Democracy

Police Urging Anti-Protest Bills in at Least 8 States Since Trump’s Election

April 22, 2018 By Simon Davis-Cohen and Sarah Lazare, In These Times Educate! Democracy, Police abuse, Police violence

Law enforcement is pressuring legislators to clamp down on protests—and specifically, on protests against police violence. “Cops are going to keep pursuing ways to keep themselves above the fray and unaccountable for the things they do,” says Tony Williams, a member of the MPD150, a police abolitionist project that recently released a “150-year performance review of the Minneapolis Police Department. “It's a naked case of self-interest more than anything else.” Minneapolis police aren’t alone: According to research conducted for In These Times in partnership with Ear to the Ground, law enforcement in at least eight states—Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Washington and Wyoming—lobbied on behalf of anti-protest bills in 2017 and 2018. The bills ran the gamut from punishing face coverings at protests to increasing penalties for “economic disruption” and highway blockage to criminalizing civil protests that interfere with “critical infrastructure” like oil pipelines.

Top Republican: Trump Won Wisconsin Because Of Voter ID law

April 22, 2018 By Patrick Marley, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Educate! Democracy, Elections, Voter ID

Attorney General Brad Schimel this week suggested Donald Trump won Wisconsin in 2016 because the state had its voter ID law in place. His comments drew a rebuke from liberals, who said they saw it as an admission by the Republican attorney general that the voter ID law suppresses Democratic turnout. Voter ID is expected to play a prominent role in Schimel's re-election bid. He has fought in court to keep the law in place and his opponent, Josh Kaul, is the lead attorney challenging it and a host of other election laws. "We battled to get voter ID on the ballot for the November '16 election," Schimel told conservative host Vicki McKenna on WISN (1130 AM) on Thursday. "How many of your listeners really honestly are sure that Senator (Ron) Johnson was going to win re-election or President Trump was going to win Wisconsin if we didn’t have voter ID . . . .

Homeland Security Compiling Database Of Journalists And ‘Media Influencers’

April 7, 2018 By Michelle Fabio , Forbes Educate! Censorship, Democracy, Media

Regarding the DHS media database, we are entering potentially dangerous territory with the government keeping track of the "sentiment" of citizens and foreign nationals. If not legal challenges from organizations that defend press freedom and freedom of speech interests, the government should expect, at the very least, backlash from the public. And that means you. If you think the idea of the U.S. government's compiling and monitoring a list of media professionals and "top media influencers" is a potential threat to democracy, now would be the perfect time to call your local and congressional representatives to let them know how much you value a free press and the freedom of speech, just in case they've forgotten.

March On Harrisburg Barnstorms Across Pennsylvania To Restore Democracy

March 29, 2018 Sarah Freeman-Woolpert, Wagingnonviolence.org Resist! Democracy, March, Pennsylvania

Last week, the special election in Pennsylvania’s 18th District made national headlines when the Democratic candidate for the state legislature, Conor Lamb, beat incumbent Republican Rep. Rick Saccone in a district that President Trump won by 20 points in 2016. Lamb’s victory was considered by many a potential sign of Republicans losing their stronghold in conservative districts with possible implications for the midterm elections in November. Behind these front page stories, however, a grassroots movement is gaining ground, paving the way for much more transformative change in Pennsylvania by pressuring for legislative reform in both parties. Leading this charge is a group called March on Harrisburg, a grassroots movement to restore democracy in Pennsylvania through lobbying state legislators and engaging in nonviolent civil disobedience.

Teaching Students How To Dissent Is Part Of Democracy

March 16, 2018 Sarah Stitzlein, Theconversation.com Create! Activism, Democracy, Protests, Students

In scenes unprecedented in previous school shootings, the past few weeks have been marked by students taking to the streets, to the media, to corporations and elected officials in protest over gun practices and policies. Responses to these teens have been mixed. Some have celebrated their passion. Some concluded that the students are immature and don’t yet fully grasp longstanding issues with the Second Amendment. Some questioned the voices and perspectives of the teens. Still others see the protests as an inappropriate use of time that might be better spent reaching out to loner students who may be prone to future acts of violence. Some schools have even threatened to take disciplinary action against students for engaging in protests during school hours. This has prompted universities like my own to promise students that disciplinary actions that stem from peaceful protest will not be held against them when they seek college admission.

The National Endowment For (Meddling In) Democracy

March 12, 2018 Daniel Lazare, Informationclearinghouse.info Educate! Democracy, US Imperialism

“They’re meddling in our politics!” That’s the war cry of outraged Clintonites and neocons, who seem to think election interference is something that Russians do to us and we never, ever do to them. But meddling in other countries has been a favorite Washington pastime ever since William McKinley vowed to “Christianize” the Philippines in 1899, despite the fact that most Filipinos were already Catholic. Today, an alphabet soup of U.S. agencies engage in political interference virtually around the clock, everyone from USAID to the VOA, RFE/RL to the DHS—respectively the U.S. Agency for International Development, Voice of America, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, and the Department of Homeland Security. The last maintains some 2,000 U.S. employees in 70 countries to ensure that no one even thinks of doing anything bad to anyone over here.

This Is What Democracy Looks Like: The People’s Hearing On Offshore Drilling

March 7, 2018 Steve Ahlquist, Upriseri.com Resist! Democracy, Drilling, Offshore Drilling

DeChristopher was speaking near the center of the Providence Marriott Downtown’s Grand Ballroom where the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) was holding a “science fair” type event to reach out to the public and sell them on President Donald Trump and Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke‘s idea to open up offshore oil drilling, by 2020 (2021 off Rhode Island), in vast new ocean areas, including the entire coast of New England. Well over a hundred people crowded into the room, amplifying the voices of the speakers with the “people’s microphone.” (If you watch the first video above you’ll get the idea.) In all, 42 people spoke, including scientists, politicians, religious leaders, children, moms, dads and more. No one spoke in favor of offshore drilling.

Capitalism As Obstacle To Equality And Democracy: The US Story

February 26, 2018 Richard D. Wolff, Counterpunch.org Educate! Capitalism, Democracy, Equality

The Cold War displaced the legacies of the New Deal. Time and Trump are now displacing Cold War legacies. Where capitalism was questioned and challenged in the 1930s and into the 1940s, doing that became taboo after 1948. Yet in the wake of the 2008 crash, critical thought about capitalism resumed. In particular one argument is gaining traction: capitalism is not the means to realize economic equality and democracy, it is rather the great obstacle to their realization. The New Deal, forced on the FDR regime from below by a coalition of unionists (CIO) and the political left (two socialist parties and one communist party), reversed the traditional direction (to greater inequality) of income and wealth distributions in the US. They shifted toward greater equality.

Crisis Of Social Democracy: From Norway To Europe

February 23, 2018 By Asbjørn Wahl, Socialistproject.ca Educate! Democracy, Europe, Norway

The crisis of social democracy is being debated throughout Europe. Several of the historically strong labour parties have almost been wiped out in elections while others seem unable to recover from defeat. In the last few years, a number of social democratic parties have ended up with only one-digit election results (Greece, Ireland, Iceland, The Netherlands, France), while others have experienced major setbacks. The Norwegian Labour Party, for example, has experienced two of its worst elections – 2001 and 2017 – since the 1920s. Significant parts of the trade union movement believe that the party made serious blunders in what should have been an easy victory during last year’s parliamentary elections. There is no doubt that social democracy is in a deep international crisis, although conditions vary widely between different countries.

Latin American Resistance And US Imperialism

February 18, 2018 Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese, Clearing the FOG. Podcast Democracy, Latin America, Peace, Wars and Militarism

Latin America is described as the back yard of the United States. There is a long history of US intervention in Latin American countries and vibrant resistance both to the US and to vicious right wing governments. Current hot spots are Venezuela, where the US is now openly advocating regime change, Colombia, which is struggling to live up to its peace agreement, and the Honduras, where the new president is being heavily protested after a fraudulent election.

Accompaniment In Honduras

February 4, 2018 By Ken Jones, Common Dreams Resist! Democracy, Honduras, Regime Change

We came to Honduras at the urgent request of SHARE El Salvador, a humanitarian aid organization with a long history of solidarity work in Central America. Police and military repression in Honduras since the overtly fraudulent elections in November 2017 has been getting worse, with over thirty people killed and more than one thousand in jails. Death threats aimed at those who are raising their voices the loudest are getting more overt and intense. We were reminded how remarkable the people of this country are. They continue in their courageous struggle with good humor, graciousness, and resilience, despite the grim repression they face. Many of us expressed our gratitude to them in return, for inspiring us to call on these inner strengths ourselves, even in the hardest of times, for protecting us, and for giving us a glimpse of the dictatorship our government supports.

Brazil’s Democracy Pushed Toward The Abyss

January 26, 2018 Mark Weisbort, Counterpunch.org Educate! Brazil, Democracy, Electoral Politics

The rule of law and the independence of the judiciary are fragile achievements in many countries — and susceptible to sharp reversals. Brazil, the last country in the Wessstern world to abolish slavery, is a fairly young democracy, having emerged from dictatorship just three decades ago. In the past two years, what could have been a historic advancement ― the Workers’ Party government granted autonomy to the judiciary to investigate and prosecute official corruption ― has turned into its opposite. As a result, Brazil’s democracy is now weaker than it has been since military rule ended. This week, that democracy may be further eroded as a three-judge appellate court decides whether the most popular political figure in the country, former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of the Workers’ Party, will be barred from competing in the 2018 presidential election, or even jailed.

The Invention of Capitalism

January 22, 2018 Yasha Levine, Sustainable Human Minds. Educate! Capitalism, Democracy, Poverty, Workers Rights and Jobs

Our popular economic wisdom says that capitalism equals freedom and free societies, right? Well, if you ever suspected that the logic is full of shit, then I’d recommend checking a book called The Invention of Capitalism, written by an economic historian named Michael Perelmen, who’s been exiled to Chico State, a redneck college in rural California, for his lack of freemarket friendliness. And Perelman has been putting his time in exile to damn good use, digging deep into the works and correspondence of Adam Smith and his contemporaries to write a history of the creation of capitalism that goes beyond superficial The Wealth of Nations fairy tale

Iran’s Unfinished Democratic Revolution

January 21, 2018 Rohini Hensmen, The Wire. Educate! Democracy, Finance and the Economy, Iran, Regime Change

The Iranian struggle for democracy goes back more than a century. The 1905 revolution, which resulted in the Constitution of 1906 establishing a parliament (Majlis), was essentially against the absolute power of the monarchy as well as British and Russian imperialism. However the first Majlis was dissolved in 1908 after being attacked by the Shah (king), and the second Majlis of 1909 was dissolved in 1911 when Russian and British imperialism re-established control over the country.

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