WEEKEND QUOTABLES

 

Willie Nelson headlines protest against anti-voting legislation in Texas

Lloyd Green 

QAnon is their creed, Trump is their Caesar and Gladiator remains the movie for our time. -- Guardian

Dr. Anthony Fauci 

...says unvaccinated Americans are "propagating this outbreak...But the issue is, if you're going to be part of the transmission chain to someone else, then your decision is impacting someone else. It's not only impacting you. And you've got to think about it, that you are a member of society and you have a responsibility." -- Face The Nation

Willie Nelson 

"It is important that we ensure the right for EVERY American to vote and vote safely...

...Laws making it more difficult for people to vote is un-American and are intended to punish poor people, people of color, the elderly, and disabled - why? If you can't win playing by the rules, then it's you and your platform — not everyone else's ability to vote."  -- At Poor People's Campaign March in Austin, TX.

The House had the opportunity to extend the eviction moratorium. But, there were a handful of conservative Democrats who chose to leave rather than keep families in their homes.

We cannot in good faith blame Republicans when House Democrats have a majority. pic.twitter.com/VBvOgZyIDY

— Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@RepAOC) August 1, 2021

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres on the military killings in Myanmar

I am deeply shocked by the killing of dozens of civilians, including children & young people, by security forces in Myanmar today.

The continuing military crackdown is unacceptable and demands a firm, unified & resolute international response. https://t.co/qtnQaH5jvN

— António Guterres (@antonioguterres) March 27, 2021

           

R.I.P. Beverly Cleary

“I had chicken pox, smallpox and tonsillitis in the first grade and nobody seemed to think that had anything to do with my reading trouble,” Cleary told the AP. “I just got mad and rebellious.” By sixth or seventh grade, “I decided that I was going to write children’s stories.” -- Guardian

Prosecutor Jerry Blackwell 

“She wanted to check on his pulse, check on Mr. Floyd’s well-being,” Blackwell said. “She did her best to intervene. When she approached Mr. Chauvin …. Mr. Chauvin reached for his Mace and pointed it in her direction. She couldn’t help.” -- AP

Bessemer, AL Amazon warehouse worker Linda Burns

 “They are treating us like robots rather than humans.” -- AP

 Attorney Walter Shaub, former director of the US Office of Government Ethics

"Georgia's bill would make it a crime to give free food or water to voters standing in line for hours and hours. But we know who these politicians force to stand in line all day long," Shaub said earlier this month on Twitter. "I've never once stood in line for even five minutes where I get to vote. This racism is thorough." -- CNN

Emma Berquist @eeberquist

everyone's anti-godzilla until there's a 200,000 ton boat that can't be moved

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

 

Robert Reich, former US secretary of labor

The most dramatic change in American capitalism over the last half-century has been the emergence of corporate behemoths like Amazon and the shrinkage of labor unions. -- Guardian

 V.P. Kamala Harris in Atlanta

"For the last year, we’ve had people in positions of incredible power scapegoating Asian Americans. People with the biggest pulpits spreading this kind of hate." -- Washington Post

Sen. Raphael Warnock 

It is a contradiction to say we must protect minority rights in the Senate while refusing to protect minority rights in the society. Colleagues, no Senate rule should overrule the integrity of the democracy and we must find a way to pass voting rights whether we get rid of the filibuster or not. -- Democracy Now

Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director General

 "Some countries are racing to vaccinate their entire populations while other countries have nothing. This may buy short-term security, but it’s a false sense of security." -- Media briefing

Systemic racism goes far beyond the police

Case in point... Georgia voters, especially in majority-Black precincts, waited hours in the rain, in the midst of the pandemic, to cast their ballots yesterday. A harbinger of things to come in November in red states where racist Republicans control of the election apparatus. 

Another case in point... In Iowa, David Harkin, a white landlord stands accused of evicting a black businessman, Jeremiah Johnson, and his partners from their office in his building after seeing video of them at a Black Lives Matter protest. In a letter to his attorney, the landlord complained: "We live in a day and age where people demand rights who have never earned anything or done anything to deserve them."

Lining up to vote in Mississippi in 1965. 

For me, this embedded line of racist reasoning is as deadly as a cop's chokehold and harkens back to Mississippi and other southern states in the early '60s when African-Americans who attempted to register to vote were fired from their jobs and evicted from their homes and worse.

Speaking of Iowa...the state went heavy for Trump four years ago. But change is in the air since corona and the protests and polls are now showing the race tightening here.

According to Politico:

Since the start of the year, Democrats in Iowa have added about twice as many active voters to their rolls as Republicans, nudging ahead in total registration for the first time in years. The farm economy has been battered by the coronavirus pandemic. And though Trump still holds a small lead in the state, according to the RealClearPolitics polling average, he’s now airing TV advertisements there — a tacit acknowledgment that the campaign anticipates a contest.

Since IL is in the bag for Democrats, IA-and=back might make for some good road-tripping for Chicago campaign workers come November.

The police, the courts, and the entire criminal justice system were and are being used as enforcers of systemic white racism and supremacy. Our protests in the wake of the George Floyd and Breonna Taylor police killings are already driving some badly needed police reform and raising mass consciousness about racism and policy priorities.

But what kinds of reform and how deeply will they go? Demands for budgetary spending reforms and new priorities just touch the surface. And how do they move from slogans to successful policy initiatives?

Brother Fred and I will be discussing these questions and more on Hitting Left Friday, 11-noon CDT with our friends, the Stevenson brothers, Craig & Corey. We're still zooming but airing live at lumpenradio.com. 

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Protesters shut down Klobuchar’s rally in St. Louis Park, Minn., on Sunday. Now it looks like she won't even carry her home state in the primary. 

Mary Moriarty, a public defender in Minnesota’s Hennepin County

“In the case of Myon Burrell -- where you had a really high-profile shooting of an innocent girl and you put a lot of pressure on the system to get someone to be responsible for that -- I think a lot of corners were probably cut.” -- AP

Richard Wolffe on Buttigieg 

All that was missing was a reason for being: a purpose, a mission. Something with more meaning than a talented youngish man who was on the rise. Something more meaningful than a preternatural prescience that the former vice-president would implode. When Joe Biden failed to do so, there was no reason for Pete Buttigieg. -- Guardian

Stacey Abrams on voting in GA

“Across Gwinnett, across Georgia, there are folks who are afraid of their power, who are afraid of what they remember, and they’re afraid to try this time...In 2020, our responsibility is to erase their fear, to take their hands and walk with them. . . . Yes, they have been silenced . . . but this time they are not going alone.” -- Rolling Stone

Lisa Donovan at The Spin

On Friday, my colleague Lolly Bowean asked Mayor Lori Lightfoot if she plans to make an endorsement and whether she could share who it is. The mayor smiled and said only: “When or if I do, I’ll let you know.” -- Tribune

Public Schools Try Ditching A-to-F Letter Grades

“The focus is more on learning for learning’s sake because you want to learn the material and you’re actually interested in it,” said 17-year-old Taylor Daniels, who grew up going to Winnetka Public Schools District 36, which doesn’t give letter grades until mid-year 7th grade. “Teachers are able to teach more to engage the student than teaching to a test.” -- WBEZ

JUST IN: more than 100 Black Scholars, Writers, and Educators including @BarbaraRansby, @murchnik, @marclamonthill, Robin DG Kelley + have just announced their support of the movement to elect @BernieSanders.

Read the POWERFUL statement HERE: pic.twitter.com/WY8gh1lQvl

— phillip agnew (@iPhilSomething) February 29, 2020

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Robert Kraig, Wisc. Citizens Action

“We have a political party in the United States that has decided it’s completely OK to hold on to power by reducing the number of people who are voting. It’s fundamentally undemocratic.” -- Guardian

Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) 

...summed it up another way: “It’s been a bad week for Individual Number One.” -- WaPo

Gery Chico, Chicago mayoral candidate

Ald. Eddie Burke “has been a friend for years,” Chico wrote, praising the alderman for “cooperating with the current federal investigation.” -- Sun-Times

Carol Burris, veteran educator and public ed advocate

It is time to acknowledge that what may have begun as a sincere attempt to promote innovation has given rise to fraud, discrimination and the depletion of public school funding. Thirty years of charters have resulted in an increase in profiteering far more than it has resulted in innovation. Democratic governance is disappearing. -- Answer Sheet

Nora Murphy, librarian and parent of L.A. school children

I will tell you this, my family will be picketing with my child's teachers because what they are asking for is the bare minimum any school district should provide for its schools, its families, its students. -- Answer Sheet

The old Confederacy is whistling Dixie again

Moral Monday protest in N.C.

The Supreme Court's disgraceful gutting of the 1965 Voting Rights Act has the old Confederacy waving the bloody flag and whistling Dixie again. From Florida to Texas, Republican governors and legislatures are moving at light's speed to pass restrictive voting and registration laws reminiscent of the Jim Crow era.

In North Carolina, 4 bills are currently before the legislature, ready to be passed and put on Gov. McCrory's desk with hardly any debate. Despite large weekly protests, passage seems likely. This would severely restrict the rights of black voters and all but guarantee that there's no repeat of anything like Obama's stunning victory in the state in 2008. First and foremost is their effort to do away with early voting, where Democrats have out-polled the Dixie-cans by huge margins.

Arrested in Raleigh

North Carolina’s voter ID bill could pose problems for 1 in 10 voters, according to an analysis by the State Board of Elections. About 613,000 North Carolinians lack the required government-issued ID. Nearly a third of these voters are black, while over half are registered Democrats.

MORAL MONDAY IN RALEIGH

On Monday, more than 100 people were arrested after their singing and clapping protest outside the state Senate chamber was declared an unlawful assembly, in what has become a weekly demonstration against Dixie-can initiatives. More than two-thirds of those arrested were women, as organizers focused on women's rights while legislation that could close most of the state's abortion clinics nears a final vote. More than 800 people have been arrested at the Legislative Building in expressions of civil disobedience since the "Moral Monday" protests began in April.

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Quotes are the actual fabric with which the mind weaves: internalizing them, but also turning them inside out, quarreling with them, adding to them, wandering through their architecture as if a single sentence were an expansible labyrinthine space. -- We Are What We Quote, Geoffrey O’Brien

New York Times Editorial

The justices heard oral argument on the Shelby County case last Wednesday. This week’s events in Alabama should remind them of the enormous cost many Americans have paid to win the right to vote, and why that remains under persistent threat and must be defended. -- Bloody Sunday, Revisited

Percy Pittman

Percy Pittman, McComb, Mississippi

Asked what he thought about people’s claims that racially motivated politics were completely a thing of the past in the South, Mr. Pittman hesitated for a moment. “I think they’re full of it,” he said. -- New York Times

Peter Dreier, Author

 If we are serious about the future of our children, we must ask: why are the Waltons, a largely out-of-state family with no ties to Los Angeles’ children and little background in education, intent on turning our communities’ educational choices into a junior version of the cut-throat, profiteering corporate world? -- Bill Moyers' blog

Tom Torlakson, California, Supt. of Public Instruction

 "I do believe we should have fewer tests, and I think the pendulum may be swinging in that direction. There's a frustration I hear from teachers, parents and administrators that there is too much testing and too much time spent preparing for testing." -- L.A. Times