#Students For a Democratic Society
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scooby-doobert · 2 years ago
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"During the 1960s economic collapse of the United States, a roving vigilante group with revolutionary ideals became infamous for using their investigative skills to seek out corruption at its source… (zoinks!)"
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from: u/marx_is_secret_santa on reddit
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princetonarchives · 1 year ago
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Throwback Thursday: Of this 1968 demonstration on the campus of Princeton University, Lewis M. Lebetkin '68 later wrote that his "GOOD IS BETTER THAN EVIL" sign had been misunderstood: A contingent of pro-Vietnam War students and a group of suitably incensed antiwarriors had announced they would hold demonstrations at the same time and place. The evening before the expected clash, over dinner at Key and Seal Club, I and some other pseudoreactionary, mainstream radical satirists decided that what this campus really needed was a new party. ... we formed the Radical Middle Party, dedicated to upholding, more or less, the motto 'Moderation in almost all things.' We, too, would make signs, march, chant, and demonstrate.
The next day, I made my sign and headed for Nassau Hall. ... As I edged toward the speaker's platform on the steps of Nassau Hall, three radicals, a conservative, and a physics professor all asked me what my sign meant. Combining a poker face, a disdainful look, and a raised lef (or was it right?) eyebrow, I said to each with full solemnity, "I should think the meaning is self-evident." To my dismay, no one laughed. ...
a photographer from the New York Times snapped [a photo], with my sign as a backdrop. The picture ran in the Times the next day, then was picked up by the wire services and reprinted in Newsweek. 'Good is better than evil,' the founding principle of the Radical Middle Party, had made the big time!
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It was the Weather Underground that kept blowing up the Haymarket police memorial. There's a cool podcast hosted by the son of two members. He's kind of annoying, but it's good for the history and stories.
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thenewdemocratus · 1 year ago
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Passionate Patriots: 1968 DNC Nightmare in Chicago
. Source:FRS FreeState The Democratic Party cost themselves the presidential election of 1968 and a chance to win the White House for a third straight time and 8-10 presidential elections, going back to 1932 with FDR. To go along with another Democratic Congress because of how divided they were on the Vietnam War. A lot of that can be blamed on President Johnson’s handling of the Vietnam War, but…
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savage-kult-of-gorthaur · 1 month ago
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"SHE POSSESSED A SPLENDOUR ALL HER OWN — LIKE A a QUEEN… A HIGH PRIESTESS, A MYTHOLOGICAL SILHOUETTE. SHE WAS A REVOLUTIONARY PIN-UP..."
PIC INFO: Spotlight on far Left militant activist Bernadine Dohrn, during her time as a leader of the Revolutionary Youth Movement (RYM), a radical wing of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), in the late 1960s, c. 1968/'69.
"[Dohrn] looked like a fashion model," Susan Stern reflected.  "Everything just so.  … She possessed a splendour all her own — like a queen … a high priestess, a mythological silhouette." She was the revolutionary pin-up — a woman who drove men crazy with constant reference to fucking. Within the organization, status was determined by access to her bed.  To have sex with her was to be anointed. "She used sex to explore and cement political alliances," Jim Mellen felt. "Sex was for her a form of ideological activity." It was also a tool of humiliation. Steve Tappis recalled one meeting at which she used her body to emasculate the men present:
"Bernardine would be arguing political points at the table with blouse open to the navel, sort of leering at J.J. It wasn’t a moral thing, just sort of disconcerting. I couldn’t concentrate on the arguments.  Finally, I said: "Bernardine! Would you please button your blouse! She just pulled out one of her breasts and, in that cold way of hers, said, "You like this tit?  Take it.""
-- MY MY CORONA (Wordpress blogspot), "You don’t need a rectal thermometer to know who the assholes are," published June 2020
Source: https://mymycorona.wordpress.com/2020/06/06/you-dont-need-a-rectal-thermometer-to-know-who-the-assholes-are.
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soon-palestine · 8 months ago
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libraford · 2 months ago
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I'm not bothered by the conversation so much as I am a growing approach to activism which makes it impossible to interact with other people. Which echoes a lot of that conversation I had with Ginger this week.
He refuses to have friends that are not faithful to Jesus. Like, he can have a productive conversation with a non-believer and nearly connect with them socially, but if he learns that they don't go to church or don't believe in christ, he finds it difficult to take them seriously because their words were not god-inspired.
Ginger was in a cult. I do not mean this colloquially- Xenos/Dwell is a prominent pseudo-christian cult in central Ohio that preys on college students in need of community. There are rules about who you can date, who you can hang with, they practice gay coversion therapy, and will tell you not to visit your family if they're not Christian.
There is a lot of focus on purity. Actions, thoughts, social groups- it's very controlling about what you can and cannot do.
So. When he goes out into the world with us sinners, it becomes difficult to interact with general society.
We were talking about Merve, one of our foremen, and I said: "the first time I was in a car with Merve, he introduced himself as a Democratic Catholic Pervert. And honestly- yeah that's a good summation."
Ginger didn't like that at all. "Well he's not a very good catholic with all that talk of pornography, he should be ashamed of himself- honestly shouldn't even call himself Christian."
Merve is very much a womanizer, but it's all talk. He's gross about it sometimes and it rubs me the wrong way, but in all fairness- he warned me. Outside of that, he's what I expected from a 60-something landscaper.
"Well, I think whether he's a good Christian or not is up to God, not us."
And he got a little pissy over that comment because I caught him judging.
He only hangs out with 'the faithful' at work, which consists of three guys who are religious in a similar way and it's caused a bit of a rift in the culture. It's gotten a little... preachy. It wasn't preachy before.
So I am making... parallels to this behavior and a particular strain of activism that's been affected by purity culture.
Nothing is ever good enough. If it touches racism, it's banned forever and you have to spread the word about how it's racist. Where doing things that are well-intended puts you in the spotlight for the underlying and actually bigoted reason you're doing a nice thing. And prevents you from doing the nice thing in the future.
Because yes you did a nice thing, but it wasn't enough- you could be doing more.
Yes you did a nice thing, but you did this nice thing instead of tackling this bigger issue.
Yes you did a nice thing, but it was through this program that you didn't know was funded somewhat unethically.
Yes you did a nice thing, but your motivation for doing it wasn't the goodness of your heart, it was motivated by guilt.
Yes you did a nice thing, but it took a horrible event to do it when you should have had the morals of goodness ingrained in you and you should have done this from the start.
Yes you did a nice thing, but you only did it when it started impacting your life and you should be thinking of others first.
Yes you did a nice thing but the nice thing doesn't align perfectly with my worldview.
The goalpost is forever moving backwards.
No one likes to be called 'racist.' It's a really easy weapon to use when something does something you don't like. If you look at anything closely enough, you will see it's racist roots. You could say the same for misogyny, homophobia. Our society is built on hatred and inequality. Untangling it and living a morally pure life free of ridicule is impossible.
Recognizing the roots of an action to be bigoted is the first step. The second step is knowing it when you see it. Step three is pointing it out.
But there are more steps.
Pointing it out, or calling it out, and chastising someone for ignoring or not knowing something actually isn't all that helpful. Because it leaves you to wonder- okay, now what? What can I do to remedy this situation?
Which is the next step- actionable items. Yes, I have done something wrong- I am sorry.
I am sorry. Now I will try to make it right.
I will try to make it right by donating, by volunteering time, by listening to the people who have been hurt and lifting their voices.
Part of healing from an oppressive Christian community is realizing that people are going to sin whether you like it or not. And barring harm to themselves and others, you're gonna have to let them.
If my tarot practice is derived from a 15th century racist, then it was derived for a 15th century racist. Refusing to participate in a past-time that helps me connect with my family doesn't make it not racist. It will still be racist. But I'm not sure who it's hurting in 2024 and I don't have a time machine and I'm not being given clear instructions for how to unracist it.
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jstor · 2 months ago
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The humanities hold the key to understanding our past, navigating the present, and shaping a more equitable future. In his latest blog post, Eugene Tobin, Senior Advisor at Ithaka S+R, directs readers to the World Humanities Report, a groundbreaking international study commissioned by UNESCO. This report, and the United States focused report, explore the state of the humanities worldwide, including into their contributions to society, their challenges and their role in addressing critical issues like democratic resilience, cultural identity, and global interconnectedness.
Tobin reflects on how the report findings resonate within the U.S., where higher education faces pressures from privatization, affordability concerns, and shifting demographics. For librarians, faculty, and students alike, the reports are an essential resource to not only understand the value of the humanities but to advocate for their future.
If you’re passionate about the power of critical inquiry, the free exchange of ideas, and the role of the humanities in fostering societal growth, these are a must-read.
📚 ✨ Explore the blog and dive into the full reports.
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nanistar · 8 months ago
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CTA for CPH 🇵🇸
hi folks, last night over 20 people were detained for peacefully protesting at California Polytechnic University Humboldt, and the students involved were immediately suspended. we are asking for repeat calls to demand their release + re-enrollment.
if you have the ability to call, please do so. There is a script below for your convenience but as of now, the people picking up the phone are hanging up the moment they recognize the script so if you can go off-script that would be preferred. There is also an email script that a friend has made that you can use if you cannot call, but make sure to change some words or add your own bits so that it doesn't get flagged for spam immediately.
The Student Democratic Society is taking donations for their bail funds, which have been set at an average of $10k.
Numbers: CPH University Police 707-826-5555 Tom Jackson, CPH President [email protected] 707-826-3311 Chrissy Holliday, VP [email protected] 707-826-3361 Mitch Michell, Dean of Students [email protected] 707-826-3504
Call Script "Hi my name is __ and I demand the immediate release of the arrested Humboldt student and faculty protesters for Palestine. They should not be charged, let along raided and attacked, for being on the right side of history. They include but are not only Fern McBride, Olivia Fox, Jared Cruz, Rouhollah Aghasaleh, Launa Wyrd, Allison Merten, Isaiah Morales, and Adelmi Ruiz."
email script https://pastebin.com/ZKtd8MhN
You can follow Humboldt for Palestine on insta for more updates https://www.instagram.com/humboldtforpalestine/ https://linktr.ee/humboldtforpalestine if you can't call, email, or donate, please reblog this post for attention. additionally, please don't forget about how you can help Palestine directly by donating to the PCRF 🇵🇸
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mariacallous · 4 months ago
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It’s the most startling thing I’ve seen in this year’s presidential campaign – the astoundingly large gap between how young men and young women plan to vote this November. Among women under age 30, an overwhelming 67% plan to vote for Kamala Harris, while just 29% say they’ll back Donald Trump. But among young men, a majority – 53% – plan to vote for Trump, while 40% say they’ll support Harris, according to a New York Times/Sienna College poll. That’s an astonishing 51-percentage-point gender gap.
It’s easy to understand why so many young women favor Harris – she has an inspiring life story, champions reproductive freedom and would break the biggest glass ceiling of all by becoming the first female president. But I’m mystified why so many young men back Trump.
Many of them seem to like Trump’s machismo. They like that he talks tough. They see him as an icon of traditional manhood. But all this raises an unavoidable question: should Trump be looked to as an icon of manhood considering that he boasted of grabbing women’s genitals, was found liable for sexual assault and had an affair with an adult film star soon after his wife gave birth? That shouldn’t be anyone’s model of manhood.
Many young men seem to admire Trump’s king-of-the-jungle vibe: he roars, he bellows, he boasts that no one can ever beat him (unless they cheat). But when you cut through Trump’s tough talk and look at the record, it becomes clear that Trump did very little for young men in his four years as president.
Whoops, I should note that if you’re a young man making more than $1m a year, Trump did do a lot for you, thanks to his colossal tax cuts for the richest 1%. But for the more than 99% of young men who don’t make $1m a year, sorry, Trump didn’t do diddly for you, other than cut your taxes a wee bit, a tiny fraction of the tax cuts that he gave to the richest Americans.
I recognize that many young men feel uncomfortable about the Democratic party, partly because some Democrats unfortunately treat men as a problem – and sometimes as the problem. If the Democrats were smart, they’d see that young men – like every other group in society – have problems that they need help with, problems like affording a home, finding a good-paying job, obtaining health insurance, affording college and having enough money to raise a family.
Regardless of how you feel about Harris, the truth is that her policies will do far more for young men than Trump’s policies will. It’s not even close. She is serious about lifting up young men and young women, and she has plans to do so.
Unlike Trump, Harris will help with soaring rents and home prices. She has pledged to build 3m new homes to help drive down housing prices. In another big step to make housing more affordable, she plans to give a $25,000 subsidy to first-time home buyers. Unlike Trump, Harris is also attacking the problem of high grocery prices – she has promised to crack down on price-gouging at the supermarket.
For many young men, health coverage and high health costs are a problem. On those matters, Trump will only make things worse. He has repeatedly promised to repeal Obamacare. That would be a disaster for millions of young men and women because they would no longer be able to be on their parents’ health plan until age 26. What’s more, repealing Obamacare will push up healthcare prices.
Many young people complain about their mountains of student debt. Trump won’t help on that; he has condemned the idea of forgiving student loans. In contrast, Harris wants to expand Biden’s debt cancellation program, which is hugely popular with young Americans. What’s more, Trump backed huge cuts in student aid – a move that would make it harder for young people to afford college. Harris is eager to make college more affordable by increasing student grants. Not only that, she is looking to what Tim Walz, her running mate, has done as Minnesota’s governor. He has made Minnesota’s state universities and community colleges free for students from middle-class and lower-income families.
If you’re a young man frustrated by how little your job pays, you should know that Trump – doing a big favor for his corporate allies – did nothing to raise the $7.25-an-hour federal minimum wage. Harris strongly supports raising the minimum wage.
Trump has made two big promises to make your life more affordable. Without giving details, he says he will cut auto insurance prices nationwide in his first 100 days in office. He also says he will cut energy and electricity prices in half during his first year in office. If you believe those far-fetched promises, then you’ll probably believe me when I say I have a bridge to sell you.
If you’re a young father or if you hope to have a family someday, you should know that Harris’s policies will do far more for you than Trump’s. Recognizing how expensive it is to raise a family, Harris has called for creating a children’s tax credit of $3,000 per child per year and $6,000 for a newborn.
To improve work-family balance, Harris has long pushed to enact paid family and medical leave so that people can take much-needed paid time off to spend with their newborns or care for sick parents or children. (Most Republicans oppose a paid leave law because their corporate donors oppose it.) Trump doesn’t have similar pro-family policies – his main policy proposals are huge tax cuts for corporations and the ultra-rich and large tariffs on imports that will dangerously push up inflation.
Although many young Americans don’t realize it, Biden and Harris have worked hard to create good-paying jobs for those who don’t go to college. Biden and Harris fought to enact three important pieces of legislation – an infrastructure bill, a green energy bill and a computer chips bill – that will create about 1m construction jobs, factory jobs and other jobs across the US, many of them unionized jobs with strong benefits.
If you’re one of the many young people at Starbucks, REI, Apple or elsewhere who support unionizing as a way to increase your pay and improve your working conditions, you should know that Harris is a strong supporter of unions and enthusiastically backs legislation to make it easier to unionize. But billionaire Trump dislikes labor unions. When he was president, he and his appointees did dozens of things, large and small, to weaken unions and create roadblocks for workers seeking to unionize.
There’s no denying that Trump’s tough talk makes many young men feel good. But tough talk is cheap. It won’t help anyone pay the rent, afford college or raise a family. Harris doesn’t talk as tough as Trump, but her record and her policies make undeniably clear that she will do far more for America’s young men and women than Trump will.
I don't agree with every point he makes here, and I also don't think a lot of young men are voting based on rational and objective things like whose policies will benefit them most. But I still thought this was an interesting read.
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scooby-doobert · 2 years ago
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this is from the same universe as this:
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Ronald Reagan and Scrappy Doo (1985, colorized)
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princetonarchives · 2 years ago
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there is a strong correlation between the radical consciousness and the regalia of the New Left — beards, long hair and clothing in disarray. By adopting its regalia, the follower of the New Left subjects himself to social ostracism that reinforces his notion that the system is oppressive, which stimulates his appreciation of the urgency for radical social change. It is therefore not coincidental that so many social reformers exhibit the regalia of social deviants.
Robert Griss ‘67, Daily Princetonian, March 7, 1967
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yourreddancer · 2 months ago
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Heather Cox Richardson 11.15.24
One of President-elect Trump’s campaign pledges was to eliminate the Department of Education. He claimed that the department pushes “woke” ideology on America’s schoolchildren and that its employees “hate our children.” He promised to “return” education to the states. 
In fact, the Department of Education does not set curriculum; states and local governments do. The Department of Education collects statistics about schools to monitor student performance and promote practices based in evidence. It provides about 10% of funding for K–12 schools through federal grants of about $19.1 billion to high-poverty schools and of $15.5 billion to help cover the cost of educating students with disabilities.
It also oversees the $1.6 trillion federal student loan program, including setting the rules under which colleges and universities can participate. But what really upsets the radical right is that the Department of Education is in charge of prohibiting discrimination on the basis of race and sex in schools that get federal funding, a policy Congress set in 1975 with an act now known as the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). This was before Congress created the department.
The Department of Education became a stand-alone department in May 1980 under Democratic president Jimmy Carter, when Congress split the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare into two departments: the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Education. 
A Republican-dominated Congress established the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare in 1953 under Republican president Dwight D. Eisenhower as part of a broad attempt to improve the nation’s schools and Americans’ well-being in the flourishing post–World War II economy. When the Soviet Union beat the United States into space by sending up the first  Sputnik satellite in 1957, lawmakers concerned that American children were falling behind put more money and effort into educating the country’s youth, especially in math and science. 
But support for federal oversight of education took a devastating hit after the Supreme Court, headed by Eisenhower appointee Chief Justice Earl Warren, declared racially segregated schools unconstitutional in the May 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision. 
Immediately, white southern lawmakers launched a campaign of what they called “massive resistance” to integration. Some Virginia counties closed their public schools. Other school districts took funds from integrated public schools and used a grant system to redistribute those funds to segregated private schools. Then, Supreme Court decisions in 1962 and 1963 that declared prayer in schools unconstitutional cemented the decision of white evangelicals to leave the public schools, convinced that public schools were leading their children to perdition.
In 1980, Republican Ronald Reagan ran on a promise to eliminate the new Department of Education.
After Reagan’s election, his secretary of education commissioned a study of the nation’s public schools, starting with the conviction that there was a “widespread public perception that something is seriously remiss in our educational system.” The resulting report, titled “A Nation at Risk,” announced that “the educational foundations of our society are presently being eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a Nation and a people.”
Although a later study commissioned in 1990 by the Secretary of Energy found the data in the original report did not support the report’s conclusions, Reagan nonetheless used the report in his day to justify school privatization. He vowed after the report’s release that he would “continue to work in the months ahead for passage of tuition tax credits, vouchers, educational savings accounts, voluntary school prayer, and abolishing the Department of Education. Our agenda is to restore quality to education by increasing competition and by strengthening parental choice and local control.”
The rise of white evangelism and its marriage to Republican politics fed the right-wing conviction that public education no longer served “family values” and that parents had been cut out of their children’s education. Christians began to educate their children at home, believing that public schools were indoctrinating their children with secular values. 
When he took office in 2017, Trump rewarded those evangelicals who had supported his candidacy by putting right-wing evangelical activist Betsy DeVos in charge of the Education Department. She called for eliminating the department—until she used its funding power to try to keep schools open during the covid pandemic—and asked for massive cuts in education spending.
Rather than funding public schools, DeVos called instead for tax money to be spent on education vouchers, which distribute tax money to parents to spend for education as they see fit. This system starves the public schools and subsidizes wealthy families whose children are already in private schools. DeVos also rolled back civil rights protections for students of color and LGBTQ+ students but increased protections for students accused of sexual assault. 
In 2019, the 1619 Project, published by the New York Times Magazine on the 400th anniversary of the arrival of enslaved Africans at Jamestown in Virginia Colony, argued that the true history of the United States began in 1619, establishing the roots of the country in the enslavement of Black Americans. That, combined with the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020, prompted Trump to commission the 1776 Project, which rooted the country in its original patriotic ideals and insisted that any moments in which it had fallen away from those ideals were quickly corrected. He also moved to ban diversity training in federal agencies. 
When Trump lost the 2020 election, his loyalists turned to undermining the public schools to destroy what they considered an illegitimate focus on race and gender that was corrupting children. In January 2021, Republican activists formed Moms for Liberty, which called itself a parental rights organization and began to demand the banning of LGBTQ+ books from school libraries. Right-wing activist Christopher Rufo engineered a national panic over the false idea that public school educators were teaching their students critical race theory, a theory taught as an elective in law school to explain why desegregation laws had not ended racial discrimination. 
After January 2021, 44 legislatures began to consider laws to ban the teaching of critical race theory or to limit how teachers could talk about racism and sexism, saying that existing curricula caused white children to feel guilty.
When the Biden administration expanded the protections enforced by the Department of Education to include LGBTQ+ students, Trump turned to focusing on the idea that transgender students were playing high-school sports despite the restrictions on that practice in the interest of “ensuring fairness in competition or preventing sports-related injury.” 
During the 2024 political campaign, Trump brought the longstanding theme of public schools as dangerous sites of indoctrination to a ridiculous conclusion, repeatedly insisting that public schools were performing gender-transition surgery on students. But that cartoonish exaggeration spoke to voters who had come to see the equal rights protected by the Department of Education as an assault on their own identity. That position leads directly to the idea of eliminating the Department of Education.
But that might not work out as right-wing Americans imagine. As Morning Joe economic analyst Steven Rattner notes, for all that Republicans embrace the attacks on public education, Republican-dominated states receive significantly more federal money for education than Democratic-dominated states do, although the Democratic states contribute significantly more tax dollars. 
There is a bigger game afoot, though, than the current attack on the Department of Education. As Thomas Jefferson recognized, education is fundamental to democracy, because only educated people can accurately evaluate the governmental policies that will truly benefit them.
In 1786, Jefferson wrote to a colleague about public education: “No other sure foundation can be devised for the preservation of freedom, and happiness…. Preach, my dear Sir, a crusade against ignorance; establish and improve the law for educating the common people. Let our countrymen know that the people alone can protect us against [the evils of “kings, nobles and priests”], and that the tax which will be paid for this purpose is not more than the thousandth part of what will be paid to kings, priests and nobles who will rise up among us if we leave the people in ignorance.”
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thenewdemocratus · 2 years ago
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Mitch: Video: Chicago 1968: The Democratic Convention
. FreeState MD 1968 is when the Democratic Party changed and no longer became a Northeastern progressive party with a Southern coalition. Made up of people who basically make up the Religious-Right and Neoconservative wing of the Republican Party today. With Liberal Democrats spread out all over the country. By 1968 the Democratic Party was moving away from the South and becoming the party of the…
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savage-kult-of-gorthaur · 2 months ago
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"I'M NOT COMMITTED TO NON-VIOLENCE IN ANY WAY."
PIC INFO: Spotlight on a film still of Bernadine Dohrn, former SDS member, later turned extreme Left militant in the Weatherman organization, from "The Weather Underground," the 2002 documentary film based on the rise and fall of the aforementioned American radical-political/revolutionary group.
Sources: www.goodreads.com/book/show/22571602-days-of-rage, IMDb, & Wikipedia.
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covid-safer-hotties · 2 months ago
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Also Preserved in our archive (Daily updates!)
What if the pandemic safety net cobbled together in 2020 had been a new beginning?
What if when Joe Biden came into office in 2021, the Covid-19 safety net he was handed had become a new floor?
What if that was his baseline—and the newly elected Democratic president, sold by his most ardent supporters as FDR 2.0, had used our Covid-19 response as the bare minimum of a new social contract with Americans?
What if the caring nature of the best aspects of the US Covid response became the map for international relations—leading not just to international cooperation on infectious disease, but on matters of war, climate and genocide?
What if, instead of dismantling the vaccine-delivery infrastructure—which, at its height, delivered some four million shots in a single day—the Biden administration built upon and made some version of it permanent, so that everyone could easily get annual Covid boosters, annual flu vaccines, or get specialty vaccinations during outbreaks of unusual viruses (such as for mpox during the 2022 summer outbreak among queer men) whenever they needed it?
What if the viral surveillance and communication mechanisms utilized for learning about SARS-CoV-2, treating it and telling the public about it were being used to address H5N1—a virus which has been moving from birds to farm mammals to humans with so little notice that dead cows were killed by the “avian flu” and left on the side of a road in California’s Central Valley, as “Thick swarms of black flies hummed and knocked against the windows of an idling car, while crows and vultures waited nearby—eyeballing the taut and bloated carcasses roasting in the October heat”?What if the leaders of the Democratic party had used Covid as a blueprint to make a national platform based on care?
What if all the ways Covid had made clear how farmers, industrial butchers, kitchen staff and other food workers are the most at risk people amongst us to viral infection led to meaningful, permanent protections, such that they were much less likely to contract not just SARS-CoV-2 but H1N1, H5N1, influenza, or any other existing or novel pathogens?
What if all the all the ways Covid exposed how unsafe industrial food production is (for the workers who make it and the people who eat it alike) had triggered safety reforms, instead of having these warnings ignored and leading towards record numbers of safety recalls for e-coli, Salmonella, and Listeria?
What if an airborne pandemic had led to indoor air being as filtered, treated and regulated as drinking water?
What if everyone with a child was still getting a $300 check from the US treasury, so that having a child was not a gambling-style risk, but a responsibility shared with all of society?
What if the paused-for-years student debts were forgiven, so that young people could actually begin their lives?
What if Biden built on Americans’ experience of just showing up somewhere to get the medical care they needed to create a universal healthcare system?
(What if Kamala Harris built upon Americans’ taste of not getting charged at the point of such service—and campaigned on Medicare for All?)
What if once the link between Covid and homelessness was established, the Democrats had pushed infectious disease as just one reason for an end to evictions and a robust, public-health-backed campaign to end homelessness and stop the United States from having more people living on the streets than any other country?
What if after the link between Covid and incarceration was established, the Democrats had pursued decarceration as a public health measure and—instead of throwing weed and cryptocurrency at us—had made reducing incarceration a centerpiece of the Harris campaign to earn the votes of Black men?
(What if after 100,000 Californians died of Covid and the links between Covid, homelessness and incarceration were clear, residents of the Golden State chose to allow rent control and to abolish legal slavery in prisons—instead of voting to ban rent control and to continue prison slavery?)
What if the leaders of the Democratic party had used Covid as a blueprint to make a national platform based on care?
Would we be in the lethal position we are now—with a genocide raging abroad, Covid deaths in the hundreds every week at home, a poisoned food supply, $17 trillion in household debt, oligarch goons ready to dismantle government regulations, and a sociopath heading back into the White House—if Covid had been the floor?
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