Thurs – 8/16: A “war economy” is a “system of producing, mobilizing and allocating resources to sustain the violence.”

– Quote by Philippe Le Billon.

“War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.” – Major General Smedley Butler

We last published an action on Yemen on 3/15/18. Back then, Trump had just tweet-fired Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, and proposed CIA Director Mike Pompeo, a Tea-Party conservative, torture-supporter and relentless anti-Muslim bigot, in his place, and Yemenis were starving and dying of cholera. (Background from that column included at the bottom.) That’s still happening.

This is where we are now:

Children were targeted: Last Thursday, a U.S.-backed Saudi airstrike killed 44 children. In a school bus. On the way home from field trip.
Business as usual: This was just one of more than 50 airstrikes THIS YEAR. The Joint Incident Assessment Team (JIAT) has only admitted Saudi error in 2 of 75 incidents involving civilian casualties.
Hitting civilians is a feature, not a bug…: Strike rates on civilian, non-military targets average 33%.
Hey, we better go check on this: US Defense secretary, James Matti sent a US 3-star general to inspect the bus bombing because…
It’s now the law…: The defense spending bill Trump just signed includes a clause that Pompeo must certify that Saudi Arabia and UAE aren’t targeting civilians or lose our help refueling their warplanes. Trump has raised objections to 52 provisions of the new law, including that measure.
Too late, we’re already complicit in war crimes!: Specifically Article 14 of Additional Protocol II and customary international laws that prohibit warring parties from attacking indispensable civilian resources and/or using starvation as a weapon of war. Also from hindering humanitarian aid and workers.
Nothing to see here: Trump hasn’t mentioned this attack, nor has Pompeo after talking to the Saudi crown prince.
Nothing to see here – part 2: Saudi Arabia is the biggest single buyer of arms from the US and the UK. Raytheon is currently lobbying to sell 60,000 precision-guided munitions to Saudi Arabia in a multi-billion dollar deal. Maybe that’ll help them get ALL the kids next time.
Making new friends everywhere we go!: Said the father of one of the survivors who escaped with a broken leg. “America is the head of evil, as well as the Saudi regime and the mercenaries of the Saudi regime.”
Update 8/17/18: It is confirmed. It was our bomb, made by Lockheed Martin. It was similar to the one used in the funeral hall bombing in October 2016 that led President Obama to ban selling the Saudis precision-guided military technology. Trump overturned the ban in March 2017.

Action – Do what we did before, but LOUDER!

Continue reading “Thurs – 8/16: A “war economy” is a “system of producing, mobilizing and allocating resources to sustain the violence.”” →

The Poor People’s Campaign has started again, 50 years later. We’re in.

Updated 5/23/18

This is not one of our normal daily calls-to-action…

This is both a history lesson and a connection that we have to a campaign that started 50 years ago. Every time we call our legislators or go to a City Council meeting to fight some form of injustice, every action we’ve participated in for the Trump Resistance, such as the Women’s March, the March for Our Lives, Citizenship Fairs, political postcard parties, environmental rallies and DACA clinics, we have been connecting with the values of the Poor People’s Campaign. We are standing together to challenge Trumpism and the power of the 1% – and indeed “transform the political, economic and moral structures of our society.”

Continue reading →

3/15 – We helped cause this…

“War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.” – Major General Smedley Butler

While our kids are working on the war against their rights to survive childhood, another war is threatening children by the millions…And the US has been helping it happen. We, the voters, need to step up now.

With a recent personnel change, this problem has just split into two parts.

Part 1 – Mike Pompeo

Trump just tweet-fired Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, and proposed CIA Director Mike Pompeo, a Tea-Party conservative, torture-supporter and relentless anti-Muslim bigot, in his place. Pompeo is an ally of Frank Gaffney, President of the Center for Security Policy, who has argued that adherence to Islamic law—far from being protected by the First Amendment—should be considered “an impermissible act of sedition, which has to be prosecuted.”

Taking a small historical sidestep for a moment…
A post by James H. Hutson, chief of the Manuscript Division at the Library of Congress, described how our Founding Fathers in 1780 made sure that the Constitution afforded “the most ample liberty of conscience … to Deists, Mahometans, Jews and Christians’.” Thomas Jefferson campaigned for recognition of the religious rights of the “Mahamdan,” the Jew and the “pagan.” George Washington said he would welcome Muslims to Mount Vernon (his home) “if they were ‘good workmen.” and “suggested a way for (them) to ‘obtain proper relief’ from a proposed tax levy to aid Christian worship.

We’re back…
Along with anti-muslim sentiments and sub-optimal comprehension of our history and constitutional rights, neither Pompeo nor Trump are big supporters of diplomacy. Instead of acting like the adult-in-the-room we keep hoping for, Pompeo will act as an enabler of Trump’s worst ideas, like destroying the Iran agreement. A Trump/Pompeo mix is like setting a fire in our California backcountry… unpredictable, lethal and hugely destructive and the wrong choice to help us solve the Yemen problem.

Action for Part #1 – Call your senators!

Minimal script: I’m calling from [zip code] to ask Sen. [___] to vote “NO” on the confirmation of Mike Pompeo as our new Secretary of State.

(Contact information at bottom.)

Part 2 – Yemen

Continue reading “3/15 – We helped cause this…” →

We ALL Marched for Justice in Ventura!

A beautiful day to march, to celebrate unity after the Thomas Fire, and to come together in peace and love, Ventura County Rising and the March for Justice was everything we hoped it would be!

Continue reading “We ALL Marched for Justice in Ventura!” →

Radical extremists in black robes. Call to stop them.

Reject Ideologues for the Federal Bench
Minimal script: I’m calling from zip code […..] to urge Senator Harris/Feinstein to reject ALL 50 of Trump’s picks for the Federal bench. Without exception, each of these nominees is an unqualified, right-wing extremist.

Senator Feinstein: DC (202) 224-3841, LA (310) 914-7300, SF (415) 393-0707, SD (619) 231-9712, Fresno (559) 485-7430
Senator Harris: DC (202) 224-3553, LA (213) 894-5000, SAC (916) 448-2787, Fresno (559) 497-5109, SF (415) 355-9041, SD (619) 239-3884

Other Senator Contacts: http://www.phoneyourrep.com

More Info:

http://www.politico.com/story/2017/10/17/trump-judges-nominees-court-picks-243834
https://www.vox.com/identities/2017/10/19/16504104/trump-jeff-mateer-lgbtq

Short read (from Rogan’s List)

Politico tell us that “Trump has nominated 50 candidates to lifetime appointments to the federal bench — including a man who asserted transgender children were evidence of “Satan’s plan,” one deemed unqualified by the American Bar Association and a handful of prolific bloggers. No Republican senator has voted against Trump’s judicial nominees so far this year, either in committee or in confirmation votes on the floor. They are planning to pick up the pace even more in the coming months.” Here are three (3) egregious nominations that Democrats are trying to derail: 1) Jeff Mateer, nominated to a federal

Continue reading “Radical extremists in black robes. Call to stop them.” →

This Week in Sanity-saving Good News – “The Kids are Alright” Edition…

Lego welcomes the women of NASA.

The kids are alright.

First, let’s talk about this 11 year-old girl who’s been worried about the Flint water situation since she’s been 9. Along with playing piano, swimming, fencing and taking dance lessons, she has invented the cheapest, most effective test for lead in water and won “America’s Top Young Scientist”. God, what was I doing when I was 11?

Then there’s Ames Mayfield, who in 14 years or so, will be running for office. Put in on your calendars now.

Continue reading “This Week in Sanity-saving Good News – “The Kids are Alright” Edition…” →

Deadline tomorrow at 11:59 EST! Pile it on! Only 2662 comments so far!

US Homeland Security Will Start Collecting Social Media Info on All Immigrants October 18th. Just say “NO”!

“We see this as part of a larger process of high-tech surveillance of immigrants and more and more people being subjected to social media screening,” Schwartz told BuzzFeed News. “There’s a growing trend at the Department of Homeland Security to be snooping on the social media of immigrants and foreigners and we think it’s an invasion of privacy and deters freedom of speech.” (Adam Schwartz, an attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation)

This would also affect all US citizens who communicate with immigrants, Schwartz said, who could self-censor out of fear that information they exchange with someone overseas could be misconstrued and used against them.

Action you can take: Click here to link to the Federal Register to register a comment before the Oct. 18th deadline.

More Info: Continue reading “Deadline tomorrow at 11:59 EST! Pile it on! Only 2662 comments so far!” →

Sanity-saving good news – “‘Respect’ is more than a song by Aretha” Edition.

Starting this hard week’s good news off with this song…

Good news in resistance!

On Columbus Day, people in New York City and Pittsburgh protested for the holiday to be renamed Indigenous People’s Day.

After Jemele Hill was suspended from ESPN, again, people showed up at their headquarters to protest. Hey ESPN, this is worth a read. #TakeAKnee & #StandWithJemele

If you missed the story about why Colin Kaepernick knelt during anthems, here it is… Pass it on to that person on your Facebook feed that’s losing his mind over this. Continue reading “Sanity-saving good news – “‘Respect’ is more than a song by Aretha” Edition.” →

We can no longer pretend that voting doesn’t matter…

It’s pretty clear we’re not going to be changing any of Trump’s hard-core supporters. The only way we’re going to win elections and protect gains we’ve made in civil rights is through finding new voters and energizing those who’ve already registered but rarely, if ever, vote.

The good news! – There are way more of us than the MAGA-hat tribe.

What we need to work on – We just don’t show up in high enough numbers.

The stakes are really high now.

We can see our protections being eroded by the current administration. It’s affecting every aspect of our lives and much that we hold dear. Environmental protections, civil worker, immigration, women’s and LGBTQ rights, and access to healthcare and education, are all in the process of being diminished.

What we may not be aware of is that we’re one state away from a constitutional convention, something right-wing groups will been waiting for a long time. This would allow them to fundamentally change our constitution by amendment. Continue reading “We can no longer pretend that voting doesn’t matter…” →

This Week in Resistance – “We have art in order not to die of the truth.”

(Image of proposed Memorial to Peace and Justice, a tribute to victims of lynching in Montgomery, Alabama. Scheduled to open in 2018. Quote by Friedrich Nietzsche)

“The truth is incontrovertible…

This wasn’t where I planned to start, but this short video is profound and it moved me to tears…

Malice may attack it,…

Removing the statues = Step 1. The Equal Justice Initiative (eji.org) is working to ensure that we better understand the history of white supremacist violence against black people with a national lynching memorial. Watch this great interview of the EJI Director Bryan Stevenson and singer songwriter Andra Day on the Daily Show. We can read more about the project here, and we can donate at this link.