Democracy

Supreme Court Stopped One Million Floridians From Voting In November

July 17, 2020 By Mark Joseph Stern, Slate. Educate! Democracy, Florida, Voter Suppression, Voting Rights

The Supreme Court all but guaranteed that nearly 1 million Floridians will be unable to vote in the 2020 election because of unpaid court debts in a shattering order handed down on Thursday. Its decision will throw Florida’s voter registration into chaos, placing a huge number of would-be voters in legal limbo and even opening them up to prosecution for casting a ballot. The justices have effectively permitted Florida Republicans to impose a poll tax in November. Florida’s ex-felons have a right to vote under both the state and federal constitutions. In 2018, a supermajority of residents approved a constitutional amendment that abolished a Jim Crow-era law permanently disenfranchising convicted felons. GOP lawmakers promptly sabotaged this amendment by passing a law that compelled formerly incarcerated people to pay all fines and fees associated with their sentence. Florida imposes a mind-boggling array of fees on defendants to fund its criminal justice system, and the new law would disenfranchise almost a million of the roughly 1.4 million voters who were poised to regain their voting rights.

Where Do We Go from Here?

July 13, 2020 Howard Brand, Information Clearinghouse. Strategize! Democracy, Inequality, Racial disparities, Worker Rights

Identity politics currently is in the forefront of the United States political agenda, and things do look quite dismal in regard to wealth, opportunity, and quality of life of a significant number of minority workers—but this is also the case, when we look closely, for a large segment of the overall population of our country. The question I see is where do we want to go and how can we change the situation? It is quite clear to me that the current ruling class has no intention of giving up their ruling position without a concerted fight. The ruling elite (the capitalist class or rich people as a class, not individually) have fought throughout the history of its existence—about 350 years, for its ruling position. I think the choice for us is this: Parity or Emancipation?

Rethinking 4th Of July With Historical Truths

July 3, 2020 Bill Bigelow , www.huffingtonpost.com Educate! Democracy, Education, Frederick Douglas, indigenous, Native Indians, Racism, Revolution, Slavery

Ray Raphael offers some context for the Declaration of Independence: In 1997, Pauline Maier published American Scripture, where she uncovered 90 state and local "declarations of independence" that preceded the U.S. Declaration of Independence. The consequence of this historical tidbit is profound: Jefferson was not a lonely genius conjuring his notions from the ether; he was part of a nationwide political upheaval. Similarly, Raphael reports: [I]n 1774 common farmers and artisans from throughout Massachusetts rose up by the thousands and overthrew all British authority. In the small town of Worcester (only 300 voters), 4,622 militiamen from 37 surrounding communities lined both sides of Main Street and forced British-appointed officials to walk the gauntlet, hats in hand, reciting their recantations 30 times each so everyone could hear. There were no famous "leaders" for this event. The people elected representatives who served for one day only, the ultimate in term limits. "The body of the people" made decisions and the people decided that the old regime must fall.

Bolivia: Añez Wants To Jail The Favored Candidate In The Coming Elections

July 2, 2020 Ernesto Reyes, Resumen English. Educate! Bolivia, Democracy, Elections, US coup

Bolivia’s de facto president, Jeanine Añez, is losing more and more of her mask obscuring democracy that, with the complicity of the United States and the European Union, she had to put on to justify the violent overthrow of Evo Morales in November of last year. Now, in a fragrant demonstration that in Bolivia there are no constitutional guarantees and that persecution is the rule of order, a coup is being prepared against the presidential candidate of the Movement Toward Socialism (MAS), Luis Arce Catacora. In a confirmation of the validity of the lawfare method (judicial war) against popular leaders, the legal form of this anti-democratic political decision is the criminal complaint filed this Tuesday before the Public Prosecutor’s Office against Arce for the alleged economic damage he caused to the State by setting up the Gestora Publica for the administration of workers’ social contributions.

The 2020 Elections: The Struggle Is For Power Not Reform

June 30, 2020 Ajamu Baraka, Black Agenda Report. Strategize! 2020 Elections, Democracy, Recession, US Imperialism

The great African revolutionary, Amilcar Cabral, reminded us that without revolutionary theory there can be no revolution. His reminder was not a call for abstract theorizing, quite the contrary. What he meant was that one cannot advance in practice unless that practice is guided by the most advanced understanding of the material and ideological conditions that revolutionary forces face. Over the next two days, we will ground ourselves in our particular realities as they relate to our strategic and tactical engagement with the bourgeois electoral system in the United States. Let’s begin: The ongoing and current capitalist crisis has created the most serious crisis of legitimacy since the collapse of the capitalist economy during the years referred to as the Great Depression.

Democratizing Energy To Counter The Climate Catastrophe

June 25, 2020 Lavinia Steinfort, ROAR Magazine. Create! Democracy, Energy, Green New Deal, New Economy

Youth climate activists have been striking to demand immediate climate action from political powers. They conjoined the issues of climate and labor by calling for a global climate strike in September, 2019, in which a historic 7.6 million schoolkids, (grand)parents and workers from 185 countries participated. Over 70 trade unions around the world supported the strike and the number of climate groups that are demanding a just transition for fossil fuel workers are also steadily increasing. The European landscape of climate activism is becoming densely populated. Numerous communities are defending nature together with their livelihoods. Initiatives like Ende Gelände practice civil disobedience to mobilize large numbers of European activists for climate justice. In most recent manifestations, such as Fridays for Future and Extinction Rebellion, many pupils and students are active, who also brought their families and teachers onto the streets.

The Rich Are Defunding Our Democracy

June 16, 2020 Sam Pizzigati, Inequality.org. Educate! Democracy, Elections, Money in Politics, wealth inequality

How can you tell if you’re living in a democracy? The answer can get rather complicated. Simple yardsticks can often confuse more than clarify. Take the notion that you have democracies where you have elections. Ballots over bullets. Sounds good. But authoritarians have been brazenly manipulating elections — to cement their rule — for generations. The deadliest example: the plebiscite Adolf Hitler staged in 1934 to lock in Nazi power. Stormtroopers at polling stations would ensure Hitler an overwhelmingly “victory.” How about free speech as the most indispensable indicator of democracy’s presence? If people can get up on a soapbox to speak their minds, if they can publish whatever they have to say, you have a democracy. But this simple formulation turns out to be less than universally revealing.

California DAs Call For Ban On Police Union Money In Prosecutor Elections

June 5, 2020 By Eliyahu Kamisher, The Appeal. Create! Democracy, Money in Politics, Police abuse, Prosecutorial Abuse

A coalition of four current and former district attorneys called on the State Bar of California on Monday to ban law enforcement unions from funding district attorney campaigns, saying the contributions represent a conflict of interest that must be urgently addressed in the wake of recent police killings of Black men and women. In a letter to the state bar association, the reform-minded district attorneys said their colleagues cannot ethically prosecute police officers if they are receiving funds and endorsements from unions that finance those officers’ legal expenses. “District Attorneys will undoubtedly review use of force incidents involving police officers,” San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin said in a statement. “When they do, the financial and political support of these unions should not be allowed to influence that decision making.”

Chris Hedges: The Treason Of The Ruling Class

June 1, 2020 Chris Hedges, Scheer Post. Educate! Democracy, oligarchy, Poverty, Ruling Class

The ruling elites no longer have legitimacy. They have destroyed our capitalist democracy and replaced it with a mafia state. What the Roman philosopher Cicero called a commonwealth, a res publica, a “public thing” or the “property of a people,” has been transformed into an instrument of naked pillage and repression on behalf of a global corporate oligarchy. We are serfs ruled by obscenely rich, omnipotent masters who loot the U.S. Treasury, pay little or no taxes and have perverted the judiciary, the media and the legislative branches of government to strip us of civil liberties and give them the freedom to commit financial fraud and theft. The loss of control over our system of rulership, the misuse of all democratic institutions, the electoral process and laws to funnel money upwards into to a handful of oligarchs while stripping us of power, ominously means that the ruling elites can no longer claim the right to have a monopoly on violence.

Federal Court Restores Voting Rights To Hundreds Of Thousands Of Florida Prisoners

May 25, 2020 By ACLU. Create! Democracy, Elections, Prisoner rights, Voting Rights

A federal court on May 24, 2020 ruled that a Florida law that created wealth-based hurdles to voting is unconstitutional. The decision restores voting rights to hundreds of thousands of people with past criminal convictions. U.S. District Judge Robert Hinkle found that conditioning voting on payment of legal financial obligations a person is unable to pay violates the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment by discriminating on the basis of wealth. The court's decision implements Amendment 4, which restored voting rights to more than a million people who had completed the terms of their sentence including parole or probation.

The Unspoken Spread Of Fascism

May 14, 2020 Fred Nagel, LA Progressive. Educate! Democracy, Fascism, Media, Trump

It is difficult for most Americans to judge just how dangerous Donald Trump might be. It is not that the clues are missing; there is a daily list of lies, racist comments, misogynist ramblings, and outrageous self-dealing. But most citizens just don’t have the right vocabulary to put his actions into some sort of context, even in these pandemic times. The left has been more confident about where Trump fits in the general run of very bad presidents. He is simply a fascist, whose behavior is very similar to other calamitous dictators we have seen in the twentieth century. This conclusion becomes increasingly believable when Trump talks about a confrontation that could happen if he doesn’t get his way. "I can tell you I have the support of the police, the support of the military, the support of the Bikers for Trump – I have the tough people, but they don’t play it tough — until they go to a certain point, and then it would be very bad, very bad."

Bolivia: The Open Veins Are Bleeding Six Months After The Coup

May 12, 2020 Verónica Zapata, Resumen English. Resist! Bolivia, Democracy, Elections, US coup

On November 10, 2019, a violent coup d’état took place in Bolivia, navigated by the U.S., which managed to articulate the racist national oligarchy with the backing of the armed forces, the police and the paramilitary groups forcing Evo Morales to resign at gunpoint. The objective was to regain control of natural resources, mainly lithium, and to erase the example of a government with an indigenous face that for the first time since the genocidal conquest of America had come to power. On November 12, Áñez proclaimed herself president, giving way to repression, including the massacres at Sacaba and Senkata. The coup left 35 dead, 800 injured, more than 1,500 arrested and hundreds exiled. A hunt for leaders, former officials, and journalists continues to this day. Neoliberal policies have been applied and the country has been plunged into a political, social, economic, and food crisis.

Bolivia: Can the Left Win An Election Without Being Able To Organize The People?

May 8, 2020 Hugo Moldiz Mercado, Resumen. Educate! Bolivia, Democracy, Elections, US coup

Is an efficient and effective electoral strategy, regardless of the relationship of forces between the dominant and subordinate classes, what is predominant, even unique, for a leftist candidate to be able to win over a high percentage of the population and crown himself as a winning formula? Is it a general political strategy, with its political-electoral correlates, that builds “from below” a favorable relationship of forces in the social struggle, and then that translates into votes greater than those received by right-wing candidates, leading to a political-electoral victory? It is clear that much thought can be given to each of those questions. Other questions can even be incorporated in the same direction and make the subject even more complex. However, at the risk of appearing too simple, let’s go over some criteria.

Curtains Up!

April 26, 2020 David Perez, Information Clearinghouse. Educate! Corporate duopoly, Democracy, Elections, Plutocracy

Welcome, everyone to the longest-running play in U.S. history: “Voting for the Lesser Evil.” The play’s strength, as you well know, is its easy-to-memorize script, combined with its superb ability to change the essential characters—all while keeping the same dialogue! Our set design also remains largely the same, although recently we’ve had to highlight red and blue colors and build a swing to denote the characterizations of “states.” Throughout the decades, our show has been labeled a melodrama, a tragicomedy, and even science fiction. The beauty of ““Voting for the Lesser Evil” is that it’s all above the above! Some people have lobbied for the play being renamed “The Greatest Show on Earth.” It does remind one of a circus, doesn’t it?

A Simple Democratic Transition Framework For Venezuela: End All Sanctions

April 19, 2020 Nino Pagliccia, One World Press. Create! Democracy, US coup, US State Department, Venezuela

On March 31, the US Secretary of State issued a press statement proposing a “pathway” by which all Venezuelans would live happily ever after, at least that is what Mike Pompeo seems to wish. He “call[s] on all Venezuelans, whether military or civilian, young or old, of all ideological tendencies and party affiliations, to consider this framework carefully and seriously.” The 13-point document was posted on the US State Department website with the title “Democratic Transition Framework for Venezuela”. Let’s take a serious look at it. An initial major observation can be made even before reading the 13 paragraphs. If this is a proposal meant as a recommendation to resolve an impasse between parties, it will not accomplish its goal because no “serious” proposal can be made unilaterally and much less by a non-friendly government.

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