Robert Reich explains Authoritarianism, Trump's threat to Democracy

Support Immigrants in California

Last month, Senate President Kevin de León introduced SB 54, the California Values Act. This bill would ban the use of state and local resources from carrying out the work of federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents in deportation actions.

This is a huge step in standing up for immigrants and those who could become targets of the Trump administration.

Cities and states across the country will play a big role in building the resistance against Trump — that's why it is so important that we continue organizing at the local level in our communities.

California is taking the lead on protecting the people who will be most vulnerable during Trump's presidency. Now we need to show that there's broad support for SB 54 before it reaches Governor Brown's desk.

Add your name to say you support SB 54 to keep immigrant families together and protect them from Trump’s proposed plans for mass deportation.

This bill can pave the way for the rest of the nation to enact policies that will block Trump’s efforts to target, criminalize, deport and incarcerate people of color.

Here's what Senator de León had to say about the California Values Act:

"To the millions of undocumented residents pursuing and contributing to the California Dream, the State of California will be your wall of justice should the incoming Administration adopt an inhumane and over-reaching mass-deportation policy. We will not stand by and let the federal government use our state and local agencies to separate mothers from their children."

Trump's Muslim Ban is a Disgrace

Choosing Democracy: Trump's Muslim Ban is a Disgrace: BY THE EDITORIAL BOARD Sacramento Bee If any American value was served by President Donald Trump’s inhumane treatment of hundreds of o...

If Trump Deports the Undocumented

UFW: If Trump deports most U.S. farm workers, who will feed the Nation—or guests at Trump hotels and golf courses?

United Farm Workers President Arturo S. Rodriguez issued the following statement from the union’s Keene, Calif. headquarters in response to executive orders announced today by the Trump administration aimed at keeping his central campaign promise to begin deporting many of the 11 million undocumented residents in the United States:

U.S. Department of Labor surveys show the majority of U.S. farm workers are undocumented: https://www.doleta.gov/agworker/report9/chapter1.cfm The United Farm Workers’ anecdotal experience in California and other states where we are active shows the percentage of undocumented workers is even higher.

So if today’s executive orders from Donald Trump signal the beginning of fulfilling his oft-repeated campaign pledge to deport the undocumented, then who is going to feed America? Who is going to feed the guests at Trump hotels and golf courses? Who is going to feed Donald Trump?

Trump Signs Executive Orders for Arrest of Immigra...

antiracismdsa: Trump Signs Executive Orders for Arrest of Immigra...: “ First they came for the Communists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Communist. Then they came fo...

Activists Oppose Trump's Executive Orders

antiracismdsa: Activists Oppose Trump's Executive Orders: County Supervisor Phil Serna  "In a display of solidarity, leaders representing a broad spectrum of Sacramento’s faith and po...

Progressive Alliance Monthly Organizing Meeting -- Sat., 1/28

Sacramento & Campus Progressive Alliance

Monthly Organizing Meeting

Saturday, January 28th, 10am-12pm

Sacraement State University Union

Oak Room (2nd floor)

Turning a March Into a Movement

Peter Dreier & Donald Cohen

January 24, 2017

The American Prospect

Two professors—Jeremy Pressman from the University of Connecticut and Erica Chenoweth from the University of Denver—conducted a detailed accounting of press and other reports from rallies in over 500 cities and towns across the country. Their conclusion so far: between 3.3 and 4.6 million Americans took to the streets. Despite the remarkable turnout, the question remains whether it heralds the beginning of a new “resistance” movement that can thwart Trump’s agenda . . .










A crowd fills Independence Avenue during the Women's March on Washington, Saturday, January 21, 2017 in Washington., AP Photo/Alex Brandon,

Saturday’s day of protest—against Donald Trump and for women’s equality—was successful in two significant ways.

First, it was the largest one-day protest in American history. Based on news reports from cities around the country, as many as 4.5 million people took to the streets. From 750,000 people in Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles to 250,000 in Chicago, 60,000 in Atlanta, 26,000 in Des Moines, and 271 in Morris, Minnesota (with a population of 3,500 and only two stoplights), protesters took over America on Trump’s second day in office.

Second, the protest completely dominated the news on a day when a newly elected president normally is basking in good press. This is a real defeat for a thin-skinned man who lives off dominating news cycles. The front-page headlines in most newspapers focused on the marches in their local cities and around the country. Many papers had no front-page stories at all about Trump’s first day as president. Those papers that did report on Trump focused on his rambling rant at the CIA. The reporters let readers know that Trump lied about the crowd size at the inauguration—a falsehood repeated later that by his press secretary Sean Spicer and his advisor Kellyanne Conway, who described those lies as “alternative facts.”

In contrast, media coverage of Obama’s second day on the job in 2009 was almost universally positive throughout the country.

In reporting on Saturday’s protests, many news outlets estimated the size of the crowds in their cities without calculating the total number nationwide. Papers that attempted to gauge the total, like The New York Times, came up several million people short. But two professors—Jeremy Pressman from the University of Connecticut and Erica Chenoweth from the University of Denver—conducted a detailed accounting of press and other reports from rallies in over 500 cities and towns across the country. Their conclusion so far: between 3.3 and 4.6 million Americans took to the streets.

Despite the remarkable turnout, the question remains whether it heralds the beginning of a new “resistance” movement that can thwart Trump’s agenda and help Democrats regain power, or whether it was a one-day act of defiance that will be difficult to sustain.

This was a nationwide protest but it was highly decentralized. It began as a Facebook post. NARAL and Planned Parenthood provided some support, but the march was not directed by paid organizers for national organizations. There was no central slogan or theme. There were few professionally printed signs. In most cities, volunteers found each other via social media or friendship networks and did the grunt work—getting police permits, identifying march routes, recruiting speakers and musicians—necessary to pull off a public protest.

Choosing Democracy: We will defend every man, woman, and child !

Choosing Democracy: We will defend every man, woman, and child !: California Gov. Edmund G Brown Jr.  Jan. 24, 2017 First, in California, immigrants are an integral part of who we are and what we’ve becom...

antiracismdsa: What Trump Can and Can't Do To Immigrants

antiracismdsa: What Trump Can and Can't Do To Immigrants: WHAT TRUMP CAN AND CAN'T DO TO IMMIGRANTS By David Bacon  Dollars and Sense | January/February 2017 http://dollarsandsense.org/archives...

Women's March: Next Steps

Next Steps;
We'll need to partner closely with other organizations and individuals as we go, so that we can be greater than the sum of our parts. For instance, the amazing organizers who led the charge on the Women's March are promoting 10 actions that we can all take in the first 100 days of Trump's Administration. We'll help promote this and other collective efforts.

Crowd Scientists Say Women’s March in Washington Had 3 Times More People Than Trump’s Inauguration - The New York Times

Crowd Scientists Say Women’s March in Washington Had 3 Times More People Than Trump’s Inauguration - The New York Times

Women's March - Sacramento

State Capitol.  Rally. 12 Noon. 

Trump, unprepared, ill informed, morally compromised

David Brooks.  ( conservative) NYTimes Jan. 20,2017.

"This is a remarkable day in the history of our country. We have never over our centuries inaugurated a man like Donald Trump as president of the United States. You can select any random group of former presidents — Madison, Lincoln, Hoover, Carter — and none of them are like Trump.

We’ve never had a major national leader as professionally unprepared, intellectually ill informed, morally compromised and temperamentally unfit as the man taking the oath on Friday. So let’s not lessen the shock factor that should reverberate across this extraordinary moment…"

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/20/opinion/the-internal-invasion.html

Stand Against Trump

Free Screening of "Michael Moore in Trumpland" on Cameron Park Lake Friday, 1/20, 6:30pm

Martin Luther King Was A Democratic Socialist | The Huffington Post

Martin Luther King Was A Democratic Socialist | The Huffington Post

Martin Luther King Jr.

What is Fascism ?

Choosing Democracy: What is Fascism ?: Henry Wallace was Vice President of the U.S. 1941-1945

Progressive Alliance Strategy -- Visualizing a Neo-Rainbow

Dear Friends, For those of you who may be new to the Progressive Alliance and our politics, this brief but important essay by veteran activists Danny Glover and Bill Fletcher, Jr. is probably the most succinct overview of our strategy for building progressive power and achieving social justice and peace. Keep Hope Alive! -- Paul B

Visualizing a Neo-Rainbow

History holds clues to a winning electoral strategy for progressives.

By Bill Fletcher Jr. and Danny Glover

JANUARY 27, 2005

In 2004 the winner-take-all system of US electoral politics again proved an obstacle to genuine democracy. While progressives found little to get excited about in the John Kerry campaign, there were no viable third-party candidates, leaving them without a fully satisfying choice at the ballot box, even if most of us ended up voting for Kerry as a statement against Bush. More important, there was no candidate whose campaign offered progressives the opportunity to develop a real political/electoral base that could move us closer to building power and influence.

The most recent campaign that held that kind of promise was the Rainbow insurgency of the 1980s, including the 1984 and ’88 presidential campaigns of the Rev. Jesse L. Jackson, and the building of the National Rainbow Coalition.

The Rainbow movement and candidacies have much to teach us today. While the Rev. Jesse Jackson was a charismatic leader, the Rainbow Coalition movement and the Jackson presidential campaigns were about far more than Jesse Jackson. The approach that Jackson advanced–building an organization and campaign both inside and outside the Democratic Party–points progressives in the direction we should be moving now.

MLK Commemoration in Placerville -- Monday, January 16th, 2017

MLK Legacy Event -- Monday, January 16th, 2017

2017 Sacramento MLK March -- Monday, January 16th

KEEP THE DREAM ALIVE! :)
https://www.facebook.com/events/447946515595271/

Betsy DeVos - Bad for America's Children

Choosing Democracy: Betsy DeVos - Bad for America's Children: The more we learn, the more we are certain that Betsy DeVos is bad for public schools and for kids. When De Vos has to choose between ...

Stand Against Trump - In Sacramento

NOW IS THE TIME TO FIGHT BACK!

The new right-wing Republican Congress is off and running. At a time when the United States remains the only major country on earth not to guarantee health care to all as a right, the Republicans want to end the Affordable Care Act (ACA), throw nearly 30 million people off of health insurance, make massive cuts to Medicaid and defund Planned Parenthood. At the same time, in the midst of a grotesque and growing level of income and wealth inequality, they want obscene tax breaks for the top one-tenth of 1 percent.

Our message to the Republicans is simple and straight forward. You are not going to get away with it. You are not going to punish the elderly, disabled veterans, the children, the sick and the poor while you reward your billionaire friends.

On Sunday, January 15, Democratic members of Congress, trade unions, senior groups, health care activists and all those who believe in economic and social justice are organizing a day of action called “Our First Stand: Save Health Care.” Rallies will be held in communities around the country.

Here's the information for a rally happening near you:

Our First Stand Rally With California Nurses Association
California State Capitol
Sunday, January 15ᵗʰ at 5:00 pm PST

Sacramento, CA 95814

Stand Against Trump

Come join us in DC to protest the inauguration of Donald Trump! DSA has a full weekend of activism and entertainment planned:




FRIDAY, JANUARY 20: Inauguration Day

At 10:00 AM, DSA will protest the inauguration. We will meet at McPherson Square by the CVS at the northwest corner of the square (1500 K St NW, Washington, DC 20005) along with other groups to stand against Trump during the inauguration. RSVP on Facebook here.

Closest Metro station: McPherson Square (Orange, Blue and Silver Lines) Closest bus stations: K St NW & 15th St NW (Metrobus lines 3Y, 16Y, 80, D1, D4, and D6), I St NW & 15th St NW northbound and westbound/H St & Madison PL NW southbound and eastbound (11Y, 30N, 30S, 32, 33, 36, 37, 39, 42, 43, P17, P19, S4, X2 eastbound, W13 northbound), H St NW & 16 St NW (X2).

Afterwards, from 5:00 until 7:00 PM, national DSA members will be meeting for dinner at Young Chow Asian restaurant (312 Pennsylvania Ave SE, Washington, DC 20003). Light food will be provided.

Reform the Democratic Party

The Political Revolution continues and we need your help this weekend!   One way we are continuing the political revolution is by seeking to transform the California Democratic Party into a truly progressive force. An opportunity to do that is coming up January 7 or 8,. when caucus-style elections will be held in each state Assembly district (AD) for delegates to the state party Central Committee for the next two years. We hope you'll make it out to support the Progressive Labor Alliance in each Assembly District. Every two years, there are elections to choose delegates to the California Democratic Party Convention. These delegates help decide the leadership of the California Democratic Party, as well as endorsements, platform and resolutions. If overall, you aren't pleased with the direction of the Democratic National Committee, this is one thing that you could do locally to have an impact. In addition to choosing 7 women and 7 men to represent each Assembly District, each caucus also selects a member of the State Party's Executive Board. This is where many of the decisions about the direction of the party and who will represent CA on the DNC are made. Please come out and support our Progressive Labor Alliance for ADEM delegates and make sure to vote for our Executive Board pick twice (once for ADEM delegate and once for Executive Board). AD4: facebook.com/events/1695098407447578/ AD6: facebook.com/events/352773825094417/ AD7: facebook.com/events/903111219819447/ AD8: facebook.com/events/643620485824877/ AD9: https://www.facebook.com/events/345650535814897/ To find your district, please check out this website: http://findyourrep.legislature.ca.gov/ Please check below for the date, time and place for your district's caucus (see list below), mark it on your calendar and then show up to cast your votes, and bring others with you. Please take a minute to respond, using this form. It will help us anticipate who's coming as well as stay in touch for future developments. You can see all candidates in each district and their self-descriptions at http://www.cadem.org/our-party/adem. You may vote for up to seven men and seven women, plus one candidate who is also running for party Executive Board. The results of these elections will affect formation of the party platform, resolutions, candidate endorsements and the highly contested election of state party officers at the convention in May 2017. At these caucuses, "business-as-usual" candidates are facing off against progressive slates in most of the 80 Assembly districts around the state. Bernie-activists are running slates of candidates in each of these districts. Whether or not you think working within (and aiming to take over) the Democratic Party is the best strategy, please help those of us who are trying to do that as we also seek to upgrade coordination on local campaigns with the entire spectrum of progressive and socialist groups in the region. In the Sacramento area, members of the Wellstone Progressive Democrats, organizers from unions who worked for Sanders, consumer and labor attorneys have teamed up with independent progressives in Districts 4 (Dodd), 6 (newly elected Keven Kiley, GOP), 7 (McCarty), 8 (Cooley) and 9 (Cooper) to form the Progressive-Labor Alliance, with slates of up to seven men and seven women in each district -- and one of them running also for party Executive Board. Slate members are pledged to support each other, to avoid diluting the progressive vote and letting the corporate Dems slip in. Please visit, "LIKE," mark that you're going to yours, then share with others you know. Create carpools! Some important facts: These elections are not widely publicized. Turnout in each district will most likely be in the hundreds, not thousands, so every vote really counts. You must be a registered Democrat to vote, but you can register/re-register at the election site; and if you wish, change back later to something else or "no party preference." The ballots include only individual candidate names. To vote for the progressives, you should familiarize yourselves with the men's and women's slates in your district, and double check at the caucus site by picking up a Progressive-Labor Alliance slate card from candidates and supporters on the spot. Beware of imposters! It's become fashionable to use the label "progressive." At least one establishment slate, maybe more, are employing it to confuse voters. Here's are the times and places for our area. Make a note of yours, then please use this form to let us know whether you'll make it. AD 4: Sunday, Jan. 8 Mary Stephens Library 315 E 14th Street Davis, CA 95618 Speeches 1 p.m., registration and voting 1:30 to 3:30 p.m. AD 6: Sat., Jan. 7 Placer County Democratic Party HQ 699 Washington Blvd, Ste B-7 Roseville, CA 95678 Speeches 12:30 p.m., registration and voting 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. AD 7: Sun., Jan. 8 California Teachers Association Region 2 Office 4100 Truxel Road Sacramento, CA 95834 Speeches 9:30 a.m., registration and voting 10 a.m. to noon AD 8: Sat., Jan. 7 CWA Local 9421 2725 El Camino Ave Sacramento, CA 95821 Speeches 12:30 p.m., registration and voting 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. AD 9: Sat., Jan. 7 Pins-N-Strikes Bowling Alley 3443 Laguan Blvd., Elk Grove, CA 95758 Speeches 9:30 a.m., registration and voting 10 a.m. to Noon. Stay involved! This political revolution, led by Bernie Sanders, has never been about Bernie Sanders. It's about taking on the establishment and changing business as usual,  It's about uniting, not dividing. We fight for economic justice and opportunity for all.  We believe that  we need a World War scale mobilization effort to combat climate change.  We need campaign finance reform.  We need to change laws designed to disenfranchise millions of eligible voters from being able to participate in this "Democracy."  We need better representation, not just in the White House, but throughout Congress, the California State Legislature, and at the county, city and school board levels here in Sacramento.  Many of you should consider running for office.  Many of us would be happy to help. The Wellstone Progressive Democratic Club has consistently fought for Progressive values within the Democratic Party.  Many of us were early supporters of Bernie Sanders and as such we were able to begin hosting regular phone banks back in September of 2015.  Wellstone Progressive Democrats of Sacramento

Here's How We Prepare to Be Ungovernable in 2017 | Alternet

Here's How We Prepare to Be Ungovernable in 2017 | Alternet

When Liberals Criticize Liberals About the Electio...

antiracismdsa: When Liberals Criticize Liberals About the Electio...: And don't consider the consequences to the Latino Community. Dissent Magazine has posted an article entitled, "The End of Prog...

We Are Witnessing the Birth Pangs of a Third Reconstruction | Portside

We Are Witnessing the Birth Pangs of a Third Reconstruction | Portside

Rev. William J. Barber

The Election and Working Class Politics

by Joseph M. Schwartz 

The Need for a Class Politics

What motivation did Hillary Clinton’s campaign provide for working-class voters of all races to turn out? Her ads stressed her “competence, experience and expertise” and the deep character flaws of her opponent, including his horrific misogyny. No doubt misogyny played a role in Clinton’s defeat. But, Clinton failed to emphasize her platform’s call to raise the minimum wage to $15 per hour, create jobs through public investment in infrastructure and alternative energy, and oppose “free trade agreements.” She never fully embraced the platform imposed on her by the forces behind her social democratic rival, Bernie Sanders. Yet Sanders’s message did resonate with white working-class voters and millennials of all races. In addition, the symbolism of a woman running for president failed to win enough white working-class or college-educated women.

Many working-class-voters view the Democrats as the party of white, socially liberal, bicoastal elites who look down upon the non-college educated. Both Republican and neoliberal Democratic politicians have embraced a racial politics that attacks antipoverty programs as creating dependence, while supporting with varying degrees of ambivalence universal social welfare programs such as Social Security and Medicare.

Narrow Victory for Trump

We should not exaggerate the size of the Trump victory. Elections are often won on the margin. Clinton won the popular vote by at least 2 million votes (or over one percent out of over 137 million votes cast), and if we didn’t have the Electoral College system (created to give increased political weight to the slave states), she would be president of the U.S. The deciding votes were approximately 97,000 or just enough to fill a large stadium. Clinton lost Pennsylvania by 68,000 votes, Michigan by 11,000, and Wisconsin by 18,000. None of these states had gone Republican since 1988. But small margins can mask seismic shifts. Trump’s support from white, college-educated voters dropped 10% from Romney’s 2012 total, while his non-college-educated white vote rose 10% higher than Romney’s. Clinton’s projected final vote total of over 65 million is about two million below Obama’s popular vote total of 2012 and about five million below his 2008 total. Trump’s vote rose slightly above Romney’s total, with an important uptick in small town and rural America, particularly in the Rust Belt (more among irregular voters than Obama-Trump switchers). Clinton lost in part because she failed to energize the Democratic base, particularly among working-class African Americans and socially liberal white working-class voters, many of whom stayed home.

As of this writing in mid-November, we still need to see actual electoral data, but exit polls indicate that Clinton probably lost whites without a college education by 70-30; and this ten-point swing away from the 2012 Democratic total explains Trump’s margins in rural and small-town white America. Trump’s victory did not depend solely on the white working class, as a good chunk of non-college-educated white voters are relatively affluent small business owners or contractors.

Clinton won the votes of the one-third of the electorate making under $50,000 a year by about 12 points; Obama won that cohort by well over 20%. (Close to half of voters making $50,000 or less are voters of color.) If the Democrats are to make gains against the Republicans in the 2018 and crucial 2020 elections (which will determine reapportionment), they have to make decreasing social inequality the centerpiece of their political appeal.

Rev. William Barber at the DNC: We Need to Revive the Heart of Our Democ...

Last night's speech not up yet.