Watch the celebrations outside the Senate when word of the failure came back! (There’s a bunch of happy videos here)
I hear over and over…”Don’t talk to me about politics. It’s too overwhelming. It stresses me out.”
I’m going to make a different plea. Come join in! Continue reading “Your Weekly Dose of Sanity-Saving Good News!”
(excerpt from Randi Weingarten’s speech for the American Federation of Teachers)
“When leaders controlling the federal government are hell-bent on taking away health care from 32 million people in order to give a tax cut to the ultra-wealthy, we are David to their Goliath. When officials far from the classroom care a whole lot about testing and test scores, but don’t give a damn about what our students really need, we are David to their Goliath. When hedge funders, billionaires and anti-labor ideologues band together in an axis of inequality, further rigging our political and economic system against working folks, we are David to their Goliath. When a presidential administration takes actions that make immigrant students afraid to dream, that favor fraudulent for-profit colleges over students seeking an education, that put an entire religion in its crosshairs, we are David to their Goliath. When governors in state after state go after labor rights and voting rights, and they find an ally in the newest Supreme Court justice who will hear the Janus case, we must be David to their Goliath.
Years ago, I had the opportunity to visit the Valley of Elah, where the standoff between David and Goliath took place. And if you remember Sunday school, you’ll recall: That wasn’t a fair fight, either. Goliath was big; David was a little guy. Goliath had an army. And David? David had a sling — with five smooth stones. But David had a plan. Goliath no doubt assumed his greater strength was enough, but we all know how that ended up.” Continue reading “Your Weekly Dose of Sanity-Saving Good News! – The “Five Smooth Stones” Edition”
As soon as I read this story…I knew that I wasn’t alone in thinking how inspirational this was. Alison & Stephanie connected it to this amazing essay from Rebecca Solnit comparing the conservative ideology of isolation to the reality of our communion with each other and the world:
“The modern right may wish that every man were an island, entire of himself, but no one is wholly independent. You can’t survive without taking air into your lungs, you didn’t give birth to or raise yourself, you won’t bury yourself, and in between you won’t produce most of the goods and services you depend on to live. Your gut is full of microorganisms, without which you could not digest all the plants and animals, likely grown by other people, on which you rely to survive. We are nodes on intricate systems, synapses snapping on a great collective brain; we are in it together, for better or worse.”
So in honor of these awesome people who held hands to help strangers, let’s start with news from states where aid and respect was extended to others… Continue reading “Your Weekly Dose of Sanity-Saving Good News! – The “Holding Hands” Edition”
(Huffpost) “Every year, the U.S. holds special citizenship-induction ceremonies on or around the Fourth of July. This year, nearly 15,000 people were being sworn in as U.S. citizens at more than 65 such gatherings across the country, according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
At one of those ceremonies, Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) ― the daughter of immigrants from India and Jamaica ― took not-so-veiled jabs at President Donald Trump, who has called for limits on legal immigration along with his effort to ramp up deportation of undocumented immigrants.
“Whenever you feel that future is threatened, whenever those values of liberty and justice for all that drew us here seem under assault, you need to speak up and speak out,” Harris said at a ceremony on the battleship Iowa in the Port of Los Angeles on Monday, according to prepared remarks. “That’s the whole point of the freedoms we cherish.” Continue reading “Your Weekly Dose of Sanity-Saving Good News! Get out a #2 pencil…there’s a quiz.”
This kind of makes me cry. This is what makes all of our resistance efforts worthwhile. This is what makes it imperative that we continue. These kids know what is right. We owe it to them to keep fighting the cancer of hatred and fear that is spreading through our society. We owe it to them to keep fighting the dark-money forces that are entrenched in every branch of government. Let this be a real 4th of July, where we celebrate the true gifts that America promises. Then, go out and protest, because that’s how we keep them.
We still have a long way to go…
Continue reading “Your Weekly Dose of Sanity Saving Good News! – “Taking Down the Tree” Edition”
If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader. ~John Quincy Adams
You never know when you’re someone else’s inspiration.
In 1963, a group of women protested (in the rain) in front of the Kennedy White House. They were there on behalf of Women Strike for Peace – an antinuclear organization that began when the founder got fed up and started a telephone tree to rally fellow mothers against nuclear testing. At that time, the U.S. was still conducting aboveground nuclear testing and radioactive fallout was showing up in breast milk and baby teeth. Women Strike for Peace was advocating for the testing to end.
So there they were, standing in front of the White House on a rainy morning in 1963.
A participant later admitted that, standing there in the rain, she felt “foolish, and futile”. Continue reading “Your Weekly Dose of Sanity Saving Good News!”
This week’s good news starts off with the story of how one five-year-old kid named Xander is saving the world, one act of kindness at a time.
This week’s inspirational read is “The Optimism of Uncertainty” from Howard Zinn. We think he’s talking about the Xanders in this world.
(Excerpt) “…Revolutionary change does not come as one cataclysmic moment (beware of such moments!) but as an endless succession of surprises, moving zigzag toward a more decent society. We don’t have to engage in grand, heroic actions to participate in the process of change. Small acts, when multiplied by millions of people, can transform the world. Even when we don’t “win,” there is fun and fulfillment in the fact that we have been involved, with other good people, in something worthwhile. We need hope.”
The Onion has given us a gift. We’re guessing parts of this will show up in Snopes queries far into the future. Continue reading “Your Weekly Dose of Sanity-Saving Good News! 5-year-olds to the rescue!”
Women dominated the resistance news cycle this week – Wonder Women Unite! But first, some crazy-good news…
Former FBI director Robert Mueller was appointed as special counsel to investigate the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia. To everyone who protested or called their member of Congress to demand an investigation: You helped make this happen! Indivisible Ventura hammered this issue from every angle we could think of – 22 calls to action – and your calls made a difference!
Single payer health care is closer to becoming law in New York and California than ever before but if we want it, everyone is going to have to ask for it. Tell Senator Hannah-Beth Jackson that you care about SB562: SAC (916) 651-4019, SB (805) 965-0862, (805) 988-1940 See the full call to action here.
These guys are ROCKSTARS! The ACLU took legal action to force Trump to produce evidence of voter fraud claims. How many executive orders have lawsuits against them? We’ve kinda lost count.
Public support for gay marriage has reached a new high.
Last Sunday was Mother’s Day. 42 years before it became an official holiday filled with roses, chocolate and Kodak moments, it was something quite different… and we can be proud to say that women have risen again to resist.
Susan Rice admonishes Trump Continue reading “Your Weekly Dose of Sanity-saving Good News: Wonder Women Unleash Their Lassos of Truth Edition!”
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