Close the Concentration Camps- Demonstrate !

Into the streets. No concentration camps for children.  

WHEN:

Tuesday, July 2 at noon. 

WHERE

Robert T Matsui United States Courthouse

501 I Street

Sacramento, CA 95814

Children denied soap and toothbrushes, crowded into unsafe conditions. Separated from their families, subject to cruel treatment that leads to lasting traumas. And some dying in custody—or dying with parents as they cross the Rio Grande. We've seen the images and heard the stories coming out of child detention centers. Horrifically, these conditions aren't an accident. They are the byproduct of an intentional strategy by the Trump administration to terrorize immigrant communities and criminalize immigration—from imprisoning children in inhumane conditions to threatening widespread raids to break up families to covering up reports of immigrants dying in U.S. custody and abuses by ICE and CBP agents. It’s going to take all of us to close the camps. This Tuesday, July 2, while members of Congress are home for the Fourth of July holiday, we will gather at Noon at their local offices in protest. Our demands: -Close the camps -Not one dollar for family detention -Bear witness and reunite families Join Us! Follow the event on Facebook for updates here: 

https://www.facebook.com/events/322037762031943

Donald Trump's Migration Policy

Current policy caused the death of two migrants trying to cross the Rio Grande river after waiting for two months "in line" to apply for asylum. Oscar Alberto Martinez Ramirez and his 23 month old daughter Valeria. 

Photo La Jornada.

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There's No Excuse for Mistreating Children at the Border

Here’s What To Do About It.
Speak up. Donate. Educate yourself. Vote.
By The Editorial Board.  New York Times.

The editorial board represents the opinions of the board, its editor and the publisher. It is separate from the newsroom and the Op-Ed section.

· June 24, 2019

A young child among the migrants being processed by border patrol agents after crossing into the United States to seek asylum.CreditJoe Raedle/Getty Images



From his promise of a “beautiful wall” to his false alarms about caravans of alien marauders at the gate, President Trump has exploited immigration as his marquee issue. He is right, there is a crisis: Not of undocumented immigrants or thousands seeking refuge, as the president would have it, but a crisis of American values, a crisis of America’s premier tradition as a welcoming and humane haven. A crisis Mr. Trump has created, even as Congress has fueled it.

That is not to deny that comprehensive immigration reform is urgently needed, as is funding for the overstretched facilitieswhere undocumented immigrants, and most horribly the children of undocumented immigrants, are held.

But, by his divisive, incoherent and barbaric policies, Mr. Trump has only made agreeing on an approach to immigration in the United States far more difficult. He has done so by systematically creating a false narrative of immigrants as job-stealing criminals, by insisting that there is a crisis of illegal immigration where there is none and, most maliciously, by dreaming up schemes to torment these people in the perverse notion that this would deter others from trying to reach the United States.

The most appalling of these has been the separation of children from their parents and detaining them in conditions no child anywhere should suffer, and certainly not children in the care of the American government. At a recent hearing before a federal appeals court in San Francisco, judges were stunned by the administration’s arguments that children sleeping on concrete floors in frigid, overcrowded cells, without soap or toothbrushes, were being kept in “safe and sanitary” facilities, as required by law. “You’re really going to stand up and tell us that being able to sleep isn’t a question of safe and sanitary conditions?” asked one judge.

Mr. Trump’s latest display of cruel bluster was the announcement, and then the delay, of nationwide raids to deport undocumented families. In fact, deporting immigrants who have exhausted their legal claims is not uncommon — President Obama, remember, was often referred to by immigration groups as “deporter in chief” — and the targets of these raids are not random. But Mr. Trump sought to use the operation to strut before his base and extract concessions from Democrats, and spread panic through immigrant communities. His announcement delayed action by Congress and made the operation that much more difficult by warning those targeted for deportation. Then he tweeted that he was delaying the raids for two weeks.

The United States urgently needs an immigration policy that combines border security, justice and humanity. President Trump has promoted policies that undermine all these goals, and Congress has failed to agree on a coherent vision. You can help turn that around. Here’s how:

Call Congress, your mayor and local representatives. Contact your representative and tell them you want upcoming ICE raids to be called off and detention conditions improved. The legal defense nonprofit Raices has provided a template and an online form that you can use to email your congressional representatives. You can also reach out to your local representatives to ask that they initiate plans to help immigrant communities that are affected by the raids. This official government website has provided links to finding your city, county and town officials.


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Free College Tuition for All

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Still Manufacturing Consent: An Interview With Noam Chomsky

https://fair.org/home/still-manufacturing-consent-an-interview-with-noam-chomsky/

Forget Bernie Vs. Warren. Focus on Growing the Progressive Base

Forget Bernie vs. Warren. Focus on Growing the Progressive Base and Defeating Biden.

Naomi Klein

We often read Klein in our seminar. Here she is July, 2019. 

https://theintercept.com/2019/06/21/bernie-sanders-elizabeth-warren-progressive/

Confronting Politicians with the Reality of Poverty

Confronting Politicians with the Reality of Poverty: In the gym on the campus of Washington, D.C.’s Trinity Washington University, with bleachers pushed to the side to make room for more than 1,000 attendees, a banner hung from the balcony

Poor People's Campaign - Organizing

This is the kind of moral fusion organizing that can sway elections and build lasting change. And with coverage on MSNBC, The New York Times, The Hill, ThinkProgress, The Nation, Vox and more, this Campaign is breaking through and we are being heard.

With so much at stake, we must keep the political spotlight on poverty. At the presidential candidates forum, we asked each candidate whether they would commit to a presidential debate on the five interlocking injustices. They all said yes. And then today the House Budget Committee acknowledged that poverty is a serious issue in this country. Let’s hold them—and every 2020 presidential candidate—to their word.

Sign your name to demand the Democratic and Republican National Committees hold at least one LIVE televised 2020 presidential debate that focuses on the five interlocking injustices of systemic poverty, racism, ecological devastation, the war economy and religious white nationalism.

SIGN THE PETITION

What we’ve done over the last three days proves that the poor are not a small, pigeonholed or easily ignored group. We are building the kind of power that, as Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said in 1967, could make the power structures of this country say yes—yes to voting rights, yes to health care, yes to good jobs and living wages, yes to welfare, housing, water and food, yes to peace—when they may be desirous of saying no.

The Poor People’s Moral Action Congress was just the beginning. The Campaign will be returning to D.C. next June for a massive march on Washington and will be holding events all over the country to make sure we confront the unjust structures in our country and build something better in their place.

We did something bold and loud because we had to. Now, we must keep pushing. Sign our petition demanding the DNC and RNC hold a live 2020 presidential debate on systemic poverty, racism, ecological devastation, the war economy and religious white nationalism.

Forward together, not one step back, 

Reverend Dr. William J. Barber II and Reverend Dr. Liz Theoharis President of Repairers of the Breach & Director of the Kairos Center Co-Chairs of the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival

Global Economy is Slowing: Trump’s Trade Wars Make it Worse.

Global Economy is Slowing: Trump’s Trade Wars Make it Worse.

Trump knows twitter; He doesn’t know trade and economic policy, 

From the NY Times.

WASHINGTON — President Trump’s trade war is chilling business investment, confidence and trade flows across the world, a development that foreign leaders and business executives say is worsening a global economic slowdown that was already underway.

Recent softening in Europe, Australia and other parts of the world coincides with Mr. Trump’s intensified trade fight with China and other partners. Economists warn that further escalation by Mr. Trump — like tariffs on more Chinese goods or levies on foreign autos — could slow global growth to a crawl.

“With these trade tensions, the global economy, in a sense, is getting close to a crossroads,” said Ayhan Kose, the director of the World Bank’s Prospects Group.

Weakness in China, driven in part by fallout from the trade war, has spread to Germany, Australia and other nations, raising supply chain costs, chilling exports and worrying political and economic leaders.

On Tuesday, Mario Draghi, the president of the European Central Bank, said the bank was prepared to inject more stimulus into the eurozone economy to combat the economic slowdown.

The effects of Mr. Trump’s trade war have been particularly hard on Germany, Europe’s largest economy, which has been bracing for a decision about whether the United States will impose tariffs on auto imports. Trade anxiety has led to a decline in business sentiment and spending: Overall German industrial production contracted sharply in April, falling 1.9 percent on the month versus the 0.5 percent analysts expected.

Read more: 

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/18/business/economy/global-economy-trade-war.html

How Kamala Harris Dodged California’s ‘Sanctuary State’ Debate

How Kamala Harris Dodged California’s ‘Sanctuary State’ Debate

The increasingly vocal immigrant rights champion shied away from her state’s trailblazing effort to pass a statewide “sanctuary” policy.



By Roque Planas  Huff  Post

As she seeks the Democratic presidential nomination, Sen. Kamala Harris (Calif.) has become an ambassador for her state’s “sanctuary” laws that limit local law enforcement’s power to hold migrants on behalf of federal immigration authorities.

But in her first years as California attorney general, Harris was far more cautious about endorsing policies that protect undocumented people from deportation. From 2011 to 2013, as pro-immigrant California activists and legislators struggled to pass a trailblazing, statewide sanctuary law called the Trust Act over the objections of then-Gov. Jerry Brown (D) and the Obama administration, Harris remained largely silent.

“Around the Trust Act, it was bupkus. It was zilch. It was invisible. There was just no help from that office,” Trust Act author Tom Ammiano, who is now backing Bernie Sandersin the presidential primary, told HuffPost of Harris’ office. “It didn’t land well with the immigrant rights folks.”

Harris is now a leading foe of President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown. The daughter of immigrants, she has called for the deprivatization of the immigrant detention system and vowed that, if elected, she’d issue a far-reaching executive action that would extend citizenshipto many Dreamers. And Harris supporters, including a spokesperson for her campaign, insist that she harbored misgivings about state collaboration with Immigration and Customs Enforcement since before her election as California’s top law enforcement officer, even if she rarely aired them publicly and declined to take a position on legislation that would have addressed the issue.

Many activists and political figures who pushed the Trust Act see Harris’ growing support of their cause as a genuine evolution that has gained urgency since Trump upended the immigration debate. But they also view her reluctance to get involved as a misunderstanding of where the immigrant rights movement was heading ― and her caution left some worrying she may continue to lead from behind on immigration, Trump’s signature issue.

“The Trust Act was a new way to limit ICE at the state level,” Angela Chan, policy director for Asian Americans Advancing Justice, told HuffPost. “We were at the forefront. She didn’t get why it was important to support it at the time. … She only signaled support when it was safe to do so.”

Caution And Silence


Dating from her time as San Francisco district attorney, Kamala Harris kept discussions about immigration at arm’s length, immigrant rights activists say.

Today, support for sanctuary policies is widespread among Democrats, who now see such laws as a last line of defense against Trump’s draconian immigration measures.

But when Harris took office as California attorney general in January 2011, Democratic leaders were at war with each other over the subject.

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Trump's Tariff War

Trump Makes America Irresponsible Again

Why “tariff” isn’t a “beautiful word.”

By Paul Krugman

Opinion Columnist

Donald Trump’s plan to impose tariffs on Mexican exports unless our neighbor does something — he hasn’t specified what — to stop the flow of asylum-seekers is almost surely illegal: U.S. trade law gives presidents discretion to impose tariffs for a number of reasons, but curbing immigration isn’t one of them.


It’s also a clear violation of U.S. international agreements. And it will reduce the living standards of most Americans, destroy many jobs in U.S. manufacturing, and hurt farmers.


But let’s put all of that to one side and talk about the really bad stuff.


Trump says that “TARIFF is a beautiful word indeed,” but the actual history of U.S. tariffs isn’t pretty — and not just because tariffs, whatever the tweeter in chief says, are in practice taxes on Americans, not foreigners. In fact, it’s now a good bet that Trump’s tariffs will more than wipe out whatever breaks middle-class Americans got from the 2017 tax cut.


The more important fact is that until the 1930s, tariff policy was a cesspool of corruption and special-interest politics. One of the main purposes of the 1934 Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act, which eventually became the template for the modern world trading system, was to drain that particular swamp by removing the capriciousness of previous tariff policy.














https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/03/opinion/trump-tariffs.html

I Know Where I Came From; Does President Trump?

I Know Where I Came From; Does President Trump?
Bernie Sanders

My political agenda has been shaped by my family’s experiences of struggling to make ends meet.

Today our rate of childhood poverty is among the highest of any developed country in the world, millions of workers are forced to work two or three jobs just to survive, hundreds of thousands of bright young people cannot afford to go to college, millions more owe outrageous levels of student debt, and half a million people are homeless on any given night. Over 80 million Americans have inadequate health insurance or spent part or all of last year without any insurance, and one out of five cannot afford the prescription drugs they need.

While wages in the United States have been stagnant for over 40 years, we have more income and wealth inequality than at any time since the 1920s. 

Today, the wealthiest three families in the country own more wealth than the bottom half of the American people and the top 1 percentowns more wealth than the bottom 90 percent. Millions of workers earn starvation wages even as nearly half of all new income is going to the top 1 percent.  read more, 

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/02/opinion/bernie-sanders-trump.html?

Trump's Path to Electoral Victory

Donald Trump’s Path to Victory

The GOP's plan to re-elect Trump in 2020 can only be stopped through unity—and that unity is under threat by centrists in the Democratic establishment. 

BY JOEL BLEIFUSS