WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Friday we were joined by the Communications Director of the Chicago Federation of Labor, Jake Lewis (second from right) and award winning scientist and union activist Loreen Targos who is with AFGE Local 704, which represents about 1,000 Environmental Protection Employees in the midwest. 

Jake Lewis, Chicago Federation of Labor

"What we've seen from [Mayor Lori Lightfoot] so far, is a willingness to speak up on [labor union] issues and to put herself front and center on big policy issues like Fair Work Week." -- Hitting Left

Loreen Targos, Award-winning EPA scientist, AFGE Local 704

Millennials and Gen Z members (I hear they're great) need to get into the unions and remind maybe some union leaders what it's all about and that's building grassroots power and fighting for what helps membership. -- Hitting Left

Eugene Robinson

 Trump no longer pretends to be the voice of forgotten working-class Americans. He has become the voice of insecure white Americans, whom he encourages to resent foreigners, immigrants and uppity minorities. His border policy — separating babies from their mothers, putting children in cages — is the fulfillment of an ugly revenge fantasy. Cruelty isn’t an unfortunate byproduct of Trump’s crackdown on asylum seekers. It’s the whole point. -- Washington Post

As an Australian I find it odd that Ocasio-Cortez, Omar, Pressley and Tlaib are seen as the “far left” when they’re just fighting for things that, well, pretty much every other developed country has had for years.

Just my two cents.

— Elle De Sylva ❄️ (@elle_desylva) July 21, 2019

Padma Lakshmi

The president is himself a second-generation American. Two of the women he has married are immigrants, but the only difference between them and Omar — and myself — is skin color. It’s clear that Trump equates being American with being white. But he doesn’t have the right to judge the Americanness of any of us. -- Washington Post

Donald Trump

... told reporters on Friday that his supporters who want him to deport Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) are "incredible patriots." -- Shareblue

Lindsey Graham

 “I don’t think it’s racist to say,” Graham told reporters on Thursday. “I don’t think a Somali refugee embracing Trump would be asked to go back. If you’re racist, you want everybody to go back because they are black or Muslim." -- Think Progress

Megan Rapinoe 

“I think this country was quite literally built on the backs of people who weren’t from here and were forced to come here in slavery.” -- Charlotte Observer

WATCH: Brittney Cooper on Trump: "He sees women of color as the people who reproduce all of these folks who are keeping him from making America white again... Our job is not to play nice with this, it is to call it out at every level." pic.twitter.com/BmoAvi4RU6

— MSNBC (@MSNBC) July 21, 2019