#politicians have to gain favor from voters and if people on the left are protest voting or refusing to

[phoenyx-rising]

Its bs like this that leads to inaction/ our politics going right. If you actually think this, please educate yourself on history and how politics in this country work, and stop spreading hopeless rhetoric. Some of us arent ready to surrender yet

screaming "we can push them Left!" when all the while they've been pushing you Right.

[hogtown-socialist-alternative]

How Socialists Defeated Amazon’s Bid to Buy Seattle’s Elections

By Ty Moore -November 9, 2019

Jeff Bezos’s bid to buy Seattle City Council has backfired. Despite big business dropping unprecedented cash behind Amazon-backed candidates in all seven council races, Seattle voters rejected this attempt to flip the council to the right in all but two of the seven council races. In Seattle’s most-watched, most expensive, and most polarized council in decades, Socialist Alternative’s Kshama Sawant appears to have won a narrow victory.

(Watch the victory press conference here. )

After election night returns showed Sawant behind by 8 points, with 46% to Egan Orion’s 54%, the corporate media and big business sounded triumphalist. But 60% of late arriving ballots counted in the following days swung toward Kshama. By Friday evening’s count Sawant had crested 3.6% past Orion with a lead of 1,515 votes, with that number likely to rise a bit further in the days ahead.

Washington State’s mail-in ballot system allows voters to mail in their ballots up to three weeks before election day. Early voters tend to be older and wealthier, with later voters being disproportionately younger, working class, and renters – those more likely to vote socialist. This year the late ballot bump for Sawant was bigger than ever, a reflection of the huge 58% turnout in District 3. Even our critics in the local media were forced to credit Socialist Alternative’s record-breaking get-out-the-vote operation.

The high turnout also reflected the wave of outrage that swept Seattle in the final three weeks of the election following Amazon’s $1 million “money bomb” dropped on Seattle on October 14. This brought Amazon’s total contribution to the Seattle Chamber of Commerce PAC to $1.5 million, and corporate PAC spending as a whole to over $4.1 million – approaching five times the previous record!

National political figures weighed in against Amazon, followed by a wave of national media attention. The Wall Street Journal’s Editorial Board complained that “Bernie Sanders tweeted this week that Amazon’s spending in Seattle was ‘a perfect example of the out-of-control corporate greed we are going to end.’ Elizabeth Warren decried Amazon for ‘trying to tilt the Seattle City Council elections in their favor,’ adding that ‘I have a plan to get big money out of politics.’”

A Referendum on Corporate Power

Warning that Bezos’s $1.5 million gamble to defeat Sawant and other progressives may have backfired, Seattle Times columnist Danny Westneat said: “The election was playing out as a referendum on the performance of the City Council.” An Elway/Crosscut poll showed 67% of likely voters supporting “someone who wants to change” the Council’s direction. Westneat continued: “Now [the election] could well be a referendum on Amazon and corporate power” (10/23/19).

Of course, the Seattle Times is at the forefront of a relentless corporate propaganda offensive to blame Sawant and other so-called “left ideologues” for the failed “performance of the City Council” in addressing Seattle’s homelessness and affordability crisis, the top concern for voters. The paper endorsed Amazon-backed candidates in all seven council races, portraying them as “change” candidates.

In reality, Seattle’s housing crisis is part of the global failure of capitalism, which treats housing as a commodity to enrich billionaire speculators, rather than as a basic human right. Working people are right to be angry at the inaction of city, state, and federal authorities to address the crisis. But blame for this falls squarely on a political establishment that is complicit with corporate power, not on activists and political leaders like Kshama Sawant calling for universal rent control and taxing big business to massively expand quality public housing.

Amazon executives’ chosen opponent for Kshama was Egan Orion, a fully corporate candidate who posed as a “progressive” to win votes. Orion put posters up all over town saying he accepted no corporate PAC money despite the fact that he applied for corporate PAC money, interviewed with the PAC, and thanked them when he got their endorsement. He sent out mailers with lies about Kshama to every household.

Orion’s supporters tore down over 1,000 Kshama Sawant yard signs throughout the district, and in the final two weeks, they vandalized over 200 signs with spray-painted profanities. Crucial to overcoming the lies and attacks against our campaign was building widespread public awareness about this attempt to buy the election through thousands of conversations on the doors and at street corners by our members and volunteers.

Debate on Seattle’s Left

Once again, Seattle has shown that socialists and working people can take on the most powerful corporate titans and win. This victory should give confidence to movements everywhere, from the recent wave of mass anti-austerity and democracy protests spreading across the globe, to the youth climate strikes, labor battles, as well as other socialist election campaigns including Bernie Sanders’ inspiring fight for the presidency.

Yet it would be a major mistake to imagine that similar victories can be won through struggle and determination alone. The role of Marxist perspectives, program, and organization was essential in Seattle and will be vital to defeating the concentrated power of the capitalist class everywhere.

At the start of the election campaign, a de-facto alliance between big business, key labor leaders, and most liberal political figures had coalesced to try and defeat Sawant and block the election of Democratic Socialists of America candidate Shaun Scott in District 4. This anti-Sawant alliance came to life in the aftermath of the “Tax Amazon” campaign in 2018, which went down in defeat following aggressive bullying by Amazon, including threats to move jobs out of Seattle.

The broad coalition built around the Tax Amazon campaign, in which Sawant’s office and Socialist Alternative played a central role, initially won unanimous passage of the tax on the top 3% of Seattle corporations to pay for affordable housing and homeless services. However, facing intense pressure from big business and a well-funded repeal campaign, this coalition was shattered and city council repealed the tax in a 7-2 vote just one month later.

From left-liberal and pro-business voices alike, blame for the defeat was put on the “divisive” approach of Sawant and Socialist Alternative. Despite support from a number of unions, leaders of the Ironworkers and other trades angrily denounced the campaign as a “tax on jobs,” fearful that Amazon would follow through on their threats to cut back new construction in retaliation.

In the August 6 primary, with no endorsements from her fellow city councilmembers or other prominent Democratic Party politicians, with labor publicly divided, Sawant received just 37% in the primary election. “No incumbent in recent memory has survived a primary showing that low,” wrote Westneat in the Seattle Times (8/7/19). “[T]he days on the council for the crusader for rent control and taxes on big business could be numbered.”

The Fight for Unity Against Amazon

If Sawant and Socialist Alternative had adopted the approach of most liberal and labor leaders to try and avoid a direct confrontation with Amazon, it’s likely Jeff Bezos’ bullying strategy and attempt to buy the city council would have succeeded. There was nothing automatic about the widespread working-class distrust toward corporate power getting organized into a coherent fightback.

In fact, most elections across the U.S. don’t feature bold working-class challenges, given the corporate domination of the two-party system. Even in Seattle, where the local Democratic Party organizations have shifted leftward under the impact of Sanders and other left challengers, this hasn’t resulted in strong working class fighters running for city council in most races.

Socialist Alternative based our electoral strategy on confidence that, if offered a fighting lead, working class and young people in Seattle were capable of defeating Amazon and big business. Crucial to this strategy was the potential for working-class pressure from below to push progressive and labor leaders off the sidelines and into a united fight with us against Seattle’s corporate establishment. Socialist Alternative members provided the Marxist backbone of this strategy. Their energy, self-sacrifice, and political skills successfully built  perhaps the most powerful grassroots election campaign in Seattle history.  

Over 1,000 volunteers and SA members have helped us knock on over 225,000 doors and make 200,000 phone calls. 7,900 working people donated to the campaign, and with a median donation of $20 we raised $570,000, smashing all previous records for both the number of donors and total amount raised. We’ll be publishing a fuller report of this historic effort soon.

The dynamic unleashed after the primary election confirmed our strategy. Candidates backed by Amazon and big business moved on to the general election in all seven council races, facing off against more progressive candidates. With the looming threat of the Chamber of Commerce engineering a wholesale takeover of City Hall, our call for maximum unity against big business rapidly gained traction among grassroots activists, exerting pressure on bigger political players.

More endorsements for Sawant, as well as Shaun Scott, began rolling in from progressive leaders and groups who had sat on the sidelines in the primary. The scandalous effort of conservative labor leaders to win Egan Orion the Labor Council’s endorsement was defeated when over 300 union members signed an open letter in protest. By the final weeks, 21 unions had endorsed Sawant – a substantial majority of the union locals who endorsed in the District 3 race. A joint event promoting a Green New Deal for Seattle was organized with Sawant, Morales, and Scott speaking, an important display of programmatic left unity that was absent in the primary.

In a major defeat for the business-backed Democratic establishment who have long-dominated city  politics, local Democratic Party groups endorsed both Shaun Scott and Kshama Sawant in September (they had already endorsed Morales in the primary). Sawant is the first independent socialist ever endorsed by Seattle’s Democrats, and this endorsement was made despite her very public calls for left Democrats, labor, and social movements to join together to build a new party for working people. This victory, the product of an energetic grassroots effort, was linked to passing resolutions condemning corporate PAC spending  through four Democratic Party organizations.

All this laid the basis for our re-election campaign to become the central driving force behind a unified response when Amazon dropped their $1 million money bomb on October 14th. Alongside the Democratic Party groups, we organized a press conference two days later outside of Amazon headquarters, followed by rally called by Amazon workers a week later.

This broke the dam. A wave of national media coverage followed. In a high profile reversal, even Lorena Gonzalez and Teresa Mosqueda – the liberal city councilmembers who had publicly called for Sawant’s defeat in the primary – felt compelled to speak at the rally against Amazon and announce their endorsement of both Sawant and Scott. A wave of other progressive Democratic Party leaders followed suit.

The  naked attempt by Jeff Bezos to buy Seattle City council backfired, but only because it met a well-prepared united front strategy to mobilize working class anger into a unifying force, pushing even reluctant labor and liberal leaders into alliance with socialists to fight big business. The role of Socialist Alternative, with our clear analysis, strategy, and a politically self-confident membership, was absolutely vital to moving these wider forces into united action.

As the wave of socialist election campaigns across the country continues to expand, the rich lessons of how we defeated Jeff Bezos in his hometown can help serious socialist organizers develop winning strategies for working class struggle everywhere.

https://www.socialistalternative.org

[giftofshewbread]

Dark Days

By Daymond Duck 

Published on:January 17, 2021

The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election was the most contentious and corrupt election in the history of America (it has been reported that almost 80% of Republicans, about 30% of Independents, and 17% of Democrats believe there was fraud).

The shadow government and globalist elite have used an illegal election to replace a president that wanted to put America first with a president that will push world government, and these people are now closer to their long-cherished goal of a one-world government, economy, and godless global religion than they have ever been.

In my last article, I reported that Dr. James Dobson said the Republican loss of the two Senate Seats in Georgia will lead to the loss of “government of the people, by the people and for the people” because the Democrats will add more Senate Seats (Washington, DC, and Puerto Rico) and more judges to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Republicans lost both seats, so if Dr. Dobson is right, the election fraud has cost America “government of the people, by the people and for the people.”

The shadow government and globalist elite have gained control of every branch of U.S. government through the Democrat Party, and there will be no way to stop the surrender of U.S. sovereignty.

Demonic forces have taken over America, and our nation will never recover.

Faithful students that study Bible prophecy on a regular basis are not surprised: We have long taught that the Bible prophesies the following:

the nation of Israel will be re-established (it has),

the Church will grow lukewarm (it is),

there will be global pandemics (worse than Covid),

persecution of Christians (lockdowns, pastors arrested, churches fined),

global economic problems (trillion-dollar stimulus packages, the economy of many nations near collapse),

global famine (unemployment and hunger are spreading),

gross immorality and abominations to God (abortion, LGBTQ, etc.),

deceit will increase (censorship, lying, etc.),

the technology to track all buying and selling (coming on the scene now),

the elimination of cash (digital currencies are now going into use),

the arrival of 10 kings in the world (this could be approved at “The Great Reset” soon),

that the U.S. must decline (this appears to be happening now),

a world government (Biden plans to push it),

an antichrist religion (Democrats have removed God from their party platform), etc.

This is a spiritual war; America is no longer a Christian nation; Biden and Harris have indicated that they will greenlight globalization, rejoin the World Health Organization, push the Green New Deal, open America’s borders, and more.

Fraud has turned America into a one-party nation; voting was worthless; fear, frustration and concern are spreading; many pastors are silent; their church members are like sheep without shepherds in front of a pack of wolves; it is not an easy time for Christians and patriots; this is probably America’s last stand; citizens are upset; and there is a lot of uncertainty about what the future holds for us, our children, our grandchildren, etc.

This has prompted me to offer these thoughts:

God is not surprised, He is still in control, the Church has been told to watch for these things, prophecy is being fulfilled, and these things indicate that this present generation could be the terminal generation (Matt. 24:32-34).

Jan Markell said, “Things are not falling apart; things are falling in place,” and Rev. J.D. Farag said, “God isn’t trying to make you happy. God is trying to get you ready.”

This world is not the Christian’s hope or home; the Christian’s hope is not an anti-Christ world government, corrupt politicians, politically motivated judges and courts, or anything except the Rapture of the Church (John 11:11; Titus 2:13).

The purpose of the Rapture is to give Christians knowledge and comfort about their future and that of their deceased loved ones (I Thess. 4:13-18).

Christians are not alone (John 14:16).

The Gates of Hell will not prevail against the Church (Matt. 6:18).

Nothing can separate Christians from the love of God (Rom. 8:38-39).

Christians should set their affections on heaven, stand firm, live by the Word of God, keep the Judgment Seat of Christ in mind, and know that our sins will find us out (Col. 3:2; Matt. 4:4; II Cor. 5:10; Num. 32:23).

A lukewarm attitude, the silence of pastors, and Church members that know very little Scripture signify the end of the age (Rev. 3:15-18).

People who are not saved should quickly and sincerely put their faith in Jesus (not baptism or joining a church) for the forgiveness of their sins (Prov. 3:5-7; John 3:16; 14:6).

Christians should love others, do good works, attend Church, get the gospel out (to everyone, but especially to their family), pray often, pray for the peace of Jerusalem, and more (Heb. 10:24-25; Mark 16:15; Psa. 122;6).

Christians should watch the signs and pray that God will consider them worthy to be Raptured before the Tribulation Period arrives (Luke 21:36).

Know that God raises up leaders and God brings down leaders. He had a reason for putting Trump in office, He has a reason for removing Trump, and a reason for putting Biden in office. I tend to believe God is ready to let world government advance, and Trump would have been in the way.

God’s prophecies must be fulfilled, and good will come from every situation (Rev. 1:1; Rom. 8:28).

Here are more of my thoughts along a different line:

On Jan. 6, 2021, an angry mob stormed and breached the U.S. Capitol building, and tragically, 1 person was killed almost immediately, several others died, several police were injured, and there was property damage.

Politicians and pundits immediately blamed Trump, but Congress, the FBI, CIA, the Media, and the U.S. Supreme Court must share the blame (also there have been reports that Antifa and Black Lives Matter were among the protesters and responsible for some of the violence; On Jan. 7, it was reported that 2 members of Antifa had already been identified by facial recognition technology. Some officials deny it, but they proved untruthful in the Russian Collusion hoax).

Barack Obama and Chuck Schumer have boasted that they will fundamentally change America, and they have been involved.

The House tried to dump Trump for 4 years, falsely accused him, impeached him for nothing, and ignored the crimes of the Bidens and Clintons.

The FBI, CIA and others lied and falsely prosecuted people because they wanted to dump Trump, and little to nothing has been done.

A Special Prosecutor was appointed to investigate the Clintons and the Russian Collusion hoax, and the public has been promised a report for years, but it has never been released, and it will probably be covered up.

Politicians, the Media, and some police claim that we are a nation of laws, but they have ignored 4 years of Antifa and Black Lives Matter rioting, looting, burning, injuring people, and attacking the police.

Despite overwhelming evidence of voter fraud, judges have refused to hear the evidence, the U.S. Supreme Court has done nothing, and some people think violence is the only answer (God is the only answer).

Pundits immediately started saying “we must come together,” but it will not happen because the left’s definition of “coming together” is that the right must totally submit. The left will never agree to restrictions on abortion, sexual perversion, drug abuse, etc. (Rev. 9:20-21), and true Christians will not totally surrender.

Simply put, violence is wrong, but Washington is corrupt and broken; frustration started building before Trump ran for President. Millions of people do not want mob rule, one-party rule, their voice to go unheard, to open America’s borders, to surrender America’s sovereignty, to let unsaved diplomats at the UN tell the U.S. what laws we have to pass, different voting rules for different people, the crimes of the Clintons and Bidens ignored, the police attacked, the police defunded, and judges that ignore the law and rule in favor of their own political party.

It saddens me to say it, but I do not believe Congress will listen. According to Bible prophecy, abortion, perversion, drug abuse, and globalism will explode; freedom of speech and freedom of religion will decline; persecution of believers and anti-Semitism will increase; violence will increase; there will be no revival in the Church; and God will soon send the Tribulation Period to deal with godless government in America and the world.

On the other hand, I rejoice to say that God is listening to the grievances of His people. The world is dark, but light is coming, and these tragic events are reasons for hope (I Thess. 5:4-9).

The Christian’s future is glorious, and the nearness of world government and the Tribulation Period implies that the Rapture of the Church is close.

I don’t know how to define close, but I honestly believe the appointment of 10 people to rule over a world government in the next 4 years is a distinct possibility.

Here are some more stories that made the news:

One, concerning false accusers, Democrats praised and bailed out rioters, looters, and arsonists in some cities, but on Jan. 7, 2021, Biden called those that stormed the capitol “rioters, insurrectionists and domestic terrorists.”

Some reports said hundreds of thousands of people attended the March to Save America, and about 40-50,000 went to the capitol.

Thus, most of those that went to Washington were not involved in the violence.

Violence is wrong, and if the Democrats want to “come together,” they should recognize that most of those that went to Washington have legitimate grievances that must be addressed and admit the truth about the involvement of Antifa and Black Lives Matter.

Sadly, there is every reason to believe that hypocrisy, lying and deceit will prevail.

Two, one TV commentator said the reason Pelosi, Schumer, Ilhan Omar and others want to remove Trump from office with less than 2 weeks to go is because removal from office will disqualify him from running for President 4 years from now.

They obviously do not know that they have no control over who will run for President 4 years from now because God raises up our leaders.

As I see it, the President of the U.S. could very well be one of the Ten Kings under the rule of the Antichrist 4 years from now (I am not setting a date for the Rapture).

Incidentally, saying the election was stolen is not an impeachable offense.

Three, concerning the Battle of Gog and Magog, on Jan. 4, 2021, Iran announced that it is now enriching uranium to 20%.

Israeli Prime Min. Netanyahu said Iran is trying to develop nuclear weapons, and Israel will not let them do it.

I have been saying it for a long time, but the latter days, latter years Battle of Gog and Magog could be close (Ezek. 38:8, 16).

Four, on Jan. 6, 2021, Rev. Franklin Graham said, “We (America) are in trouble. I believe God’s judgment is coming, for the sins of our nation are great, and they are a stench in the nostrils of our Creator.”

Five, concerning famine, on Jan. 7, 2021, Bloomberg reported that global food prices hit a 6-year high in Dec. 2020, and they are likely to go higher in 2021.

The higher cost of food is expected to increase inflation.

Six, the place that is believed to be the site where John the Baptist baptized Jesus is in an area between Israel and Jordan that was designated a war zone more than 50 years ago.

Land mines were laid in the area, and people were warned to stay away.

Two years ago, Israel started removing the landmines, and the area has now been declared safe.

On Jan. 10, 2021, it was reported that a group toured the area and held a baptism ceremony there.

Seven, concerning the censorship of Trump, and Christian and conservative websites, on Jan. 10, 2021, it was reported that Biden has at least 14 current or former executives of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, and Twitter ready to serve in his administration or advising his transition team.

In my opinion, one of the primary reasons for censorship is to silence anyone that opposes the surrender of America’s sovereignty to a world government.

Eight, on Jan. 10, 2021, it was reported that a post on Biden’s website says he has plans to defeat the NRA and “end our epidemic of gun violence.”

There are not a lot of specifics, but the NRA is saying Biden will make “a concerted attack on the rights of gun owners.

Finally, God loves you, and if you have not done so, sincerely admit that you are a sinner; believe that Jesus is the virgin-born, sinless Son of God who died for the sins of the world, was buried, and raised from the dead; ask Him to forgive your sins, cleanse you, come into your heart and be your Saviour; then tell someone that you have done this.

[theprogressivepapers-blog1]

It’s Time We Listened to the “Kids”

As a scholar, I’ve spent my fair share of time imagining what a post-Trump America will look like. But my vision for the United States doesn’t match what the many in the media are predicting; I like to refer to these predictions as “wishful thinking” because they largely assert a return to “politics as usual” or suggest some type of resurgence in the Obama Era of Good Feelings - neither of which will happen. The idea of going back to “normal” would be valid if the Constitution were truly a living document and policy problems were adequately and substantively addressed, but that hasn’t happened in the last century or so. The Constitution didn’t save us from Trump, it didn’t get him removed from office, it didn’t stop him from performing blatantly illegal actions that make our country unsafe both domestically and internationally, it didn’t put Breonna Taylor’s murderers behind bars, and it won’t save our democracy. 

Yet, there are very few in the political sphere that will admit this very real fact. It’s radical in today’s polity to suggest that the Constitution is a tired document that needs to either be seriously reformed and amended to holy hell, or replaced completely by a parliamentary-style government. The latter solution would allow for greater representation and it adequately addresses the issue of extreme party polarization by encouraging the formation of coalitions to gain a majority. Furthermore, parliamentary systems effectively limit the power of the individual in favor of party power, leading to more discipline, less showboating, and (hopefully) no filibuster. But of course, nation-building, like nation-destroying, is complex and not especially popular among the general electorate.

However, one specific demographic - my demographic - is incredibly receptive to progressive policies, including changing the system completely: 18-44 year olds. We coalesced around Bernie Sanders in both the 2016 and 2020 election and will most likely decide whether Joe Biden wins the next election. Even so, Democrats aren’t doing nearly enough to appease the “New Left,” instead choosing to focus on moderate, aging Republicans. This alienates our demographic - who is set to have the second greatest voting power, and is primed to turn out in record numbers in November - further adding to our distaste for Establishment politicians who have done little to nothing to help our generation get by. 

In the last month, we have taken to the streets demanding the abolition of the police force and basic human rights for African Americans and Democrats haven’t tried too hard to appease us. We have provided adequate, well-researched policy proposals and solutions to police brutality, yet we are categorically rejected by the likes of Joe Biden - a man who penned and ushered in the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, which invariably contributed to mass incarceration and didn’t address police brutality in any way. We saw the systematic campaign perpetrated by Democrats to end Bernie Sanders’ presidential bid twice, called it out, and were gaslit by the party of the working class. After being slammed by the media and older generations for being “lazy” or “uninterested in anything but our phones,” and having our activism ignored or torn apart by the people who are supposed to be on our side, it’s no wonder that many of us have a distaste for “politics as usual” that sometimes manifests as voter apathy. Many of us recognize that politicians on both sides are not actually interested in helping us; our lives are a game for the political elite to play with, and, trust me, that fact is not lost upon the majority of us.

Now it’s our turn to change the world into a more equitable place that respects the human rights of all people. It’s time to listen to the “kids” who are protesting for basic human rights and necessities like the right to not be murdered by those who protect and serve us. Our contemporary body politic is unquestionably corrupt, and we should recognize that the subpar material conditions we live in now have pervaded across centuries. It is not only the fault of the current regime that they can get away with blatantly illegal acts, it’s the fault of the system that allows it to happen time and again. Thus, we must ask ourselves: Why does our system of governance allow injustices? Why do corporations get treated better than human beings? Why are we so different from other developed nations who don’t have these problems? Why do we allow people to murder and get away with it? We have given the Government 231 years to fulfill the promises of our social contract, how much longer must we wait?

[theliberaltony]

via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

Sen. Elizabeth Warren is running close with Joe Biden among white voters, according to national polls. Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Indiana, (and sometimes Warren and Sen. Bernie Sanders) leads the former vice president in recent surveys of overwhelmingly white Iowa. But Biden still leads in national polls, largely because he has a substantial lead among African Americans.That support is keeping him at the top of the polls and is crucial to his path to the Democratic presidential nomination.

However, an important portion of the black community is very much not behind Biden: the black left. The question is how much that will matter electorally. There are important characteristics of the black left — the way it is structured and the way it exercises political power — that could make it difficult for its members to stop Biden from winning the nomination. And the black left may not try that hard to stop him anyway.

There is no official “black left.” What I’m describing here is a bloc of people who have gained power and prominence since the 2014 protests in Ferguson, Missouri, that turned Black Lives Matter into one of the most important civil rights movements of the past decade. This bloc is distinct from what I would describe as the black establishment, which includes powerful black institutions and people: longtime civil rights activists and ministers like Jesse Jackson Sr. and Al Sharpton; veteran members of the Congressional Black Caucus; groups like the National Urban League and the NAACP; and President Obama and his close allies.1

The black left includes:

The activists and groups who either were involved in protesting the 2012 killing of Florida teenager Trayvon Martin, went to Ferguson two years later or subsequently organized in opposition to police practices that they felt were discriminatory against black people.

Black leaders of prominent liberal groups, such as Maurice Mitchell of the Working Families Party.

Left-leaning black academics and intellectuals who have big followings, such as authors Ta-Nehisi Coates and Roxane Gay and regular MSNBC contributor and Princeton University professor Eddie Glaude.

New generation civil rights organizations such as Color of Change and Dream Defenders.

More liberal black elected officials, such as Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison and Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota.

Not everyone in the black left actively opposes Biden. (Nor does all of the black establishment support him.) But opposition is fairly widespread. For instance, Leslie Mac, the digital organizer for a group of progressive black women and gender non-conforming individuals called Black Womxn For, told me that in an informal survey the group conducted of about 500 people in their activists’ circles, not a single person favored Biden. (Black Womxn For has endorsed Warren.)

The beef the black left has with Biden isn’t much different from the concerns that white liberal activists have about the former vice president: Namely, that he’s too centrist and establishment.

“Joe Biden shouldn’t be president,” Coates said in an interview on “Democracy Now!” back in July, noting that Biden “wanted more people sentenced to the death penalty, wanted more jails,” in earlier stages of his career.

What’s different for the black left — as opposed to the white left — is that its views are very deeply in tension with the broader black Democratic electorate, at least so far. Forty-three percent of black voters favor Biden, according to polling from The Economist/YouGov. That’s roughly 30 points more than anyone else. We don’t have a lot of polls breaking down black voters into smaller subgroups, but Morning Consult polling suggests Biden is leading even among blacks with college degrees.

Another candidate, like Warren, might catch up among black voters — or Biden might fall back. But no matter what happens, it’s worth asking why opposition to Biden on the black left hasn’t had more of an effect among rank-and-file black voters. And there are a couple of reasonable answers.

First, the black left has an unorthodox structure that might limit its electoral influence. The national office of Black Lives Matter can’t throw its weight behind Warren, Sanders or anyone else — there is no Black Lives Matter, at least in the sense of a formal organization with a board, a president and a physical headquarters. Instead, there is an informal Black Lives Matter Global Network, which has at least 15 U.S. Black Lives Matter chapters in cities around the country, plus one in Toronto. Key figures associated with the creation of the phrase Black Lives Matter and the Ferguson protests work at an array of different progressive organizations that focus on racial issues, rather than one single place. There is also a coalition of dozens of civil rights organizations, such as Dream Defenders, called The Movement for Black Lives.

More than five years after the protests in Ferguson, there is an active debate about whether this decentralized structure is the best approach to challenging policing practices and broader racial inequality in America. (It’s not totally clear if this structure was the intention of the activists, if it happened organically or if it’s something in between.)

This loose organizational structure is also largely untested in electoral politics. In 2016, the Black Lives Matter movement was in its infancy. During the Democratic primary, the activists criticized both Hillary Clinton and Sanders. The two candidates and their campaigns tried to appease the activists while also seeming a bit confused about what exactly Black Lives Matter was and who was leading it. Clinton overwhelmingly won the black vote, but she wasn’t as strongly opposed by the black left as Biden is now.

The black left has played a big role in helping to elect reform-minded local prosecutors in the years since the Ferguson protests, so I don’t want to suggest that it has no electoral power. And in theory, the black left is well-represented in spaces where some black voters are (social media, for example). Being the candidate backed by black figures with large Twitter followings should be helpful to a candidate.

“The church doesn’t have the power and influence it used to,” Aimee Allison, founder of She the People, a San Francisco-based group created in 2018 that is focused on motivating liberal women of color, told me. (Allison’s group has not endorsed a candidate but Allison herself expressed wariness about Biden during my interview with her). “There are new and powerful people and networks that are being activated,” she added.

Maybe. But if I were a candidate running for president in 2020, I might prefer the tried-and-true networks that Biden is relying on, which are similar to those that helped Clinton win the black vote by more than 50 percentage points in 2016. If you are a Democratic presidential candidate aiming to win older black voters, in particular, there are clear, long-standing institutions to tap into (black churches) and political figures to court (Rep. James Clyburn of South Carolina). Why is Biden currently leading with black voters? That’s a complicated question with a complicated answer (here are 2,000 words on the topic), but I think one factor is that he has spent decades in these black establishment spaces.

Beyond its structure, the black left might also struggle to wield electoral influence for a second reason: It’s not unified behind a single Democratic candidate, in part because it is somewhat wary of politicians in general.

Warren, Sanders, Buttigieg, Sen. Cory Booker, Sen. Kamala Harris and former Cabinet secretary Julián Castro have all courted organizations on the black left, including making personal appeals (such as by appearing on their podcasts and at events they sponsor) but also by adopting some of their language and positions (for example, embracing the idea that reparations for black Americans should be studied). Biden hasn’t done as much of this — and it’s unlikely that his positions and rhetoric would have appealed to the black left anyway.

But the approach to Biden’s candidacy has varied widely among various individuals and organizations within the black left. Some have endorsed other candidates (Gay, Rep. Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts and the Working Families Party are with Warren; Ellison and Omar with Sanders; the progressive black women’s group Higher Heights for America with Harris).

The decision by Working Families, a major force in liberal politics that backed Sanders in 2016, to endorse Warren angered Sanders’s supporters. But in explaining that move, Mitchell emphasized that taking a more cautious posture in this primary wasn’t smart.

“You don’t defeat the moderate wing of Democrats through thought pieces or pithy tweets, you defeat their politics through organizing,” Mitchell told The New York Times.

But others in the black left haven’t gone that far. Some influential black liberal voices, such as Coates, are more commentators and writers than political figures — they give their opinions but aren’t in roles that would necessarily put them in position to organize people for or against a candidate. Another bloc of black left figures told me that they and others in the movement like several of the candidates (usually some combination of Castro, Harris, Sanders and Warren) and are now waiting for the field to narrow.

On criminal justice and policing issues, “Julián Castro has been the most outspoken of any of the candidates,” said Samuel Sinyangwe, a co-founder of Campaign Zero, a policy-focused group that seeks to reduce the number of civilians killed by police. When I pressed him to choose among the candidates at the top of the polls, Sinyangwe praised Warren, but emphasized, “It’s early.”

Still another bloc says the field overall is flawed, and it’s not worth singling out Biden as worse than the more liberal candidates. For example, at a recent conference, the leaders of the group ADOS (American Descendants of Slavery) said they will not endorse a Democratic candidate, arguing that none of the party’s leading contenders are sufficiently committed to pushing for reparations. That posture echoes early statements from some Black Lives Matter activists, many of whom were wary of the more cautious racial stands of basically all politicians, including Democrats and then-President Barack Obama. That’s both because the black left thinks the party is too centrist but also because it is in some ways an anti-establishment, anti-party movement. In its endorsement of Warren, Black Womxn For basically criticized the entire Democratic Party, writing, “the two-party system, elites within the Democratic establishment, and even the primary process itself continue to fall short of what is required to fully engage and honor the power” of black female voters.

“People were like, ‘you’ve sold out,’” said Chanelle Helm, a leader of the Black Lives Matter group in Louisville, Kentucky, describing the reaction after Helm and other black female activists attended a private meeting with Warren earlier this year. Helm is supporting the Massachusetts senator, who she said “speaks for the mamas in the margins.”

A kind of anti-politicians posture has the potential to result in a divided or disengaged black left, which could help Biden. In fact, in some ways that posture has probably already helped him. The surveys of the Democratic race are essentially an early contest of their own, as this year’s polls determine who makes the debate stage and who receives the accompanying money and attention. Candidates with low poll numbers drop out (Kirsten Gillibrand) or struggle to raise money (Booker, Castro). Biden has held a huge lead among older black voters throughout 2019, while a bunch of candidates, including Biden, are splitting the younger vote. The Democratic race would look worse for Biden if the younger black vote was more consolidated.

I don’t know where black voters will land overall, nor do I know what role the black left will ultimately play in 2020 primary. But what’s clear is that many in the black left don’t want Biden to be the Democratic nominee, and yet may not mobilize to stop him or may not be organized enough to stop him, even if they wanted to.

At the same time, a Biden primary win would not be catastrophic for their movement, these activists say. They note that the former Delaware senator has embraced many of the black left’s ideas for changing the criminal justice system, such as abolishing the death penalty.

“In many cases, he is fighting the policies he enacted,” said Sinyangwe. “I don’t think it’s an indictment of the movement if Biden wins. It isn’t dependent on a single candidate winning.”

[patriotsnet]

Why Are Democrats And Republicans So Divided

New Post has been published on https://www.patriotsnet.com/why-are-democrats-and-republicans-so-divided/

Why Are Democrats And Republicans So Divided

Us Election Shows Perilous Divide Between Republicans And Democrats: Experts

The fascinating psychology behind why we’re so divided right now.

Copy article linkCopy link

Presidential elections can be revealing moments that convey the wishes of the American people to the next wave of elected officials. So far, the big reveal in the contest between President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden is the extent of the cavernous divide between Republican and Democratic America, one that defines the nation, no matter which candidate ultimately wins.

Voters from both parties turned out in droves to pick the next president, but as they did so, they found little agreement about what that president should do. Democrats and Republicans prioritized different issues, lived in different communities and even voted on different kinds of ballots.

Read more: Trump makes baseless allegations over U.S. election, prompting Republican rebukes

Whoever emerges as the winner, that division ensures that the next president will face significant gridlock in Congress, skepticism about the integrity of the vote and an agitated electorate increasingly divided by race, education and geography. Even the vote count itself threatens to further split Americans.

Two days after polls closed, neither Trump nor Biden has earned;the 270 electoral votes;needed to win the presidency. The Republican incumbent is encouraging his supporters to protest outside counting locations still sorting through mail ballots the method of voting preferred by many Democrats while pursuing an aggressive;legal strategy;that could lead to further delays.

America’s Political Divide Intensified During Trump’s First Year As President

Republicans and Democrats have grown further apart in their political views during the first year of the administration, the Pew Research Center finds.

Disagreement among Republican and Democratic voters on a range of political issues has risen sharply in recent years, a political divide that intensified during the first year of President Trumps administration, according to a new report from the Pew Research Center.

The divisions between Republicans and Democrats on fundamental political valueson government, race, immigration, national security, environmental protection, and other areasreached record levels during Barack Obamas presidency, Pews report states. In Donald Trumps first year as president, these gaps have grown even larger.

Political Parties: What Is Divided Government

In a rare instance of united rather than divided government, members of both major political parties put aside partisan differences to show support for those injured at the Republican party practice session earlier in the week. Republicans and Democrats came together. Not just for a baseball game. We came together to express our gratitude to law enforcement, show our support for those who were injured, and also to unite as a nation in the face of such tragedy, wrote Speaker Paul Ryan about the 2017 Congressional Baseball Game on June 16, 2017. He is seen in this photo thanking Special Agent Crystal Griner of the Capitol Police.

Don’t Miss: How Many Log Cabin Republicans Are There

The 2016 Rebellion Is Ongoing

With the 2016 political primaries looming, I asked which candidates they found most attractive. At the time, the leaders of the Democratic party favored Hillary Clinton and Republican leaders favored Jeb Bush. Yet no one I spoke with mentioned Clinton or Bush.

They talked instead about Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump. When I asked why, they said Sanders or Trump would shake things up or make the system work again or stop the corruption or end the rigging.

In the following year, Sanders a 74-year-old Jew from Vermont who described himself as a democratic socialist and wasnt even a Democrat until the primaries came within a whisker of beating Clinton in Iowa, routed her in New Hampshire, and ended up with 46% of the pledged delegates from Democratic primaries and caucuses.

Trump a 69-year-old egomaniacal billionaire reality-TV star who had never held elective office or had anything to do with the Republican party and who lied compulsively about everything won the primaries and went on to beat Clinton, one of the most experienced and well-connected politicians in modern America .

Something very big had happened, and it wasnt due to Sanders magnetism or Trumps likability. It was a rebellion against the establishment. That rebellion is still going on, although much of the establishment still denies it. They prefer to attribute Trumps rise solely to racism.

Television And The Internet

A 2013 review concluded that there is no firm evidence that media institutions are contributing to the polarization of average Americans. No evidence supports the idea that longstanding news outlets are becoming increasingly partisan. Analyses confirm that the tone of evening news broadcasts remained unchanged from 1968 to 1996: largely centrist, with a small but constant bias towards Democratic Party positions. However, more partisan media pockets have emerged in blogs, talk radio, websites, and cable news channels, which are much more likely to use insulting language, mockery, and extremely dramatic reactions, collectively referred to as “outrage”. People who have strongly partisan viewpoints are more likely to watch partisan news.

Furthermore, a 2018 study highlights that there is no correlation between increased media and Internet consumption and increased political polarization. The data confirms a larger increase in polarization among individuals over 65 compared to those aged 18â39, revealing that Internet consumption is only a small factor in calculating the cause of political polarization.

Also Check: How Do Republicans Really Feel About Trump

Healing The Political Divide

How did we become such a divided nation, and how can psychologists help us bridge the gap?

Vol. 52 No. 1

Monitor on Psychology52

With votes now tallied, and in some cases, electoral outcomes having been determined by extremely narrow margins and marked by legal challenges, there is no doubt that the political divide in the United States is a central trait of the country. And as this divide seems likely to continue to grow, for many of us it feels uncrossable. Yet psychological science suggests that it is both possible and imperative for members of our society to find common ground.

Why We Should Not Tolerate Any Voting Errors

Nonetheless, the refrain seems to run that any problems seen in 2020 would not have changed the outcome of the election. First, that is not necessarily true.

Second, so what? Every fraudulent and illegal vote disenfranchises a legal voter, and just as we as a country would not tolerate the disenfranchisement of any voters by locking the ballot box to them, we should not tolerate the disenfranchisement of any legal voter by acquiescing to the stuffing of the ballot box by a non-dispositive number of voters.

Third and most importantly, our country is too divided to survive unless both the right and the left trust the outcome of the election. Here, we are not merely talking about the presidency. Since Republicans victory in 1994 gaining control of the House for the first time in 40 years, a slim margin has separated the majority and minority parties in both the House and the Senate.

Further, with enough individual House and Senate races to flip the majority having been by narrow margins of victory, confidence in election results is imperative. Such trust in election results proves especially important given the deep divide on not just matters of policy and priority, but core American values.

Elections are too tight and the populace too divided for close enough for government work to cut it anymore. The American voting system must be reformed to ensure security, transparency, replicability, and election officials uniform compliance with state election law.

Recommended Reading: Did Any Republicans Vote To Impeach Trump

The Big Lie Claim Is A Dodge

Before these filings, Biden had attacked Georgias voting-integrity law as Jim Crow in the 21st century. While Democrats current focus is Georgia, the talking-point of the party is that voting rights are under attack by GOP-controlled states after Republicans seized on former President Donald Trumps false claim of massive voter fraud in the 2020 election as a pretext for passing new legislation curtailing ballot access.

Biden later repeated the Jim Crow canard in pushing H.R. 1, the so-called For the People Act, which could gut many mainstream state statutes designed to ensure voting integrity, such as voter ID laws. In a speech in Philadelphia earlier this month, after branding state election-integrity laws a 21st-century Jim Crow assault, the president sought to connect Trumps attacks on the validity of the 2020 electioncalling it both the Big Lie and the most significant test of our democracy since the Civil Warthe January 6, 2021 storming of the capitol, and the supposed imperative for passage of H.R. 1.

There is a dangerous confluence of factors at play here that has permeated the press coverage of election-related matters. By coloring all criticism of the 2020 election as part of The Big Lie, the left allows itself to ignore evidence of actual fraud, widespread illegal voting, violations of the Electors Clause, and, frankly, just plain incompetence.

From Republicans To Democrats: America Is Deeply Divided

Schumer: Republicans Are ‘So Divided’ They Cannot Come Up With A Coronavirus Plan | MSNBC

The past week of news has shown just how entrenched the state of polarization is in the United States today

The early 20th-century American entertainer and social commentator Will Rogers once observed: Im not a member of any organized political party. I am a Democrat. Rarely has that aphorism seemed as appropriate as in the wake of this weeks botched Iowa Democratic caucuses.

I stayed up half the night waiting for the Iowa election results, only to find that none would be forthcoming, largely on account of a faulty app. With the results still trickling in days after they should have been tabulated, it appears that Pete Buttigieg and Bernie Sanders are in a virtual dead heat for the lead, with Elizabeth Warren, Joe Biden and Amy Klobuchar rounding out the second tier.

The reception of Trumps address illustrated the almost complete polarization that prevails in America today. Republicans considered the address a thoroughly appropriate perfect, one might say extended boast about the economic success under his watch. Democrats considered it a divisive, mean-spirited barrage of lies and slander. By the same token, your partisan affiliation will probably determine whether you thought Pelosis tearing Trumps speech text apart was an outrageous and disrespectful breach of decorum or a dissent against demagoguery.

You May Like: What Republicans Voted Against Repeal Of Obamacare

Cpac And The Broader Republican Party Agree: Its Trumps Party For Now

Its part of our long era of partisan stalemate. The question, of course, is how much longer can this last? And is there any resolution in sight?

History holds, at best, a half lesson here. This current period of partisan stalemate stands out in a few respects when we consider Americas long history with partisan conflict. For starters, the period we find ourselves in now is unique in that the national partisan balance of power is extremely close , even as most states and most voters are either solidly Democratic or Republican. Whats more, the national outcome often hinges on just a few swing states and districts. This period is also unique in the extent to which America is divided. Hatred toward the other party drives our politics. This produces a deeply polarizing and highly destructive form of partisan trench warfare that threatens to erode the very legitimacy of American democracy.

Consider just a few record-setting patterns in the last several elections:

Nine presidential elections in a row without either party experiencing a landslide , eclipsing the previous record of seven in a row .

Seven presidential elections in a row where fewer than a quarter of states changed parties, well eclipsing the previous record of three in a row.

And now the question is, how do we get out of this current stalemate? Once again, we can turn to the hyper-partisanship of the Gilded Age for clues.

Why Democrats Massive Effort To Suppress Election Concerns Is Dangerous

Americans should see 2020 and the January 6 riots as a wake-up call to the future our nation faces should election integrity not be restored.

By: The Federalist, January 35, 2021:

This man was elected president of the United States of America, Joe Biden of Al Gore during a 2013 campaign event when introducing George W. Bushs Democrat opponent.

Theres no doubt that the Russians did interfere in the election, and I think the interference, although not yet quantified, if fully investigated would show that Trump didnt actually win the election in 2016, former President Jimmy Carter proclaimed during a 2019 panel discussion sponsored by his nonprofit organization.

He knows hes an illegitimate president, Hillary Clinton seethed when asked about Donald Trump during a CBS interview nearly two years ago, later telling the audience the election was stolen from her.

Rush thought we won, and so do I, Trump said in an interview with Fox News following radio personality Rush Limbaughs death in February 2021, later the contest the fraudulent presidential election of 2020.

Three different presidential elections and four different presidential candidates all claimed the man inaugurated commander-in-chief stole the election. Yet while tolerating claims that Clinton and Gore actually won the White House, the corrupt media immediately co-opted the Nazi comparison Joe Biden deployed in response to Trumps claims of fraud, branding his charges The Big Lie.

Also Check: What Republicans Are Voting Against Trump

Why America Should Suddenly Prepare For A Billion

The problem is that previous models fail to take in proper empirical data and do not account for voters picking candidates that are good enough without obsessing over details. Furthermore, they do not take into account misinformation, missing information, decision fatigue and other things that can stand in the way of an optimal decision.

Yang and her team,;which includes Daniel Abrams, Associate Professor of Engineering Sciences and Applied Mathematics at Northwestern University, Adilson Motter, Charles E. and Emma H. Morrison Professor of Physics at Northwestern University, and Georgia Kernell, Assistant Professor in the Departments of Communication and Political Science at UCLA,;created a model that works a little differently. They took all of those factors into account along with 150 years-worth of U.S. Congressional voting data from the American Nation Election Study. They then compiled all of this information using complex mathematical formulas and came out with something that explains why politicians are becoming more polarized.

How it Works

First, we must understand the shape of the American political system and how parties shape themselves to function within it. The graphic below sheds some light on this subject.

Kander10 Designs

With this information and a lot more the model created by Yang and her team have been able to predict the movement of the parties away from the center.

KAnder10 Designs

My two cents

Why Democrats Share The Blame For The Rise Of Donald Trump

I was part of a Democratic administration that failed to fix a rigged system I know our current president is a symptom of our disunion, not its only cause

An impeached president who is up for re-election will this week deliver a State of the Union address to the most divided union in living memory.

But why are we so divided? Were not fighting a hugely unpopular war on the scale of Vietnam. Were not in a deep economic crisis like the Great Depression. Yes, we disagree about guns, gays, abortion and immigration, but weve disagreed about them for decades. Why are we so divided now?

Part of the answer is Trump himself. The Great Divider knows how to pit native-born Americans against immigrants, the working class against the poor, whites against blacks and Latinos, evangelicals against secularists, keeping almost everyone stirred up by vilifying, disparaging, denouncing, defaming and accusing others of the worst. Trump thrives off disruption and division.

But that begs the question of why we have been so ready to be divided by Trump. The answer derives in large part from what has happened to wealth and power.

In the fall of 2015, I visited Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Missouri and North Carolina, for a research project on the changing nature of work. I spoke with many of the people I had met 20 years before when I was secretary of labor, as well as with some of their grown children.

Also Check: Do Republicans Support The Death Penalty

What Is Political Polarization And Is The United States Becoming More Polarized

The United States has two main political parties, the Republican Party and the Democratic Party. In the early 1990s, the two parties had more similar policy agendas than they do today. Over the last 25 years, the Democratic Party has moved more to the left, while the Republican Party has moved more to the right.1

Building Back Better: Bipartisanship In A Divided Nation Is An Attractive Mirage

With Donald Trump now largely absent from the national stage, there has been greater talk of the potential for a return to;bipartisanship;between Democrats and Republicans in Congress. As part of our;Building Back Better;series,;David T. Smith;writes that while there has been a brief revival of;bipartisanship;in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the rise in partisan polarization over the last three decades means that cooperation in Congress on;anything;else is very unlikely.

Joe Biden;repeatedly;promised;a return to;bipartisanship;in his 2020;presidential election;campaign. Claiming decades of experience in negotiating with his Republican opponents;in the US Senate, Biden appealed to;people;exhausted;by political polarisation.;He urged Republicans;along with other Americans;to reject Trumps re-election;and return to;political normality, where civility reigns and cooperation is possible.

But polarisation;in;the Trump era wasnt an anomaly. It was a continuation of trends that have been visible for decades, and;it;wont be reversed by;Trumps exit from the White House.;Polarisation is;even;worse;in Congress than outside it, and;with the;smallest Congressional majorities now operating;since the 1930s, there;is;acute;pressure on both sides not to break ranks.

Figure 1 ;Liberal-conservative partisan polarization by chamber

Source:;Voteview;

P20210223AS-0017 by;The White House;is United States Government Work

Shortened URL for this post:;

You May Like: Who Is The Speaker Of The House For Republicans

[hepworld-blog]

2017: confusion, hopelessness, and silver linings

Remember on January 1st of 2017 when someone altered the Hollywood sign to say hollyweed? Well I guess we should’ve known the year would be all downhill from there.

Ok that’s not totally fair. On the world stage it was a year of highs and lows, disasters and improvements, and it’s difficult to separate the good from the bad. If I had to sum up my year, I’d label it as in confusion. World events seemed to be one disaster after another all through the year. From a rise in gun violence in the United States, to a humanitarian crisis against the Rohingya people, a catastrophe in Yemen that the rest of the world has ignored to numerous natural disasters across North America, 2017 was a year of suffering across the globe. Not to mention and an increase in oppressive and chaotic policies from world powers: pushback against free speech in China, efforts to curb internet freedom from every major world power in human civilization, Turkey’s embrace of elected dictatorship, the United States’ rollback of protection on transgender individuals, Spain’s takeover of Catalunya, Russia’s imprisonment of political opponents, a genocide against gay people in Chechnya and the United States’ pullback on climate protections. Some claimed 2016 showed a rebellion of the working class against elites, and heralded populist policies as restoring rule of the common person. 2017 showed how misguided these ideas really were.

But in the middle of all the suffering, 2017 showed us a slight glimmer of hope for us to build our futures on. As an observer of humanity, I was very enthusiastic to see the rise and popularity of the #MeToo movement—that a substantial group of people in western society are willing to listen to the claims of women against harassment, and take a stand against anyone who perpetuates this violence. And this new intolerance of sexual crimes even drifted to the most conservative parts of the united states: a (small) majority of Alabama voters were willing to put aside the politically-divisive atmosphere that they’ve cherished in the face of a candidate whose unapologetic bigotry was overshadowed by his alleged pedophilia. After a tense year in most western countries’ politics, this showed some kind of hope that people would stand together to put what is right before their own pride.

Any discussion of 2017’s silver linings would be incomplete if I didn’t mention the strides taken by Saudi Arabia’s crown prince to modernize the countries policies and eliminate corruption. From allowing women to drive, to a reopening of movie theaters, I am hopeful that the oppressive regime will continue its path towards acknowledging human rights to all people. These steps might be small, they may be small victories amidst a larger trend against human rights, but the most oppressed among us are slowly gaining their freedoms. Those people’s livelihoods are worth every struggle. Amidst a general feeling of hopelessness that has surrounded world events, we have a beautiful silver lining. That was a main theme of 2017: hope in the face of hopelessness.

I found it interesting how closely entertainment in 2017 reflected this. Memes became more ironic and cynical as the world seemed to lose its way forward. As life became more confusing and the truth seemed to drift farther away, surreal memes became popular showing the meaningless of the world. Even the newest movie in the Star Wars saga reflected our time, showing how small acts of kindness in the face of huge defeats for the resistance made the whole journey worth it, all while the film’s antihero urges us to put our losses behind us and embrace the uncertainty of the future.

Many of the reactions people had to all this trouble really bothered me, especially people who try to fight what they think is wrong, but aren’t sincere about it. I call it popular protesting, and I know I’ve played along with it sometimes. When there’s some outrage in the world, people speak out about it until its old news, and then they move on to something else. Meanwhile the people affected by the outrage are left to rot, just some pawns in a political game. It’s sick, and it has to stop. Meanwhile people totally ignore crises that are harder to take some fake moral high ground in (again why don’t more people care about the worst humanitarian crisis of the decade in Yemen?).

Of course for us, what makes a year good or bad is more about personal experience than that of world events that don’t affect us personally. And I know a lot of you had amazing years, spending time with friends and making memories. Ironically, I think my year directly mirrored the world’s. Some of the best memories of my life were formed this year, and some of the worst, I felt the general hopelessness and saw silver linings in my own life as in the world. Maybe we’re all just reflections of the world we live in, if we are willing to admit it to ourselves.

At the end of 2016, I asked a friend on Instagram what he thought the key to ethical behavior was. His response was “to accept that you are not any more special than anybody else and act accordingly.” I thought that was a pretty crappy answer at first, but I think he’s right: it takes realizing that you are no superior to anyone else to act in a way that isn’t selfish and act fairly. Everyone is just as confused and scared as you, nobody belongs anywhere, and everyone’s going to die, so you have the same consideration towards all people as you do yourself. So I went into 2017 with that attitude, spent a lot of time thinking about life, and after melding it with my previously-held beliefs, I thought I’d been enlightened or found some sort of key to life. I realize now how arrogant that was to think I had everything in my understanding. I guess if life was easy to figure out, someone else would’ve done it by now.

Here’s the thing. In Atlantis’s culture there’s something called the Jakanta, an ancient practice which refers to a way of living, where you constantly pursue a greater truth, discovering some sort of pattern to the universe. I’m not sure if there’s an allegory in human society but it’s something engrained in our history and I try to live to pursue it. For a long time I felt like I was getting closer to being firmly “enlightened” and gained understanding of reality, and then I came across information that started forcing me to dismantle what I thought were my hard-formed values. The thing is, it was my philosophy of Jakanta that was forcing me out of the ideas I’ve believed my whole life. Realizing that you’ve been wrong and letting go of your so-called sacred cows is probably the scariest thing a person can do. And it didn’t make me happier or feel liberated or anything, it only made my life more chaotic and confusing. Because I loved being that old Hep. That Hep was so passionate and driven, felt wise and validated, like I was going somewhere. I bet if that Hep met me now he would never guess I was once him. Maybe that Hep would rather die than become me, see me as some empty and purposeless shell. But the ironic part is that I came directly from that Hep’s way of thinking.

Anyone who has talked to me at any length knows I’m a more than a little obsessive about the concept of identity (If y’all want, maybe I’ll write a long paper about all I’ve learned about it someday). That’s one of the main reasons I’ve kept my account all these years lol, because constantly being asked who I am by all of you forces me to think about identity and I still don’t have it completely figured out. But this is what 2017 taught me: what defines you isn’t your beliefs or knowledge, because that is constantly changing (either that or you die stupid, like your politicians). Rather I think that what forms a person’s identity is how they think and allow themselves to grow. What are they willing to question? Do they have faith in something? I guess the beliefs that define your identity are the ones about how to grow, not conceptions of the world. So if any of us want to improve, we need to start by adopting a better way of thinking.

So this begs the question, is my way of thinking even good? Obviously questioning and overanalyzing everything like I do didn’t do me any favors, basically destroying whatever walls I’d built up to keep me sane! I feel like after the past year I’ve lost touch with a lot of reality, just drifting through some abstract space I don’t understand. Maybe I’ve gone insane, probably, even. But at least I am authentic to myself. Because it’s so easy to delude yourself, and I’m constantly worried that I’m pushing reality away in exchange for what I’d rather be true to feel secure and accepted. You can convince yourself of anything you want, if it makes you feel good. Maybe if “ignorance is bliss” I should just forget the whole thing and delude myself into whatever is comfortable. For several months I’ve been wrestling with a simple question: if knowing some truth makes me unhappy and sets my life askew, is it worth knowing? I’ve asked a ton of friends about this (thanks y’all). One of them told me what I’d feared: my good friend told me that nobody can never escape ignorance, so learning isn’t relevant. She told me that it’s best to live entirely in faith and not question things that may lead me down questionable paths. My gut reaction was to reject that, but I didn’t understand why. Because she’s right, I will never achieve complete understanding, I know it as did the monks who established the Jakanta in Atlantis 3000 years ago. Was it time to topple that final pillar of my identity and exchange pursuing knowledge for a blissful life?  

It took me a while to come up with a good answer: knowledge builds wisdom, and that helps others. A happy life lived only for itself is no meaningful life. However, I can use my understanding of the world to help others who are struggling with similar situations, and not often, but maybe, I can change someone’s life for the better. If I can help just someone, all the unhappiness in the world is worth suffering. How selfish is willful ignorance! Only those who suffer can sympathize with others. That’s why every religion claims their central figure “suffered in every way.” I’m no more special than anyone else, so if I can help someone through real physical struggles, my mental confusion is worth every second of it. So then knowledge doesn’t always make you happy, but it always makes you better.

See I don’t know when I’ll die. I’m just lucky to have survived for as long as I have. I think I don’t value that enough: I need to make a difference while I still can, in the name of those who didn’t make it through the past year. And most importantly, when my time comes I want to die where I stood, following what I believed in. I don’t want to die complacent, like a former hero who has become irrelevant while his work is undone. That’s why I try so hard to keep improving myself, so that I can pursue what I believe till the very end. Life is too short to check out and stop helping people.

I’m realize I’m rambling, and maybe you’re trying to think up some platitude to respond to me, but I assure you that’s the last way I want you to react. This is not at all a plea for sympathy or some way to evangelize my ideas to you, I’m just putting out there what I’m thinking because maybe it will help someone think. And because everyone always asks me what my “true identity” is: well, this is it. I’m Hep, because that’s how I choose to grow.

Is happiness a lost cause for those of us who question everything like I think is right? I thought so at first. But my good friend Taylor made a point that gave me hope: she says that whatever contentment I lost because of what I’ve learned this year will surely pass. Everyone knows that people resist change, that much has been obvious over the last two years. Missing my old state of mind and feeling less happy about life becoming chaotic and confusing is just that same fear of change. If I embrace the chaos, I’ll eventually find that contentment again. I expect this cycle of understanding and confusion will continue throughout my life. Thinking I know myself, losing it, and moving on. Maybe it will bring with it waves of depression or confusion, but all is worth it because with each cycle I will be better equipped to help others. And so out of this cycle of hopelessness and chaos, I have my silver lining.

You know, seems poetic to me that America, in a year full of politically-charged anger, would experience a full solar eclipse. As some of you know, I made the trek out from Atlantis to middle America to see the full eclipse, and maybe those of you who didn’t do the same will not understand this at all. When the full eclipse began, and the sky had darkened, a cold wind rolled over the plains relieving from a hot summer afternoon and the sun became a beautiful iridescent ring, circling a brilliant silver sphere of the moon. It hovered there in the sky, and for a minute it seemed to give peace to everything beneath it. I was reminded of the words of a certain future empress of Atlantis, 19 years old at the time, nearly 2500 years ago. “When nature reveals to us its full glory, it challenges us to imprint its beauty upon our souls.” She said this while leading a rebellion against a violent and oppressive government that ruled Atlantis, a movement which would result in the restructure of our government and issue in an era of prosperity, peace and stability. To me, the eclipse was a reminder that life and society are improved not by opposing anger with anger, but by individuals each harboring a determined peace and understanding as the foundation of their souls.

This thought is by no means original in the current climate, but while these ideas are often used as tropes to make the user feel righteous they are blatantly ignored in practice. Maybe many of them try to live by it. I know I’ve failed at applying this idea many times, because anger is such an easier response to fear and confusion than temperance and self-examination. It is my challenge to keep improving myself to approach this, and I expect I will continue pursuing this goal for the rest of my life.

I’m not a believer in new years resolutions. You can keep your “new year new me” crap, because one week in, you’ll realize you have no means to achieve your goals, give up and be twice the slob you were beforehand. Heck I bet a handful of you already gave up. Because you can’t just change your habits and beliefs on a whim, all you can hope to do is make an effort to grow. So in that spirit I’m giving myself a challenge to give myself a direction to improve. I probably will fail to follow it many times, but that’s okay as long as I keep trying.

Here’s my challenge, to start the year. For one, I’m not going to fall into the trap of popular protesting. If something bad is going on, I’ll either keep spreading awareness and don’t stop until it’s fixed—no letting go when the public stops caring—or I’ll let someone else carry the fight. There’s nothing worse than an insincere activist. And if someone is being unethical it does me no good to hate on them. The best reaction is to behave in the way opposite of them, acting positively instead of negatively. As my man Ghandi once said, you gotta be the change you wish to see in the world. I think I’m going to try to cut judgement out of my life altogether: whenever something happens or someone says an idea, my first reaction is often to identify it as good or bad. Just like I’m not a fan of names, I’m not a fan of those labels, and I’ll work to stop that response in myself. Every time you label something, you keep it from being properly questioned, and that’s unhealthy for me. And finally, as always, I will try to be a decent person, try to make an impact on those around me and work to acquire knowledge and improve my thinking.

That’s where I’m going in the next year. I’m not asking you to agree with it or adopt the same challenge, but I hope you ask yourself where you want to grow. Every day is another step in the journey to make yourself authentic, and I hope you all live to be the best versions of yourselves. Don’t be afraid to leave your pasts behind and look to the future, always find ways to be kind, and never stop questioning your thoughts.

Hep out.

[blackkudos]

Marion Barry

Marion Shepilov Barry, Jr. (March 6, 1936 – November 23, 2014) was an American politician who served as the second Mayor of the District of Columbia from 1979 to 1991, and again as the fourth mayor from 1995 to 1999. A Democrat, Barry had served three tenures on the Council of the District of Columbia, representing as an at-large member from 1975 to 1979 and in Ward 8 from 1993 to 1995, and again from 2005 to 2014. In the 1960s he was involved in the Civil Rights Movement, first as a member of the Nashville Student Movement and then serving as the first chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).

Barry came to national prominence as mayor of the national capital, the first prominent civil rights activist to become chief executive of a major American city. He gave the presidential nomination speech for Jesse Jackson at the 1984 Democratic National Convention. His celebrity was transformed into international notoriety in January 1990, when he was videotaped smoking crack cocaine and was arrested by Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) officials on drug charges. The arrest and subsequent trial precluded Barry seeking re-election, and he served six months in a federal prison. After his release, he was elected to the Council of the District of Columbia in 1992. He was elected again as mayor in 1994, serving from 1995 to 1999.

Despite his history of political and legal controversies, Barry was a popular and influential figure in Washington, D.C. The alternative weekly Washington City Paper nicknamed him "Mayor for life", a designation that remained long after Barry left the mayoralty. The Washington Post once stated that "to understand the District of Columbia, one must understand Marion Barry".

1936–54: Early life

Marion Barry was born in rural Itta Bena, Mississippi, the third child of Mattie Cummings and Marion Barry. His father died when he was four years old, and a year later his mother moved the family to Memphis, Tennessee, where her employment prospects were better. His mother married David Cummings, a butcher, and together they raised eight children. Growing up on Latham Street near South Parkway, Marion Barry attended Florida Elementary and graduated from Booker T. Washington High.

The first time Barry noticed racial issues was when he had to walk to school while the white students were assigned a schoolbus to ride. The schools were segregated, as were public facilities. He had a number of jobs as a child, including picking cotton, delivering and selling newspapers, and bagging groceries. While in high school, Barry worked as a waiter at the American Legion post and, at age 17, earned the rank of eagle scout.

Marion Barry first began his spirit of civil rights activism when he was a paperboy in Memphis. The paper he worked for organized a contest in which any boys who gained 15 new customers could win a trip to New Orleans. Barry and a couple of the other black paperboys reached the quota of 15 new customers yet were not allowed to go on the trip to New Orleans, a segregated city. The paper said it could not afford to hire two buses to satisfy Mississippi's segregation rules. Barry decided to boycott his paper route until they agreed to send the black paperboys on a trip. After the paper offered the black paperboys a chance to go to St. Louis, Missouri on a trip, because it was not a segregated city, Barry resumed his paper route.

1955–70: Education and civil rights activism

Undergraduate studies at LeMoyne College

Barry attended LeMoyne–Owen College, in Memphis, graduating in 1958. In his junior year, the racial injustices he had seen started to come together. He and his friends went to a segregated fairground in Memphis, and went at a time reserved for whites, because they wanted to see the science exhibit. When they were close to the exhibit, a policeman stopped them and asked them to leave. Barry and his friends left without protest. At that time, Barry did not know much about his race, or why they were treated poorly, but he resented the incident. Barry became more active in the NAACP chapter at LeMoyne-Owens, serving as president. His ardent support of the Civil Rights Movement earned him the nickname "Shep", in reference to Soviet politician Dmitri Shepilov. Barry began using Shepilov as his middle name. In 1958 at LeMoyne-Owens, he criticized a college trustee for remarks he felt were demeaning to African Americans, which nearly caused his expulsion. While a senior and the president of the NAACP chapter, Barry heard of Walter Chandler—the only white member on LeMoyne-Owen's board of trustees—making comments that black people should be treated as a "younger brother not as an adult". Barry wrote a letter to LeMoyne's president objecting to the comments and asking if Walter Chandler could be removed from the board. A friend of Barry's was the editor of the school newspaper, the Magician, and told Barry to run the letter in the paper. From there, the letter made it to the front page of Memphis’ conservative morning paper.

Master's degree, Nashville Student Movement, SNCC

Barry earned an M.S. in organic chemistry from Fisk University in 1960. He was a member of Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity. While in graduate school at Fisk, Barry was arrested several times while participating in the Nashville sit-ins to desegregate lunch counters and other Civil Rights Movement events. After graduating from Fisk, Barry continued to work in the Civil Rights Movement, focusing on the elimination of the racial segregation of bus passengers.

In 1960 Barry was elected as the first chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). He helped develop an organizing project in McComb, Mississippi. The project was both a voter registration and a direct action endeavor. Barry said he and other activists lived with the local people in order to stay safe, as well as to learn what it was like to live there. They could use that information to organize the members of the SNCC accordingly.

Doctoral studies

Barry began doctoral studies at the University of Kansas but soon quit the program. He contemplated law school to help with his activism, but decided against it because the delayed admission would mean that he would have to take a year off from school. Had he taken a year off, there was a chance of his being drafted into the military, and he did not want to be drafted.

He decided to go to the University of Tennessee where he was awarded a graduate fellowship. In addition, while southern, the University of Tennessee was an integrated educational institution, a new experience for him. He began doctoral chemistry studies at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, the only African American in the program. He learned that he was prohibited from tutoring white children, and his wife Blantie Evans was not allowed to work at the white school. He quit the program in favor of his new duties at SNCC.

In the Spring of 1964 he attended a conference in Nashville and became one of the founders of the Southern Student Organizing Committee (SSOC).

Working for SNCC

As head of SNCC, Barry led protests against racial segregation and discrimination. After he left McComb, Barry's lobbied the state legislatures to try to convince them to vote to make the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) the recognized Democratic party of Mississippi in the 1964 Democratic National Convention. In a protest of their continuing disenfranchisement, African Americans had organized this party to prove that blacks wanted to vote and conducted a trial election. Barry slept on the boardwalk in Atlantic City the night after speaking to the New Jersey Legislature.

After he left the New York legislature, James Forman asked Barry to go to Washington, D.C. to manage SNCC's office. At the time, over half of the population of Washington D.C. was black, and they had no political representation in Congress, as the capital was considered a different kind of jurisdiction.

In 1965, Barry and Evans moved to Washington, D.C., to open a local chapter of SNCC. He was deeply involved in coordinating peaceful street demonstrations as well as a boycott to protest bus fare increases. Barry organized rides to work for those who needed them. The boycott cost the bus line thousands of dollars, and Barry proved his ability to organize.

He also served as the leader of the Free D.C. Movement, strongly supporting increased home rule, as a Congressional committee exercised administrative rule over the district. Barry quit SNCC in 1967, when H. Rap Brown became chairman of the group. In 1967, Barry and Mary Treadwell co-founded Pride, Inc., a Department of Labor-funded program to provide job training to unemployed black men. The group employed hundreds of teenagers to clean littered streets and alleys in the district. Barry and Treadwell had met while students at Fisk University, and they later met again while picketing in front of the Washington Gas Light Company.

Barry and Treadwell married in 1972. They separated five years later.

Barry was active in the aftermath of the 1968 Washington, D.C. riots that followed the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. in Memphis. He organized through Pride Inc. a program of free food distribution for poor black residents whose homes and neighborhoods had been destroyed in the rioting. Barry convinced the Giant Food supermarket chain to donate food, and he spent a week driving trucks and delivering food throughout the city's housing projects. He also became a board member of the city's Economic Development Committee, helping to route federal funds and venture capital to black-owned businesses that were struggling to recover from the riots.

When President Richard Nixon declared July 21, 1969, National Day of Participation in honor of the moon landing by Apollo 11, Barry criticized him. Barry believed that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. deserived a national honor day on his birthday, which Nixon had opposed. Said Barry, "Why should blacks feel elated when we see men eating on the moon when millions of blacks and poor whites don't have enough money to buy food here on earth?"

1971–74: D.C. Board of Education

In 1971, Barry announced his candidacy for at-large member of the school board, running against the incumbent, Anita L. Allen. Barry said he wanted to steer the school board back to the "issues of education" and away from problems of personalities. Barry defeated Allen, with 58 percent of the vote to Allen's 34 percent.

After Barry was seated in 1972, he was unanimously elected as president of the board. He served as board president for two years, reorganizing the school system's finances and building consensus on the board.

In response to the 1972 blaxploitation film Super Fly, Barry quickly formed a protest group named Blacks Against Narcotics and Genocide (BANG). Barry said the film was harmful to black youth, and that it glorified drug abuse. BANG called for a boycott of the film.

Barry advocated for a larger budget for education and raises for teachers. Barry also supported the appointment of Barbara Sizemore as the city's superintendent, making Washington, DC the country's first major city with a woman as School Board Superintendent.

When the Senate held up annual payments to the district because of debate over whether the federal government should continue to pay for holding the district's partisan elections, Barry called for public hearings on the matter. He also commented, "Since it is a known fact that the majority makeup of an elected government will be black, the conferees' agreement indicates to me that some members of Congress are saying that black people cannot be fiscally responsible, and therefore, have to have a predominantly white Congress overseeing how our monies are spent."

1974–79: D.C. Council and shooting

Upon establishment of Washington's home rule in 1974, Barry was elected an at-large member of Washington's first elected city council. In that position, he served as chair of the District of Columbia Committee on Finance and Revenue. He was re-elected in 1976.

While serving on the D.C. City Council, Barry was shot on March 9, 1977, by radical Hanafi Muslims (from a breakaway sect of the Nation of Islam) when they overran the District Building. Barry was shot near his heart during the two-day 1977 Hanafi Siege in which hostages were held by the terrorists. This was finally defused by the FBI and Muslim ambassadors. Barry recovered from his injury.

1978 mayoral election

Having credentials as an activist, legislator, and "hero" in a hostage crisis, as well as an early endorsement from the Washington Post, Barry was elected as mayor after Walter Washington, the district's first mayor, fell out of political favor in the 1978 election.

In the Democratic primary—the real contest in the heavily Democratic, black-majority city—Barry ran with the campaign slogan "Take a Stand" and the promise to improve the "bumbling and bungling" Washington administration. He won the Democratic primary election against his main rivals Mayor Washington and council chairman Sterling Tucker. The vote was so close that final tally was in doubt for over two weeks. Barry defeated his Republican opponent Arthur Fletcher and two other minor candidates in a landslide general election in November. He was the second person elected to the mayor's office.

1979–91: Washington, D.C. Mayor

First term

Barry's first four years in office were characterized by increased efficiency in city administration and government services, in particular the sanitation department. Barry also instituted his signature summer jobs program, in which summer employment was made available to every school-age resident. At the same time, Barry straightened the city's chaotic finances and attacked the deficit by introducing spending controls and laying off ten percent of the city's workforce. Each year of his first term saw a budget surplus of at least US$13 million. District of Columbia political reporter Jonetta Rose Barras characterized the first Barry administration as "methodical, competent, and intellectually superior."

However, unemployment rose dramatically during his first administration, as did crime rates, in part because many of his layoffs were centered in the police department (1,500 terminations by 1981). Barry's campaign promise to "take the boards off" public housing – i.e., to rehabilitate dilapidated and condemned public housing units – was slow in fulfillment. The city's debt was a constant problem as well: Barry had recalculated the Washington Administration's claim of a $41 million surplus and found that the city was $285 million in debt, a long-term accrual that his annual surpluses were unable to surmount by the end of his term. Graft and embezzlement among Barry appointees, such as Employment Services director Ivanhoe Donaldson, began late in Barry's first term, although it would not be discovered for several years. Barry was personally touched by a number of "mini-scandals". He had travels with finances he often kept secret. He was first reported to be using cocaine at downtown nightclubs.

Second term

In 1982, Barry faced re-election against a challenge from fellow Democrat Patricia Roberts Harris, an African-American woman who had served in two cabinet positions under President Jimmy Carter, as well as from council members John L. Ray and Charlene Drew Jarvis. In the primary election held September 14, 1982, Barry won by a landslide, with over 58% of the vote. He won 82% of the vote in the November 11 general election against Republican candidate E. Brooke Lee.

Barry's second term was much more troublesome than his first. Though Washington experienced a massive real estate boom that helped alleviate the city's fiscal problems for a time, government spending skyrocketed; the administration posted a fifth straight budget surplus, but the next year struggled with a $110 million deficit. Much of the disparity was caused by Barry's policy of combatting unemployment by creating government jobs; the city government's payrolls swelled so greatly that by 1986, nobody in the administration knew exactly how many employees it had.

Wasteful contract spending also became a problem in the second Barry administration. In his first term Barry had made a point of insisting that any firm wishing to do business with the city have minority partners, and shepherding legislation requiring 35% of all contracts to go to minority-owned firms. The policy was modified in his second term such that the administration gave contracts to Barry's political connections and high-end campaign contributors to the tune of $856 million. The city did not exercise sufficient oversight. The cost of services such as heating oil for the public schools inflated 40 percent, without any guarantee that the goods and services were being provided. City councilman John A. Wilson commented that "What started out to benefit the minority community at large has meant some politically influential blacks can move out to posh suburbs."

Major scandal caught up to the mayor in his second term. Several of his associates were indicted for financial malfeasance, including former administration officials Ivanhoe Donaldson and Alphonse G. Hill. Barry began to be plagued by rumors and press reports of womanizing and of alcohol and drug abuse; in particular, stories abounded of his cocaine use in the city's nightclubs and red-light district. In 1983, Barry's ex-wife, Mary Treadwell, was convicted of fraudulently using federal funds given to Pride, Inc., a group that helped local youth find employment. In 1984, Barry's one-time lover Karen Johnson was convicted of cocaine possession and contempt of court for refusing to testify to a grand jury about Barry's drug use. Barry's second four years in office had some high points, including the District's entry into the open bond market with Wall Street's highest credit rating, and Barry's nomination speech for Jesse Jackson at the 1984 Democratic Convention.

Third term

Barry sought a third term as mayor in 1986. By this time, his dominance of city politics was so absolute that he faced only token opposition in the Democratic primary in the form of former school board member Mattie Taylor, whom Barry dispatched rather easily. Barry had expected to face Jesse Jackson, who had been encouraged by colleagues to seek the mayoralty, and who had been relatively popular in stark contrast to Barry's declining reputation. Barry, who knew that most of Jackson's income came from delivering speeches, used his political clout to arbitrarily disqualify Jackson by getting a law passed that said anyone who made more than a certain amount in honoraria was ineligible to run for D.C. office. Council members jokingly called this the "Jesse Jackson law," as it was legislated expressly to keep Jackson out of the mayoral race. As expected, Barry defeated Republican city councilwoman Carol Schwartz fairly handily in the November 4 general election. However, Schwartz managed to win 33 percent of the vote—the first time a Republican had crossed the 30-percent barrier in a general election. For the third time, Barry received the endorsement of The Washington Post but "with far greater reservations and misgivings" than at any time in the past.

By this time, Barry was openly suffering from the effects of longstanding addictions to cocaine and alcohol; he would later admit that he lost control of his drug habit soon after being sworn in for a third term. His public appearances were marked by his glassy eyes and slurred speech. His aides began scheduling all of his daily events later and later in the day as he was arriving to work as late as lunchtime, and nodding off to sleep at his desk. His ability to function as mayor had become so impaired that even his closest associates urged him not to run again. They tried to create an endowed professorship for him at the University of the District of Columbia. In the wake of Barry's inattention, the city declined badly. Barry was watching Super Bowl XXI in Pasadena, California when a winter blizzard struck Washington in January 1987; city crews were accused of badly mishandling the road clearing, adversely affecting local businesses.

In 1987 crack use exploded in the city, as did territorial wars among drug dealers; in 1988 there were 369 homicides in Washington, D.C, the most ever in the city. That record was broken when the next year had 434 homicides, and it was broken again in 1990 with 474 homicides, making Washington's murder rate the highest in the nation. The Washington, D.C. government's employment and deficits grew as city services suffered; in particular, there were frequent press reports of deaths occurring because police lacked cars to get to crime scenes, and EMS services responded slowly or went to the wrong address.

1990 arrest and drug conviction

By late 1989, federal officials had been investigating Barry on suspicion of illegal drug possession and use; that fall, they prosecuted several of Barry's associates for cocaine use, including Charles Lewis, a native of the United States Virgin Islands. He was implicated in a drug investigation involving Barry and a room at Washington's Ramada Inn in December 1988.

On January 18, 1990, Barry was arrested with a former girlfriend, Hazel Diane "Rasheeda" Moore, in a sting operation at the Vista Hotel by the FBI and D.C. police for crack cocaine use and possession. Moore was an FBI informant when she invited Barry to the hotel room and insisted that he smoke freebase cocaine before they had sex, while agents in another room watched on camera, waiting for Barry to accept her offer. During the videotaped arrest, Barry says of Moore, "Bitch set me up...I shouldn't have come up here...goddamn bitch".

Barry was charged with three felony counts of perjury, 10 counts of drug possession, and one misdemeanor count of conspiracy to possess cocaine, even though the cocaine belonged to the government informant. The criminal trial ended in August 1990 with a conviction for only one possession incident, which had occurred in November 1989, and an acquittal on another. The jury deadlocked on the remaining charges. Six or seven jurors (of whom two were white and the rest black) believed that the evidence against Barry was overwhelming and that he had displayed "arrogance" during the trial. Against these, five black jurors were convinced that the prosecution had falsified evidence and testimony as part of a racist conspiracy against Barry, and even disputed factual findings that had not been contested in court. After scolding the jurors for not following his instructions, presiding judge Thomas Penfield Jackson declared a mistrial on the remaining charges.

As a result of his arrest and the ensuing trial, Barry decided in June 1990 not to seek re-election as mayor. After his arrest and through his trial, Barry continued as mayor. He even ran as an independent for an at-large seat on the council against 74-year-old incumbent Hilda Mason. Mason, a former ally who had helped Barry recuperate after the 1977 shooting, took the challenge personally, saying, "I do feel very disappointed in my grandson Marion Barry." Mason was endorsed by a majority of the council members and by Jesse Jackson, who was running for shadow senator.

Barry was sentenced to six months in federal prison shortly before the November election, which he lost – the first and only electoral loss of his career – receiving 20 percent of the overall vote, but doing well among the voters of Ward 8. His wife and son moved out of the house later that month. In October 1991, Barry surrendered himself at a correctional facility in Petersburg, Virginia. While serving his time, Barry was accused of letting a woman perform oral sex on him in a prison waiting room, a charge Barry denied. Barry was transferred to another federal prison in Loretto, Pennsylvania. Barry was released in April 1992.

In May 2013, after Toronto mayor Rob Ford was allegedly videotaped smoking what was reported to be crack, parallels were made with the similarity to the 1990 incident. Barry denied any similarity, stating: "Unless he was entrapped by the government, it's not similar."

1992–94: Political comeback

D.C. Council

Barry was released from prison in 1992, and two months later filed papers to run for the Ward 8 city council seat in that year's election. Barry ran under the slogan "He May Not Be Perfect, But He's Perfect for D.C." He defeated the four-term incumbent, Wilhelmina Rolark, in the Democratic primary, winning 70 percent of the vote, saying he was "not interested in being mayor", and went on to win the general election easily.

1994 mayoral election

Despite his earlier statements to the contrary, observers of Barry's council victory expressed beliefs that he was laying ground for a mayoral run in 1994. Indeed, Barry fulfilled expectations when he formally announced his candidacy for mayor on May 21, 1994 and was immediately regarded as a serious challenge to the unpopular incumbent mayor, Sharon Pratt Kelly. Despite much opposition, including an abortive effort to recall his 1992 council election, Barry won a three-way Democratic primary contest for mayor with 48% of the vote on September 13, pushing Kelly into last place. The victory, coming after Barry's videotaped crack use and conviction, shocked the nation, carrying front page headlines in newspapers such as the Los Angeles Times and Boston Globe.

An oft-repeated Barry quote came in the aftermath of his victory in the Democratic primary election, in which he counseled those voters who opposed his mayoral campaign to "get over it."

Though facing a credible challenge from Republican councilmember Carol Schwartz, who received the endorsement of the Washington Post and captured 42% of the vote, Barry was victorious in the general election with 56%. This was the only time since the restoration of home rule that a Democratic candidate for mayor had dropped below the 60 percent mark, until Muriel Bowser won the 2014 general election with 54% of the vote.

1995–99: D.C. Mayor fourth term

Barry was sworn into office on January 2, 1995, and was almost immediately confronted with a financial crisis. The budgetary problems of his previous administrations had only increased during Kelly's term, with city officials estimating a fiscal 1996 deficit between $700 million and $1 billion. In addition, city services remained extremely dysfunctional due to mismanagement. One month into his term, Barry declared that the city government was "unworkable" in its present state and lobbied Congress to take over the areas of its operation that were analogous to typical state government functions. Wall Street, which Barry had convinced just after his election to continue investing in municipal bonds, reduced the city's credit rating to "junk status." Instead of implementing Barry's proposals, the newly Republican Congress (who had come to power on promises of decreasing federal spending) placed several city operations into receivership and created the District of Columbia Financial Control Board to assume complete authority over the city's day-to-day spending and finances, including overrule of the mayor's fiscal decisions.

The next two years were dominated by budgetary and policy battles between Barry and the control board — along with Chief Financial Officer Anthony A. Williams — for power over the District of Columbia's operation. The conflict was ultimately settled when in 1997 the Clinton Administration and Senator Lauch Faircloth agreed on legislation that rescued the city from its financial crisis but stripped Barry of all authority (including hiring and firing) over nine district agencies, making them directly answerable to the control board. Barry was left with control of only the Department of Parks and Recreation, the public libraries, and the Board of Tourism, as well as the ceremonial trappings of his office — a condition he characterized "a rape of democracy."

Barry declined to run for a fifth term in office in June 1998, stating his belief that Congress would not restore full home rule while he was mayor. He was succeeded by city CFO Anthony A. Williams.

2000–14: D.C. Council

After leaving office, Barry performed consulting work for an investment banking firm. On March 6, 2002, Barry declared his intention to challenge at-large council member Phil Mendelson in the Democratic primary. Within a month, he decided against running, after an incident in which U.S. Park Police found traces of marijuana and cocaine in his car.

On June 12, 2004, Barry announced that he was running in the Democratic primary for the Ward 8 council seat, a position he held before becoming mayor. Barry received 58% of the vote, defeating the incumbent council member, Sandy Allen, on September 14, 2004. Barry received 95% of the vote in the general election, giving him a victory in the race to represent Ward 8 in the Council.

During the 2006 mayoral election, Barry endorsed Adrian Fenty despite Linda Cropp hiring many members of Barry's former political machine. Barry has publicly clashed with Fenty over D.C. United's proposed soccer stadium in Barry's Ward 8. Barry was the stadium's most outspoken supporter on the council, whereas Fenty attempted to distance himself from his initial support for the project.

In July 2007, Marion Barry was chosen as one of fifty wax statues to debut in the Washington D.C. franchise of Madame Tussauds Wax Museum. Barry was chosen by a majority of Washington residents and tourists from Tussauds' "Top 10 Wish List," in a contest that pitted him against Cal Ripken, Jr., Al Gore, Denzel Washington, Carl Bernstein, Halle Berry, Martin Sheen, Marilyn Monroe, Nancy Reagan and Oprah Winfrey.

Barry ran for re-election in 2008 and easily held off all five challengers in the Democratic primary: Ahmad Braxton-Jones, Howard Brown, Chanda McMahan, Sandra Seegars and Charles Wilson. No Republican or Statehood Green candidates filed to run in the Ward 8 council race.

Vote on gay marriage

In May 2009, Barry voted against a bill committing Washington, D.C. to recognize same-sex marriages performed elsewhere. During his 2008 reelection campaign, Barry had told members of the Gertrude Stein Democratic Club, the city's largest Lesbian, Gay, Bi-sexual, and Transgender LGBT political group, "I don’t think you should make [supporting the bill] a litmus test. But if a bill like that were to come up, I would vote for it." Following his May 2009 vote against recognizing gay marriages, Barry was criticized for what activists believed to be an apparent flip-flop. Councilman Phil Mendelson said he was surprised by the vote because Barry had signed on as a co-introducer of the marriage bill. Barry said his position had not changed and warned that the council needed to move slowly on this issue. Citing his belief that the local African American community is overwhelmingly opposed to gay marriage, "All hell is going to break loose", Barry said. "We may have a civil war. The black community is just adamant against this."

Legal problemsFailures to file tax returns and pay taxes

On October 28, 2005, Barry pleaded guilty to the misdemeanor charges stemming from an IRS investigation. The mandatory drug testing for the hearing showed Barry as being positive for cocaine and marijuana. On March 9, 2006, he was sentenced to three years probation for misdemeanor charges of failing to pay federal and local taxes, and underwent drug counseling.

In 2007, federal prosecutors sought to have his probation revoked for failure to file his 2005 tax return. U.S. Magistrate Judge Deborah Robinson refused, saying that prosecutors had not proved that the failure was willful, even if Barry was aware he had missed the deadline. According to Judge Robinson, sentencing Barry to jail without proving that he willfully failed to file his taxes would contradict precedent set by the United States Supreme Court.

On February 9, 2009, prosecutors filed a motion in federal court to revoke Barry's probation for not filing his 2007 tax return, which violated his probation. According to one prosecutor, Barry has not filed his taxes eight of the last nine years. Barry said the reason he did not file his taxes is because of distractions from his medical problems, although he noted that there is "no excuse" for not filing. In an interview, Barry said he has been undergoing four-hour dialyses three times a week as treatment for a problem with his kidney. At that point, a kidney donor had been identified, but the operation had yet to be scheduled. On February 17, WTOP-FM reported that, according to Barry's attorney, Barry had filed his federal and District tax returns for 2007. The same day, Barry was admitted to Howard University Hospital to prepare for a kidney transplant the next day. Barry was released from the hospital on February 27, but he was readmitted on March 2 due to large amounts of air in his abdominal cavity and also due to Barry's complaints of serious pains, both of which were caused by the combination of medications Barry was taking after the operation. Barry was released from the hospital on March 6. On April 17, 2009, the prosecution withdrew their request to revoke Barry's probation.

On September 9, 2011, the Internal Revenue Service filed a notice of federal tax lien against Barry because of $3,200 of unpaid federal income taxes for 2010. Barry attributed the lien to poor communication between the Internal Revenue Service and his representatives.

Alleged traffic violations

On September 10, 2006, Barry was stopped by Secret Service Uniformed Division police officers after stopping at a green light and running a red light. According to a Secret Service spokesman, the police officers pulled over his car, smelled alcohol, and administered a field sobriety test. Barry was then taken to the U.S. Capitol Police station for a breathalyzer test. The Secret Service said that the breathalyzer test did not give an accurate reading, but Barry later said that it gave a successful reading of 0.02%, which is less than the legal limit of 0.08%. The police officers asked Barry to give a urine analysis, which Barry refused. The officers gave Barry a ticket for running a red light and failing to submit to a urine analysis. He was also charged with driving an unregistered vehicle and misuse of temporary tags. Barry pleaded not guilty to the charges. Prosecutors offered Barry a deal to drop the charge of driving under the influence in exchange for a guilty plea from Barry; he declined. A judge found him not guilty of the charges.

On December 16, 2006, the Park Police pulled over Barry for driving too slowly, which Barry later said was because he was trying to figure out where to enter an elementary school's parking lot for a nonprofit foundation's event. After looking up Barry's record, the police officer told Barry that his license had been suspended and ticketed Barry for operating a vehicle on a suspended license, despite Barry's insistence to the contrary. Two days later, the D.C. Department of Motor Vehicles confirmed that Barry's license had not actually been suspended and said a computer glitch must have caused the error.

On August 2, 2014, Barry was in a traffic accident in the district, which his spokesperson blamed on a "hypoglycemic attack" due to his diabetes. At the time of the accident Barry had $2,800 in unpaid tickets for speeding and parking violations accumulated since 2012.

Conflict of interest: personal benefit from contract to girlfriend

On July 4, 2009, Barry was taken into custody by the Park Police after political consultant Donna Watts-Brighthaupt, his ex-girlfriend, claimed he was stalking her. Barry was arrested and charged with "misdemeanor stalking". Following an interview with authorities, he was released on citation and told he must appear before the Superior Court of the District of Columbia on July 9. However, all charges were dropped on July 8.

An investigative report by a special counsel said that Barry had personally benefited from a contract that he had awarded to his then-girlfriend Donna Watts-Brighthaupt. The report stated that Barry had awarded a contract to Watts-Brighthaupt, who then repaid money owed to Barry with the proceeds of the contract. When interviewed by the special counsel, Watts-Brighthaupt admitted to plagiarizing substantial portions of her study from a publicly available study by the United States Department of Education. The special counsel report also said that Barry had requested 41 earmarks in 2009 worth $8.4 million, some of which were paid to organizations "rife with waste and abuse." The report also said that Barry had impeded the investigation by refusing to respond to questions and by telling witnesses not to respond to questions and not give subpoenaed documents to the special counsel.

Barry responded to the special counsel report by claiming he had violated no written rules or procedures on such contracts and that there was no conflict of interest. Barry apologized for his "very, very poor judgment."

In response to the special counsel's report, several council members said they would like to hear a response from Barry before considering a censure. On March 2, 2010, the Council of the District of Columbia voted 12–0 in favor of stripping Barry of all committee assignments, ending his chair of the Committee on Housing and Workforce Development, and removing him from the Committee on Finance and Revenue.

Asian American racist remarks controversy

At a party celebrating his primary victory for his D.C. council seat on April 3, 2012, Barry said, "We've got to do something about these Asians coming in, opening up businesses, those dirty shops. They ought to go, I'll just say that right now, you know. But we need African-American businesspeople to be able to take their places, too."

Several other council members, Mayor Vincent Gray, and Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton criticized Barry's comments. Five Asian American members of the Maryland General Assembly also called on Barry to apologize in a statement saying, "At best, Mr. Barry's attack on Asian Americans is deeply troubling, and at worst it is race baiting."

Barry apologized for his comments, saying in a written statement, "It is to these less than stellar Asian-American businessmen in Ward 8 that my remarks were directed, not the whole of Asian businessmen in Ward 8 or the Asian-American population."

While apologizing to Asian Americans, Barry slurred Polish-Americans by calling them Polacks.

Death

Barry died at United Medical Center in Washington, D.C., on November 23, 2014 from cardiac arrest, aged 78. Following three days of memorial observances, he was buried December 6 at Washington's Congressional Cemetery.

Personal life

Barry married Effi Slaughter, his third wife, just after announcing his candidacy for mayor in 1978. The couple had one son, Marion Christopher Barry, who died of a drug overdose on August 14, 2016. The Barrys separated in 1990, soon after he was caught on videotape smoking crack cocaine with an ex-model and propositioning her for sex. They divorced in 1993, but she returned to Washington and supported him in his successful bid for a city council seat in 2004. Effi died on September 6, 2007, after an 18-month battle with acute myeloid leukemia.

Barry married Cora Masters on January 8, 1993. Masters was a political science professor at the University of the District of Columbia and his former spokeswoman.

Barry's mother, Mattie Cummings, died at age 92 in Memphis on November 8, 2009.

Legacy

In the midst of a contentious mayoral race in Newark, New Jersey in May 2014, Rutgers University professor and Newark city historian Clement A. Price cited Barry and Jackson, Mississippi's Chokwe Lumumba as his role models as mayor. The citation came in an April 2014 public discussion. Professor Price had not taken sides in the 2014 contest.

In June 2009, a documentary of Barry's life was released at Silverdocs. The HBO Documentary was released on August 2009, on HBO.

Wikipedia

[itsfinancethings]

On a night when protests over racial injustice erupted into violent clashes across the country and multiple fires burned and store windows were smashed just two blocks from his bedroom in the White House, President Trump did not address the nation or try to calm a country grieving over the twin injuries of police brutality and a pandemic that has disproportionately hit minorities.

Instead he got political.

Trump wrote on Twitter just after 10 p.m. Saturday that the National Guard had been “released” in Minneapolis, “to do the job the Democrat Mayor couldn’t do.” Shortly after noon the next day, Trump played the political card again, writing, “Other Democrat run Cities and States should look at the total shutdown of Radical Left Anarchists in Minneapolis last night.”

It was a striking response to what appeared to be a turning point in the contentious era of racial tensions Trump has done so much to foment. Thousands of people marched peacefully in more than 70 cities across the country Saturday, and city leaders blamed the vandalism and arson on small groups. As of Sunday morning, about 5,000 National Guard troops were activated in 15 states and Washington, D.C. “in response to civil disturbances,” according to a statement from the National Guard Bureau.

Inside the White House, Trump’s aides are debating how the President should respond to the violence and how far Trump should follow his decades-old instinct to back the police and minimize claims of racial bias. Some aides have floated the idea of Trump giving a stand alone address to the nation, but so far, Trump has held off. On Sunday, Fox News’ Griff Jenkins suggested that President Trump should make a speech to the country. “I really believe it is time for President Trump to do an Oval Office address,” said Jenkins on Fox and Friends.

One White House official who spoke to TIME has advised against Trump making a speech. “I don’t think speeches are productive at this point, action is what’s needed,” says the official. Trump ran as “a law and order guy” and should stick to that, the official says, adding: “Any politician that tolerates this at the state, local or federal level including the President looks weak, looks weak because they are weak.”

Another advisor believes the violent outbursts, while disturbing and painful for the country, will ultimately play to Trump’s political advantage. “Really makes you want tough, Republican leadership,” a second White House official says. “I don’t care what your position is on anything else. People do not want their streets to be lit on fire and not feel safe in their homes,” says the official.

The focus on transparently political interests, from the President down to his aides and campaign staffers, is unsurprising five months before the election. From the beginning of Trump’s political career, he has repeatedly found political rocketfuel by pressing on the most divisive issues in America. He questioned President Obama’s citizenship. He said Mexico is sending “rapists” to the U.S. He criticized NFL players who took a knee during the national anthem to protest discriminatory police practices. He waded into the debate over Confederate monuments saying there are “very fine people” on “both sides.”

Now, as countrywide protests have surged following George Floyd’s death in police custody in Minneapolis, Trump has turned up the heat again, stoking the flames rather than seeking to put them out. Earlier on Saturday, Trump wrote on Twitter that the Secret Service had been prepared with the “most vicious dogs” and “ominous weapons” for use against protestors and seemed to egg on a confrontation with his supporters by saying Saturday would be “MAGA NIGHT” at the White House.

The clashes, and Trump’s response to them, have driven stories off the front pages about the rising COVID-19 death toll and his clumsy handling of the pandemic response. Trump’s leadership during the pandemic has taken a bite out of Trump’s approval rating, a Washington Post-ABC News poll released Sunday found. Trump’s approval rating with that poll had slipped slightly to 45 percent, down from 48 percent approving in March. The poll found Biden had widened his lead over Trump among registered voters, who favor Biden 53 to 43 percent.

Now Trump finds himself on more familiar ground: he always seems more comfortable politically when he’s driving toward a controversy rather than running from one. And that reflex is rewarded in the fervor of his base. Enthusiasm among potential Trump voters was higher than among Biden supporters in the Post-ABC poll, with 87 percent saying they were enthusiastic about supporting Trump and 64 percent were “very enthusiastic.” For Biden, 74 percent of supporters described themselves as enthusiastic and 31 percent as “very enthusiastic.”

President Trump “never understood what it was to be a healer, he never sought that, because that wasn’t his playbook,” says Timothy Naftali, a presidential historian at New York University. “He gained power by dividing us, not uniting us.”

Before returning to the White House Saturday afternoon, Trump was in Cape Canaveral, Florida to watch the launch of astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley into Earth’s orbit, a historic achievement that was drowned out by the widespread unrest in the country. Speaking after the successful takeoff, Trump called the death of George Floyd “a grave tragedy” that “should never have happened.” Trump described himself as “as a friend and ally to every American seeking justice and peace” and then turned to a stark warning, saying, “In America, justice is never achieved at the hands of an angry mob. I will not allow angry mobs to dominate. It won’t happen.”

But it is Trump’s reflex for division rather than his law and order talk that threatens to raise the stakes as violence mounts and racial tensions rise. With economic, racial, and political divisions deepening by the day, the country is left wondering just how far he is willing to go five months before the election, and what the cost will be.

[brajeshupadhyay]

Twitter Refutes Inaccuracies in Trump’s Tweets for First Time

OAKLAND, Calif. — Twitter added information to refute the inaccuracies in President Trump’s tweets for the first time on Tuesday, after years of pressure over its inaction on his false and threatening posts.

The social media company added links late Tuesday to two of Mr. Trump’s recent tweets in which he had posted about mail-in ballots and falsely claimed that they would cause the November presidential election to be “rigged.” The links — which were in blue lettering at the bottom of the posts and punctuated by an exclamation mark — urged people to “get the facts” about voting by mail. Clicking on the links led to a CNN story that said Mr. Trump’s claims were unsubstantiated and to a list of bullet points that Twitter had compiled rebutting the inaccuracies.

The warning labels were a minor addition to Mr. Trump’s tweets, but they represented a big shift in how Twitter deals with the president.

For years, the San Francisco company has faced criticism over Mr. Trump’s posts on his most favored social media platform, which he has used to bully, cajole and spread falsehoods. But Twitter has repeatedly said the president’s messages did not violate its terms of service and that while Mr. Trump may have skirted the line of what was accepted under its rules, he never crossed it.

That changed Tuesday after a fierce backlash over tweets that Mr. Trump had posted about Lori Klausutis, a young woman who died in 2001 from complications of an undiagnosed heart condition while working for Joe Scarborough, a Florida congressman at the time. Mr. Trump had posted false conspiracy theories about Ms. Klausutis’s death in recent days, suggesting that Mr. Scarborough was involved, as part of his long-running feud with the MSNBC host.

Early Tuesday, a letter from the widower of Ms. Klausutis addressed to Jack Dorsey, Twitter’s chief executive, became public. In it, Timothy Klausutis asked Twitter to delete Mr. Trump’s tweets about his late wife, calling them “horrifying lies.”

Mr. Scarborough also called the tweets “unspeakably cruel.” Others, including Katie Couric and the CNN anchor Jake Tapper, expressed sympathy for the Klausutis family, with Mr. Tapper calling Mr. Trump’s tweets “malicious lies.”

Twitter said it was “deeply sorry about the pain these statements” were causing the Klausutis family, but said that it would not remove Mr. Trump’s tweets because they did not violate its policies. While those posts remain untouched by Twitter, the company instead added warning labels to other messages by the president on mail-in ballots.

The changes immediately set off accusations by the Trump campaign that Twitter was biased against the president.

“We always knew that Silicon Valley would pull out all the stops to obstruct and interfere with President Trump getting his message through to voters,” said Brad Parscale, a manager of the Trump 2020 campaign. “Partnering with the biased fake news media ‘fact checkers’ is only a smoke screen Twitter is using to try to lend their obvious political tactics some false credibility.”

A Twitter spokesman said the tweets “contain potentially misleading information about voting processes and have been labeled to provide additional context.”

Disinformation experts said Twitter’s move indicated how social media platforms that had once declared themselves neutral were increasingly having to abandon that stance.

“This is the first time that Twitter has done something that has in some small way attempted to rein in the president,” said Tiffany C. Li, a visiting professor at Boston University School of Law. “There’s been a gradual shift in the way that Twitter has treated content moderation. You see them taking on more of their duty and responsibility to create a healthy online speech environment.”

Twitter faces singular pressure because it is Mr. Trump’s most frequently used method of communicating with the public. Early in his presidency, he tweeted about nine times a day. He has since accelerated his pace, averaging 29 tweets a day last year and posting up to 108 times on May 10, according to a tally by The New York Times.

That high level of activity by Mr. Trump has brought attention and growth to Twitter. If the company deleted his tweets or altered them, it would escalate accusations from conservative politicians that it censors their political views or was biased against them.

But by doing nothing, Twitter was also being “misguided,” said Joan Donovan, research director at Harvard Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center, who studies disinformation. “If world leaders are not kept to the same standard as everyone else, they wield more power to harass, defame and silence others.”

The dilemma with Mr. Trump has put Mr. Dorsey under scrutiny. In a series of tweets last October, Mr. Dorsey said the company would ban all political ads from the service because they presented challenges to civic discourse, “all at increasing velocity, sophistication, and overwhelming scale.” He worried such ads had “significant ramifications that today’s democratic infrastructure may not be prepared to handle.”

Yet Mr. Dorsey has appeared unwilling to tackle Mr. Trump’s tweets even though disinformation experts said political tweets from world leaders often reach a wider audience than political ads and have a greater power to misinform.

Still, election misinformation is a sore spot for Twitter and Mr. Dorsey. The company faced heavy criticism, along with Facebook, for allowing Russian disinformation to run rampant on the platform during the 2016 presidential election.

In 2018, Mr. Dorsey testified before Congress that he would put a stop to social media campaigns that sought to dissuade voters from participating in democracy.

“We have learned from situations where people have taken advantage of our service and our past inability to address it fast enough,” he said.

Twitter is not the only tech company struggling with moderating Mr. Trump’s threats and falsehoods online. Over the past few days, Mr. Trump posted identical comments about Ms. Klausutis’s death on Facebook. One of his posts there gained about 4,000 comments and 2,000 shares and was not mentioned by Mr. Klausutis. On Twitter, that same post, which questioned whether Mr. Scarborough had gotten away with murder, was shared 31,000 times and received 23,000 replies.

For years, Twitter took a hands-off approach to moderating the posts on its platform. That brought it acclaim when it enabled dissidents to tweet about political protests, like the Egyptian revolution in 2011. But it also allowed trolls, bots and malicious operatives onto the site, making Twitter an epicenter for harassment, misinformation and abuse.

In 2018, after all the criticism about the platform following the 2016 election, Mr. Dorsey said he would focus on molding Twitter to support “healthy” conversations.

“We have witnessed abuse, harassment, troll armies, manipulation through bots and human-coordination, misinformation campaigns, and increasingly divisive echo chambers,” he tweeted at the time. “We aren’t proud of how people have taken advantage of our service, or our inability to address it fast enough.”

But Mr. Trump himself largely escaped enforcement. Although he sometimes deleted his own tweets when they contained misspellings, Twitter mostly left his posts alone.

That hands-off treatment was controversial inside Twitter. In 2017, a rogue Twitter worker deactivated Mr. Trump’s account. The account was reinstated in about 10 minutes.

Critics have piled on over time. Last year, Senator Kamala Harris, Democrat of California, asked Mr. Dorsey to suspend Mr. Trump’s Twitter account. In a letter to Ms. Harris, Twitter reiterated its public stance on tweets by world leaders and said it would err on the side of leaving the posts up if there was a public interest in doing so.

Other world leaders have not enjoyed similar freedom on Twitter. Tweets from the Brazilian president, Jair Bolsonaro, and the Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro, that promoted unproven cures for the coronavirus were recently removed.

Until this week, Twitter had maintained that Mr. Trump did not violate its policies and that the company would take action if he crossed the line.

“We believe it’s important that the world sees how global leaders think and how they act. And we think the conversation that ensues around that is critical,” Mr. Dorsey said in an interview with HuffPost last year. If Mr. Trump posted something that violated Twitter’s policies, Mr. Dorsey added, “we’d certainly talk about it.”

On Tuesday, the company turned that talk into action.

Kate Conger reported from Oakland, Calif., and Davey Alba from New York. Ben Decker contributed reporting.

The post Twitter Refutes Inaccuracies in Trump’s Tweets for First Time appeared first on Sansaar Times.

via Blogger https://ift.tt/3end3WM

[nickyschneiderus]

Net neutrality died last year. But the fight’s just begun

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) made the controversial choice to rescind net neutrality rules one year ago today—and much has happened since then as lawmakers and advocates attempt to reverse that decision.

Since the FCC’s vote, which was down party lines, with Republicans voting to scrap the rules and Democrats voting to keep them, there have been online protests, in-person meetings with lawmakers, lawsuits against the agency, and probes into fake comments. Meanwhile, states have enacted their own net neutrality laws, and an effort in Congress is underway to use a mechanism that would reverse the decision.

Here’s a reminder of all of the things that have happened in the year since the FCC’s decision.

Net neutrality repeal one year later

Congress and net neutrality

Both chambers of Congress have taken up an effort to reverse the FCC’s decision by using the Congressional Review Act (CRA). The CRA is a mechanism that Congress can use to overturn federal agencies’ decisions within a certain time-frame. If a CRA effort passes in both the Senate and the House of Representatives, the president would then need to sign it.

The effort was seen as a long-shot by many critics, but there has been some momentum.

In May, Sen. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) launched a CRA effort in the Senate to save net neutrality. During the vote, several Republicans broke ranks to vote in favor of it, pushing it to the House.

The effort to garner the needed votes there–it would need 218 signatures, a simple majority in the House–has been led by Rep. Mike Doyle (D-Penn.)

Representatives for both Markey and Doyle did not respond to a request for comment by the Daily Dot.

While there was a strong bipartisan effort in the Senate, the attempts to get signatures from Republicans (and even some Democrats) has not been as easy.

Senate Democrats/YouTube

Currently, 180 lawmakers have signed onto the “discharge petition,” which, if it reaches 218 votes, would force a full vote in the House. So far only one Republican has signed on, and a handful of Democrats have yet to sign onto it.

Another Republican representative drew ire from advocates over the summer when he allegedly told a constituent he would sign onto the CRA, but then announced that he wouldn’t.

The deadline for the net neutrality CRA was originally slated for early December, but with Congress’s session being extended until later this month, there is still time for lawmakers to get the needed 38 votes.

The push to get the needed signatures has been the focus of many internet rights’ organizations.

We have 180 signatures on the CRA discharge petition to restore #NetNeutrality – we need 218 to force a vote on the House Floor. There is still time to save the internet, but we need to act now! pic.twitter.com/SbMCjK5yP3

— Mike Doyle (@USRepMikeDoyle) December 13, 2018

Fight for the Future, a non-profit that has advocated for net neutrality, and other organizations have been active for months trying to convince lawmakers to sign onto the CRA.

In the months since the FCC’s repeal, advocates across the country have visited with lawmakers and urged them to support reinstating net neutrality.

Ahead of the 2018 midterms, many voters also said that net neutrality was a major issue for them when they headed to the polls.

Earlier this month, Fight for the Future launched a website that allowed constituents to pressure Democrats in the House who have not signed onto the effort. All of the Democrats in the Senate voted in favor of the CRA earlier this year.

To mark the one year anniversary, Fight for the Future said on Friday that a mobile billboard will go around Washington D.C.

One of the signs says: “One year ago today, the FCC repealed net neutrality. Congress could have stopped them.”

READ MORE: 

For marginalized communities, net neutrality is about way more than Netflix

Will a lame-duck Congress take up the net neutrality fight?

These politicians bet against the internet. Will it cost them in 2018?

Kavanaugh’s toxic net neutrality record went mostly unnoticed during hearings

Net neutrality fake comments

On top of all of that, lawmakers have also expressed concern about the commenting process the FCC had ahead of its vote last year.

Millions of fraudulent comments were left on the FCC’s website before the vote—which included the names of lawmakers and dead people—all of which have become the focus of an investigation by the New York Attorney General and, as BuzzFeed News reported recently, federal law enforcement.

In October, the New York Attorney General’s office (which is leading the charge among more than 20 states who are challenging the FCC’s repeal) announced that it had subpoenaed a number of telecom groups, lobbyists, and advocacy organizations in an attempt to “get to the bottom” of how millions of comments were left on the FCC’s website that were fraudulent.

Around the same time, a study from Stanford University found that after filtering out the fake comments, nearly 100 percent of those left on the FCC’s website were opposed to the agency’s decision to repeal net neutrality.

The FCC was also grilled by lawmakers in August about its claim that it was hit with a distributed-denial-of-service (DDoS) attack ahead of its net neutrality vote after Last Week Tonight host John Oliver urged his viewers to comment on the agency’s website. The FCC would later backtrack on the claims.

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai blamed the FCC’s former chief information officer for providing “inaccurate information” about the alleged DDoS attack.

More recently Pai admitted that Russian email addresses were used during the public commenting process.

Gage Skidmore/Flickr (CC-BY-SA)

States and net neutrality

As the debate in Congress raged on, states have taken matters into their own hands.

Several states have used executive orders to enact net neutrality rules of their own, including New Jersey, New York, Montana, Hawaii, and others. Some states, like Vermont and California, have gone further and passed net neutrality legislation.

In particular, California’s law has drawn a lot of attention. The law—which bars internet service providers (ISPs) from blocking, speeding up, or slowing down internet traffic—was called the “gold standard” template for states by internet rights organizations.

However, after passing it this fall, the Justice Department announced it was suing California over the law. Several groups representing telecom companies soon followed the Justice Department and also sued California.

California then, as Wired notes, agreed to postpone enacting its law until a federal lawsuit regarding net neutrality is decided.

In mid-October, the same telecom groups also sued Vermont for its net neutrality law.

Net neutrality lawsuits

The effort to save net neutrality isn’t just happening legislatively–there is also a battle raging in the courts.

In February, more than 20 attorneys general from across the country announced that they had filed a lawsuit challenging the FCC’s “Restoring Internet Freedom” order, which rescinded net neutrality.

Tech companies like Mozilla, Etsy, Vimeo, Foursquare, and others have also filed petitions against the order. The case is being heard by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.

In a separate case, the New York Times has sued the FCC in an effort to get government records surrounding the public comments ahead of the net neutrality vote. The documents, they argue, will “shed light” on how Russia may have interfered in the process.

Andrew Wyrich/The Daily Dot (Licensed)

What’s next for net neutrality?

If the CRA effort is unsuccessful, the future of net neutrality could go in several different directions.

The lawsuits challenging the FCC’s decision could become a major point of pressure. There is also the possibility that legislation is considered by Congress, however, internet rights advocates have cautioned against that.

Meanwhile, Gigi Sohn, who is a prominent net neutrality advocate and distinguished fellow at the Georgetown Law Institute for Technology Law & Policy, predicted recently that Democrats will have a sharper eye on the FCC once they gain control of the House of Representatives next year and have oversight over the agency.

“This FCC has had a very, very easy two years,” she told the Hill. “I think there have only been two oversight hearings in the last two years. I can tell you that when I was working for Tom Wheeler, we had 10 years in 13 weeks… I think there is going to be an oversight both on the substance of what the FCC has done and also on the process.”

READ MORE: 

Democrats predicted to go in on net neutrality when they take House

FBI will reportedly investigate fake net neutrality comments

Democrats want answers from wireless carriers after alleged throttling

from Ricky Schneiderus Curation https://www.dailydot.com/layer8/net-neutrality-fcc-one-year/

[theliberaltony]

via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

Welcome to Pollapalooza, our weekly polling roundup.

Poll of the week

On Sunday, Oct. 6, President Trump publicly called for withdrawal of U.S. troops from northeastern Syria. Since then, as U.S. troops have hastily withdrawn from their position, Turkish, Russian, and Syrian government forces have advanced into the region. The American withdrawal has been met with bipartisan disapproval from Congress, where two-thirds of Republicans in the House voted with Democrats to condemn the president’s decision. Even some of Trump’s staunchest Republican allies opposed the move. South Carolina Senator Linsey Graham, who normally votes with the president, called the withdrawal a “stain on the honor of the United States.”

But while the measure has been unpopular among Republican lawmakers, rank-and-file members of the party may not be as opposed. There have only been four polls so far since Trump announced he would withdraw troops from Syria, and while all four showed that mainly Americans oppose the withdrawal, there was a stark partisan split — Republican voters aren’t broadly opposed to Trump’s decision.

First up, a YouGov/CBS News poll conducted Oct. 8-11 found that a plurality of Americans (41 percent) said they didn’t know enough about the situation to determine whether they supported removing troops from the region, while 24 percent approved of withdrawing troops and 34 percent disapproved of the move. But among Republicans, 41 percent approved of the decision to withdraw troops. (The majority of Democrats opposed it.)

A Morning Consult/Politico poll conducted Oct. 11-13 found that a 41 percent plurality of Americans opposed withdrawing troops, but unlike the YouGov/CBS News poll, this poll did not give respondents the option of saying they hadn’t heard enough to know how the felt. A majority of Republicans (56 percent) supported removing troops from the region, while the majority of Democrats (60 percent) opposed it.

A YouGov/Economist poll conducted Oct. 13-15 asked respondents whether they supported removing U.S. troops and “leaving Syrian Kurds who fought against ISIS vulnerable to attack from the Turkish military.” That poll found a majority (52 percent) of Americans were opposed. Seventy-six percent of Democrats opposed military withdrawal, but a majority of Republicans (57 percent) supported it.

And lastly, a USA Today/IPSOS poll conducted Oct. 16-17 asked respondents whether withdrawing troops was the right decision because “the U.S. has too many military commitments abroad” or the wrong decision because it will “upset stability in a dangerous region.” Twenty-seven percent said it was the right decision, while 37 percent said it was the wrong decision. A 41 percent plurality of Republicans thought withdrawal was the right decision while only 15 percent of Democrats said the same.

This isn’t the first time Trump has announced plans to remove troops from Syria. But the public wasn’t as opposed before. YouGov/Economist started asking Americans whether they’d support removing troops from Syria in April 2018 after Trump called for withdrawal. At that time, slightly more Americans were in favor (36 percent) than opposed (28 percent). And even after Trump called for the removal of troops again in December, Americans were still about evenly split (39 percent approved; 37 percent disapproved). But this time around, Trump’s decision to remove troops from the region is not as popular. As the table below shows, net support for withdrawing troops has decreased since last year, especially among Democrats and independents. But support among Republicans has stayed relatively high since December.

Support for withdrawing troops from Syria fell … mostly

Net support for removing troops from Syria over time, by party, according to YouGov/Economist polls

NET Support Date Do you approve of the U.S. … ALL DEM. IND. REP. April 8-10, 2018 Withdrawing troops +8 +3 +18 -4 Dec 23-25, 2018 Immediately withdrawing troops +2 -32 +11 27 Feb 2-5, 2019 Immediately withdrawing troops -1 -35 +7 29 Oct 13-15, 2019 Withdrawing troops, leaving Syrian Kurds vulnerable -24 -66 -19 31

Source: YouGov/Economist Polls

However, we don’t want to read too much into Republican support for Trump’s decision to remove troops from Syria. And that’s because many Americans are still getting up to speed on the situation. Remember, in that YouGov/CBS News poll, a plurality of Americans said they didn’t know enough to say whether they supported removing troops from the region. And according to that Morning Consult/Politico poll, 40 percent of registered voters had heard either “nothing at all” or “not much” about the Turkish offensive (including 45 percent of Republicans, and 34 percent of Democrats). A third of voters also said they have heard little or nothing about the U.S. troop pullout. And that USA Today/Ipsos poll also found that 42 percent of Americans — including 45 percent of Republicans — had either not heard about the U.S. decision to withdraw troops or knew little about it.

There are some early signs, though, that even as they learn more, Republican voters may not sour on Trump’s decision. The Morning Consult/Politico poll also conducted an “informed ballot” test to see whether respondents’ answers changed after they were presented with arguments from both sides. The pollster told respondents that opponents of Trump’s decision said it amounts to “abandoning the Kurds” and that it “could lead to ISIS gaining ground in the area,” and said supporters of the president argued that “it’s time to keep the U.S. out of foreign wars.” After being presented with this information, 60 percent of Republicans supported Trump’s decision to remove troops from Syria, a slight increase from the 56 percent who backed the move without being given these arguments first.

If Republican voters continue to support Trump’s position, though, Republican politicians may have to fall in line.

Other polling bites

Last week, Trump took aim at Fox News’s pollster after their latest poll showed results that were unfavorable to him, including growing support for impeachment. “Whoever their Pollster is, they suck,” he tweeted, following up again on Monday with another tweet calling the poll “incorrect.” His assessment appears to be based on an article from the New York Post that attributed the poll to Braun Research and attempted to re-weight the poll under the assumption that the partisan breakdown of respondents was not in line with real-world party affiliations. While Braun did conduct fieldwork for the poll, Fox News polls are conducted under the joint direction of a Democrat working for Beacon Research and a Republican with Shaw & Company Research, and they are among the more accurate polls around. Reweighting polls based on party identification, which has come to be known as “unskewing,” is generally a methodologically flawed way of interpreting polling data, and it has led to misleading results in the past.

A FiveThirtyEight/Ipsos poll, which asked respondents to rate each candidates’ debate performance on a four-point scale, found that Sen. Elizabeth Warren was ranked highest by those who watched the debate. But South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg saw the largest increase in the share of voters who were considering voting for him before and after the debate — an increase of 4.5 percentage points.

According to a poll from the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg Public Policy Center, 57 percent of Americans either “strongly” or “somewhat” agree that the Supreme Court “gets too mixed up in politics.” A majority of Americans, however, still think that the court acts “in the best interests of the American people” and that it has “about the right amount of power.”

Over a quarter of American adults are now religiously unaffiliated, according to a Pew Research Center study, up from 17 percent in 2009.

According to a poll conducted last weekend by Public Policy Polling for the Chicago Sun-Times and ABC7 Chicago, 49 percent of Chicagoans either “strongly” or “somewhat” support a teachers strike, while 38 percent opposed it. The strike was announced Wednesday evening, and classes in Chicago were canceled as of Thursday.

A YouGov poll asked Americans about the NBA’s priorities in light of backlash from Chinese companies, following theHouston Rockets’ general manager Daryl Morey tweeting support for Hong Kong’s pro-democracy protesters. Two-thirds of respondents said the NBA should prioritize freedom of speech for its employees more, 8 percent said it should prioritize its business interests more, and about a quarter said they don’t know.

According to a recent poll from Siena College, a quarter of New Yorkers support a bill in the New York State legislature to divide New York State in two states. Two-thirds of New Yorkers said they oppose the bill. The bill stipulates that one of the two states would be New York City and the surrounding areas, while the other would be the remaining 53 counties in the state.

Bolivians go to the polls on Sunday to elect a president. In late 2017, the country’s highest court scrapped term limits altogether, paving the way for current president Evo Morales to run for his fourth consecutive term. In order to win in the first-round election, Morales must get above 40 percent of the vote and have a 10-point lead over his second-place rival. While Morales is leading, some recent polls have left him just shy of 40 percent, indicating that he may not be able to avoid a runoff election, but others have put him at just over the 40 percent mark.

Trump approval

According to FiveThirtyEight’s presidential approval tracker, 41.6 percent of Americans approve of the job Trump is doing as president, while 54 percent disapprove (a net approval rating of -12.4 points). At this time last week, 42.0 percent approved and 53.7 percent disapproved (for a net approval rating of -11.7 points). One month ago, Trump had an approval rating of 41.8 percent and a disapproval rating of 53.7 percent, for a net approval rating of -11.9 points.

Generic ballot

In our average of polls of the generic congressional ballot, Democrats currently lead by 6.3 percentage points (46.6 percent to 40.3 percent). At this time last week, Democrats led by 6.1 percentage points (46.2 percent to 40.1 percent). At this time last month, voters preferred Democrats by 6.8 points (46.8 percent to 40 percent).

Check out our impeachment polls tracker.

[blogwonderwebsites]

Nature Brazil’s Presidential Race: Who’s Ahead and What to Expect

Nature Brazil’s Presidential Race: Who’s Ahead and What to Expect Nature Brazil’s Presidential Race: Who’s Ahead and What to Expect http://www.nature-business.com/nature-brazils-presidential-race-whos-ahead-and-what-to-expect/

Nature

Image

Jair Bolsonaro, the front-runner in Brazil’s presidential election on Sunday, greeting supporters in Brasília last month.CreditCreditEraldo Peres/Associated Press

SÃO PAULO, Brazil — There has been no lack of drama in the lead-up to Brazil’s presidential election on Sunday. One candidate was jailed, another was stabbed and a week before the voting, women organized nationwide protests against the front-runner.

The presidential contest, the most splintered and divisive race since the end of the military dictatorship in the 1980s, has for many Brazilians come down to who is the least bad option.

Who Is Leading?

The front-runner by a wide margin is the far-right former army captain, Jair Bolsonaro, according to the polls. A member of Congress since 1991, he was long a marginal figure best known for incendiary comments defending Brazil’s military dictatorship and attacking women, gays and blacks.

In addition to electing the next president from a field of 13 candidates, voters will also choose 27 governors and more than 1,600 state and federal lawmakers. In Brazil, there are 147.3 million eligible voters, and voting is obligatory.

As anger and frustration with entrenched political corruption has grown, Mr. Bolsonaro has presented himself as an anti-establishment maverick who could effectively combat corruption and rein in soaring violence and crime.

His main rival, former São Paulo Mayor Fernando Haddad, entered the race only last month. He was selected to represent the left-wing Workers’ Party after the former president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, was sentenced to prison on corruption charges and barred from running as the party’s candidate.

Until the courts ruled him out, Mr. da Silva had been leading in the polls. But it appears that the Workers’ Party has been unable to transfer Mr. da Silva’s broad support among impoverished Brazilians to the less charismatic Mr. Haddad.

The crowded field also includes Marina Silva, the daughter of Amazon rubber tappers; Geraldo Alckmin, the pragmatic and market-friendly former governor of São Paulo; and a candidate, Cabo Daciolo, who describes himself as a messenger from heaven.

Will Brazil Have a New President?

The final polls before Election Day showed Mr. Bolsonaro’s lead widening as the evangelical and agribusiness lobbies rallied to his side. But he still appeared likely to fall short of the 50 percent-plus-one needed to avoid a runoff. Surveys project him competing in a second round of voting on Oct. 28 against Mr. Haddad.

Still, some analysts think that Mr. Bolsonaro, 63, could defy the projections and emerge victorious on Sunday night despite — or perhaps because of — his lack of support from a major political party and a shoestring budget that relied on social media to build a base.

Brazil uses an electronic ballot system and is expected to tally results within a couple of hours after polling stations close in the westernmost state of Acre at 6 p.m. Eastern Time.

What’s on Voters’ Minds?

Soaring crime, the worst recession on record and institutionalized political corruption have been the three main issues in the campaign.

Despite accomplishing little of note during his seven terms as a lawmaker, Mr. Bolsonaro gained prominence when a massive corruption investigation known as Lava Jato, or Car Wash, engulfed all of Brazil’s major political parties.

He cultivated an image as an abrasive, but honest politician with a clean record. This was in contrast with the Workers’ Party, which has been largely blamed for the vast bribery schemes of the past decade and a half.

For many voters, the biggest concern has been violent crime. This past year, Brazil averaged 175 murders a day, surpassing its previous macabre record.

Mr. Bolsonaro, who insists that he is the only candidate tough enough to stop criminals, has posed often for photos with his fingers pointed like loaded pistols. With his unfiltered comments and amateur videos on social media, he offered ready solutions for the country’s problems: He wants to make it easier for citizens to own guns and for the police to shoot criminals.

Critics worry, however, that Mr. Bolsonaro would undermine democratic institutions, and they point to outbursts like a congressional speech in 1993 when he declared, “I am in favor of dictatorship.”

As his standing in the polls has improved, opponents rallied behind the motto #EleNão, or #NotHim, taking to the streets and the internet to encourage voters to elect anyone but Mr. Bolsonaro.

Brazil’s sputtering economy has also divided voters. Many of the country’s poorest people, who benefited from expanded social programs during Mr. da Silva’s two terms as president, have embraced his stand-in, Mr. Haddad. The Workers’ Party insisted that Mr. Haddad “would make Brazil happy again.”

But many other voters blame the Workers’ Party for the deep recession that started on its watch. Every time the polls show Mr. Bolsonaro’s popularity growing, the markets rally on the hope that he will curtail social spending and make fiscal changes.

Mr. Bolsonaro’s supporters also worry that a victory for Mr. Haddad would deal a blow to the Car Wash investigation, which might lead to Mr. da Silva being freed from prison, despite his corruption conviction.

A version of this article appears in print on

, on Page

A

4

of the New York edition

with the headline:

Who’s Ahead and What to Expect in Brazil Vote

. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

Read More | https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/06/world/americas/brazil-president-election-jair-bolsonaro.html |

Nature Brazil’s Presidential Race: Who’s Ahead and What to Expect, in 2018-10-07 10:43:11

[blogparadiseisland]

Nature Brazil’s Presidential Race: Who’s Ahead and What to Expect

Nature Brazil’s Presidential Race: Who’s Ahead and What to Expect Nature Brazil’s Presidential Race: Who’s Ahead and What to Expect http://www.nature-business.com/nature-brazils-presidential-race-whos-ahead-and-what-to-expect/

Nature

Image

Jair Bolsonaro, the front-runner in Brazil’s presidential election on Sunday, greeting supporters in Brasília last month.CreditCreditEraldo Peres/Associated Press

SÃO PAULO, Brazil — There has been no lack of drama in the lead-up to Brazil’s presidential election on Sunday. One candidate was jailed, another was stabbed and a week before the voting, women organized nationwide protests against the front-runner.

The presidential contest, the most splintered and divisive race since the end of the military dictatorship in the 1980s, has for many Brazilians come down to who is the least bad option.

Who Is Leading?

The front-runner by a wide margin is the far-right former army captain, Jair Bolsonaro, according to the polls. A member of Congress since 1991, he was long a marginal figure best known for incendiary comments defending Brazil’s military dictatorship and attacking women, gays and blacks.

In addition to electing the next president from a field of 13 candidates, voters will also choose 27 governors and more than 1,600 state and federal lawmakers. In Brazil, there are 147.3 million eligible voters, and voting is obligatory.

As anger and frustration with entrenched political corruption has grown, Mr. Bolsonaro has presented himself as an anti-establishment maverick who could effectively combat corruption and rein in soaring violence and crime.

His main rival, former São Paulo Mayor Fernando Haddad, entered the race only last month. He was selected to represent the left-wing Workers’ Party after the former president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, was sentenced to prison on corruption charges and barred from running as the party’s candidate.

Until the courts ruled him out, Mr. da Silva had been leading in the polls. But it appears that the Workers’ Party has been unable to transfer Mr. da Silva’s broad support among impoverished Brazilians to the less charismatic Mr. Haddad.

The crowded field also includes Marina Silva, the daughter of Amazon rubber tappers; Geraldo Alckmin, the pragmatic and market-friendly former governor of São Paulo; and a candidate, Cabo Daciolo, who describes himself as a messenger from heaven.

Will Brazil Have a New President?

The final polls before Election Day showed Mr. Bolsonaro’s lead widening as the evangelical and agribusiness lobbies rallied to his side. But he still appeared likely to fall short of the 50 percent-plus-one needed to avoid a runoff. Surveys project him competing in a second round of voting on Oct. 28 against Mr. Haddad.

Still, some analysts think that Mr. Bolsonaro, 63, could defy the projections and emerge victorious on Sunday night despite — or perhaps because of — his lack of support from a major political party and a shoestring budget that relied on social media to build a base.

Brazil uses an electronic ballot system and is expected to tally results within a couple of hours after polling stations close in the westernmost state of Acre at 6 p.m. Eastern Time.

What’s on Voters’ Minds?

Soaring crime, the worst recession on record and institutionalized political corruption have been the three main issues in the campaign.

Despite accomplishing little of note during his seven terms as a lawmaker, Mr. Bolsonaro gained prominence when a massive corruption investigation known as Lava Jato, or Car Wash, engulfed all of Brazil’s major political parties.

He cultivated an image as an abrasive, but honest politician with a clean record. This was in contrast with the Workers’ Party, which has been largely blamed for the vast bribery schemes of the past decade and a half.

For many voters, the biggest concern has been violent crime. This past year, Brazil averaged 175 murders a day, surpassing its previous macabre record.

Mr. Bolsonaro, who insists that he is the only candidate tough enough to stop criminals, has posed often for photos with his fingers pointed like loaded pistols. With his unfiltered comments and amateur videos on social media, he offered ready solutions for the country’s problems: He wants to make it easier for citizens to own guns and for the police to shoot criminals.

Critics worry, however, that Mr. Bolsonaro would undermine democratic institutions, and they point to outbursts like a congressional speech in 1993 when he declared, “I am in favor of dictatorship.”

As his standing in the polls has improved, opponents rallied behind the motto #EleNão, or #NotHim, taking to the streets and the internet to encourage voters to elect anyone but Mr. Bolsonaro.

Brazil’s sputtering economy has also divided voters. Many of the country’s poorest people, who benefited from expanded social programs during Mr. da Silva’s two terms as president, have embraced his stand-in, Mr. Haddad. The Workers’ Party insisted that Mr. Haddad “would make Brazil happy again.”

But many other voters blame the Workers’ Party for the deep recession that started on its watch. Every time the polls show Mr. Bolsonaro’s popularity growing, the markets rally on the hope that he will curtail social spending and make fiscal changes.

Mr. Bolsonaro’s supporters also worry that a victory for Mr. Haddad would deal a blow to the Car Wash investigation, which might lead to Mr. da Silva being freed from prison, despite his corruption conviction.

A version of this article appears in print on

, on Page

A

4

of the New York edition

with the headline:

Who’s Ahead and What to Expect in Brazil Vote

. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

Read More | https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/06/world/americas/brazil-president-election-jair-bolsonaro.html |

Nature Brazil’s Presidential Race: Who’s Ahead and What to Expect, in 2018-10-07 10:43:11

[magicwebsitesnet]

Nature Brazil’s Presidential Race: Who’s Ahead and What to Expect

Nature Brazil’s Presidential Race: Who’s Ahead and What to Expect Nature Brazil’s Presidential Race: Who’s Ahead and What to Expect http://www.nature-business.com/nature-brazils-presidential-race-whos-ahead-and-what-to-expect/

Nature

Image

Jair Bolsonaro, the front-runner in Brazil’s presidential election on Sunday, greeting supporters in Brasília last month.CreditCreditEraldo Peres/Associated Press

SÃO PAULO, Brazil — There has been no lack of drama in the lead-up to Brazil’s presidential election on Sunday. One candidate was jailed, another was stabbed and a week before the voting, women organized nationwide protests against the front-runner.

The presidential contest, the most splintered and divisive race since the end of the military dictatorship in the 1980s, has for many Brazilians come down to who is the least bad option.

Who Is Leading?

The front-runner by a wide margin is the far-right former army captain, Jair Bolsonaro, according to the polls. A member of Congress since 1991, he was long a marginal figure best known for incendiary comments defending Brazil’s military dictatorship and attacking women, gays and blacks.

In addition to electing the next president from a field of 13 candidates, voters will also choose 27 governors and more than 1,600 state and federal lawmakers. In Brazil, there are 147.3 million eligible voters, and voting is obligatory.

As anger and frustration with entrenched political corruption has grown, Mr. Bolsonaro has presented himself as an anti-establishment maverick who could effectively combat corruption and rein in soaring violence and crime.

His main rival, former São Paulo Mayor Fernando Haddad, entered the race only last month. He was selected to represent the left-wing Workers’ Party after the former president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, was sentenced to prison on corruption charges and barred from running as the party’s candidate.

Until the courts ruled him out, Mr. da Silva had been leading in the polls. But it appears that the Workers’ Party has been unable to transfer Mr. da Silva’s broad support among impoverished Brazilians to the less charismatic Mr. Haddad.

The crowded field also includes Marina Silva, the daughter of Amazon rubber tappers; Geraldo Alckmin, the pragmatic and market-friendly former governor of São Paulo; and a candidate, Cabo Daciolo, who describes himself as a messenger from heaven.

Will Brazil Have a New President?

The final polls before Election Day showed Mr. Bolsonaro’s lead widening as the evangelical and agribusiness lobbies rallied to his side. But he still appeared likely to fall short of the 50 percent-plus-one needed to avoid a runoff. Surveys project him competing in a second round of voting on Oct. 28 against Mr. Haddad.

Still, some analysts think that Mr. Bolsonaro, 63, could defy the projections and emerge victorious on Sunday night despite — or perhaps because of — his lack of support from a major political party and a shoestring budget that relied on social media to build a base.

Brazil uses an electronic ballot system and is expected to tally results within a couple of hours after polling stations close in the westernmost state of Acre at 6 p.m. Eastern Time.

What’s on Voters’ Minds?

Soaring crime, the worst recession on record and institutionalized political corruption have been the three main issues in the campaign.

Despite accomplishing little of note during his seven terms as a lawmaker, Mr. Bolsonaro gained prominence when a massive corruption investigation known as Lava Jato, or Car Wash, engulfed all of Brazil’s major political parties.

He cultivated an image as an abrasive, but honest politician with a clean record. This was in contrast with the Workers’ Party, which has been largely blamed for the vast bribery schemes of the past decade and a half.

For many voters, the biggest concern has been violent crime. This past year, Brazil averaged 175 murders a day, surpassing its previous macabre record.

Mr. Bolsonaro, who insists that he is the only candidate tough enough to stop criminals, has posed often for photos with his fingers pointed like loaded pistols. With his unfiltered comments and amateur videos on social media, he offered ready solutions for the country’s problems: He wants to make it easier for citizens to own guns and for the police to shoot criminals.

Critics worry, however, that Mr. Bolsonaro would undermine democratic institutions, and they point to outbursts like a congressional speech in 1993 when he declared, “I am in favor of dictatorship.”

As his standing in the polls has improved, opponents rallied behind the motto #EleNão, or #NotHim, taking to the streets and the internet to encourage voters to elect anyone but Mr. Bolsonaro.

Brazil’s sputtering economy has also divided voters. Many of the country’s poorest people, who benefited from expanded social programs during Mr. da Silva’s two terms as president, have embraced his stand-in, Mr. Haddad. The Workers’ Party insisted that Mr. Haddad “would make Brazil happy again.”

But many other voters blame the Workers’ Party for the deep recession that started on its watch. Every time the polls show Mr. Bolsonaro’s popularity growing, the markets rally on the hope that he will curtail social spending and make fiscal changes.

Mr. Bolsonaro’s supporters also worry that a victory for Mr. Haddad would deal a blow to the Car Wash investigation, which might lead to Mr. da Silva being freed from prison, despite his corruption conviction.

A version of this article appears in print on

, on Page

A

4

of the New York edition

with the headline:

Who’s Ahead and What to Expect in Brazil Vote

. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

Read More | https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/06/world/americas/brazil-president-election-jair-bolsonaro.html |

Nature Brazil’s Presidential Race: Who’s Ahead and What to Expect, in 2018-10-07 10:43:11

[blogcompetnetall]

Nature Brazil’s Presidential Race: Who’s Ahead and What to Expect

Nature Brazil’s Presidential Race: Who’s Ahead and What to Expect Nature Brazil’s Presidential Race: Who’s Ahead and What to Expect http://www.nature-business.com/nature-brazils-presidential-race-whos-ahead-and-what-to-expect/

Nature

Image

Jair Bolsonaro, the front-runner in Brazil’s presidential election on Sunday, greeting supporters in Brasília last month.CreditCreditEraldo Peres/Associated Press

SÃO PAULO, Brazil — There has been no lack of drama in the lead-up to Brazil’s presidential election on Sunday. One candidate was jailed, another was stabbed and a week before the voting, women organized nationwide protests against the front-runner.

The presidential contest, the most splintered and divisive race since the end of the military dictatorship in the 1980s, has for many Brazilians come down to who is the least bad option.

Who Is Leading?

The front-runner by a wide margin is the far-right former army captain, Jair Bolsonaro, according to the polls. A member of Congress since 1991, he was long a marginal figure best known for incendiary comments defending Brazil’s military dictatorship and attacking women, gays and blacks.

In addition to electing the next president from a field of 13 candidates, voters will also choose 27 governors and more than 1,600 state and federal lawmakers. In Brazil, there are 147.3 million eligible voters, and voting is obligatory.

As anger and frustration with entrenched political corruption has grown, Mr. Bolsonaro has presented himself as an anti-establishment maverick who could effectively combat corruption and rein in soaring violence and crime.

His main rival, former São Paulo Mayor Fernando Haddad, entered the race only last month. He was selected to represent the left-wing Workers’ Party after the former president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, was sentenced to prison on corruption charges and barred from running as the party’s candidate.

Until the courts ruled him out, Mr. da Silva had been leading in the polls. But it appears that the Workers’ Party has been unable to transfer Mr. da Silva’s broad support among impoverished Brazilians to the less charismatic Mr. Haddad.

The crowded field also includes Marina Silva, the daughter of Amazon rubber tappers; Geraldo Alckmin, the pragmatic and market-friendly former governor of São Paulo; and a candidate, Cabo Daciolo, who describes himself as a messenger from heaven.

Will Brazil Have a New President?

The final polls before Election Day showed Mr. Bolsonaro’s lead widening as the evangelical and agribusiness lobbies rallied to his side. But he still appeared likely to fall short of the 50 percent-plus-one needed to avoid a runoff. Surveys project him competing in a second round of voting on Oct. 28 against Mr. Haddad.

Still, some analysts think that Mr. Bolsonaro, 63, could defy the projections and emerge victorious on Sunday night despite — or perhaps because of — his lack of support from a major political party and a shoestring budget that relied on social media to build a base.

Brazil uses an electronic ballot system and is expected to tally results within a couple of hours after polling stations close in the westernmost state of Acre at 6 p.m. Eastern Time.

What’s on Voters’ Minds?

Soaring crime, the worst recession on record and institutionalized political corruption have been the three main issues in the campaign.

Despite accomplishing little of note during his seven terms as a lawmaker, Mr. Bolsonaro gained prominence when a massive corruption investigation known as Lava Jato, or Car Wash, engulfed all of Brazil’s major political parties.

He cultivated an image as an abrasive, but honest politician with a clean record. This was in contrast with the Workers’ Party, which has been largely blamed for the vast bribery schemes of the past decade and a half.

For many voters, the biggest concern has been violent crime. This past year, Brazil averaged 175 murders a day, surpassing its previous macabre record.

Mr. Bolsonaro, who insists that he is the only candidate tough enough to stop criminals, has posed often for photos with his fingers pointed like loaded pistols. With his unfiltered comments and amateur videos on social media, he offered ready solutions for the country’s problems: He wants to make it easier for citizens to own guns and for the police to shoot criminals.

Critics worry, however, that Mr. Bolsonaro would undermine democratic institutions, and they point to outbursts like a congressional speech in 1993 when he declared, “I am in favor of dictatorship.”

As his standing in the polls has improved, opponents rallied behind the motto #EleNão, or #NotHim, taking to the streets and the internet to encourage voters to elect anyone but Mr. Bolsonaro.

Brazil’s sputtering economy has also divided voters. Many of the country’s poorest people, who benefited from expanded social programs during Mr. da Silva’s two terms as president, have embraced his stand-in, Mr. Haddad. The Workers’ Party insisted that Mr. Haddad “would make Brazil happy again.”

But many other voters blame the Workers’ Party for the deep recession that started on its watch. Every time the polls show Mr. Bolsonaro’s popularity growing, the markets rally on the hope that he will curtail social spending and make fiscal changes.

Mr. Bolsonaro’s supporters also worry that a victory for Mr. Haddad would deal a blow to the Car Wash investigation, which might lead to Mr. da Silva being freed from prison, despite his corruption conviction.

A version of this article appears in print on

, on Page

A

4

of the New York edition

with the headline:

Who’s Ahead and What to Expect in Brazil Vote

. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

Read More | https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/06/world/americas/brazil-president-election-jair-bolsonaro.html |

Nature Brazil’s Presidential Race: Who’s Ahead and What to Expect, in 2018-10-07 10:43:11