Three Percent Militia Leader Runs for School Board, Showcasing the Republicans' Rogues Gallery, Defending Reproductive Rights Rally in Doylestown, & A Progressive Sunday Reading List
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The far-right’s assault on our democracy is now targeting our schools, something I’ve been covering here and in my column for the last few months. Bucks County’s Republican Party is now a party of extremism. Some friends just alerted me to the fact that the head of Bucks County’s Three Percent Militia cell (Proud American Patriots Network) Theodore “TJ” Kosin is running for school board. He applied to fill a vacant seat until November:
Here he is praising white, vigilante Kyle Rittenhouse, who killed 2 people and severely wounded a third at a protest after “Jacob Blake, a Black man, was shot several times at close range by Kenosha (WI) police”:
This adds to the Bucks GOP’s Rogues Gallery of extremists, like Cora Landis in Palisades School District:
Or Ricki Chaikin in Pennridge:
Because sunlight is the best disinfectant, each Wednesday leading up to the election I am going to be showcasing a member/members of the Bucks GOP’s School Board Rogues Gallery running for office so that you can share these resources with your neighbors. I am convinced that given the correct information, a majority of Bucks voters will reject this militia/QAnon/bigoted extremism. But it’s gonna take everyone doing their best to register new voters and to make sure those voters turn out!
Defending Reproductive Rights in Doylestown, PA
“On October 2, we’re rising up for reproductive rights, at the Bucks County Courthouse lawn, on this national day of solidarity with thousands of people in every single state, ahead of the Supreme Court reconvening on October 4. Youth4Unity, Rise Up Doylestown, NAACP Bucks County, Planned Parenthood Keystone, Bucks County Women’s Advocacy Coalition, The Rainbow Room, Bucks Liberation Coalition, Central Bucks YSDA, Indivisible Lambertville New Hope, Indivisible Bucks County, and many other partnered organizations are part of this call to mobilize and defend our reproductive rights….” For more information: https://act.womensmarch.com/event/oct-2-2021-march/2054/signup/
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Some Sunday Reading
Our constitutional crisis is already here
By Robert Kagan, The Washington Post
“The United States is heading into its greatest political and constitutional crisis since the Civil War, with a reasonable chance over the next three to four years of incidents of mass violence, a breakdown of federal authority, and the division of the country into warring red and blue enclaves. The warning signs may be obscured by the distractions of politics, the pandemic, the economy and global crises, and by wishful thinking and denial.” https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/09/23/robert-kagan-constitutional-crisis/
"We Are Emptying Out Their Shelves": Nabisco Workers’ 5-Week Strike Won by Shutting Down Business as Usual
By Stephen Franklin, In These Times
“A five-week strike by 1,000 of the union’s members at Mondelēz came to an end with workers approving a new, four-year contract on Saturday, September 18 … this new showdown serves as a reminder for organized labor that strikes do work — despite the ominous national decline in the number of major labor disputes (involving 1,000 or more workers) in 2020, which fell to just eight, the third-lowest since the Bureau of Labor Statistics began keeping track in 1947. It’s also proof that strikes work best when an employer can’t do business as usual — a lesson also illustrated by the Teamsters’ victory with UPS in 1997.” https://inthesetimes.com/article/nabisco-workers-strike-union-labor-mondelez
Don’t Tell Me to Despair About the Climate: Hope Is a Right We Must Protect
By Morgan Florsheim, Yes! Magazine
“The youth climate movement deserves hope and optimism … I know that hope is not a happy accident. Hope is a right we must protect. Hope is a discipline, according to Mariame Kaba, an organizer and educator building the movement for transformative justice.” https://www.yesmagazine.org/opinion/2021/06/15/climate-despair-hope
A River Reawakened: Ten Years of Rewilding the Elwha Watershed
By Jessica Plumb, Orion Magazine
“In September 2011, I stood on a river overlook with children from my daughter’s elementary school, all of us transfixed by a giant jackhammer pounding cement to rubble. Below us, a waterfall raged through the first notch carved in the Lower Elwha Dam, as dust rose in the September sunshine, drifting over Douglas fir and cedar crowns. Trees were the only spectators old enough to remember when the Elwha River ran free, a century earlier. The rest of us stood in awe, watching the world’s largest dam removal to date, feeling time start to spin in reverse.
I’ve spent a decade bearing witness to an unprecedented restoration experiment in Washington State. That September day committed me to unraveling the river’s story, while dam removal raised enough questions to keep scientists engaged for years to come.” https://orionmagazine.org/article/a-river-reawakened/
This US company sold iPhone hacking tools to UAE spies
By Patrick Howell O'Neill, MIT Technology Review
“An American cybersecurity company was behind a 2016 iPhone hack sold to a group of mercenaries and used by the United Arab Emirates … It was used against hundreds of targets in a vast campaign of surveillance and espionage whose victims included geopolitical rivals, dissidents, and human rights activists.” https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/09/15/1035813/us-sold-iphone-exploit-uae/
Daniel Foote’s Resignation Resounds Like Thunder
By Amy Wilentz, The Nation
“The departing special envoy to Haiti undiplomatically tells the truth about US policy:
Last week, the U.S. and other embassies in Port-au-Prince issued another public statement of support for the unelected, de facto Prime Minister Dr. Ariel Henry as interim leader of Haiti, and have continued to tout his “political agreement” over another broader, earlier accord shepherded by civil society [the Commission, referred to above]. The hubris that makes us believe we should pick the winner—again—is impressive. This cycle of international political interventions in Haiti has produced catastrophic results. More negative impacts to Haiti will have calamitous consequences not only in Haiti, but in the U.S. and our neighbors in the hemisphere.”
https://www.thenation.com/article/world/foote-resignation-haiti/
Thanks for reading! I look forward to your feedback and suggestions. And most importantly, keep organizing!