audience applauded. But I wasn’t sure what that meant. I knew I was going against the grain of orthodoxy, the romanticization of the war in movies and television and now in the war memorial celebrations in the nation’s capital.

There was a question-and-answer period. The first person to walk up front was a veteran of World War II, wearing parts of his old uniform. He spoke into the microphone: “I was wounded in World War II and have a Purple Heart to show for it. If President Bush were here right now I would throw that medal in his face.”

There was a moment of what I think was shock at the force of his statement. Then applause. I wondered if I was seeing a phenomenon that recurs often in society—when one voice speaks out against the conventional wisdom, and is recognized as speaking truth, people are drawn out of their previous silence.

I was encouraged by the thought that it is possible to challenge the standard glorification of the Second World War, and more important, to refuse to allow it to give war a good name. I did not want this celebration to make it easy for the American public to accept whatever monstrous adventure is cooked up by the establishment in Washington.

More and more, I am finding that I am not the only veteran of World War II who refuses to be corralled into justifying the wars of today, drawing on the emotional and moral capital of World War II. There are other veterans who do not want to overlook the moral complexity of World War II: the imperial intentions of the Allies even as they declared it a war against fascism, and for democracy; the deliberate bombing of civilian populations to destroy the morale of the enemy.

Paul Fussell was an infantry lieutenant who was badly wounded while a platoon leader in France in World War II.

“For the past fifty years the Allied war has been sanitized and romanticized almost beyond recognition by the sentimental, the loony patriotic, the ignorant, and the bloodthirsty,” he wrote in Wartime.

It was easier, after the end of World War II, to point to its stupidities and cruelties in fiction rather than in a direct onslaught on what was so universally acclaimed as “the good war.” Thus, Joseph Heller in Catch-22 captured the idiocy of military life, the crass profiteering, the pointless bombings. And Kurt Vonnegut, in Slaughterhouse-Five, brought to a large readership the awful story of the bombing of Dresden.

My own delayed criticism of the war—I had volunteered and was an enthusiastic bombardier—began with reflecting about my participation in the bombing of Royan. This was a small town on the Atlantic coast of France, where several thousand German soldiers had been overrun and were waiting for the war to end. Twelve hundred heavy bombers flew over the vicinity of Royan and dropped napalm, killing German soldiers and French civilians, destroying what was once a beautiful little resort town.

Recently, a man wrote to me who had heard me speak on the radio about that bombing mission and said he was also on that mission. After the war, he became a fireman, then a carpenter, and is now a strong opponent of war. He told me of a friend of his who was also on that mission, and who has been arrested many times in anti-war actions. I was encouraged to hear that.

World War II veterans get in touch with me from time to time. One is Edward Wood Jr. of Denver, who upon hearing I was going to be at the Washington Memorial, wrote to me: He said, “If I were there, I would say: As a combat veteran of World War II, severely wounded in France in 1944, never the man I might have been because of that wound, I so wish that this memorial to World War II might have been made of more than stone or marble. I mourn my generation’s failures since its victory in World War II . . . our legacy of incessant warfare in smaller nations far from our borders.”

Another airman, Ken Norwood, was shot down on his tenth mission over Europe, and spent a year as a prisoner of war in Germany. He has written a memoir (unpublished, so far) which he says is “intentionally an anti-war war story.” Packed first into a box car, and then forced to march for two weeks through Bavaria in the spring of 1945, Norwood saw the mangled corpses of the victims of Allied bombs, the working class neighborhoods destroyed. All his experiences, he says, “add to the harsh testimony about the futility and obscenity of war.”

The glorification of the “good war” persists on our television and movie screens, in the press, in the pretentious speeches by politicians. The more ugly the stories that come out of Iraq—the bombing of civilians, the mutilation of children, the invasion of homes, and now the torture of prisoners—the more urgent it is for our government to try to crowd out all those images with the triumphant stories of D-Day and World War II.

Those who fought in that war are perhaps better able than anyone to insist that whatever moral standing can be attached to that war must not be used to turn our eyes away from Bush’s atrocities in Afghanistan and Iraq.

____________

Published in The Progressive • August 8, 2004

Image: Bas relief at the World War II Memorial • National Park Service

Please go here for the original article: https://www.howardzinn.org/dissent-at-the-war-memorial/

Thích Nhất Hạnh: To Work For Peace Is To Uproot War From Ourselves

 Another post for Veteran's Day 

and for everyday. Bless 

us all, no exceptions.

🙏 Molly

We often think of peace as the absence of war, that if powerful countries would reduce their weapon arsenals, we could have peace. But if we look deeply into the weapons, we see our own minds ― our own prejudices, fears and ignorance. Even if we transport all the bombs to the moon, the roots of war and the roots of bombs are still there, in our hearts and minds, and sooner or later we will make new bombs. To work for peace is to uproot war from ourselves and from the hearts of men and women. To prepare for war, to give millions of men and women the opportunity to practice killing day and night in their hearts, is to plant millions of seeds of violence, anger, frustration, and fear that will be passed on for generations to come. 

 

 ― Thích Nhất Hạnh

From Living Buddha, Living Christ

For Veteran's Day: The Military-Industrial-Congressional Complex Is Fascism

 War is not peace. War is terrorism. 

Peace is the path to peace.

— Molly

This Veterans Day, if you wish to honor the 

troops and humanity as a whole, vow 

to break with or challenge the MIC.

 

By

Christian Sorensen

The military-industrial-congressional complex (MIC) is the insulated triangle consisting of the Pentagon, the decision-making headquarters of the U.S. military; the war industry, the corporations that sell goods and services to the U.S. military establishment and allied governments and regimes; and Capitol Hill, the elected representatives who fund it all and pass legislation abetting war. In concept and practice, the military-industrial-congressional complex is fascism. 

Under fascism, the capitalist economy is deeply intertwined with government. The war industry floods the Pentagon’s civilian offices with corporate executives (e.g. Mark Esper, Secretary of Defense; Ellen Lord, Undersecretary for Acquisition & Sustainment; Ryan McCarthy, Secretary of the Army). It recruits retired generals and admirals (e.g. Joseph Dunford at Lockheed Martin, Jim Mattis at General Dynamics, James Winnefeld at Raytheon) to leverage their knowledge for profit. It spreads its production facilities across all 50 states. Indeed, the MIC’s very fuel is the federal budget. And, most markedly, the war industry assumes control of jobs once carried out by uniformed troops. 

Under fascism, authority is concentrated in a dictator or a dictatorship that rotates figureheads. The United States’ one-party, two-faction system exemplifies the latter. The war industry’s lobbying of Congress and funding of Congressional campaigns (particularly politicians who serve on Armed Services, Appropriations, Intelligence, and Foreign Affairs committees) lock both factions into a belligerent foreign policy through which war corporations accrue fantastic riches. Furthermore, the war industry funds and runs pressure groups (e.g. NDIA, AIA, AUSA), which, in addition to administering arms fairs, generally badger Congress. Members of Congress, for their part, profit off of war. Executive policies and congressional legislation is often written by corporate lobbyists or crafted and implemented without public input. Presidents from both political factions ascend to authority within this fascist system and conform to a war-first foreign policy, as exemplified by all presidents since the 1947 National Security Act. Peace is not an option. Not even in presidential debates, which instead are fora to flex, glorify the military, and threaten hyped-up enemies.

Under fascism, politics exalts the nation above all else and accretes a centralized autocratic government. Congress abstains from its constitutional mandate to declare and end wars, deferring instead to the Executive branch on such matters. As the nation is exalted, political discourse is dumbed down across the board, as professor and author Leo Panitch has noted. Knee-jerk vitriol replaces measured debate or discussion. Vapid slogans defend armed bureaucracies, foregrounding class-conscious challengers as savage anti-Americans. The war industry sets the broader boundaries of acceptable discourse by funding think tanks (whose primary purpose is the issuance of information amenable to donors’ bottom line) and corporate media, keeping the narrative pro-war. 

Career militants—such as former Acting CIA Director Mike Morell at CBS, former CIA Director John Brennan at MSNBC, and retired General Jack Keane at FoxNews—steer the discourse regarding foreign policy. The former chief of propaganda at the U.S. Agency for Global Media, John Lansing, now runs NPR. A private equity firm owns Sightline Media Group, which runs most major military-oriented publications, such as Defense News and C4ISRNet. When war profits those in authority—the founding tenet of the MIC—peace is off the table and official enemies abound. Fascism’s need for scapegoats overlaps perfectly with the war industry’s need to manufacture and hype enemies in order to profit from the ensuing wars. Arabs, Persians, and Muslims have been the official bad guy for decades now, simultaneously serving as the pretext for overseas military action and domestic surveillance, and against which the ruling class funnels the working class’

Under fascism, the state violently and systematically dismantles progressive and radical Left political parties. Such eradication of organized progressive movements has been a defining trend in the United States over the past hundred years. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) was largely founded to do just that, performing quite well. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) also operates against political progressives and Left radicals. (Notably, the war industry carries out a large part of DHS’ workload, further imbricating capitalist profit with government activity.) The rare rebel who damages the infrastructure of war corporations is locked up. Charismatic leaders able to galvanize working-class opposition to capitalism and war (e.g. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, Fred Hampton) are targeted as subversives by government agencies, and ultimately assassinated under various circumstances.

People of color, long denied even a taste of democratic pretense, are policed intensely by overmilitarized local and state law enforcement that are armed by the war industry. They are then stuffed at disproportionate rates into the prison system where they’re used as cheap labor. (Federal Prison Industries, a corporation owned by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Prisons, makes a lot of light gear and clothing for the military.) The Commission on Presidential Debates doesn’t even allow non-corporate parties to participate, effectively banning anti-war discourse. Organized labor is dismantled piece by piece, helping corporate criminals, to the working class' detriment. The fascist system then draws support from chunks of a white working class that lives precariously (due to bipartisan abuse and imposition of neoliberal economic policies outsourcing jobs and automating the rest). An invasive surveillance state and armed bureaucracies at the federal, state, and local level protect the status quo.

Fascism, the brutal fusion of corporate might with government authority, is the MIC. Democracy will be out of reach until working people recognize their enemy and addresses the MIC. This means dismantling the war industry and converting factory output to meet human need instead of war profiteering. This Veterans Day, if you wish to honor the troops and humanity as a whole, vow to break with or challenge the MIC. Do your part, and help create a better world for all.

_____________

Christian Sorensen is a novelist, military analyst, and independent journalist mainly focused on war profiteering within the military-industrial complex. An Air Force veteran, he is the author of the recently published book, Understanding the War Industry. Mr. Sorensen is also a senior fellow at the Eisenhower Media Network (EMN), an organization of independent veteran military and national security experts.

Please go here for the original article: https://www.commondreams.org/views/2020/11/11/military-industrial-congressional-complex-fascism

Veterans Against the War: 11 Perspectives on Ending US Imperialism

 For Veteran's Day... 

This piece from 2016 is worth posting again. It's now been ten years later and my thoughts and heart and prayers remain with veterans and their families and loved ones today. And because I am deeply aware of the cultural stories in our nation which glorify and justify war and violence and oppression, I am deeply committed to not promoting images which collude in the great suffering that those stories and belief systems bring to our veterans, their families and friends, and to those in this country and around the world who are impacted by war. Which is all of us. As Martin Luther King, Jr. has voiced, just imagine if our nation spent more on programs of social uplift rather than weapons of war. Just imagine! We certainly would not be approaching the spiritual death that he warned us of those many decades ago. We need new stories, new values, new images of courage, integrity, truth, and wisdom that are centered in peace and caring and not violence and war. Truly, another world is possible! And this Great Awakening that is inviting us all to be part of begins within the hearts and minds of each and every one of us. War, imperialism, violence is not the answer! There is another way. Bless us all, no exceptions. ― Molly

Maggie Martin. (Photo: Courtesy of Rory Fanning)

By Rory Fanning, Truthout | Op-Ed

Today is the 11th Armistice Day I will observe as a veteran. I only recently found the courage to speak up against the US-led wars being fought around the world. It took me so long to speak up because I was scared. I was scared of losing the respect of my family, and of losing the handful of social benefits that accompany being a compliant, "heroic" veteran worthy of uncritical cheers and applause at sporting events and airports. But I was tired of hiding and pretending that being honest about my military experience was less important than social approval, so I learned to speak out. It began with a few articles, which led to a book. The book led to speaking engagements at high schools, prisons and universities. Now it almost feels like second nature to challenge the notion that the United States military is a force for good, or that it fights for freedom and democracy around the world.

The support from like-minded veterans and activists who also speak out against US imperialism -- the lives it takes, the racism it fuels, the economic inequality it creates and the damage it does to the environment -- was the most important part of my evolution. These antiwar veterans helped me do battle with the fear of isolation that kept me silent. They are the ones who gave me courage. The idea that I was in it alone was a false one. Losing this feeling, I think, was the first step to speaking out.

Fifteen years ago, the US invaded Afghanistan, allegedly to capture the handful of people responsible for 9/11. A decade and a half later, hundreds of thousands of lives have been lost, other wars have been fought and a vast national security state has been built up around us. Trillions of dollars have been diverted from things like health care, education, infrastructure, fighting climate change and more. And now, a rightwing demagogue has been elected president of the US.

 How do we prevent a repeat of the last 15 years? How do we fight the creeping cynicism so many of us feel regarding our ability to stop the damage the US military does around the world? What are some of the obstacles faced by veterans since returning home? What are the challenges that prevent veterans from speaking against the vicious and brutal cycle of war in this country? Now, more than ever, these questions need answers.

 In my talks with students I am always encouraging them and their teachers to come together and organize space for veterans to share their stories. No, it isn't easy for veterans who want to communicate the realities of war to the soon-to-be military-aged kids who need to hear them the most. Ask any number of the millions of young people signed up for the Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps program a few questions about our country's recent history. You'll soon realize how little information is being shared with those who will be tasked with fighting the next decade and a half of wars -- if those wars are not stopped.

The problem is that there is plenty of time for parades, backslapping, yellow ribbons and other propaganda, but very little time to hear the horrors of war. So, I thought I would heed my own advice. This Veterans Day, I reached out to a few of my favorite vets, and asked them about the challenges they've faced since leaving the military, what needs to happen to end the wars, and their greatest fear about speaking out. Hopefully, these voices will reach others who are considering speaking out, the young people who are being denied the information they need to make an informed decision about joining the military, and the active duty soldiers who are contemplating laying their weapons down and coming home. Maybe they will see that they are not alone, and that there are wonderful and courageous people out there who will support them.  

Please continue this article here: http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/38344-veterans-against-the-war-perspectives-on-ending-us-imperialism 

For Veteran's Day - Howard Zinn: We All Have An Enormous Responsibility

 For Veteran's Day. For veterans. For us all. 

May we awaken.

― Molly

Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience. Our problem is that people all over the world have obeyed the dictates of leaders…and millions have been killed because of this obedience…Our problem is that people are obedient all over the world in the face of poverty and starvation and stupidity, and war, and cruelty. Our problem is that people are obedient while the jails are full of petty thieves… (and) the grand thieves are running the country. That’s our problem...

TO BE HOPEFUL in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness.

What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places—and there are so many—where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction.

And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.

 ― Howard Zinn

Mary Oliver: Wild Geese

Photo by Molly
Wild Geese

You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting --
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

― Mary Oliver

EXCELLENT ― Chris Hedges: Will the Democrats Betray Us Again?

Yet another excellent and illuminating article by Chris Hedges and more. This is also part of a greater article and interview that Chris did on November 6th with Ralph Nader. 

It now cannot be said that we were not warned repeatedly about what is at stake following the blue tsunami of one week ago in the midterm elections. It is not time for us to think the struggle is over when in reality a whole new level of fighting for justice, democracy, and the highest good for all has only just begun. 

I have been posting many times here on my blog and on Facebook about both the joy and celebration and also, very importantly, the peril we are in if we do not act in every way possible to wrest the poisonous power away from both the fascist republicans and the neoliberal democrats who have sabotaged and fought fiercely against any actual substantial progressive change and radical transformation that has been so urgently needed for so very long. Now it is up to us to pursue being deeply informed and inspired to take on the most wealthy and dismantle a toxic status quo that has long been destroying our country, other nations, and the planet.

And I bow with the deepest gratitude for Chris Hedges and all of the courageous truth-tellers, wisdom-keepers, authors and activists. spiritual and political leaders who have never relented in their fierce commitment to bringing us the truth and the larger pictures that are so essential for us all to see, understand, and individually and collectively act upon. Another world is possible! It is up to us! ― Molly

The 'Blue Tsunami' has inspired hope across the nation as Americans have repudiated Trumpism — but will the Democrats actually stand up to the donor class and deliver for their constituents?

By Chris Hedges

The Democrats may have taken control of the House and the Senate, they may have humiliated Donald Trump and the Republican Party, but the real fight is only beginning. It is not simply a battle to hold the corrupt Trump regime to account, something that can only be done if the Democrats are willing overcome their reluctance to carry out impeachment proceedings against the president. It is also a battle to sweep away the corporate-indentured hierarchy of the Democratic Party, including Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries.

The Democratic Party since the presidency of Bill Clinton, who gave us the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the greatest betrayal of the working class since the 1947 Taft-Hartley Act, and gutted New Deal-era welfare programs such as the Aid to Families with Dependent Children, is a more polished version of corporate and oligarchic rule, abjectly subservient to the war machine, the Israel lobby and their funders in the billionaire class.

The country is broken. Corruption, in both parties, is endemic. Federal agencies have been hollowed out and destroyed. The courts, including the Supreme Court, have been handed over to right-wing ideologues. The working class is crippled with debt peonage and substandard wages. Constitutional norms and protections have been erased. Billionaires, including Trump, pay little to no income tax. The 2010 Citizens United Supreme Court ruling, which allows big business to fund their hand-picked candidates, sustains a system of legalized bribery.

The public may clamor for a raise in the minimum wage, Medicare for All, regulation of the big banks and private equity firms, an end to arms shipments to Israel and campaign finance reform, but no one in the leadership of the Democratic Party listens or cares. They serve their paymasters.

Will cutthroat capitalism, sold to us under the sanitized name of neoliberalism, be allowed to continue to impoverish the citizenry and funnel wealth upwards into the hands of the 1 percent? Will corporations be regulated and policed? Will corporate criminals be brought to trial? Will our democracy be restored? Or will the grotesque sight of a trillionaire, Elon Musk, gutting federal agencies and pouring hundreds of millions into elections to try and control the outcome be normalized?

The handful of politicians who attempt to confront the corruption and the devastation visited on the American working class through deindustrialization and deregulation, such as Bernie Sanders, see their campaigns sabotaged by the Democratic Party leadership, including Barack Obama.

We must demand that progressive candidates, including Michigan senator-elect Abdul El-Sayed and Maine’s Troy Jackson, build coalitions to oust the Democratic Party leadership, raise the minimum wage, enact universal health care, prosecute corporate crime and impeach Trump. It will be up to us.

The Democratic Party hierarchy will see the results not as a repudiation of Trump, but an endorsement of the flaccid and ineffectual position of a party that stands for little and fights for less. This would be yet another betrayal by the Democrats of voters. It would keep alive the very real prospect of another fascist, one better organized and more intelligent, taking the White House in two years.

Of course, this fight will mean not only jettisoning a corrupt Democratic Party leadership, but turning on the mega-donors, lobbyists and corporations that fund and control the Democratic Party.

The effort to wrest the party back from the hands of corporations and oligarchs will be vicious and difficult. It will require us to rely on the power of mass movements to sever these bonds. Nothing else will work.

If we fail, our anemic democracy will not be saved by these midterm elections, but doomed.

Please go here for the original article and interview: https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/will-the-democrats-betray-us-again

Qasim Rashid: Why Chuck Schumer Must Not Be Senate Majority Leader

Excellent piece and absolutely spot on! It’s centrist neoliberal democrats like Schumer and Jeffries whose all out fight against progressives and the radical changes long urgently needed that played a definitive role in bringing us Trump. Twice. They have long ago sold their souls to the donor class and feel no twinge of conscience to support genocide and be funded by AIPAC. Schumer and Jeffries must not be allowed to sustain positions of power within the party. This is so utterly critical to the forward momentum embodied in the blue tsunami of this past midterm election. ― Molly

Democrats just won despite voter suppression, gerrymandering, and purges. Putting Chuck Schumer back in charge is how we squander it.

By Qasim Rashid

Please understand how remarkable this week’s Democratic victory is—and how critical it is we don’t let Chuck Schumer muck it up. Democrats did not just flip an unprecedented number of red seats and states. They did it while combatting immense voter suppression, racial gerrymandering, voter roll purges, and the thousands of polling place closures that followed Shelby County v. Holder. (Closures in disproportionally Black and Latino communities).

The voters did their part. Now the party has to do its part. Chuck Schumer says he expects to be reelected Senate Majority Leader. If ever there was a way to kill Democratic momentum, it would be to allow Schumer back into the powerful position that enabled Trump to return to the White House with a Senate Majority. Schumer’s failures are well documented, and any insinuation that he gets credit for Tuesday’s wins is laughable at best. These wins happened not because of him, but despite him.

Let’s Address This.

The New Senators Have Already Spoken

We are now at eight senator-elects who have stated they oppose Chuck Schumer as majority leader, and do not plan to vote for him. This is the new era of leadership we demand. Among them:

Dr. Annie Andrews (South Carolina) will not support Schumer.

Peggy Flanagan (Minnesota) has called for new Senate leadership and will not support Schumer.

Dr. Abdul El-Sayed (Michigan) has called for a new leader.

Adam Hamilton (Kansas) will not support Schumer.

Juliana Stratton (Illinois) will not support Schumer.

Chris Pappas (New Hampshire) will not support Schumer.

James Talarico (Texas) will not commit to Schumer.

Troy Jackson (Maine) will not support Schumer.

As a bonus, Scott Colom should win his Mississippi Senate seat, and has remained loudly critical of the DSCC for refusing to support and back Mississippi. I cannot imagine he is too pleased with Schumer, who only entered the race in the final weak with nominal support. Listen, these are not Beltway critics. These are the senators-elect who just won in Kansas, South Carolina, Minnesota, Michigan, Illinois, and New Hampshire.

Meanwhile, Schumer recruited Alexander Vindman in Florida—who lost by double digits to Angie Nixon. He recruited Janet Mills in Maine—who didn’t even make it to the primary. He recruited Haley Stevens in Michigan—who defected after she lost the primary and supported MAGA Mike Rogers.

We need a Senate Majority Leader who reflects this new era. The aforementioned senators-elect are that new era. They gave Democrats the senate majority on the backs of working people. Their voices must be heard as they know first hand what the people want. And given that Schumer’s approval rating is 13%, what the people want is a new leader. Because it isn’t just about those who were elected despite Schumer’s failures, but those who were not because of Schumer’s failures.

The Seats We Should Have Won

Angie Nixon in Florida. Jamie Davis in Louisiana. Everett Wess in Alabama. All three lost by single digits. And again, Scott Colom’s race in Mississippi is coming down to a few dozen votes and ballot curing.

I’ll say it plainly. If Chuck Schumer hadn’t let his arrogance, incompetence, and racism interfere, and had actually supported Black candidates, we would have elected Angie Nixon in Florida, Jamie Davis in Louisiana, and even Everett Wess in Alabama. If Scott Colom had another $1 million, we wouldn’t be ballot curing right now.

We could have locked in four new Black senators and flipped four more red seats. Just imagine the brilliance of a 58-42 Democratic Senate majority. Given the Democrats’ favorable map in 2028, we could viably be in a position to single handedly break the 60 vote filibuster threshold. Instead, Schumer’s racism and incompetence won out, and three amazing Black candidates will have to try again in two years, should that opportunity even arise.

Progressives Win. The Centrists Were Wrong.

This ultimately boils down to Schumer’s complete detachment with the Democratic Party and with voters. He is a center right corporate funded pro-AIPAC politician. The American people are looking for populist, progressive, and principled public servants. For example, we were told that Michigan is purple and needs a centrist like Haley Stevens to win, and that a progressive like Dr. Abdul El-Sayed would lose badly to a Republican.

Abdul won by seven points. That is a larger margin than Trump or Slotkin in 2024, than Biden or Peters in 2020, than Stabenow in 2018, than Trump in 2016. The last time a President or Senator won Michigan by a larger margin was Barack Obama as an incumbent President in 2012.

These facts still won’t convince centrist consultants, because admitting Abdul was right kills their paycheck. Centrists pearl clutch—progressives win elections. And we need one such progressive in the Majority seat. Because the Senate Majority Leader controls what reaches the floor. This fight is not about one man. It is about whether the Senate ever votes on the bills that the American people want passed—including Medicare for all, ending corporate money in politics, and strengthening economic justice—all things Schumer either opposes or has wholly failed to pursue.

But Schumer has proven that he has no interest in taking the fight to Republicans. He’s already talked about “working with Trump” and “hoping Trump has changed.” Despite the historic mandate handed to Democrats by the American people—Schumer wants to work with a fascist party who despises the American people. Honestly, do you think Trump would ever discuss “bipartisanship” if Americans handed Republicans a generational election win? Not a chance. Chuck Schumer may as well be Charlie Brown with Trump as Lucy holding the football.

He falls for it every time, but the American people can bear no more.

Because meanwhile, the communities that powered this victory, Black, Indigenous, immigrant, and working-class Americans, have waited long enough for power that is truly theirs. They deserve a leader who fights for them first.

Who Should Lead Instead

If you follow my writing you know that I don’t just identify injustices, I provide meaningful solutions as well. We have far better options for Majority leader, and it’s time to embrace them. Here are just three for consideration, and there are certainly more:

Chris Van Hollen of Maryland flew to El Salvador to demand the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland father wrongfully deported to a Salvadoran prison. He flew to Egypt outside the Gaza border to report on Israel’s genocide. He has been a relentless progressive fighting for Medicare for All and standing up to Trump’s fascism. That is moral courage in the Senate.

Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts is the architect of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and has spent her career taking on the corporations and billionaires who rig the system against working families. She would be an outstanding pick as Majority Leader.

Peggy Flanagan of Minnesota, who will be the first Indigenous woman in the U.S. Senate, is a true change agent. She has already called for new Senate leadership, and she embodies the era voters just chose. Some might consider her too young and inexperienced, but if “experience” is what guided Chuck Schumer, then no thanks. Flanagan has the vision, the courage, and the ability to communicate and coalition build to serve in this key role.

Whoever it is, the standard is simple: a leader who will back every candidate in every state, make voter protections the first order of business, and truly return power to the most marginalized of communities. Schumer has proven he is not capable of any of these things—it is long past time for him to go.

What You Can Do

Quite simply—raise your voice. Next month the Democratic Senate caucus will choose its Senate Majority leader, and they need to hear from you. They listen to pressure. If a Democrat represents you in the Senate, call the Capitol switchboard at (202) 224-3121 and tell their office: do not vote for Chuck Schumer for Senate Majority Leader. Then share this article with everyone you know.

This is the new era of leadership we demand. The American people have given our elected officials a mandate. This is not the time to slow down, but to lean in and demand results. Let’s elect a Senate Majority Leader with the courage and conviction to deliver.

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