Congress

Civil Society Calls On Congress To End War And Blockade On Yemen

July 20, 2021 Action Corps, Popular Resistance. Resist! Congress, Economic Blockade, Hunger, Yemen

New York - Civil society groups rallied at U.S. legislators’ offices in New York, Boston, and San Francisco on Friday, July 16th as part of a National Day of Action for Yemen. They called for U.S. senators & representatives to introduce a new War Powers Resolution to end U.S. participation in the 6-year war and blockade on Yemen that has created the world’s largest humanitarian crisis, according to the U.N. In Boston, Brian Garvey of Massachusetts Peace Action noted, “We’re not going to stop until we end the U.S. war in Yemen, and that means War Powers....It’s the only legislation that meets the urgency right now.” During the Day of Action, letters were hand-delivered (see letter to Sen. Sanders below) to local offices of the following legislators signed by dozens of local civil society groups in each state calling for the new War Powers Resolution.

July 24: National Marches For Medicare For All

July 18, 2021 Popular Resistance. Resist! Congress, Health Care, Medicare for all, National Improved Medicare for All

We are a coalition of groups that are coming together to march for Medicare for All. Who is in that coalition depends on which city you are talking about. There is no one single group behind this. The list seems to grow every day. Some people are even politically homeless and simply focused on doing what they can to move #M4A forward. We are nonpartisan, but some local parties have joined in the fight! We are proud to say that this type of coming together hasn't happened in recent memory, if ever. Our movement was founded from a place of compassion and love. We came together out of frustration with the lack of action from the powers that be. Many of us have our own personal stories as to why we are in this fight. All of us know that healthcare is a right, not a privilege.

Child Care Should Be Universal And Well-Paid

July 14, 2021 Michelle Chen, Truthout. Create! Child Care, Congress, Pandemic, Worker Rights

Queen Freelove of New Haven, Connecticut, remembers when the pandemic transformed the daycare she ran out of her home, abruptly turning the atmosphere from cozy to clinical: “Things got extremely traumatic for us,” she recalled. She was constantly trying to keep the environment sanitized, keeping a stockpile of masks, wipes, and other equipment, stopping parents in the hallway when they arrived to pick up their kids to take their temperature and give them a squirt of sanitizer — the protocol for “contactless” drop-offs and pick-ups. Keeping parents outside to minimize direct interaction, she said, was “hard, because we look forward to having that great relationship with the parents, and that really helps. But we could no longer have that relationship that we once had, because of the pandemic.”

Liberals And Congress Retreat Rather Than Fight For Medicare For All

July 3, 2021 Ed Grystar, Counterpunch. Strategize! Congress, Health Care, Medicare for all, Single payer health care

At a Bernie Sanders healthcare town hall last year, Rep. Pramila Jayapal glibly stated that the problem to enacting Medicare for All was not more education of the public, but a question of “political will” necessary to actually push it forward. Yet, despite a pandemic, which has laid bare the inequalities and deficiencies of our healthcare system coupled with Democrat majorities in three branches of government, Medicare for All seems off the table. Where is the political will?

Revealing The Pentagon Papers In Congress: Going To The Supreme Court

June 30, 2021 Mike Gravel and Joe Lauria, Consortium News. Educate! Congress, Pentagon Papers, Supreme Court, Vietnam War

My gut was tight as a knot. The oral arguments began before the Supreme Court on April 19, 1972. I fidgeted in my seat in the audience in the first row with my wife and two young kids. I could see our legal team sitting in front of me: Robert Reinstein and Chuck Fishman. A young Alan Dershowitz sat next to them, representing Beacon. Twenty-four Ionic columns of Italian marble surrounded us below white friezes encircling the chamber. I gazed up at the Justices arrayed in black high before me on their imposing, mahogany bench, under a 44-foot ceiling. Behind them were red satin curtains and four marble columns. A huge black and white clock hung from above. Two new Justices had joined the Court since the New York Times ruling: Hugo Black and John Harlan left in September 1971.

How A US Congressman Took On The US Blockade Against Venezuela

June 27, 2021 Celina della Croce, Peoples Dispatch. Organize! Congress, Massachusetts, US Sanctions, Venezuela

On a cold winter day in February 2019, activists gathered in downtown Northampton, Massachusetts, to denounce the attempted US-backed coup in Venezuela. More than two years later, in the wake of ongoing rallies and discussions with Democratic Rep. Jim McGovern of Massachusetts, activists gained some ground as the congressman tweeted an open letter to President Joe Biden on June 14 in which he called on the president to end “all secondary and sectoral sanctions” against Venezuela. The letter stated: “While US officials debate the sanctions policy in Washington, for people in Venezuela the ongoing crisis is a life-and-death matter. … I have never believed that sanctions should be used to punish whole populations for the actions of their leaders or to bludgeon an adversary into submission.

Revealing The Pentagon Papers In Congress: A Pyrrhic Victory

June 26, 2021 Mike Gravel and Joe Lauria, Consortium News. Educate! Congress, Pentagon Papers, US Supreme Court, Vietnam War

I propped myself up on an elbow as the announcer read the news: The Supreme Court ruled, 6-3, against Nixon. The government’s unprecedented move to stop the presses had failed. The Court agreed with two lower courts that the attempt to impose prior restraint on the press was unconstitutional. The ruling turned out to be more complex than at first glance, but it was an unequivocal call for Constitutional constraint on an out-of-control control executive. The Court challenged the executive’s misuse of “national security” as a mantra to undermine the Bill of Rights and accrue quasi-dictatorial powers. Writing for the majority, Justice Hugo Black boldly took on Nixon’s nonsense: “To find that the President has ‘inherent power’ to halt the publication of news by resort to the courts would wipe out the First Amendment and destroy the fundamental liberty and security of the very people the Government hopes to make ‘secure.’

Revealing The Pentagon Papers In Congress: Reading The Papers

June 25, 2021 Mike Gravel and Joe Lauria, Consortium News. Educate! Congress, Pentagon Papers, Vietnam War, Wars and Militarism

Some scholars believed that, had FDR lived, there may have been no Vietnam War for either French or American troops. But the Pentagon Papers revealed, through access to State Department, Central Intelligence Agency and Defense Department classified material, that though Roosevelt “vehemently advocated” a trusteeship and ultimate post-war independence for Vietnam, Britain, which occupied Indochina after the war, would not allow it. “Ultimately, U.S. policy was governed neither by the principles of the Atlantic Charter, nor by the President’s anti-colonialism but by the dictates of military strategy and by British intransigence on the colonial issue,” I read. I went on with the Truman years, reading how Harry had rebuffed Ho in a disastrously stupid foreign policy decision.

Boycott Juneteenth 2022

June 21, 2021 Trevor Baldwin, News One. Strategize! Black America, Congress, Juneteenth, Slavery

I believe the reason there’s more disdain than pride is because it feels like we’re honoring a crime – a day commemorating the end of a 2 ½ year hostage negotiation where the captors were not punished yet instead compensated for the inconvenience of slavery ending. Our collective cases of injustice and reparations have been made with overwhelming evidence. Unfortunately, our moral victories aren’t moving the needle enough to ensure that our lives matter. It might be time to reject these trophies of courage and resilience while perpetrators of violence against us get slapped with feathers. No more ceremonies acknowledging injustices if it’s not accompanied by legislation that prevents it. As we have these national “enlightenment” moments of events like Tulsa, where are the laws that protect Black people from the impulses of that white rage repeating?

The End of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico

May 22, 2021 Pedro Cabán, Dissent Magazine Educate! colonization, Congress, Independence, Puerto Rico

U.S. representatives have introduced two bills that would finally end Puerto Rico’s subordinate Commonwealth status. But continued colonial rule may be the only option Congress seriously considers.

650 Groups Tell Congress: Leave Dirty Power Out Of Clean Electricity Standard

May 12, 2021 the Center for Biological Diversity. Create! Biden administration, climate crisis, Congress, Renewable Energy

Washington, DC— More than 650 national advocacy and grassroots groups sent a letter today calling on Congress to develop a truly clean, renewable and just energy standard for electricity as part of an evolving infrastructure package. To meet its climate goals, the Biden administration is expected to back a national Clean Electricity Standard, or CES, which some advocates argue can pass under existing budget reconciliation rules. But existing CES proposals from prominent Democrats allow for filthy and false solutions such as fracked gas, carbon capture and storage, and factory farm biogas, warn the groups, which include Indigenous Environmental Network, Friends of the Earth, the Center for Biological Diversity, Food & Water Watch, Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation, California Environmental Justice Alliance, Oil Change International and The Democracy Collaborative.

Report Blasts Broadband Industry For Fueling Digital Divide

May 7, 2021 Andrea Germanos, Commondreams. Educate! Congress, Inequality, Internet Access, Telecoms

As federal lawmakers held a hearing Thursday on broadband equity, a new report details how the internet service provider industry, through hiked prices and disappearing lower-priced offerings, is exacerbating the digital divide. Entitled Price Too High and Rising: The Facts About America's Broadband Affordability Gap, the publication (pdf) from Free Press states that "the central fact is Americans pay too much for the internet." "By the start of 2020, nearly 80 million people still did not have adequate internet at home," according to report author and Free Press research director S. Derek Turner. "Black, Latinx, and Indigenous people comprise a disproportionate number of those who are disconnected."

Squad And Company Must Unite As A Bloc To Downsize Biden’s Military Budget

May 6, 2021 Medea Benjamin and Marcy Winograd, Popular Resistance. Organize! Congress, Joe Biden, Pentagon Budget, Progressive Caucus

Imagine this scenario: A month before the vote on the federal budget, progressives in Congress declared, “We’ve studied President Biden’s proposed $753 billion military budget, an increase of $13 billion from Trump’s already inflated budget, and we can’t, in good conscience, support this.” Now that would be a show stopper, particularly if they added, “So we have decided to stand united, arm in arm, as a block of NO votes on any federal budget resolution that fails to reduce military spending by 10-30 percent. We stand united against a federal budget resolution that includes upwards of $30 billion for new nuclear weapons slated to ultimately cost nearly $2 trillion. We stand united in demanding the $50 billion earmarked to maintain all 800 overseas bases, including the new one under construction in Henoko, Okinawa, be reduced by a third because it’s time we scaled back on plans for global domination.”

Progressives Denounce Biden Plan For Taxpayer Bailout Of Nuclear Industry

May 6, 2021 Andrea Germanos, Commondreams. Educate! climate crisis, Congress, Joe Biden, Nuclear Energy

The Biden administration is being urged Wednesday not to court "disaster" after new reporting revealed the White House is pushing for taxpayer subsidies to keep nuclear power plants afloat in its sweeping infrastructure plan. According to Bloomberg and Reuters, the taxpayer prop-up would come in the form of "production tax credits," which already apply to renewables like wind and solar. The PTC effort "would likely be swept into" Biden's American Jobs Plan, Reuters reported, stating that the White House "has signaled privately to lawmakers and stakeholders in recent weeks" its support for the action. The American Jobs Plan already points broadly to support for nuclear power, stating the plan will invest in "advanced nuclear." Writing last month at The American Prospect, Gabrielle Gurley outlined the administration's efforts at a clean energy standard...

Whistleblower Groups Push Congress For Stronger Whistleblower Protections In AML Act

May 5, 2021 Ana Popovich, Whistleblower News Network. Resist! Congress, Money Laundering, Whistleblowers

On April 30, nonprofit organization the National Whistleblower Center (NWC) sent a letter to members of Congress advocating for stronger whistleblower provisions in the Anti-Money Laundering (AML) Act of 2020. The letter is cosigned by the National Whistleblower Legal Defense and Education Fund, Public Citizen, Government Accountability Project, Project On Government Oversight, Whistleblowers of America, and ACORN 8. “The essence of money laundering is to hide the source of ill-gotten wealth,” the letter states. “Without insider information, this multi-trillion dollar highly corrupt international business cannot be stopped.” The organizations acknowledge that the AML law is a start to addressing this type of crime but state that the Act’s whistleblower provision “contains some weaknesses that we urge Congress to rectify.”

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