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Category: Cori Bush

  • The Squad Joins Line 3 Pipeline Protests in Support of Fight Against Enbridge

    Members of the progressive “Squad” held a press conference in Minnesota on Friday to draw attention to the Indigenous-led fight against Enbridge’s Line 3 tar sands pipeline, which water protectors and environmentalists have been battling on the ground and in court.

    Hosted by Congresswoman Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), the press conference also featured remarks from U.S. Reps. Cori Bush (D-Mo.), Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.), and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) as well as Minnesota state Sen. Mary Kunesh (DFL-41).

    “We are here because nearly all of Minnesota is in a state of drought,” Omar explained. “We are here because wildfires are burning in northern Minnesota. We are here because the Twin Cities just had their hottest summer on record. We are here because the climate crisis is here.”

    “The climate crisis is now,” she continued. “The climate crisis is happening and the last thing we need to do is allow the very criminals who created this crisis to build more fossil fuel infrastructure.”

    Omar pointed out that the Canadian company’s partly completed Line 3 pipeline — intended to replace an aging pipeline with smaller capacity — is set to cross wetlands and over 200 water bodies, endangering the health of her constituents and treaty lands of Indigenous peoples.

    The Minnesota Democrat also highlighted law enforcement’s oppression of Line 3 protesters, noting that over 700 water protectors and Indigenous leaders have been arrested.

    As Pressley put it: “We are here to shed light and spread awareness about this egregious violation of tribal sovereignty and environmental injustice — and to hear directly from those whose voices have been ignored throughout the process.”

    The Squad members are planning to meet with Indigenous leaders in Minnesota on Saturday.

    The Friday event came just a few days after Omar, Kunesh, and Minnesota state Rep. Heather Keeler (DFL-4A) led a letter — joined by state and federal lawmakers — urging President Joe Biden to intervene “to protect Indigenous sovereignty amidst the construction” of the pipeline.

    “In recent weeks,” the letter to Biden said, “we have seen concerning violations of treaty rights by public agencies and private actors, ongoing violence against Indigenous women, and environmental impacts that will have long-lasting impacts on hunting, fishing, and wild rice gathering as we grapple with the climate crisis.”

    “We ask that the Department of Interior uphold the rights guaranteed to Indigenous people under federal treaties and fulfill tribal requests for a government-to-government meeting concerning Line 3,” the letter continued.

    Among the lawmakers who signed on to the the letter was Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), who had planned to visit Minnesota with her colleagues before the remnants of Hurricane Ida devastated the Northeast, including her New York City district, this week.

    Tlaib, who also signed the letter to Biden, said of Line 3 on Friday, “Look, I’m here to help shut it down — and at home in Michigan, we also know firsthand that Enbridge can’t be trusted.”

    “Enbridge is responsible for the worst inland oil spill in American history,” Tlaib noted, referencing the Kalamazoo River disaster of 2010. She also highlighted the ongoing fight in her state over Line 5.

    The passionate speeches from all lawmakers present came after Biden said Thursday that “the past few days of Hurricane Ida and the wildfires in the West and the unprecedented flash floods in New York and New Jersey is yet another reminder that these extreme storms and the climate… crisis are here.”

    “We need to… be much better prepared. We need to act,” he said, touting his Build Back Better agenda that Democrats in Congress are working to enact through the budget reconciliation process.

    The president, however, has neglected to take action to stop Line 3 — like he did for the Keystone XL Pipeline shortly after taking office. In what one critic called a “horrible and unconscionable betrayal,” Biden’s administration has continued to defend in federal court the approval of Enbridge’s controversial project under his predecessor.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Ocasio-Cortez Slams Manchin for $3.5T Bill Opposition, Points Out Exxon Ties

    Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) is seen on the House steps of the Capitol during a vigil lead by Rep. Cori Bush (D-Missouri) to call on President Biden and Congress to renew the expiring eviction moratorium on August 03, 2021.

    Progressives berated Sen. Joe Manchin (D-West Virginia) for willfully ignoring the disastrous effects of the climate crisis on the U.S. after he urged Democrats to “hit the pause button” on the Democrats’ $3.5 trillion reconciliation package and argued for “a strategic pause” in a Wall Street Journal op-ed Thursday.

    “By placing a strategic pause on this budgetary proposal, by significantly reducing the size of any possible reconciliation bill to only what America can afford and needs to spend, we can and will build a better and stronger nation for all our families,” Manchin wrote.

    “If only you could just ‘hit the pause button’ on our climate crisis,” tweeted Rep. Cori Bush (D-Missouri) in response.

    “I wish that I could hit your mute button but here we are,” said Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Massachusetts).

    “[M]aybe we hit the ‘cancel’ button on this so-called ‘bipartisan’ charade of an Exxon lobbyist drafted infrastructure bill unless we actually pass a law that helps people’s lives with healthcare expansion, childcare, climate action, etc,” wrote Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) on Twitter.

    Critics of Manchin pointed out that climate disasters in the past week like Hurricane Ida have killed at least 43 people so far and caused major flooding in New York City.

    In the WSJ op-ed, Manchin wrote that the federal government shouldn’t be spending $3.5 trillion because a smaller bill, containing a wide slate of social and climate proposals, would actually help the public more.

    The West Virginia senator also ignored the fact that Democratic leadership has promised that the bill will be fully paid for. He claimed, instead, that Democrats are ignoring the national debt and that it’s irresponsible for the government to spend more than it has on the stimulus bills — the bills that kept middle- and lower-class families afloat during an unprecedented economic crisis and pandemic.

    With this position, Manchin stands directly against President Joe Biden, fracturing the party at a time when unity is sorely needed to pass key parts of the Democrats’ agenda. Manchin is also standing directly against the dozens of progressives like Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) who have said that they will not accept a smaller reconciliation deal.

    Progressives have said that they will vote against the bipartisan infrastructure bill that contains very little funding for climate and social programs if conservative Democrats water down the reconciliation bill, as they’re threatening to do.

    Manchin has continually stood against Democratic priorities like voting rights and addressing the climate crisis over the past months, earning a poor reputation among progressives and Democrats alike. Instead, he seems to align closer to deep-pocketed lobbyists, many conservative-leaning, with whom he has created strong relationships.

    Manchin helped to carve climate proposals out of the bipartisan infrastructure bill, in fact, leaving only measly funding for electric vehicles. He also keeps a close relationship with fossil fuel lobbyists and wealthy Wall Street figures who are lobbying against many of the climate, taxation and social proposals in the mix with the reconciliation bill.

    “Manchin has weekly huddles with Exxon and is one of many senators who gives lobbyists their pen to write so-called ‘bipartisan’ fossil fuel bills,” Ocasio-Cortez wrote. “It’s killing people. Our people. At least 12 last night. Sick of this ‘bipartisan’ corruption that masquerades as clear-eyed moderation.”

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • 750,000 Households Facing Eviction If Congress Doesn’t Act, Says Goldman Sachs

    Activists hold a protest against evictions near City Hall on August 11, 2021 in New York City.

    A new analysis from finance firm Goldman Sachs finds that if Congress doesn’t act soon to pass an eviction moratorium, 750,000 households could face eviction in the fall and winter.

    The investment bank estimates that between 2.5 and 3.5 million people in the U.S. are significantly behind on rent, which collectively adds up to an estimated $12 billion to $17 billion.

    The Goldman Sachs estimate is more conservative than a Census Bureau estimate from last week that said about 1.3 million people could be facing eviction within just the next two months. Still, both of those estimates should serve as a wake-up call for Congress, which has dragged its feet and refused to pass an eviction moratorium, even as hundreds of thousands of families are threatened with imminent homelessness and destabilization.

    Part of the reason for the multibillion dollar rent debt is due to the failure of state governments to distribute tens of billions of dollars in rental aid given to them by the federal government. Lawmakers approved $46.5 billion to be disbursed to states to help residents with rent payments during the pandemic, but only about 11 percent of it has been distributed as of last week.

    Of about 2.8 million households that applied for rental assistance, The New York Times reported last week, only about 500,000 have reported receiving funds, and 700,000 applications have been rejected. Many renters who are behind on rent payments, meanwhile, haven’t applied for the program. This could be due to states not publicizing the rental assistance or creating complicated application systems for renters.

    Conservative justices in the Supreme Court recently shot down the Biden administration’s latest eviction moratorium extension, which was spurred by progressive lawmaker Rep. Cori Bush (D-Missouri). The justices cruelly argued that the eviction moratorium couldn’t be upheld because it could be a slippery slope to other government assistance programs like food and internet aid.

    The moratorium was set to protect renters until October, but the Supreme Court decision has put a huge swath of renters at risk of immediate eviction. If Congress fails to pass another eviction moratorium, the country could be facing a wave of mass evictions, advocates have warned.

    While the evictions could have a small impact on the economy, Goldman Sachs writes “The implications for Covid infections and public health are probably more severe.” Indeed, part of the reason for the eviction moratorium is to help stem community spread of COVID.

    More importantly, however, the eviction moratorium has helped prevent 1.55 million evictions, the Biden administration estimated in July. Evictions have an enormous psychological and financial impact on people and are a major contributor to homelessness.

    On Friday, over 60 House Democrats signed a letter to the Democratic leadership pleading for them to bring to a vote and pass a new eviction moratorium, codifying it into law. Led by progressive lawmakers Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York), Cori Bush (D-Missouri), Ayanna Pressley (D-Massachusetts), and others, the letter argues that the legislation is crucial to help Americans survive the pandemic and beyond.

    “Millions of people who are currently at risk for eviction, housing insecurity, or face becoming unhoused desperately look to their elected representatives to implement legislation that will put their health and safety first and save lives,” the letter writers said.

    They face long odds of passing a moratorium through Congress, however. Democrats in the House shot down the idea in July, just before the moratorium was about to end for the first time.

    It’s unclear whether or not there would be more support this time — as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-New York) pointed out at the time, the Democrats had only a couple of days to draft and pass the legislation before it expired, with little notice from the Biden administration.

    The Democrats are also up against real estate firms that have poured millions into lobbying to stop the eviction moratorium. The lobbying against the moratorium has not stopped despite the fact that many of these real estate groups have reported solid earnings this year.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Cori Bush Urges Congress to Act as Supreme Court Ends Eviction Moratorium

    Cori Bush

    Millions of people across the U.S. are once again at imminent risk of losing their homes after the conservative-dominated Supreme Court on Thursday struck down the Biden administration’s eviction moratorium, siding with a coalition of landlords and real estate companies that challenged the critical lifeline.

    In an unsigned opinion, the 6-3 conservative majority ruled (pdf) that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention does not have the authority to implement the eviction moratorium, the latest version of which was put in place earlier this month in response to pressure from progressive lawmakers and activists.

    Writing for the three dissenting liberal justices, Stephen Breyer slammed the high court’s conservatives for rushing their massively consequential decision on the eviction ban without a “full briefing and argument.” The moratorium on evictions for non-payment of rent was originally intended to run through October 3.

    “The public interest strongly favors respecting the CDC’s judgment at this moment, when over 90% of counties are experiencing high [coronavirus] transmission rates,” Breyer wrote, noting that the real estate coalition’s earlier argument against the eviction moratorium — that Covid-19 infections were trending downward — no longer holds.

    The high court’s ruling came just a day after the U.S. Treasury Department released figures showing that 89% of rental assistance funds approved by Congress have not yet been distributed — a problem that some critics have attributed to the faulty design of the federal aid program.

    Housing experts and advocates estimate that total rental debt in the U.S. currently amounts to around $21.3 billion, with households that are behind on rent owing $3,300 on average.

    Congress has approved $46.5 billion in emergency rental assistance.

    In a statement late Thursday, Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.) called the Supreme Court’s ruling “disastrous” and said that “Congress must act immediately to prevent mass evictions.”

    Earlier this month, Bush and other progressive lawmakers camped out on the steps of the U.S. Capitol building to protest the expiration of a previous CDC eviction moratorium. Days after the demonstration began, the CDC authorized a new eviction ban that covered around 90% of the country.

    “We are in an unprecedented and ongoing crisis that demands compassionate solutions that center the needs of the people and communities most in need of our help,” Bush said Thursday. “We didn’t sleep on those steps just to give up now… I urge my colleagues to reflect on the humanity of every single one of their unhoused, or soon-to-be unhoused, neighbors, and support a legislative solution to this eviction crisis.”

    While some cities and states still have moratoria in place, the Supreme Court’s decision means that millions of renters who are behind on payments are set to lose their last remaining protections, setting the stage for a wave of evictions as coronavirus infections surge across the country.

    “This is cruel and wrong,” tweeted Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. “If the public health crisis hasn’t ended, then the relief to survive it shouldn’t either. We must immediately do everything possible to keep people in their homes. This is a matter of life and death.”

    According to a recent analysis by Eviction Lab, U.S. neighborhoods with the highest eviction filing rates typically have the lowest levels of vaccination against Covid-19. In some Southern states, landlord-friendly laws and procedures allow evictions to be fast-tracked, meaning the consequences of the high court’s decision could be felt in the very near future.

    Diane Yentel, president and CEO of the National Low Income Housing Coalition, warned that “the tragic, consequential, and entirely avoidable outcome of this ruling will be millions of people losing their homes this fall and winter, just as the Delta variant ravages communities and lives.”

    “Evictions risk lives and drive families deeper into poverty,” said Yentel. “During a pandemic, evictions further burden overstretched hospital systems, and make it much more difficult for the country to contain the virus. Evictions have been shown to increase spread of, and potentially deaths from, Covid-19. For families and individuals, evictions are profoundly traumatizing and destabilizing. For the country, evictions are expensive. The tragic consequences of this decision will reverberate for years.”

    It is not yet clear what specific steps the White House and Congress — which is currently on recess — intend to take in response to the Supreme Court’s ruling. In a statement, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said the Biden administration was “disappointed” by the decision and urged “all entities that can prevent evictions — from cities and states to local courts, landlords, cabinet agencies — to urgently act.”

    Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.), chair emeritus of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, argued late Thursday that “Congress should immediately come back into session and extend the moratorium.”

    “The Supreme Court blocking the eviction moratorium while the pandemic is killing 1,000 people a day is appalling,” said Pocan.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Cori Bush Blasts Centrists, Saying “Budget Resolution Isn’t a Political Pawn”

    Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-New Jersey), left, and Sen. Joe Manchin (D-West Virginia) talk during a news conference with a group of bipartisan lawmakers to unveil a COVID-19 emergency relief framework in Washington on Tuesday, Dec. 1, 2020.

    The nine conservative Democrats who are trying to undermine their party’s plans to pass the bipartisan infrastructure bill alongside the reconciliation bill are having trouble finding a sympathetic ear in their party — but they’re still holding fast to their convictions.

    In a contentious meeting Monday night with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-California), the group was determined to get Pelosi to cave in on her promise to not pass the infrastructure bill without the Democrats’ $3.5 trillion budget reconciliation package. Pelosi has promised to pass the infrastructure bill by September 27, but the two parties have not reached agreement on much else.

    But the battle that the centrists are fighting so fiercely may be a battle in which they stand alone in their mission — with only, perhaps, the support of Senate conservative Democrats Joe Manchin (D-West Virginia) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-Arizona).

    For the past couple of weeks, the nine centrists, led by Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-New Jersey) have threatened to vote against the $3.5 trillion package if the bipartisan infrastructure bill isn’t passed soon. They argue that “Time kills deals” — despite the fact that it is conservative Democrats and Republicans who have dragged out the infrastructure talks from spring through the summer.

    Pelosi, however, typically sympathetic to the more conservative voices in her party, has been surprisingly insistent in defending the reconciliation bill. Other House Democrats are livid and progressive Democrats have been panning the group in the media. One representative, Susan Wild (D-Pennsylvania), who formerly agreed with the centrists’ plan has flipped, telling The Washington Post that their strategy is “stupid” and it’s “time to fold.”

    They stand, too, against the wills of their constituents. In a poll released Tuesday, Data for Progress found that 63 percent of likely voters living in the nine Democrats’ districts support the reconciliation bill that they’re threatening to tank, including 94 percent of Democrats polled.

    The centrist group claimed in an op-ed this week that President Joe Biden, at least, is on their side. “[W]e are pushing to get the bipartisan infrastructure bill through Congress and immediately to President Biden’s desk — as the president himself requested the day after it passed the Senate,” they wrote in The Washington Post.

    But even this isn’t true. Though the president has celebrated the bipartisan infrastructure package that has been widely criticized by progressives and Democrats, he does not have the nine centrists’ backs on their latest obstruction agenda. “[W]hen asked by NBC News on Monday if Biden is calling for that, White House spokesman Andrew Bates responded: ‘No,’” the outlet reported.

    This makes sense: the centrists are, after all, obstructing the president’s agenda. The $3.5 trillion bill contains a wide swath of Democratic priorities like expanding Medicare and increasing taxes on the rich. It has the support of progressives and moderate Democrats alike and builds on Biden’s infrastructure plan from the spring. If passed, it could be consequential and far-reaching in helping the country recover from the impacts of COVID on the economy by providing a safety net for more Americans.

    As Rep. Cori Bush (D-Missouri) pointed out in a statement on Monday, the reconciliation bill isn’t just about politics.

    “The budget resolution isn’t a political pawn. It’s an opportunity to deliver on our agenda by making long-overdue and life-changing investments into the health, safety, and education of the people who need it most,” she said. “We are not here to play politics with people’s lives — we are here to pass transformative policies.”

    “We must pass the budget resolution immediately,” Bush continued. “St. Louis sent me to Congress to tangibly improve the lives of regular, everyday people. Why are you here?” she asked, addressing the group directly.

    Though the Democrats are standing at odds with their own party, they have gained the praise of the conservative lobby group of the Chamber of Commerce, which is running ads thanking the Democrats for their current agenda. This is a familiar tune: Manchin, an advisor to the group, has become an expert on obstructing Democrats in recent months. He also has the support of right-wing dark money groups with ties to the Koch family.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Centrist Dems Seek to Delay the Reconciliation Bill While Passing Infrastructure

    House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-California) departs from her office after a meeting on July 22, 2021 in Washington, D.C.

    Over the past months, the Democratic caucus in Congress has struck a careful, if tenuous, balance within the party and its allies. The agreement is that the bipartisan infrastructure bill, largely influenced by Republicans, can pass as long as the $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill, with many Democratic priorities, passes alongside it.

    Though it took some cajoling, progressives were swayed to support the infrastructure bill because of moderate Democrats’ insistent support of the bipartisan bill, with the only caveat being that items like climate action aren’t cut from the reconciliation package. Even the moderate House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-California) has agreed to this plan, saying that she won’t bring the infrastructure bill, which progressives have panned, to a vote until the reconciliation bill is passed.

    But moderate Democrats evidently aren’t satisfied with their ability to pass a far-reaching, consequential bill containing many of the party’s priorities, given to them by the Senate’s unusual passage of both bills this week. According to Politico, a handful of centrist Democrats are conniving to sink the plan carefully crafted by party leadership to satisfy the caucus, President Joe Biden, the public, and even some Republicans seeking to pass the bipartisan bill.

    Pelosi is currently planning to workshop and pass the reconciliation bill and the infrastructure bills by the end of September, before certain funding programs are set to expire. If Pelosi brings the infrastructure bill to a vote this month without substantial movement of the reconciliation bill, progressives have promised to reject its passage.

    “Pelosi’s timetable hasn’t assuaged a small group of frustrated Democratic moderates who are plotting ways to convince her and her team to change course,” reports Politico. “At least six of those centrists say privately they are willing to block consideration of the Democrats’ budget blueprint as a last-ditch move to stall the $3.5 trillion bill, according to two people familiar with the discussions.” Democrats hold the majority in the House by only three votes.

    What the unnamed moderates want instead, it seems, is to pass the infrastructure bill now, with no mention of the reconciliation bill about which the conservative Sen. Joe Manchin (D-West Virginia), somewhat of a ringleader of centrist thought, has raised concern. Their worry is that the public may forget about President Joe Biden’s so-called victory on the infrastructure negotiations by September.

    “I believe we need to take an immediate vote on the infrastructure legislation that we have in front of us,” Rep. Stephanie Murphy (D-Florida), who co-leads the centrist Blue Dog Coalition, told Politico. The House should not “hold the infrastructure bill hostage to the yet-developed reconciliation bill,” Murphy said.

    While it’s true that the reconciliation bill has yet to be fully fleshed out, Democrats have released a relatively detailed blueprint of the legislation. It contains long-vaunted Democratic priorities like a Civilian Climate Corps, Medicare expansion, guaranteed medical leave, funding for affordable housing, and much more. Sen. Bernie Sanders, who led the bill, has called it “the most consequential piece of legislation for working people, the elderly, the children, the sick and the poor since FDR and the New Deal of the 1930s.”

    Many of the proposals in the reconciliation are of vital and timely importance as COVID-19 sweeps the country yet again and the climate crisis is revealed to be accelerating more rapidly than scientists previously thought. And many of the proposals, outside of the reconciliation process, would be or have already been blocked by Republicans, who carved things like climate and affordable housing nearly entirely out of the bipartisan infrastructure bill.

    As Rep. Cori Bush (D-Missouri) pointed out on Twitter on Wednesday, there are more progressives who have threatened to vote against the infrastructure bill if the reconciliation bill is watered down than there are centrists who want to pass the infrastructure bill immediately.

    The reconciliation bill is already a compromise for progressives, some of whom wanted a $10 trillion climate and justice bill in place of Biden’s infrastructure bill. In an internal survey of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, a majority of the group’s 96 House members said they’d reject the bipartisan bill without a sufficient reconciliation package.

    “There are MANY more of us demanding that the only way the bipartisan bill gets a vote in the House is if we do not miss the chance to invest in our communities with a $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill,” tweeted Bush. “This was already the compromise. We must deliver what we promised.”

    The centrists seeking to change course on this plan, then, seem to be ignoring the delicate balance that Democratic leaders have struck between progressives and the more conservative part of their caucus. As Politico reported in an interview with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-New York), the Senate leader has worked to get both Manchin and Sanders to support each other’s bills, contingent on both bills passing.

    It’s yet unclear what moderates are angling for, but their plan to rush the infrastructure bill separately from the reconciliation bill would surely fail with dozens of progressives standing against them — a show, perhaps, of the growing power of progressives within Congress. Surely even Pelosi, who tends to be especially precious about moderates in her party, understands that.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Housing Advocates Welcome CDC Eviction Moratorium But Say It’s Not Enough

    Despite a new two-month moratorium on evictions issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, millions of people in the U.S. are still at risk of losing their homes as landlords in some states fight back against the measure. The new CDC moratorium is “a band-aid over a bullet wound,” says Tara Raghuveer, director of KC Tenants, a tenants’ rights organization in Kansas City. “This is a very small step. It’s the bare minimum. And for many tenants … this will actually not offer the protections that are needed to keep them in their homes.”

    TRANSCRIPT

    This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

    AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman.

    Landlords in Georgia and Alabama have asked a federal judge to block the Biden administration’s new two-month moratorium on evictions. The new CDC moratorium covers areas of the United States where there is “substantial” or “high” spread of the coronavirus. That’s about 90% of the country.

    A nationwide moratorium on evictions expired at the end of July after Democratic lawmakers failed to pass a bill to protect the millions of renters who could be forced from their homes. But then a group of lawmakers, led by Representative Cori Bush of Missouri, began camping out on the steps of the U.S. Capitol to pressure the Biden administration to take action.

    In a moment, we’ll be joined by a leading housing activist, but first we turn to a tenant in Kansas City who’s on the verge of losing his home. His name is Aqui Greadington. He spoke to Democracy Now! last week.

    AQUI GREADINGTON: I’m at risk for eviction because my landlord is, essentially, just one month behind on rent. I came home one evening to a three-day eviction notice on my door, which I later found out isn’t really the process for how evictions go. So, I really felt like my landlord was trying to intimidate me or, like, harass me, because not only was there the three-day eviction notice on my door, but there was also a notice to — notice of nonrenewal. So, my lease ends September 30th. So, whether I get the funds or not, I still have to be out of here. …

    I ended up behind not only with rents, but utilities and, I mean, really just kind of like, in general, just through mental health surrounding the pandemic. I struggle with depression and anxiety as it is, that on top of a lot of the racial trauma we’ve been enduring, as well as a lot of the misinformation and just the way people are treating each other just kind of compounds and adds to this energy. For me, I just became extremely overwhelmed. And my leave was unpaid. So I just kind of got into a position where I fell, you know, behind. …

    I’ve tried to make a payment plan. I informed them the very first day when I started working and that I just need time. None of those things really made a difference. And it was very frustrating for myself to be someone that, aside from my leave that I took, I’m someone that works full time. I’m someone that pays my rent on time every month. And the first time I have any sort of an issue, at a time when the world is dealing with something unprecedented, it just made zero sense to me, like very unempathetic, that you can only be concerned about money at this time. …

    It’s definitely a high-anxiety moment, because I don’t have a mom and dad that I can call to, you know, go stay with or ask for money or anything like that. You know, I actually have my dad’s ashes. And one of my big concerns is, you know, if I get kicked out on the street, like what am I going to do with my dad’s ashes? You know, and I think those are things that these landlords don’t think about when they make these decisions from these boardrooms, is the real effect that it has on people.

    AMY GOODMAN: That’s Aqui Greadington, speaking to Democracy Now! from Kansas City about his fight to stay in his home. He says he doesn’t have a father or mother to just go live in their house. In fact, he has his father’s ashes with him.

    We’re joined now by Tara Raghuveer, director of KC Tenants, which is a grassroots, tenant-led organization in Kansas City, Missouri, which is also the Homes Guarantee campaign director at People’s Action.

    We thank you so much for being with us. Let’s continue with Aqui, to use him as an example to understand what’s happening right now. We just reported that the Biden administration, under enormous pressure, led by a formerly unhoused person, now congressmember, Cori Bush, and Ilhan Omar of Minneapolis and Ayanna Pressley of Boston — slept out on the Capitol steps to protest the lack of extension of a rent moratorium. So they got that extension, ultimately, but it’s not for the entire country. And what does it mean in Aqui’s case? How is this playing out on the ground for millions of people, Tara?

    TARA RAGHUVEER: Well, Amy, thank you so much for having me back.

    And you’re absolutely right to give kudos to Representative Cori Bush and Representative Ilhan Omar. I want to start there, because I think what they demonstrated through their actions on Friday and through the weekend is that, more often than not, when someone in power tells you that something is impossible, they’re lying to you, right? And these congresswomen, empowered by and driven by their own direct experience, that’s not dissimilar to Aqui’s, took the action that they needed to take in order to fight for millions of renters across the country. So, kudos is owed to them.

    And this latest action by the administration is just a band-aid over a bullet wound. This is a very small step. It’s the bare minimum. And for many tenants, including Aqui, this will actually not offer the protections that are needed to keep them in their homes. Aqui tells us in his story that he’s at risk of eviction, but currently his landlord has just threatened him with legal action. That means that he is putting notices on the door and harassing Aqui to tell him to get out. He’s actually not even using the formal eviction process. And we see this so often, that tenants are displaced even outside of the court’s purview.

    And then the other thing that Aqui tells us is that his lease is just not going to be renewed, right? So, his landlord will be able to get around this eviction moratorium by, instead of evicting him for back owed rent, which is what’s protected at the federal level, evicting him for possession of the property. And that eviction is actually not banned by this eviction moratorium. And therefore, Aqui is one of millions of tenants who will be evicted because their landlords will, unfortunately, exploit this loophole.

    AMY GOODMAN: What’s happened to the billions of dollars under COVID relief that were allocated to deal with these crises?

    TARA RAGHUVEER: To put it bluntly, rental assistance has been a disaster. And the tenant movement knew that it would be, right? Last March, March 2020, we were calling for rent and mortgage cancellation. And we worked very closely with Representative Ilhan Omar and her team to introduce that legislation to Congress. That would have been automatic, and it would have been universal. Rent and mortgage cancellation would have canceled all rent payments. It would have made the rent, back owed rent, uncollectible and unevictable. And then landlords could apply directly for the relief that they needed, that would be conditioned on a set of tenant protections.

    Now, instead of any of that, we have a bureaucratic, nonautomatic, means-tested program in rental assistance. And the money is not getting to the tenants who need it. Not only is it a major bailout for the industry, a lot of governors, like ours in Missouri, are just sitting on money. Our governor, Mike Parson, is sitting on $250 million that are not getting to tenants who need it across his state. Our city, in Kansas City, has closed down their rental assistance applications, even though they are sitting on the second round of the emergency rental assistance money from the federal government. And at this point, a lot of tenants, of course, are facing eviction before they’ve ever had a chance to access that funding to stay in their homes.

    AMY GOODMAN: But why can’t you get that freed up? How can they be closing? How can they not be giving it out?

    TARA RAGHUVEER: I wish I had the answers for you, Amy. We’ve been asking everyone who will talk to us. But, unfortunately, when policy is made in this way, when the federal government is handing money down to states and localities, that money becomes political really quickly, right? We saw that money get held up at the state level, at the county level and at the city level as people played political games with other people’s lives, right? And unfortunately, now it’s too little too late for a lot of the tenants who are most at risk or most urgently at risk. They will be displaced, or they’ve already been displaced, before they can ever access those funds.

    AMY GOODMAN: So, let’s be clear that the moratorium on evicting renters actually began under Trump, and then Biden reextended it and now, only because of enormous pressure, has come up with a kind of new one. So, given that it was established under the former president, who was a developer, who is a developer, what do you see — who does it actually protect? And how many people are going to lose their homes, do you predict, Tara?

    TARA RAGHUVEER: The timing of the Trump moratorium is notable. Trump, the developer-in-chief, right before his reelection — which was ultimately unsuccessful — issued this federal moratorium. It was September 2020. And it was, you know, crumbs that he was throwing at poor and working-class people to try to win some votes, right? It was a political move.

    The policy was never well written. From the beginning, it was extremely flawed. It was not written in a way that was actually going to keep the majority of poor and working-class tenants in their homes. It only protects against evictions on the basis of rent, meaning that landlords, from the beginning, have been able to exploit those loopholes and start evicting people for other reasons, lease violations for the possession of property, just not renewing leases as a way of getting people out.

    Also, this policy was never automatic. So it didn’t just ban evictions. It said, “Here’s a form that tenants have to fill out to apply for protection.” But that requires the tenant to know that this protection exists. So tenant organizations like ours worked overtime to make sure that the information on the moratorium got out to people. And still, there are a lot of people who never got that information.

    Fundamentally, the Trump order leaves — excuse me, the Trump order left so much discretion up to local judges that many courts just kept the eviction dockets open and continued evicting people. And it’s important for people to note that the Biden order that was issued on Tuesday is actually, in many ways, more restrictive than the Trump order was to begin with.

    AMY GOODMAN: Meaning? What does it leave out? Who does it leave out?

    TARA RAGHUVEER: So, it’s not automatic. It doesn’t apply to every eviction. And now it’s limited to geographies that are distinctly impacted by the Delta variant and by spiking cases. But if case numbers go down in a given geography for a 14-day period, the protection could expire for that locality, for that geography.

    AMY GOODMAN: So, Tara, you are the director of KC Tenants, which is a grassroots, tenant-led organization in Kansas City. You engage in a lot of eviction defense. What does that mean? And what are you doing now?

    TARA RAGHUVEER: For the better part of the last year, we have had to take matters into our own hands and disrupt evictions by any means necessary. And this is only after months, months of advocacy at the local level, at the state level, to try to get our courts to close down, to try to get the state to cancel rent. Ultimately, we were unsuccessful, and the people in power were not listening to the people.

    And so, July of last year, I think, was the first disruption that we attempted in the downtown courthouse in Kansas City. We had people go into the courthouse and verbally disrupt. We had people on the phone lines, because evictions were also happening by conference call.

    And then we iterated on those tactics over the course of several months, ultimately culminating in what we called “Zero Eviction January.” It was the dead of winter. It was cold. COVID numbers were spiking. And we decided that we were going to try to shut down every eviction in Kansas City for the month of January. And ultimately, we were successful. We interrupted over 90% of the court’s attempts to evict people that month.

    AMY GOODMAN: So, you have Kansas City now, metropolitan area, reporting 1,115 new COVID-19 cases on Wednesday, the highest daily number since January. So you would be included in this eviction moratorium, which ends in two months. What do you expect will happen then?

    TARA RAGHUVEER: We’re included in this moratorium that ends in two months, but evictions have been happening the entirety of the past year in Kansas City. There are evictions happening in downtown Kansas City today. There are 150 eviction cases on the docket today in downtown Kansas City, including at least a few KC Tenants members, including one named Sabrina Davis, who’s already been displaced from her home. So I think it’s very important that we start there. Evictions are happening. They’ve been happening. They will continue to occur even under this federal moratorium.

    And, to your point, we will be in the same place that we were on Saturday come October 3rd, right? We’re just kicking the can down the road. We in the tenant movement have always known that an eviction moratorium was not going to save us. We actually need, and the Biden administration and Congress need, to confront this system that commodifies one of our basic needs, which is our homes, and tells us that our homes are just someone else’s investment. With every eviction that we allow, whether it’s during a pandemic or not, what we are doing is prioritizing one person’s profits over another person’s life. And that is not OK.

    AMY GOODMAN: We just interviewed Cori Bush, in the midst of her protest, that has led to the Biden administration doing something temporary here. She introduced the Unhoused Bill of Rights. You are proposing a National Tenants’ Bill of Rights. What would that look like?

    TARA RAGHUVEER: Absolutely. In the Homes Guarantee, what we envision is a country in which we can guarantee that everyone has a safe, accessible and truly affordable home. This sounds simple, but, of course, it’s a premise that’s complicated by what we like to call a conspiracy of the profiteers, that has convinced us that the only way to deliver housing is through the private market.

    Now more than ever, now when the federal government is moving hundreds of billions of dollars in a bailout to the rental industry, what we need is a correction of the power imbalance between landlords and tenants. Tenants need more power. They need more control over their homes, over where they live, how long they get to live there, over their choices in the rental market, before we fully transition away from the market model, which is ultimately the goal. So, we in the Homes Guarantee campaign have envisioned a National Tenants’ Bill of Rights.

    But importantly, actually before we go to talk to anyone in D.C., even our closest champions, what we know that we need to do is build the power in the field to win a National Tenants’ Bill of Rights. We actually can’t exist in the realm of message bills anymore. It’s not going to cut it. We learned some hard lessons during the fight for cancel rent about the power that we do not have to win what we need yet.

    So, currently, we’re in the process of the largest field operation that the tenant movement has ever seen. We’re attempting to engage over a million tenants in the process of writing their own rights into existence. And through that process, we’re hoping to build the power that we will ultimately need to not only introduce a National Tenants’ Bill of Rights, that’s written by us, but also win that National Tenants’ Bill of Rights to correct that balance of power in the direction of the tenant.

    AMY GOODMAN: Tara Raghuveer, director of KC Tenants, which is a grassroots, tenant-led organization based in Kansas City. She’s also with People’s Action. To see our interviews last week with Congressmembers Ilhan Omar and Cori Bush, who both slept outside on the Capitol steps to demand the Biden administration reimpose the rent moratorium, go to democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman. Stay safe. Protect yourself, your family, community. Wear a mask.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Real Estate Groups Have So Far Poured Millions Into Stopping Eviction Moratorium

    People participate in a protest against N.Y. Governor Andrew Cuomo and protest for a moratorium on evictions on August 4, 2021 in New York City.

    While the eviction moratorium set in place for the pandemic likely saved millions of renters from being evicted and potentially experiencing homelessness, the real estate industry was focused on its profits — and was willing to spend millions of dollars to protect their profit margins.

    A new report from OpenSecrets finds that, over the past year and a half, the real estate industry has spent over $100 million on lobbying. Though financial disclosures don’t specify the purpose of the lobbying funds, the efforts were likely in large part to get the eviction moratorium overturned or not renewed.

    After a stunning protest led by Rep. Cori Bush (D-Missouri), and at the urging of other progressive lawmakers, President Joe Biden announced this week that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) would be implementing a new eviction moratorium for two months. Bush and other advocates had protested against the Biden administration and Congress allowing the moratorium to end at the end of July.

    “On Friday night, I came to the Capitol with my chair. I refused to accept that Congress could leave for vacation while 11 million people faced eviction,” tweeted Bush on Tuesday, after Biden announced the extension. “For 5 days, we’ve been out here, demanding that our government acts to save lives. Today, our movement moved mountains.”

    The real estate industry has been pushing for over a year to overturn the eviction moratorium, filing lawsuits and donating to GOP lawmakers to help their cause. The National Association of Realtors spent $84 million on lobbying in 2020 — more than it ever has in one year — according to OpenSecrets.

    All the while, real estate groups have been complaining of how much the moratorium was costing them, even though top financial and real estate firms have reported high or stable earnings in the first quarter of 2021.

    While real estate agents worried about their profits, housing advocates warned that, if the eviction moratorium was to end, millions of people could be affected. Many of these renters would also be at risk of experiencing homelessness.

    In a court case filed by an Alabama real estate group earlier this year, the Supreme Court ruled that the CDC’s moratorium could stay in place, but only until the end of July. The new eviction moratorium is written differently from the previous order and made to specifically address areas that are being hit hard by COVID and the Delta variant of the virus. As a result, it’s estimated to cover about 90 percent of the U.S. population.

    The new wording circumvents the Supreme Court’s previous ruling, but is already facing a new challenge in court. Just one day after Biden announced the new moratorium, state real estate associations, with the backing of the National Association of Realtors, filed another lawsuit claiming that the ruling is an overstep by the CDC.

    They claim in the lawsuit that the agency, in implementing a policy that could help keep millions of families housed and protected from the virus, “caved to political pressure.” They do not acknowledge that the new moratorium is written to be more specific to the pandemic.

    Democratic leadership, meanwhile, have praised the new moratorium order and have thanked Bush for her work in influencing the White House.

    “Cori Bush gets huge credit,” said Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-New York). “One person who changed things for tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, of people.”

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Congress Goes on Vacation, Letting Eviction Moratorium Expire Amid Delta Surge

    Rep. Cori Bush speaks with supporters as she spends the night outside the U.S. Capitol to call for for an extension of the federal eviction moratorium on July 31, 2021, in Washington, D.C.

    After many of their fellow Democratic lawmakers skipped town for a weeks-long vacation, Reps. Cori Bush, Ilhan Omar, and Ayanna Pressley slept outside the U.S. Capitol building Friday night to demand that the House immediately reconvene and pass an extension of the soon-to-expire national eviction moratorium.

    With the reprieve set to lapse on Saturday, House Democratic leaders scrambled to pull their caucus together at the last-minute to pass legislation that would extend the moratorium until the end of 2021.

    But the effort, spurred by the Biden administration’s refusal to act on its own, ultimately fizzled out as a number of centrist Democrats made clear they would rather leave Washington, D.C. for August recess than work to prolong the moratorium, which is shielding millions of people across the U.S. from potentially imminent eviction.

    A parallel effort by Senate Democrats has also failed to get off the ground.

    “Earlier Friday afternoon, top Democrats began floating an alternative that they hoped would pick up votes from the moderate wing of their caucus — an extension of just over three months, rather than six months — on what is likely to be the House’s final task before departing for its lengthy August recess,” Politico reported. “But moderates remained unconvinced.”

    Because House Democratic leaders attempted to pass a moratorium extension using a procedure known as unanimous consent, a single Republican objection—in this case from Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.)—was enough to block the legislation. There was no full vote in the chamber, so centrist Democrats did not have to go on the record opposing an extension.

    The House is not scheduled to return to session until September 20.

    Bush (D-Mo.), who was formerly unhoused as a mother of two, expressed outrage that many of her Democratic colleagues “chose to go on vacation early today rather than staying to vote to keep people in their homes.”

    “That the House suddenly adjourned this evening without a roll call vote on Chairwoman Waters’ legislation is a moral failure,” Bush wrote in a letter to House Democrats on Friday, referring to Rep. Maxine Waters’ (D-Calif.) bill to extend the eviction ban. “I have been unhoused and evicted. I’ve slept in my car and slept outdoors. I know what it’s like, and I wouldn’t wish that trauma on anyone.”

    “I’m prepared to do whatever it takes, including staying in Washington and demanding that the House vote on H.R. 4791,” Bush continued. “I cannot in good conscience leave Washington tonight while a Democratic-controlled government allows millions of people to go unhoused as the Delta variant is ravaging our communities. Millions of people are about to lose their homes and, as Democrats, we must not give up on the chance to save their lives.”

    The Missouri Democrat went on to invite her colleagues to join her in sleeping outside the Capitol, but just two lawmakers — Pressley and Omar — heeded the call, along with a number of activists.

    First implemented by the CDC in September, the federal eviction moratorium is set to expire as more than 10 million tenants across the country are behind on rent and relief funds appropriated by Congress to help at-risk households remain largely unspent.

    “Six months after the aid program was approved by President Donald Trump in December, just 12% of the first $25 billion in funds had reached people in need due to loss of income from the pandemic,” the Washington Post reported Friday. “More than three months after President Biden signed a March relief package with another $21.5 billion for the program, even less of that has been spent.”

    Housing advocates have warned that a wave of evictions, while unacceptable at any time, would be especially perilous in the current moment, given the nationwide spread of the highly contagious Delta variant. While renters in Hawaii, Maryland, New York, Illinois, and a handful of other states will still be protected by temporary eviction bans after the national moratorium expires on Saturday, experts have argued that federal action is necessary to prevent a looming housing disaster.

    “Without immediate action, millions of these households will be at risk of losing their homes and their ability to keep themselves and their families safe and healthy,” National Low Income Housing Coalition and other organizations wrote in a letter (pdf) to congressional leaders on Thursday. “The newly surging Delta variant, low vaccination rates in communities with high eviction filings, and the slow rate of distributing [Emergency Rental Assistance] make the necessity of an extension abundantly clear.”

    The letter came hours after the Biden White House asked Congress to pass legislation to extend the moratorium — just three days before it was set to expire. In a statement Thursday, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki insisted that the Biden administration cannot unilaterally prolong the moratorium due to a recent Supreme Court ruling — a justification that many questioned.

    “The CDC could extend the eviction moratorium right now,” argued Kriston Capps, a staff writer for City Lab. “It would almost certainly be struck down, but it would take time for a challenge to reach the Supreme Court. Instead the White House punted to Congress but with very little time to reach a deal.”

    From the front of the U.S. Capitol, Bush tweeted Saturday morning that the House could have passed an extension in time, “but some Democrats went on vacation instead.”

    “We slept at the Capitol last night to ask them to come back and do their jobs,” Bush added. “Today’s their last chance. We’re still here.”

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Omar Unveils Guaranteed Income Bill to Send American Adults $1,200 a Month

    Rep. Ilhan Omar speaks during a press conference at a memorial for Daunte Wright on April 20, 2021, in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota.

    Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minnesota) plans to introduce a bill that would create a guaranteed income program that would send $1,200 a month to most Americans. The bill, she argues, could be a major step toward ending poverty in the U.S.

    The SUPPORT Act would send $1,200 a month to U.S. adults making up to $75,000 a year, or a head of household making up to $112,500 a year, with supplemental income for children, according to HuffPost. The bill would phase out payments at higher income brackets.

    The bill strives to include groups that are traditionally left out of government aid like the recent COVID stimulus checks. Undocumented immigrants who file taxes with an ITIN would be included. People without banking accounts or people experiencing homelessness could also access payments through a banking system run by the United States Postal Service.

    The SUPPORT Act has been cosponsored by Reps. Cori Bush (D-Missouri), Pramila Jayapal (D-Washington), Dwight Evans (D-Pennsylvania) and Jamaal Bowman (D-New York). It faces long odds in Congress.

    “Poverty is a choice. For too long we have prioritized endless growth while millions are homeless, hungry or without healthcare,” Omar said in a statement, per HuffPost. “We as a nation have the ability to make sure everyone has their basic needs like food, housing and healthcare met.”

    The state of poverty and debt in the U.S. is dire. The gap between the highest and lowest earners is growing, while people working on the dismally low federal minimum wage are struggling to meet their needs. Tax cuts for the rich, meanwhile, have allowed the rich to avoid paying income tax altogether some years, creating a stark contrast between the wealthy and the poor.

    A study by the Federal Reserve published in 2019 found that almost 40 percent of Americans didn’t have $400 in savings, leaving them vulnerable if unexpected expenses were to arise.

    Omar argues that her bill could help reverse poverty in the U.S., pointing to the stimulus checks sent out earlier this year and last. Indeed, a recent study of the effects of the COVID stimulus bill passed earlier this year found that poverty dropped to the lowest level on record in the U.S. The largest contributor to the reduction in poverty is from the stimulus checks — a similar program to what Omar is proposing.

    Not only did the checks reduce poverty, they also helped families stay afloat through the pandemic. Half of Americans used the $1,400 checks sent by the government earlier this year to pay debts. Many others used the checks to pay off bills, relieving a burden from families while the country was, and still is, being crushed by COVID-19.

    Universal basic income has been tried before in the U.S. Recently, Stockton, California, experimented with the idea, giving randomly selected members of the public $500 a month with no strings attached for two years. The cash stipends benefitted or increased participant’s financial stability and career prospects. It also helped better the participant’s overall well-being.

    Similar programs have had success in other countries. Countries like Finland and South Korea have had similar results from guaranteed income programs, which freed up participants to pursue goals like starting a business or attending school.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Formerly Unhoused Rep. Cori Bush Introduces a Bill of Rights for the Unhoused

    Rep. Cori Bush testifies during a House Oversight and Reform Committee hearing in Rayburn House Office Building on May 6, 2021.

    Housing advocates and experts on Wednesday applauded Rep. Cori Bush following her introduction of an Unhoused Bill of Rights, a resolution aimed at ending the U.S. homelessness crisis by 2025.

    Bush (D-Mo.) — who was formerly unhoused — described the measure (pdf) as “the first federal resolution to declare unalienable rights for unhoused persons and provide solutions to permanently end the crisis by 2025.”

    “In the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, this resolution illustrates the interconnectedness of the unhoused and public health crises,” she added.

    Bush said in a statement that “the unhoused crisis in our country is a public health emergency, and a moral and policy failure at every level of our government. As someone who has lived in her car with my two infants while I was working a full-time job, I know the daily trauma and stress that comes with the perpetual instability of not having a safe place to live.”

    “It is past time for the federal government to establish an Unhoused Bill of Rights and make the desperately needed investments to guarantee housing, healthcare, and a robust social safety net for our unhoused neighbors,” she added. “We can end this crisis by 2025 if we, as lawmakers and as a country, finally dedicate ourselves to prioritizing those in our communities who have the least.”

    If passed, as Bush’s office detailed, the Unhoused Bill of Rights would:

    • Permanently end the unhoused crisis by 2025 by drastically increasing the affordable housing stock, providing universal housing vouchers, and bolstering funding to federal housing programs, shelters, transitional and permanent housing programs, social services, and housing advocates;
    • Call on the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to declare the unhoused crisis a public health emergency;
    • Protect unhoused individuals from the violation of their fundamental civil and human rights to housing, healthcare, livable wages, education, employment opportunities, access to public facilities, and freedom from harassment by law enforcement, private businesses, property owners, and housed residents;
    • Support historic federal funding levels for state and local governments to provide 24-hour support for unhoused people, including: shelters, transitional housing programs, supportive services, public restrooms, hand-washing stations, showers, laundry facilities, and water fountains in coordination with grassroots and community-led organizations; and
    • Develop holistic, health-based, and noncarceral solutions to the unhoused crisis in coordination with the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), HHS, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), community-led organizations, and unhoused advocates from a health-based approach that addresses both the unhoused and public health crises.

    The resolution is co-sponsored by 17 progressive House Democrats: Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (N.Y.), Sheila Jackson Lee (Texas), Yvette D. Clarke (N.Y.), Rashida Tlaib (Mich.), Nydia Velazquez (N.Y.), Dwight Evans (Pa.), Marie Newman (Ill.), Mondaire Jones (N.Y.), Earl Blumenauer (Ore.), Jamaal Bowman (N.Y.), Bonnie Watson Coleman (N.J.), Nikema Williams (Ga.), Betty McCollum (Minn.), André Carson (Ind.), Jesús G. “Chuy” García (Ill.), Pramila Jayapal (Wash.), and Ayanna Pressley (Mass.).

    The measure is also backed by numerous advocacy groups.

    Lee Camp, senior staff attorney at the St. Louis-based advocacy organization ArchCity Defenders, hailed the resolution as “a crucial first step in ensuring that the rights of those experiencing homelessness in St. Louis, and throughout the United States, are not infringed upon simply because they’re unhoused.”

    Tent Mission STL, another St. Louis advocacy group, noted that “we live in a country whose approach to homelessness has been criminalization, a state where harm-reduction workers are forced into the shadows because it is still a felony to distribute clean syringes to IV drug users, and a city that doesn’t have a 24/7 emergency walk-up shelter for its residents.”

    “The time for the federal government to extend a hand to local communities who have always taken up the work of supporting their unhoused residents is long overdue,” Tent Mission STL added. “However, it is crucial that in doing so they follow the lead of unhoused folks and local activists in order to mitigate harm and uphold the dignity of the unhoused community.”

    Eric Tars, legal director at the National Homelessness Law Center, said that “with Covid and the Delta variant still raging, evictions from rentals and homeless encampments will create public health disasters. Unless we get rental assistance to the 15 million people who need it — and at the same time, stop criminalizing homelessness — this crisis will get much worse. Housing is a human right, and Rep. Bush’s Unhoused Bill of Rights is our guide map to making that right a reality in America.”

    The resolution was introduced on the same day that the Los Angeles City Council voted to outlaw sitting, sleeping, or storing belongings on public property.

    The measure also came as progressive lawmakers and experts sound the alarm about the potentially devastating consequences of the looming expiration of the federal eviction moratorium, which, if unextended, will place an estimated six million people at risk of losing their homes after July 31.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Dems Introduce Bill to Decriminalize Pot, “Restore Lives” Harmed by Prohibition

    Marijuana plants in a grow room at Canna Provisions in Sheffield, Massachusetts, on February 13, 2021.

    Senate Democrats, including Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-New York), are set to introduce a bill on Wednesday that would decriminalize marijuana at the federal level. The bill also attempts to remedy the harms done to those negatively impacted — disproportionately represented by people of color — by the prohibition of the drug over the decades.

    The 163-page bill, which is also sponsored by Senators Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) and Cory Booker (D-New Jersey), would call for bringing “common sense to the federal government” when it comes to cannabis, to “end prohibition and restore the lives of those hurt most and set them up for opportunity.”

    “Cannabis prohibition, a key pillar of the failed war on drugs, has caused substantial harm to our communities and small businesses, and especially for communities of color,” Wyden said in a statement about the bill.

    The bill would “finally turn the page on this dark chapter in American history and begin righting these wrongs,” Booker also said.

    Among a number of provisions in the bill, the Cannabis Administration and Opportunity Act would remove marijuana from the Controlled Substances Act list of drugs that are barred for recreational use, and allow the government to regulate and tax marijuana as well. Businesses in In states where marijuana is already legalized, businesses would be able to sell the drug and users consume it without risk of federal criminal liability.

    The bill would not automatically decriminalize marijuana in every state — those that still ban its use would be allowed to keep those laws intact, to prohibit its use within their jurisdictions.

    The bill would, however, expunge federal nonviolent marijuana-related arrests and convictions from individuals’ records, and would use federal tax dollars generated from the sale of marijuana to create restorative justice programs to help communities harmed by years of prohibition. The bill would also transition regulatory authority of cannabis manufacturing and marketing to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

    While the bill is likely to garner praise, it faces steep challenges in passing within the deeply divided Senate where most of the 50 Democrats are largely in favor of decriminalization while most of the 50 Republicans are opposed to the idea. It’s more than likely that the bill will be blocked with the threat of a filibuster unless at least 10 Republicans, along with every single Democrat in the chamber, agree to pass it.

    The bill also only focuses on marijuana decriminalization, and not any other drugs on the controlled substances list, unlike the bill proposed in June by Representatives Cori Bush (D-Missouri) and Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-New Jersey) called the Drug Policy Reform Act, which seeks to decriminalize all drugs that have fueled the war on drugs for decades.

    That legislation calls for a “refocus” on drug regulation, toward an approach that is “health-focused, evidence-based and respectful of self-determination.” It would expunge criminal records and provide for resentencing of convictions for all drugs, reinvest in alternative health approaches, and eliminate other consequences of past and future use of the drug, including denial of employment, refusal of public benefits, restriction of voting rights, and people’s immigration statuses.

    The “punitive approach” to drugs “creates more pain, increases substance use, and leaves millions of people to live in shame and isolation with limited support and healing,” Bush said in announcing the legislation, adding that “it’s time to put wellness and compassion ahead of trauma and punishment.”

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Cori Bush Introduces Bill to Move Away From Policing for Public Safety

    Rep. Cori Bush (D-Missouri) speaks at The National Council for Incarcerated Women and Girls "100 Women for 100 Women" rally in Black Lives Matter Plaza near The White House on March 12, 2021.

    Rep. Cori Bush (D-Missouri) has introduced a bill that aims to transform public safety in the U.S. by transitioning away from policing and toward responses that aren’t focused on violence, incarceration and criminalization.

    The People’s Response Act would create a public safety division within the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) in order to help guide research and run grant programs for “health-centered investments” in public safety, according to a press release on the bill. It would launch a federal first responders unit and provide funding to support state and local governments in transitioning away from punitive emergency responses.

    “The People’s Response Act will transform public safety into a system of care rather than criminalization, healing rather than incarceration, and prevention rather than policing,” said Bush in a statement. “We are safer when our communities are well funded, our people are healthy and housed, and our children have nutritious meals, excellent schools, and green spaces to play in.”

    The proposal, if passed, could mark the first major federal step towards police abolition, which Bush has advocated for. As abolitionist Mariame Kaba argues in her recent book, We Do This ‘Til We Free Us, funding kinder approaches to emergencies like social programs and experts instead of the police is a crucial step toward the ultimate goal of police and prison abolition.

    Though Bush’s bill, supported by Representatives Ayanna Pressley (D-Massachusetts), Jan Schakowsky (D-Illinois) and Congressional Progressive Caucus leader Pramila Jayapal (D-Washington), doesn’t call for defunding police departments, it could create a more holistic approach to public safety. The lawmakers propose creating a $2.5 billion grant to fund the hiring of thousands of first responders who specialize in mental health, social work and substance use, among other specialities, to provide an emergency response system aimed at helping — not punishing — people in crisis.

    As Bush points out, emergency calls are often more dangerous than helpful for the public, especially for Black and Brown communities. “When people in crisis need help, calling 911 too often becomes a death sentence,” she said on Twitter.

    In a video advocating for the bill, Bush points to the case of Atatiana Jefferson, who was murdered by a police officer during what was supposed to be a standard welfare check. Jefferson, a Black woman, was in her home studying when former Fort Worth police officer Aaron Dean shot her through a window.

    The bill comes at a time when activists have drawn attention to many cases like Jefferson’s, where a Black person has been killed by police often seemingly just for existing. Protests for the movement for Black lives that swept the country over the past year often called for police abolition, arguing that an institution focused on perpetuating criminalization and violence shouldn’t exist.

    Politicians on both sides of the aisle often say, in response to growing calls for abolition and in response to a growing overdose crisis, that police need more funding to combat these issues. But policing often does little to help communities and people in crisis, and abolitionists argue that police belong to an institution that can’t be reformed.

    “For too long, our flawed approach to public safety has centered criminalization, surveillance and incarceration, rather than care, justice and healing,” said Pressley in a statement. “Our bill would help change that by directing the federal government to take a health-centered approach to public safety and investing in trauma-informed, community-based responses that will truly keep people safe.”

    Though the bill could represent a step toward abolition, it also gives power to HHS, a government agency that abolitionists have been skeptical of funding. Under Donald Trump, HHS institutionalized anti-LGBTQ oppression and helped to sabotage the U.S.’s COVID response.

    Still, though it faces long odds of passing, the People’s Response Act could represent a crucial shift toward a public safety approach focused on healing — and away from the corrupt system of policing.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Rep. Cori Bush Introduces Bill to Decriminalize Possession of All Drugs

    Cori Bush speaks during a canvassing event on November 1, 2020, in St. Louis, Missouri.

    A pair of House Democrats introduced legislation on Tuesday that would decriminalize possession of all drugs at the federal level for personal use and begin the process of prioritizing a public health approach to drug use over punishment and policing. These are the necessary first steps, advocates say, for ending the war on drugs 50 years after it was first declared by President Richard Nixon.

    Representatives Cori Bush (D-Missouri) and Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-New Jersey) introduced the Drug Policy Reform Act, which would eliminate federal criminal penalties for possession of any drug for personal use, including marijuana, cocaine, opioids, various psychedelics and other drugs banned under the Controlled Substances Act. The bill aims to begin repairing some of the damage to communities and the lives of individuals caused by the drug war, which has contributed heavily to mass incarceration and whose effects have fallen hardest on low-income communities and people of color.

    “The economic stability of our carceral state depends on this misguided and racist policy, and we are here to say no more, it’s time that we end this destruction,” Bush told reporters on Tuesday, adding that, as a nurse in St. Louis, she saw first hand how criminalization and stigma harms people who use drugs. “Imagine what we could do if we built systems of care that treated supported and people dealing with substance abuse disorders. That is the world we should build.”

    The legislation calls on Congress to “refocus its strategies” for addressing drug use toward an approach that is “health-focused, evidence-based and respectful of self-determination.” The bill would shift regulatory authority over the Controlled Substances Act from the Department of Justice and its Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), signaling a seismic shift in terms of future policy that could reframe drug use as a health issue rather than a criminal offense, at least for the federal government.

    The Controlled Substances Act forms the legal backbone for the drug war at the federal level by “scheduling” drugs, which makes certain drugs only available by prescription or illegal altogether. For example, marijuana is listed on Schedule I alongside peyote, MDMA and several other drugs. Schedule I drugs remain federally illegal for any purpose, despite changes in state law, such as the widespread legalization of medical marijuana.

    Currently, changing federal drug scheduling requires an act of Congress or action by the DEA, the federal drug war agency that has refused to reschedule marijuana. In theory, shifting regulatory authority over the Controlled Substances Act from law enforcement to HHS, a federal public health agency, would allow the government to begin the process of regulating drugs based on science and public health concerns, rather than regulating drugs in order to criminalize and punish people who use them. Supporters say the change would also be symbolic of the government’s shifting priorities.

    The bill comes as new polling shows that more than 80 percent of Democrats, Republicans and independents agree the drug war is a policy failure. Two-thirds of voters say criminal penalties should be removed for all drugs, not just marijuana, so the money spent on drug enforcement can be reinvested into addiction treatment and mental health services. Other polls show that public opinion about drugs and prohibition continues to shift, but the bill still faces a steep uphill climb in Congress.

    Last year, House Democrats passed legislation that would remove marijuana from the Controlled Substances Act, effectively decriminalizing cannabis at the federal level. However, the legislation went nowhere in the Senate. Democrats now hold the slimmest majority in the Senate, but the Biden administration has signaled that marijuana reform is far from a priority, if not off the table entirely. President Biden is wary of marijuana legalization, and reports suggest Vice President Kamala Harris — the tie-breaking vote for Democrats in the Senate — may have flip-flopped after campaigning on the issue. If Democratic leadership has little appetite for marijuana reform, which is overwhelmingly supported by voters, then decriminalizing all drugs is a legislative longshot.

    Like other drug decriminalization initiatives at home and abroad, the Drug Policy Reform Act would not eliminate all federal criminal penalties for drugs. Federal courts could still issue fines for drug possession, although a judge could waive a fine if the defendant is unable to pay. Selling large amounts of drugs would remain illegal, and the bill would create a commission of experts tasked with determining what amounts of specific drugs would be decriminalized for personal consumption. The commission would also make recommendations for preventing the prosecution of people who sell or distribute small amounts drugs to support their own drug use or meet other immediate needs, making room for the decriminalization of low-level drug sales.

    Morgan Godvin, a research associate at the Health in Justice Action Lab who has served time in federal prison on trumped-up drug charges, said the bill is a conversation starter. Few people are caged in federal prison for drug possession charges alone, but the federal criminal legal system has proved much more intractable to reform than state and local systems. Removing the Controlled Substances Act from the DEA’s purview could allow federal health officials to disassemble the drug prohibition law, Godvin said, and media coverage of the bill could push lawmakers across the political spectrum to take a position.

    “It’s getting increasingly difficult to defend criminalization as response to our crises … we are experiencing record-breaking overdose deaths year after year, and endemic untreated substance abuse in our people,” Godvin said in an interview. “I can’t wait to see conservatives contort themselves into pretzels trying to defend the criminalization scheme as effective; if that is supposed to keep people from doing drugs, then they failed.”

    Rather than ending the drug war altogether, the bill appears to provide a path forward for federal reform and a template for changes in state law. For example, federal courts would be required to expunge federal drug possession convictions that would be decriminalized under the bill, and people held in federal prison on possession charges could have their sentences reviewed and vacated.

    “The war on drugs was never about helping people, it was about criminalizing them, and that is what we are trying to correct today,” Coleman told reporters on Tuesday.

    The bill would also make it illegal to deny people access to federal benefits such as food assistance or a driver’s license based on prior drug possession convictions, which advocates say would help people harmed by the drug war to move on with their lives. Cities and states that continue to criminalize people who possess drugs for personal use would not be eligible for certain federal grant programs that fund police. The bill would deal a significant blow to the DEA and begin to refocus federal resources on harm reduction, addiction treatment and evidence-based drug education, but it would not totally eliminate federal drug policing.

    Queen Adesuyi, a policy manager at the Drug Policy Alliance, a group that helped write the legislation and a similar statewide initiative that decriminalized drugs in Oregon, said the drug war has caused “mass devastation” in Black, Indigenous, Latinx and low-income communities. The new legislation, she said, provides a glimpse of what an end to the war on drugs could look like.

    “We will not be subjugated any longer by an offensive that was created solely with the purpose of ‘disrupting’ our communities,” Adesuyi said in a statement. “This bill gives us a way out — a chance to reimagine what the next 50 years can be. It allows us to offer people support instead of punishment.”

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Democrats Remind Biden That Bipartisanship on Infrastructure Is “Hopeless”

    President Joe Biden listens during a meeting in the White House on May 21, 2021.

    President Joe Biden is set to meet with Republican Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (West Virginia) on Wednesday to further discuss a bipartisan deal on his infrastructure proposal. But, as Democrats and progressives have exasperatedly reminded the president, bipartisanship with Republicans on large proposals has proven to be nearly impossible.

    The president has extended the talks with Republican senators on the bill into this month. While the White House has already cut their infrastructure offer by about $600 billion in negotiations, Republicans have offered a proposal that’s a small fraction of the Democrats’ proposal. Biden’s current proposal is a $1.7 trillion bill, all in new spending; the GOP’s offer for new spending is only $257 billion.

    Democrats and progressives have grown frustrated with the protracted negotiations, and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg has said that the administration is soon approaching a “fish-or-cut-bait” moment, since the process “can’t go on forever.”

    But Biden is insistent that the negotiations process is necessary and healthy. Politico reported Tuesday that “In the White House there is a belief that the public will reward the president for reaching a bipartisan agreement on infrastructure.”

    Perhaps that would be true if the Republicans were interested in the same — but, as progressives and Democrats are pointing out, Republicans haven’t proven themselves to be good faith negotiators.

    “Time is tick, tick, ticking past. Every day spent on hopeless bipartisanship is a day not spent on climate,” said Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-Rhode Island) on Twitter. “We can survive bumpy roads; a ruined planet is for eons.”

    Democrats also point out that abolishing the filibuster would make it possible for them to actually use their majority in Congress and the White House.

    “Instead of wasting our energy negotiating against ourselves for an infrastructure package that Republicans clearly have no interest in passing, let’s put our energy into abolishing the filibuster, passing the policy we were elected to deliver” wrote Rep. Cori Bush (D-Missouri) on Twitter.

    Indeed, the filibuster has earned a huge amount of ire from the left in recent months, and its two main defenders in the Senate were even ribbed, seemingly, by the president.

    “I hear all the folks on TV saying, ‘Why doesn’t Biden get this done?’ Well, Biden only has a majority, effectively, of four votes in the House and a tie in the Senate, with two members of the Senate who vote more with my Republican friends,” said Biden during remarks on Tuesday. “But we’re not giving up.”

    Many pundits and political journalists have interpreted this comment to refer to Senators Joe Manchin (D-West Virginia) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-Arizona). Biden’s not wrong about their voting records: according to a FiveThirtyEight tracker of how often legislators voted with President Donald Trump, Manchin and Sinema are among four Democrats in the Senate who voted with Republicans the most during Trump’s tenure.

    Manchin and Sinema are also both still vehemently in favor of keeping the filibuster, even as progressives warn that keeping the filibuster — and not passing any meaningful Democratic legislation — could cost Democrats big time in the midterms and in 2024.

    “The American people want action, not never-ending ‘negotiations’ and obstructionism, and they will not come out and vote for a party that does not deliver,” tweeted Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont). “If not now, when?”

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Democrats Call for End of Filibuster as GOP Threatens to Block Jan. 6 Commission

    Security forces clash with Trump supporters after they breached the U.S. Capitol security in Washington, D.C., on January 6, 2021.

    As top Senate Republicans are indicating that they’ll employ their first filibuster of this Congress on the proposal to form a commission to investigate the January 6 Capitol breach, progressives and Democrats are re-upping calls to abolish the filibuster.

    Republicans like Senate Minority Whip John Thune (R-South Dakota) and Minority Leader Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) have come out against the commission, and others have indicated a general distaste for the idea, fearing it would hurt their party. Meanwhile, Mitt Romney (R-Utah) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) are the only GOP senators who have said they’d vote to end a filibuster on the issue.

    In other words, all signs point toward an oncoming filibuster, which would effectively kill the legislation. It’s incredibly unlikely that Democrats would be able to get nine more Republicans on board with the commission to end the filibuster; even Sen. Richard Burr (R-North Carolina), who voted to convict former President Donald Trump in his second impeachment trial, has come out against the idea. The legislation could get a vote as early as this week.

    To some Democrats and progressives, the fact that Republicans — the party responsible for the Capitol attack in January — could stop the proposal despite being the minority in the Senate is further proof that the filibuster needs to be abolished.

    Filibustering the bipartisan commission on the attack, tweeted Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii), “is a three dimensional way to make the point that the filibuster is primarily a destructive force in American politics.”

    Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts) told HuffPost that the potential filibuster is “one more reminder that McConnell thinks he has a veto over anything that he wants to stop. That’s not what the founders thought when they wrote the constitution and it’s sure not what a Democratic majority should go along with now.”

    Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin told Politico that he thinks the very use of the filibuster is an example of how archaic the procedure is. “When the filibuster is actually used, it becomes an exhibit in the case against continuing it,” he said. Durbin has previously come out in favor of filibuster reform.

    The legislation establishing the commission, which passed the House last week, would create a bipartisan body of 10 — five members from each major party — tasked with investigating the January 6 Capitol attack. Both party members would have equal subpoena power, and its bipartisan setup is already a Democratic compromise from the previous Democrat-favoring structure.

    Progressive House Rep. Cori Bush (Missouri) joined Democratic colleagues in calls for the end to the filibuster, saying, “There are Democrats in the Senate who say that we need the filibuster for ‘bipartisanship’ while Republicans are literally filibustering an investigation into the insurrection that could have killed them. We don’t compromise with white supremacy. End the filibuster.”

    Progressive advocates also echoed the calls for ending the outdated practice. Berkeley professor and former Labor Secretary Robert Reich said, “Does anyone seriously think the Framers would be okay with a minority of senators using the filibuster to block an investigation into a deadly attack on the U.S. government?”

    The potential filibuster even got the ire of Sen. Joe Manchin (D-West Virginia), who is one of the Democrats’ biggest roadblocks to filibuster abolition. “So disheartening. It makes you really concerned about our country,” he told Politico.

    Still, despite his disappointment with the GOP, Manchin is reportedly holding strong to his support of the filibuster. CNN’s Manu Raju reported on Tuesday that Manchin said he wouldn’t favor abolishing the practice even if it means that it would kill the January 6 commission. “I can’t take the fallout,” said Manchin.

    He instead put out a statement with fellow filibuster proponent Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Arizona) asking his Republican colleagues to support the commission — though a statement is unlikely to change the minds of the party dead set on sabotaging the Democratic agenda.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Biden: End Your Co-Belligerent Backing of Israeli War Crimes

    As Senator, Vice President, and now President, your self-promoted/displayed empathy has a problem. You can’t seem to connect the Israeli military powerhouse’s occupation to the oppression and destruction of innocent Palestinian civilians, illegal seizure of Palestinian land/water, and daily violations of U.S. and international law. Israel’s military is deliberately bombing these families, the offices of American media, international medical facilities, and many local hospitals and water and electricity facilities with fighter jets and missiles made in America.

    To know about what is happening daily, you do not need to rely on the evidence compiled by the U.S. mainstream media or foreign reporters on the ground in Gaza or your own intelligence agencies, just take it from the Israeli media and Israelis themselves.

    Stop repeatedly mumbling the usual mantra to escape your presidential responsibilities for the military weaponry and political cover, including the U.S. Veto at the U.N. By your failure to act you have backed this Israeli-initiated aggression, as you have invariably favored prior illegal Israeli military attacks against U.S. ally Lebanon, and Syria and Iran in recent decades.

    Although the Netanyahu regime prohibits Israeli journalists from entering Gaza or the West Bank to report reality, enough of the Israeli media carries the horrific devastation in Gaza with casualties and critical property destruction hundreds of times greater than that inflicted by the primitive Hamas rockets, 90% of which are shot down by the U.S.-funded “iron dome” anti-missile systems. The rest, with very few random exceptions, fall onto the desert floor, sometimes back into Gaza.

    Israel needs these feeble, homemade rockets as the pretext for its massively greater attacks again and again against the civilian population during the past fifteen years. How else can it engage in such slaughter of entire extended families asleep in their crowded homes, destruction of schools, health clinics, media offices – against what the Israeli newspaper Haaretz has called a wholly defenseless, captive people? Israel is just defending itself, you keep saying, ignoring the imperial racist premise in that statement.

    As Representative Cori Bush (D-MO) declared this week: “These atrocities are being funded by billions of our own American tax dollars while communities like mine in St. Louis are hurting and are in need of life-affirming investment here at home.”

    The expanding Jewish Voice for Peace, whose views represent a larger polling of American Jews than does AIPAC, joined over 70 U.S. advocacy groups in support of a Congressional resolution opposing your latest $735 million weapons shipment to Israel. You know federal law prohibits U.S. weapons delivered to a foreign country from being used for offensive purposes – a law continually and openly violated by Israel with impunity.

    Having such precision instruments of war, and because it has Gaza under the strictest, most intrusive surveillance of any encircled, besieged territory in history, Israeli destruction of critical civilian infrastructure – electricity, water, sewage, and medical facilities – can be considered deliberate. The Israeli military knows about every street, home, apartment building, business, and government site, including who moves inside this tiny enclave. They have embedded spies, informants, a 24/7 electronic watch, and even updated Palestinian DNA samples. Indeed, Israeli government spokespersons boast about giving warnings to the occupants of some of the targets, such as those in the 14-story building housing AP, Al Jazeera, many residential apartments, and doctors’ offices, before turning it into rubble. They know exactly what they are striking – warnings or no warnings. So far, half of the fatalities are children, women, and those sick from the raging, Covid-19 pandemic, who have little or no access to vaccines.

    You have two dozen Democratic Senators demanding a ceasefire and you still will not come out strongly for a transition toward a vigorous peace process leading to your stated two-state solution. You have none of President Eisenhower’s steadfastness who in 1956 declared a firm stop to the aggressive Israeli, French, and British bombing of Suez in Egypt.

    You know full well what started this latest round of hostilities. Read this excerpt from the New York Times:

    …it was the outgrowth of years of blockades and restrictions in Gaza, decades of occupation in the West Bank, and decades more of discrimination against Arabs within the state of Israel, said Avraham Burg, a former speaker of the Israeli Parliament and former chairman of the World Zionist Organization. ‘All the enriched uranium was already in place,’ he said. ‘But you needed a trigger. And the trigger was the Aqsa Mosque.’

    Mr. Burg was referring to the Israeli police invasion of the 8th century Aqsa Mosque – Islam’s third holiest site – during Ramadan, tear gassing and wounding over 300 praying faithful with stun grenades and rubber bullets. Together with Israeli street gangs in East Jerusalem and the intensifying displacement of Palestinian families there, the provocations proved to be the tipping point for panicked Palestinians.

    You know this and much more from your confidential briefings. Still, you are hesitating. You are intimately aware of why Prime Minister Netanyahu timed and choreographed these bloody, brutal assaults. It is to position himself more successfully in forming a governing coalition of extremists to avoid a fifth election and ward off an ongoing prosecution for corruption by Israeli law enforcers. He provoked, for his political ambitions, the terrifying of the country he leads.

    I am attaching an open letter I sent to President Obama on December 19, 2016, asking him to adopt Jimmy Carter’s urgent plea for you to take “the vital step – to grant American diplomatic recognition to the state of Palestine, as 137 countries have already done, and help it achieve full United Nations membership.” As you know, Mr. Carter negotiated the peace agreement between Israel and Egypt. He referenced President Obama’s support of the long-standing United Nations Resolution 242, which called for a “complete freeze on settlement expansion on Palestinian territory that is illegal under international law.” In 2011, President Obama also made clear that “the borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines” as two states.

    In dire contrast, your Administration has been signaling a diplomatic withdrawal from this conflict to focus on China and East Asia. You’d be well advised to generate some residual fortitude, and empathy, and uphold the legal responsibility to reverse your total support for whatever Israel has done since you began your Senate career in 1973.

    Enclosed: An Open Letter to President Obama: Decision Time For Israeli-Palestinian Peace – December 19, 2016.

    The post Biden: End Your Co-Belligerent Backing of Israeli War Crimes first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • AOC and Cori Bush Have Helped Remove Taboo on Calling Israel an Apartheid State

    Rep. Cori Bush testifies during a House Oversight and Reform Committee hearing in Rayburn Building on May 6, 2021.

    When Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez labeled Israel an apartheid country over the weekend, writing, “Apartheid states are not democracies,” she made international headlines. And Missouri Rep. Cori Bush promptly echoed her colleague from New York. Michigan Rep. Rashida Tlaib made the apartheid charge last week.

    It’s obvious that the Human Rights Watch report of April 27 accusing Israel of the crime of apartheid has given others permission to open their mouths. AOC defended herself from an onslaught of critics by retweeting HRW’s statement that it didn’t arrive at the apartheid charge “lightly” and by citing the B’Tselem apartheid finding of January, along with the HRW finding.

    Of course, Israel critics have leveled the apartheid charge for more than 15 years. Rep. Betty McCollum of MN first leveled the “apartheid” charge in 2018.

    But the Human Rights Watch report has gotten legs from Israel’s latest Gaza onslaught; and what we are now seeing is a sudden end to a taboo (as my friend Dan Walsh says).

    This weekend both John Oliver on HBO and Ali Velshi on MSNBC deployed the apartheid charge to explain what viewers are seeing.

    On Sunday, John Oliver accused Israel of war crimes and apartheid against Palestinians, and cited HRW and B’Tselem. Daily Beast has the quote:

    They’ve been living under a suffocating blockade for 14 years, and in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories, Palestinians are essentially being governed by a form of apartheid—an assessment echoed by both international and Israeli human rights groups,

    Here is a longer clip of Oliver from the show.

    “Both sides are suffering heartbreaking casualties. But one side is suffering them exponentially… We have got to start having this conversation honestly. And falling back on convenient, sanitized terms like real estate dispute and air strikes on militants feels a little disingenous, when what you are describing is forcing people form the homes they have lived in for decades and killing civilians and children…

    “Some things are pretty simple. One side is suffering much more…If America really wants to help… I would hope that a real friend would tell me when I’m being an asshole and definitely when I’m committing a fucking war crime.

    Ali Velshi spoke out on May 15, on MSNBC, this clip thanks to CAIR:

    Palestinians are at best third-class citizens in the nation of their birth. The idea that it is even remotely controversial to call what Israel has imposed on Palestinians a form of apartheid is laughable. One look at a map of Israel, Gaza and the occupied territories conjures up only one other example, apartheid era South Africa…

    It may be worth gong deeper than what you may hear in your bubble in understanding the depth to which the Palestinian people are subject to apartheid in their own land, deprived of basic necessities and subject to relentless civil rights violations. This is not a secret. It’s out there to see. You just have to look for it.

    Velshi was soon echoed by Joy-Ann Reid:

    What @AliVelshi says in this succinct explanation is just facts: painful, well known and documented facts. Israel has a right to exist in peace but so do Palestinians, who currently suffer under what can only be called apartheid. And no one is doing anything about it.

    The young Jewish group IfNotNow has made apartheid a regular allegation in their messaging.

    To bomb schools today — or any day — goes against everything it means to be Jewish. #JewsAgainstApartheid

    This morning David Rothkopf, scribe of the liberal establishment, tweeted: “Israel is an apartheid state. Apartheid states are not democracies.”

    And yesterday, Iran labeled Israel an “apartheid” state and called for international action to stop its systematic violations of human rights.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Rashida Tlaib Condemns Israeli Apartheid, Saying “It Must End”

    Rep. Rashida Tlaib speaks during a press conference at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., on July 15, 2019.

    Progressives in Congress delivered powerful speeches on the House floor on Thursday condemning the violence being wrought by the Israeli government against Palestinians and urging their colleagues in Washington to end U.S. support for Israel’s “apartheid government.”

    “I am a reminder that Palestinians do, indeed, exist. That we are human, that we are allowed to exist,” said Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Michigan) in the House. Tlaib is the only Palestinian American in Congress. “Colleagues, Palestinians aren’t going anywhere, no matter how much money you send to Israel’s apartheid government.”

    “If we are to make good on our promises to support equal human rights for all, it is our duty to end the apartheid system that for decades has subjected Palestinians to inhumane treatment and racism, reducing Palestinians to live in utter fear and terror of losing a child, being indefinitely detained or killed because of who they are, and the unequal rights and protections they have under Israeli law,” Tlaib continued. “It must end.”

    Tlaib spoke during a special order hour for members of Congress to speak about the apartheid. It was organized by Representatives Mark Pocan (D-Wisconsin) and Marie Newman (D-Illinois), who also helped lead a letter sent to the Biden administration on Wednesday urging the Secretary of State Antony Blinken to use his diplomatic power to urge Israel to stop evicting Palestinians in Jerusalem.

    Israel has been stepping up violence and attacks on Palestinians in Gaza over the past few days. Israeli forces have killed over 100 people in Gaza since attacks began on Monday. That death toll includes at least 31 children, adding to the over 3,000 Palestinian children who have been killed by Israel over the past two decades.

    “The Palestinian story is that of being made a refugee on the lands you called home. We cannot have an honest conversation about U.S. military support for the Israeli government today without acknowledging that, for Palestinians, the catastrophe of displacement and dehumanization in their homeland has been ongoing since 1948,” said Tlaib.

    Funding from the U.S. has helped make possible Israel’s many raids and attacks on Palestinians. The U.S. sends Israel $3.8 billion a year — money which is often used to commit human rights violations and further oppress Palestinians in the area.

    President Joe Biden has not followed lawmakers left on the issue of Israeli apartheid and said earlier this week that “Israel has the right to defend itself,” while saying nothing of the historical horrors wrought upon Palestinians by the Israeli government. Meanwhile, he’s said that he believes that Israel’s devastating airstrikes that have killed dozens and leveled entire buildings over the past days aren’t a “significant overreaction.”

    The left has criticized the Biden administration for such comments defending Israel. In response to a State Department representative saying that Israel was right in retaliating brutally against rockets fired by Hamas, Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minnesota) pointed out on Twitter that “This unsurprising response is devoid of empathy and concern for human suffering. He can’t even condemn the killing of children.”

    In her time speaking on Thursday, Rep. Cori Bush (D-Missouri) spoke on the parallels between police brutality faced by Black people in the U.S. and brutality faced by Palestinians and condemned the U.S.’s funding of Israeli forces.

    “I remember learning that the same equipment that [U.S. police] used to brutalize us is the same equipment that we send to the Israeli military to police and brutalize Palestinians,” said Bush. “That harassment, that extortion, that brutalization by a heavily armed militarized presence in our community — that’s what we fund when our government sends our tax dollars to the Israeli military.”

    Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Massachusetts) also likened the Israeli violence on Palestinians to police brutality in the U.S. when speaking on the House floor. “Palestinians are being told the same thing as Black folks in America: There is no acceptable form of resistance,” Pressley said.

    “We cannot remain silent when our government sends $3.8 billion of military aid to Israel that is used to demolish Palestinian homes, imprison Palestinian children and displace Palestinian families. A budget is a reflection of our values,” Pressley continued. “The question at hand is, should our taxpayer dollars create conditions for justice, healing and repair? Or should those dollars create conditions for oppression and apartheid?”

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Nearly 100 House Democrats Send Letter to Schumer Demanding End to Filibuster

    Rep. Cori Bush speaks during a news conference to advocate for ending the Senate filibuster, outside the U.S. Capitol on April 22, 2021, in Washington, D.C.

    Representatives Cori Bush (D-Missouri) and Pramila Jayapal (D-Washington) are leading an effort with nearly 100 of their fellow House members to end the Senate filibuster. The lawmakers join many progressive and Democratic advocates in saying that the filibuster is a roadblock to progress.

    “In today’s hyper-partisan climate, there is simply no avenue for bold legislation that meets the needs of everyday Americans without ending the filibuster,” the representatives wrote in a letter to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-New York). “We must end the gridlock that has become common practice in Washington and govern boldly and transformatively to improve the lives of millions of people, children, and families all across the country.”

    The lawmakers say that getting rid of the filibuster, which forces bills to have 60 votes to be able to pass, is essential to passing things like a $15 federal minimum wage, voting rights bills like the For the People Act, climate bills, and reforms on immigration and gun rights, among other proposals.

    “For too many people in our communities, their very survival is at stake. Republicans are well aware that removing barriers to passing legislation will have a transformational impact on these communities,” the lawmakers write. “It is why they are passing legislation at the state level across the country in an attempt to suppress the votes of Black, brown and Indigenous people. It is also why they are preventing the Senate from advancing critical legislation that can meet the needs of the people we represent.”

    The letter notes that lawmakers from both sides of the aisle have tried to get rid of the filibuster before. In fact, lawmakers got rid of the House’s filibuster 130 years ago because it was preventing progress.

    The Senate filibuster, as the lawmakers point out, is a relic of the Jim Crow era and has a history of being used to block civil rights. Advocates have said that filibuster abolition is thus an issue of racial equality and justice.

    “Filibuster reform is critical for advancing racial justice,” said Senior Director of Democracy and Criminal Justice for Color of Change Scott Roberts in a statement. “Democratic Senators who defend the filibuster are protecting a legacy of racism, and are choosing to let an outdated rule block progress that would begin to address the challenges facing Black communities across the country.”

    In more recent times, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) has made himself an expert in wielding the filibuster as a weapon against Democrats, as he did under Barack Obama.

    McConnell knows that he can continue to wield that power in his newfound minority; at the beginning of this congressional session, McConnell held up the Senate by insisting on protecting the filibuster. Last month, he threatened to go “scorched earth” if Democrats got rid of the filibuster, saying that he’d make the Senate look like a “100-car pileup.”

    But filibuster abolition faces opposition from both sides of the Senate. Democrats like Senators Joe Manchin (D-West Virginia) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-Arizona) have opposed getting rid of the filibuster even though it is a significant roadblock to progress. Though Democrats, including President Joe Biden to a small extent, and progressives have been working on changing the minds of Sinema, Manchin and other Democrats about holding on to the arcane rule, they have so far not been very successful in their efforts.

    Bush and Jayapal, along with fellow letter leaders Representatives Jason Crow (D-Colorado) and Sean Casten (D-Illinois), hope that highlighting Democratic policies that are held up by the filibuster can help sway the Senate their way.

    “It’s LGBTQ+ equality or the filibuster. It’s DC Statehood or the filibuster. It’s voting rights or the filibuster. It’s the Dream Act, gun safety reforms, campaign finance reform, and equal pay or the filibuster,” tweeted Jayapal on Thursday. “The choice is clear. We must eliminate the filibuster.”

    Casten highlighted the urgency and timeliness of the matter as Republicans attempt to pass hundreds of voter suppression laws at the state level. “Republicans proposed at least 250 voting restriction laws at the state level. Georgia has already passed a voter suppression bill. H.R. 1 is waiting to be passed in the Senate and it would protect our right to vote,” he wrote. “This is an urgent crisis. We must end the filibuster and pass it.”

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ed Markey Reintroduce the Green New Deal

    Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez speaks during a press conference to re-introduce the Green New Deal in front of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., on April 20, 2021.

    Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) and Sen. Ed Markey (D-Massachusetts) are set to reintroduce the Green New Deal (GND) resolution in Congress on Tuesday. The lawmakers last introduced the legislation two years ago.

    “For the past two years, it has been proven that the Green New Deal isn’t just a resolution, it is a revolution,” said Markey at an event unveiling the legislation.

    The reintroduction comes during what Ocasio-Cortez has dubbed “Green New Deal week,” as she and fellow progressives introduce GND-related legislation ahead of President Joe Biden’s climate summit beginning on Thursday.

    “For so long, our movement towards a sustainable future has been divided with really just this false notion that we have to choose between our planet and our economy,” said Ocasio-Cortez at the unveiling. “And we decided to come together in sweeping legislation that not only rejects that notion, but creates a plan for 20 million union jobs in the United States of America to rebuild our infrastructure.”

    The lawmakers last introduced the GND resolution in 2019. It got over 100 co-sponsors in the House and 14 co-sponsors in the Senate, but it never got a vote in either chamber. Ocasio-Cortez says that this year’s version of the resolution has new sponsors.

    Though the legislation was criticized and falsely smeared by the right, Markey pointed out on Tuesday that legislators like Representatives Jamaal Bowman (D-New York) and Mondaire Jones (D-New York) and Senator Markey himself ran on the Green New Deal and won their elections.

    “We made bold climate action not only a voting issue, we made it a winning, political issue. And now, all of these leaders are working to pass bold, visionary legislation,” said Markey. “Climate justice is finally taking over the halls of the United States Congress.” Markey says that the Green New Deal has shifted goalposts on climate for not only the U.S. government but also for other countries and for companies within the U.S. making climate goals.

    The Green New Deal resolution has called for a host of climate, energy and economic proposals like a federal jobs guarantee and is rooted around justice for frontline and oppressed communities. Ocasio-Cortez, as well as the many environmental organizations like the Sunrise Movement that are proponents of the legislation, say that an all-encompassing plan such as the GND will be essential to tackling the climate crisis in an equitable and just way.

    “It is going to be an all hands on deck approach, and we refuse to leave any community behind in the process,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “We refuse to allow, for example, an economy that goes from oil barons to solar barons. That’s what we’re not going to do.”

    “Because what we’re going to do is we’re going to transition to a 100 percent carbon-free economy that is more unionized, more just, more dignified, and guarantees more health care and housing than we ever have before. That’s our goal,” Ocasio-Cortez continued.

    Markey and Ocasio-Cortez are also introducing legislation for a Civilian Climate Corps on Tuesday. The Civilian Climate Corps hearkens back to the original New Deal’s Civilian Conservation Corps and is a progressive proposal that has been adopted by Biden. As one of his first actions in office, Biden signed an executive order to create a Civilian Climate Corps to create jobs for careers in climate- and environment-related work.

    Tuesday’s proposals come on the heels of two other GND proposals that Ocasio-Cortez, alongside other progressive lawmakers, introduced on Monday.

    Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) reintroduced legislation on Monday for a Green New Deal for Public Housing. The bill would provide over $100 billion in investments in public housing over the next decade to make public housing safer for residents and more climate-friendly.

    Ocasio-Cortez also teamed up with Rep. Cori Bush (D-Missouri) on Monday to introduce a plan to provide $1 trillion in federal funding to cities that are seeking to slash emissions and implement a Green New Deal. The plan is called the Green New Deal for Cities, and it specifically highlights funding for reparations for Black and Indigenous communities.

    “We know that to fight climate change, we need to root out environmental injustice where we feel it every day: in our communities,” said Bush in a video promoting the legislation. Bush emphasized that the legislation is about addressing injustices like air and water pollution that disproportionately affect frontline neighborhoods.

    The lawmakers are introducing the legislation at a time of great significance for the Democrats — since Democrats control Congress and the White House, it’s a crucial time to get climate-related initiatives passed. Progressives are hoping to nudge Biden and the Democratic caucus to the left with ambitious policy like the GND.

    A proposal like the Green New Deal for Public Housing, for instance, calls for significantly more funding for public housing than the $40 billion Biden has proposed in his recent $2 trillion infrastructure bill.

    Ocasio-Cortez has said that Biden’s infrastructure plan has elements of the Green New Deal and that Biden has adopted proposals by progressive climate advocates in the past, but that it’s still not big enough. “The size of it is disappointing,” she told NPR. Many other Democrats and climate activists have urged Biden to go bigger on his infrastructure plan.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Bernie Sanders Introduces Bills to Lower Prescription Drug Costs

    Ahead of a subcommittee hearing on the “soaring” cost of prescription drugs in the U.S., Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont), along with a cohort of House representatives, introduced a set of bills that would lower the cost of most brand-name drugs by 50 percent.

    “How many people need to die? How many people need to get unnecessarily sicker before Congress is prepared to take on the greed of the pharmaceutical industry?” Sanders asked in a hearing before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions. “Last year, one out of five Americans could not afford to buy the medicine prescribed by their doctor.”

    “The United States pays by far the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs. This is an immediate health crisis that must be addressed,” Sanders said in a statement released Tuesday. Indeed, recent analyses have shown that prescription drug prices in the U.S. are on average 2.6 times higher than what they are in other countries, and 3.4 times higher for brand-name drugs.

    The bills, introduced by Sanders, Representatives Ro Khanna (D-California), Cori Bush (D-Missouri) and over two dozen others are aimed at “drastically” reducing the cost of prescription drugs, according to a Sanders press release.

    Similar to proposals previously championed by Sanders during his presidential run, the three bills would peg the price of prescription drugs to the median drug prices in five major countries, including Canada and the U.K.; direct the Secretary of Health and Human Services to negotiate for lower drug prices; and allow patients and pharmacies to safely import drugs from other countries like Canada.

    “In the wealthiest nation on planet Earth, no one should be choosing between paying for their medications or paying their rent,” said Khanna. Drug prices in the U.S. steadily tick up each year, a number of analyses have found.

    During the hearing, Sanders noted that, compared to other special interest groups, the pharmaceutical industry has some of the most power over Capitol Hill. The pharmaceutical and health products industries spend hundreds of millions in lobbying every year, finds OpenSecrets, and that number has risen over the past decade. Last year, OpenSecrets reports, the pharmaceutical and health products industry spent over $306 million on lobbying.

    “The pharmaceutical industry is out of control,” Sanders told CNN. “They can charge any price they want at any time and that has to change.” The U.S. essentially has no regulations governing drug prices, so the pharmaceutical industry can set prices however they want.

    In 2016, for instance, controversy erupted when pharmaceutical company Mylan raised the price of the lifesaving EpiPen by 400 percent over the course of a few years to $500. And in 2015, former hedge fund manager Martin Shkreli came under scrutiny for raising the price of an HIV/AIDS treatment from $13.50 to $750 per tablet.

    Prescription drug prices are often a top concern for voters and the general concept of lowering drug prices has bipartisan buy-in. Many Republicans have run with the proposal on their platforms, but end up not delivering. Previous attempts to lower drug prices, via different methods, had the backing of the public and even then-President Donald Trump, but members of Congress couldn’t agree on the right way to go about it.

    The current bill on offer is unlikely to get Republican backing, as the GOP and the pharmaceutical industry are particularly opposed to letting the government negotiate drug prices.

    However, Sanders and fellow lawmakers behind the bill are confident that they can pass the package through reconciliation in the Senate, meaning that they could pass it with no Republican buy-in. The proposal is strong enough that the pharmaceutical industry, normally untouchable on Capitol Hill, is bracing for defeat, Politico reports.

    Democrats are considering putting the drug pricing proposals into an upcoming infrastructure bill that the White House is putting together as a cost-saving measure.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Cori Bush Grills Postmaster DeJoy About USPS’s Board of “Millionaire White Boys”

    Mailman James Daniels delivers mail on his route on May 15, 2020, in San Clemente, California.

    During Postmaster General Louis DeJoy’s hearing before the House Oversight and Reform Committee on Wednesday, Rep. Cori Bush (D-Missouri) noted that, despite the fact that people of color make up a sizeable share of United States Postal Service (USPS) employees, the postal service board is entirely made up of white men.

    “Currently the board includes only white men. This grotesque lack of representation is a critical opportunity to diversify the board’s ranks,” said Bush. “An agency with over 640,000 employees that come from every walk of life and serve the entire American public should have representation at the top reflective of the broader American population. More than 35 percent of postal workers are people of color, while zero percent of governors are.”

    People of color represent a larger percentage of postal workers than in the U.S. population at large. While 23 percent of postal workers are Black, for instance, Black people make up only about 13 percent of the U.S. population.

    The USPS board of governors is currently made up of six white men and has three vacancies. These board members were all appointed by Donald Trump and they helped select DeJoy — who has many ties to Trump and the Republican party — for the top position last year as Trump and the GOP set about attacking the USPS.

    Wednesday’s hearing was part of a series of attempts by Congress to question DeJoy on his gutting of the postal service since he took the helm. Installing DeJoy to gut the USPS was an integral element of Trump’s plan last year to sow discord and distrust in the 2020 election.

    Though Trump lost, the problems with USPS have remained as mail delays continue well into 2021. Those delays are likely to continue, as DeJoy said on Wednesday that the USPS’s forthcoming strategic plan may include further provisions to slow down mail, including removing mail from air transportation and slowing down first-class mail.

    As the face and driving force behind the slow dismantling of the postal service, DeJoy has come under much fire for not only his actions as the postmaster general but also for his dealings in the private sector.

    A new report by the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington found that XPO Logistics, a transportation company where DeJoy was formerly an executive, was awarded a Christmas contract by USPS last year to help with seasonal deliveries. While it’s unclear whether or not DeJoy was fully divested from the company at the time and if the contract was routine, it raises questions about potential conflicts of interest that DeJoy may have. This contract is, after all, on top of the hundreds of millions of dollars that the USPS paid to the company while DeJoy worked there.

    But it’s not only DeJoy who’s been under scrutiny. Almost all of the members of the board have financial ties to Trump and the Republican party and, as Bush pointed out on Wednesday, have backgrounds in elite finance jobs that, in some cases, may represent conflicts of interest.

    “The positions that are filled and are not supposed to be represented by special interests actually include Wall Street bankers and fossil fuel lobbyists,” said Bush.

    “Do you see it as a problem that the board of governors of the United States Postal Service looks like a millionaire white boys club?” Bush asked DeJoy. DeJoy responded that the board isn’t currently full and said that it’s the president’s problem to solve.

    “The quicker we get some new board members from the new administration, the less we can talk about this and move on to the plan and the real problems we need to fix here,” said DeJoy in response.

    But, since the current board that chose him is made up of people who have similar interests and similar political ties to DeJoy, filling the board under the current president may not actually be in his best interest if he wants to keep his job, which he appears to think is going to happen. He said he intends to be around “a long time,” and told lawmakers at the hearing that they should “get used to [him].”

    That may not soon be the case, however. On Wednesday, Joe Biden announced three picks to fill the empty seats on the board that will add to its racial and gender diversity. Since Biden took office, there have been many calls by Democrats to fill the seats with Democrats who could oust the Trump-loyalist postmaster general.

    Biden has tapped former Deputy Postmaster General Ron Stroman, National Vote at Home Institute head Amber McReynolds and former general counsel for the American Postal Workers Union Anton Hajjar. McReynolds is a woman and Stroman and Hajjar are men of color.

    Though Biden can’t fire DeJoy directly, his picks, if confirmed, may be able to remove him. There are currently two Democrats and four Republicans on the board, partly because Republicans refused to confirm Barack Obama’s appointments, leaving Trump to fill the empty seats. If Biden’s picks are confirmed, he can create a 5-4 majority that can then vote to push DeJoy out.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Cori Bush Demands Expulsion for Every Republican Who Incited the Capitol Siege

    Rep. Cori Bush speaks to the press outside of the Hyatt Regency hotel on Capitol Hill on November 12, 2020, in Washington, D.C.

    Congresswoman Cori Bush of Missouri delivered an emotional speech on the House floor Thursday night detailing her experience of the January 6 mob invasion of the U.S. Capitol Building — which she called a “blatant, heinous, vile white supremacist attack” — and demanding that lawmakers take the basic step of holding to account those who abetted and incited the deadly violence.

    The Missouri Democrat’s remarks were part of a series of speeches organized by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) in which members of the House provided their individual perspectives of the events of last month in an effort to inform the public and bolster the pursuit consequences for all responsible, including former President Donald Trump.

    A racial justice and anti-police brutality organizer prior to her election to Congress in November, Bush said Thursday that as the pro-Trump insurrectionists broke into and began storming through the halls of the Capitol Building on January 6, she felt “like this was one of the days out there on the streets when the white supremacists would show up and start shooting at us.”

    “This was one of the days when the police would ambush us from behind, from behind trees, and from behind buildings, and all of a sudden now we’re on the ground feeling brutalized,” Bush said. “And I just remember taking a second thinking, if they touch these doors, and come anywhere near my staff, and I’m just going to be real honest about it, my thought process was: we banging to the end. I’m not letting them take out my people. And you’re not taking me out. We’ve come too far.”

    The Missouri Democrat went on to specifically address the Republicans whose incessant lies about the results of the 2020 presidential election — and efforts to overturn the results of that contest — helped fuel last month’s attack, pointing to her resolution calling for investigation and expulsion of seditious members of Congress.

    “If we cannot stand up to white supremacy in this moment, as representatives, then why did you run for office in the first place?” Bush asked. “We can’t build a better society if members are too scared to stand up and act to reject the white supremacist attack that happened right before our eyes. How can we trust that you will address the suffering that white supremacy causes on a day to day basis in the shadows if you can’t even address the white supremacy that happens right in front of you in your house? Does your silence speak to your agreement is the question.”

    “On January 3, we stood together to swear an oath to office to the Constitution,” Bush continued. “We swore to defend it against all enemies, foreign and domestic. Well, it was attacked by a domestic enemy called white supremacy and we must stand together now, today, to uphold that oath and hold every single person who helped incite it accountable.”

    Watch the full speech:

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.