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https://jezebel.com/just-3-weeks-post-roe-the-stories-emerging-are-worse-t-1849188588
Excerpt:
Reproductive rights advocates have long warned that women would die if abortion were banned again—that children would be forced to give birth to their rapists’ babies. I’ve been covering abortion rights for over a decade, and I expected these horrifying, dystopian stories to trickle out over the next six months to maybe a year, forcing people to acknowledge a reality that had long been just hypothetical.
Instead, the stories have sprayed out like a firehose: A 10-year-old rape survivor had to travel to another state to get safe abortion care, and politicians immediately went after the doctor who helped her; a Texas hospital let a woman with an ectopic pregnancy bleed until she almost died to avoid getting sued; Idaho Republicans overwhelmingly voted to let women die before giving them health care. The dystopia is upon us, and it arrived faster than anyone expected.
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The climate has changed and the US political and economic system has failed utterly
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ARA Analysis: Record-smashing heat waves are moving north through Europe, with “triple-digit” Fahrenheit temps (40+ᵒC) becoming the new “normal”. Agricultural economies and crops around the world are withering under blistering temperatures and drought. Bees already threatened by pesticides and herbicides are faced with starvation because the plants they depend on are dying. Yet the NY Times claims that “Voters and politicians put a higher premium on immediate issues, such as inflation and the economy, giving politicians a pass on global warming.”
Their story, focusing on Manchin scuttling the Dem’s (inadequate) climate and social safety net bill, [see https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/17/us/politics/climate-change-manchin-biden.html] also implicitly lets the GOP and the corporate interests that bankroll both parties off the hook.
The solution is putting an end to the settler colonial capitalist system of extraction and production for profit, but such a position is effectively banned from the system’s approved political or media discourse. Just as with Roe v Wade, the Supreme Court is in the vanguard of the fascistization of politics around this issue, stripping the Environmental Protection Agency of most power to regulate greenhouse gas emissions at power plants, in a decision that threatens to upend ALL regulatory agency supervision of corporate actions.
Perhaps this is why young people are increasingly disenchanted with both political parties.
Can the left seize the time to break through with effective organizing that links climate justice with a transformative social and economic program of decolonization, democratization, decarceration and decarbonization?
As the LA Times reports, this is an immediate local question as well, exposing decades of neglect, exploitation, and unwillingness to plan for the common good and environmental sustainability.
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-07-15/scientists-have-long-warned-of-a-colorado-river-crisis
Excerpt:
The Colorado River is approaching a breaking point, its reservoirs depleted and Western states under pressure to drastically cut water use.
It’s a crisis that scientists have long warned was coming. Years before the current shortage, scientists repeatedly alerted public officials who manage water supplies that the chronic overuse of the river combined with the effects of climate change would likely drain the Colorado’s reservoirs to dangerously low levels. But these warnings by various researchers — though discussed and considered by water managers — went largely unheeded.
Now, many of the scientists’ dire predictions are coming to pass, with Lake Mead and Lake Powell nearly three-fourths empty and their water levels continuing to fall. Some researchers say the seven states that depend on the river would have been better prepared had they acted years ago.
“If I’ve learned anything recently, it’s that humans are really reluctant to give things up to prevent a catastrophe,” said Brad Udall, a water and climate scientist at Colorado State University. “They’re willing to hang on to the very end and risk a calamity.”
In the Colorado River Basin, … the vested interests that have hindered new approaches for dealing with the water shortfall include some in agriculture who benefit from generations-old water rights, water managers with a “find more and more water” mentality, and politicians who’ve fought to defend old state apportionments.
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Excerpt:
When I was growing up on Buffalo’s East Side, most, if not all, of my neighbors were Black. The racial composition of my neighborhood was no accident; it was the byproduct of Buffalo’s shameful legacy of racial residential segregation. I was simultaneously part of a vibrant Black community and a resident of a neighborhood deemed unfit for life, as evidenced by the lack of grocery stores, parks, playgrounds or civic investment.
This May, when Tops supermarket became the site of a massacre by a white supremacist, we all received a chilling reminder that targeting the East Side is the same as targeting the heart of Black Buffalo.
Frustratingly, the police have, in their own way, targeted the East Side for years – a fact that I learned as a civil rights lawyer seeking to hold the police accountable in my hometown. The Buffalo Police Department has subjected East Side residents to unconstitutional checkpoints and traffic stops, resulting in exorbitant fines and fees.
ARA Note: So we see that long years after the exposures and uprising at Ferguson, police nationally are still targeting Black people not only to enforce white supremacy and redlining, but to generate income for their municipalities and departments. Here in Los Angeles, LAPD is continuing its murderous ways, killing three people in a week’s time. Cops have killed more than 50 people around the country just so far in July:
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Neo-fascist Proud Boys & "Patriots" have promoted violence in so-called "pro-life" rallies against reproductive rights.
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White Supremacists throughout CA Emboldened in anti-LGBTQ, anti-abortion, and antisemitic campaigns
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On June 11th, about a dozen Proud Boys and sympathizers stormed the San Lorenzo Drag Queen Story Hour hosted by the library and featuring local drag artist Panda Dulce. Proud Boys gathered outside before storming the event, screaming slurs and verbally harassing performers, library staff and parents attending the event with their children, with the goal of shutting down the event and intimidating parents into disavowing drag and by proxy LGBTQ visibility. After disrupting the event and being told they would be charged with trespassing, Proud Boys exited the facility, shook hands with the Police outside, and continued their harassment with an outdoor megaphone rally. One Bay Area Proud Boy prominently photographed and circulated on social media wearing a t-shirt reading “Kill Your Local Pedophile” is Martinez, CA white supremacist Ian Donald Kearns.
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With the Goyim Defense League in Texas [whose antisemitic propaganda and harassment campaign culminated in an arson of an Austin synagogue] was Robert Frank Wilson of Chula Vista, CA, who occasionally streams on Omegle as “Aryan Bacon”, and films one on one video chat-rooms with minors where he attempts to trot out his white nationalist arguments to bored teenagers and whoever happens to hop onto Omegle late at night.
Following NTN5 [the GDL’s blatantly antisemitic propaganda campaign], Wilson started publicly organizing with SoCal “White Lives Matter” and carried out several banner drops in Orange County and San Clemente. Around this time Wilson’s identity became public due to a hate crime he was arrested for, when he trapped a neighbor in his driveway by blocking it with his vehicle, repeatedly yelled homophobic slurs at him, then reached into his vehicle and hit him in the face.
Wilson was also charged for his participation in hanging an antisemitic banner over the I-805 freeway in San Diego just after the incident near his home.
ARA Note: Proud Boys have also been spotted and countered locally in harassment of a reproductive health clinic in Santa Monica. There were several counter-demonstrations held, and in a second round, the anti-abortion white and Christian nationalist groups kept their distance from the clinic, rallying some blocks away. See https://www.bozemandailychronicle.com/ap_news/opposing-abortion-rallies-center-on-santa-monica-planned-parenthood-office/article_3bd51677-58ad-5b18-87ae-adbf4bc81dae.html “The far-right group, AmericanMade Patriots, held a rally at Palisades Park in Santa Monica earlier [in July], and on July 9, far-right groups protested outside the Santa Monica Planned Parenthood office, forcing the clinic to close early. The Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade has sparked hundreds of protests across the country …. Although the demonstrations have been overwhelmingly peaceful, 11 have turned violent, all of which have involved participants affiliated with the Proud Boys, according to Roudabeh Kishi, director of research and innovation at Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project, a nonprofit that tracks political violence and demonstrations.”
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Neo-Confederate Christian Nationalist M. Peroutka won primary race.
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GOP Attorney General nominee in Maryland is a “former” Neo-Confederate
Excerpt from Baltimore media reports: Michael Peroutka, a [Christian nationalist and] neo-Confederate activist who’s refused to disavow a racist group to which he once belonged, has won the Republican nomination to be Maryland’s next attorney general.
Peroutka, a former Anne Arundel County Council member, beat his opponent Jim Shalleck, a former state and federal prosecutor, on Tuesday. He’ll face Democrat Anthony Brown in November.
In a 2014 blog post, Peroutka described the separation of church and state as the “great lie.” That same year he argued for dismantling public education, which he denounced as “the 10th plank in the Communist Manifesto.”
And in 2002, according to Vice, Peroutka gave a speech to a racist organization called the League of the South, in which he said he was “still angry” that Maryland did not secede from the Union during the Civil War.
Peroutka served on the board of the League of the South — which believes that today’s Southern states should secede from the U.S. — from 2012 to 2014.
ARA Analysis:
Democrats in Maryland and other states have been playing a dangerous game, backing far-right, pro-Trump extremists in GOP primaries with money, campaign ads, and in some cases cross-over votes in open primaries, imagining they will be easier opponents in the general election. But this really demonstrates very clearly that the corporate Democratic Party is part of the problem of fascistization.
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Excerpt:
Boeing stands to benefit. Within a month of donating the easement to NALT, Boeing told the state of California it no longer intended to make the property clean enough to live on. Because the easement prohibits building on the land, the company said, Boeing instead intended to make the property safe for light recreation, such as hiking. That lesser standard would leave the vast majority of chemical pollution in the ground and shave at least tens of millions and perhaps hundreds of millions of dollars off the company’s cleanup costs, according to a Reuters analysis of the proposed cleanup standards and soil sampling data. Four independent cleanup specialists vetted the analysis.
California rejected Boeing’s argument that the conservation easement warranted a lesser cleanup, but to avoid a lawsuit and further delays, the state reopened negotiations with the company anyway. Boeing has won a preliminary victory in getting the state to consider new cleanup scenarios, including some that take the easement into account. All of the new options would leave more pollution behind than the cleanup the state approved years ago, according to a Reuters review of the company’s latest agreement with the California Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC).
Boeing’s strategy angers Jen Connell, who lost her husband, Mike, in April to glioblastoma, an aggressive brain cancer. He lived most of his 50 years within five miles of Santa Susana’s rocket-testing platforms and blamed radioactive ash from there for his disease. Radiation is known to increase the risk of glioblastoma.
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Watch the ICUJP Discussion of Alternatives to Capitalism
TTT and ARA E-News editor Michael Novick was part of a panel speaking about alternatives to capitalism at Interfaith Communities United for Justice & Peace (ICUJP) in Los Angeles as their Friday Forum on July 8. Here’s a link to the video on YouTube. We will be transcribing at least the presentation and perhaps some of the discussion at a later date.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-d82PdBauI
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Michael will be at the Dual Power 2022 un-conference in Indiana Dunes July 29-31, so probably no ARA E-News next week. Learn more about the gathering at https://dualpower2022.org
If you were forwarded this e-newsletter and want to subscribe, you can do so on our website, https://antiracist.org, where you can also donate via ko-fi.com and read back issues of our print publication, Turning The Tide, going back almost 35 years.
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