RSN: Garrison Keillor | With Your Permission, I Shall Give a Short Speech

11 April 20

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Garrison Keillor | With Your Permission, I Shall Give a Short Speech

Garrison Keillor, Garrison Keillor's Website
Keillor writes: "Love your neighbor. Gather your family close. Prepare for hard times ahead. Pledge allegiance to each other. This country is so much better than it appears these days. Now is the time to come to its aid, before it sinks."

EXCERPTS:

It’s an easy life compared to what many people are going through and skipping the news lets you ignore a president who, as the British writer Nate White points out, “has no class, no charm, no coolness, no credibility, no compassion, no wit, no warmth, no wisdom, no subtlety, no sensitivity, no self-awareness, no humility, no honor and no grace” and now, in a national crisis, shows himself to be an ignorant  bumbler and con artist focused on weeding out non-yes-men in the White House.

The Founders never considered this. They provided for impeachment for high crimes and misdemeanors but not for blinkered stupidity. So we must depend on the heroes in our midst, the hospital workers and truck drivers and grocery clerks and crucial employees, the people the Queen thanked in her speech, to get us through the next few weeks or months until, God help us, the rate of infection declines and life can resume.

Our country is in trouble and it lacks coherent leadership and this obligates us to extend ourselves to each other. Love your neighbor. Gather your family close. Prepare for hard times ahead. Pledge allegiance to each other. This country is so much better than it appears these days. Now is the time to come to its aid, before it sinks.

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Rep. Adam Schiff, left, speaks with Sen. Mark Warner at an event on Capitol Hill, Jan. 10. (photo: Andrew Harnik/Shutterstock)

Top Democrat Accuses Trump of 'Purging' the Intelligence Community
Ken Dilanian, NBC News
Dilanian writes: "President Donald Trump is conducting a 'purge' of the intelligence community, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee says in a letter obtained by NBC News that echoes concerns raised by his House counterpart."
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An aerial view of Baltimore City row homes on Dec. 1, 2016, in Baltimore, Md. (photo: Patrick Smith/Getty)

Lawsuit Aims to Stop Baltimore Police From Using War-Zone Surveillance System to Spy on Residents
Alex Emmons, The Intercept
Emmons writes: "The American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit on Thursday to stop the Baltimore Police Department from testing one of the most expansive surveillance regimes in any American city, an aerial photography system capable of tracking the outdoor movement of every one of its 600,000 residents."
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Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) speaks to a crowd gathered for a campaign rally on March 7, in Chicago. (photo: Scott Olson/Getty)

Bernie Sanders' Exit Is an Indictment of Our Broken System - Not His Campaign
Astra Taylor, In These Times
Taylor writes: "Sanders' campaign was remarkable, in part, because he was trying to do two things at once: win the Democratic nomination and strengthen social movements."

Voter suppression was stronger than Bernie Sanders’ voter turnout plan. And the pandemic has made things worse.

t sucks living through a pandemic, especially a criminally mismanaged one. It also sucks to live through an epochal political mistake. Should the stars have aligned differently, Bernie Sanders might have been president. It would have been amazing for a variety of reasons. A Sanders victory, for example, would have totally upended the Democratic Party’s narrative that it is the Republicans who stand in the way of progressive and humane social policy. Centrists Democrats want to play “resistance” to Donald Trump, not a principled left wing, and many of them are no doubt breathing a big sigh of relief.

Sanders’ campaign was remarkable, in part, because he was trying to do two things at once: win the Democratic nomination and strengthen social movements. Leftists have long talked about inside and outside strategies as though they were in opposition, but the Sanders campaign made the argument that they can and must be united, difficult though this process may be. The energy and radicalism of the streets needs to be brought to bear on electoral politics and into the halls of power. That remains the needle the Left has to thread.

I’m pretty sure historians will look back kindly on Sanders. He is the rare honest public servant, and one who ran a campaign centering human dignity. While self-branded as “radical,” in reality his proposals were merely aligned with European social democracy. But given decades of anti-government propaganda and neoliberal economic doctrine, that alignment alone was transformative. Sanders has done more than anyone else to popularize policies including universal healthcare, a living wage, student debt cancellation coupled with free college, a wealth tax, workplace democracy and a Green New Deal. This has put the Left on stronger footing than it has ever been in my lifetime, even if we are not yet where we want to be.

In its own bizarre way, the current pandemic has only bolstered Sanders’ case. The virtue of his core proposition—that working Americans deserve an equitable and functioning welfare state—is becoming more apparent by the day. Reality has endorsed Bernie Sanders, as Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor has argued, though sadly the endorsement came a couple months too late. His slogan—“Not me, us,”—rings even more true in a period of pathogen-induced social distancing. We are only as safe from disease as our most vulnerable neighbors and even those who are privileged enough to shelter in place are dependent on frontline workers for their survival. Our interdependence is undeniable.

If the timing had been better, COVID-19 might have strengthened Sanders’ hand at the ballot box. Instead, it disrupted and delayed primaries across the country, putting voters in a terrible bind—go to the polls and risk catching (or unwittingly spreading) a deadly illness, or don’t vote at all. (Last year I put out a book called Democracy May Not Exist, but We’ll Miss It When It’s Gone—I had no idea how deeply the title would eventually resonate.)

In the end, Sanders did the honorable thing by bowing out and sparing voters such an agonizing choice. The fact that he was forced to make that decision is an indictment of our broken system, which claims to enable “one person, one vote” while suppressing voter turnout at every opportunity. Our country’s long lines at polling stations, especially in poor and racially diverse communities, have long been symbols of injustice. Now they take on a new, ghastly hue. This election cycle needs to push leftists to engage in voting issues and push the conversation beyond standard liberal talking points like voting-by-mail, automatic voter registration and an end to gerrymandering. We need to talk about safe and secure online voting, turning election day into election month, and more systemic reforms including ranked choice voting, making voting mandatory (as it is in many other developed countries) and experimenting with the use of sortition (random selection of political officials) and citizens’ assemblies.

Sanders’ big gamble was to bank on a boost in turnout among so-called “low propensity” voters—the folks who tend to stay home at election time. Unfortunately, though he earned the overwhelming support of young and diverse voters, this wager didn’t pay off the way many of us hoped. We need to reflect on why this strategy failed while also taking stock of the challenges ahead. In the coming months, electoral participation is likely to be even lower than the typically abysmal rates—something that suits powerful incumbents just fine.

It’s tempting to give up on electoral politics, but that would be the wrong move and would play into the hands of those (Republican and Democrat) eager to see the Left disengage. The Left needs to continue its quest for political power, building on the example of bold fighters like Senator Sanders, Congresswomen Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, as well as local politicians such as Durham, North Carolina’s Jillian Johnson and Seattle’s Kshama Sawant. In the coming months we can still get behind inspiring candidates like Nikil Saval who is running for state legislature in Pennsylvania, Cori Bush who is running for the U.S. House of Representatives in Missouri, Jabari Brisport for New York’s state senate and Sandy Nurse for city council in New York City. We need these folks to win now more than ever.

Beating Donald Trump is, of course, imperative. But that doesn’t mean we need to treat Joe Biden with kid gloves. He must make concessions to the Left and earn our votes. An emerging coalition of young movement leaders are already making demands on the Biden campaign, insisting that he adopt a range of progressive policy positions that matter to the younger generation. Their initiative deserves support. The Debt Collective, a union for debtors I helped found, will also be pushing him to commit to canceling all student debt—a move that makes even more fiscal sense given the economic disaster unfolding around us. Biden is already making overtures in this direction, but has further to go and must be pressured.

Important as it may be, making demands of Biden is low hanging fruit. The real takeaway from this primary is that we need to get organized. Our policies may be broadly popular, but it doesn’t add up to much if we aren’t acting collectively and strategically. As longtime activist Yotam Marom recently wrote, “There is no skipping ahead. Elections are not how our people will take power. They will be, when we are strong enough, the expression of the power we have already taken.”

What does that mean in practice? It means we need to band together around our common interests so we can interrupt business as usual and demand concessions. Join or start a union. Find a local Sunrise hub. Start or support a rent strike in your city. Sign up for the ongoing student debt strike. Log on to a local Indivisible meeting. Start paying dues to the Democratic Socialists of America or the Debt Collective. Run for office. As the brilliant labor organizer Jane McAlevey always says, there are no shortcuts to building power for regular people. This is nitty gritty work that has to be done relationship by relationship, day by day.

Like so many others, I didn’t just want Sanders to “change the discourse” or “win the ideological war.” I wanted him to win the election. But I also knew it was an incredible longshot. We’ve made progress, even if we haven’t reached our goal. The fact that his campaign got as far as it did signals a massive sea change. A democratic socialist can win millions of votes in America. A decade ago I never would have believed such a thing to be possible, and that’s our new foundation to build from.

History will look back kindly on Sanders. The question is how generations to come will look back on the rest of us—the “us” of the Sanders campaign’s rousing slogan. Let’s make the future proud.

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'I didn't account for how dramatically Covid-19 would alter my life as an inmate.' (photo: David Madison/Getty)

I'm in Prison. I May Never Get to See My Family Again Due to Coronavirus
Kenneth Hogan, Guardian UK
Hogan writes: "So far the authorities have issued no information on when the prison will return to normal operation."
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A boy carries a wheel barrel full of wood to heat his rural mobile home in freezing temperatures during the coronavirus pandemic on the Navajo reservation on March 27, 2020, in Cameron, Arizona. (photo: Gina Ferazzi/Getty)

Native Americans Were Promised $40 Million to Fight the Coronavirus, but Members of the Navajo Nation Are Afraid It's Too Little, Too Late
Isaac Scher, Business Insider
Scher writes: "COVID-19 cases are surging among the Navajo community."

 

hree weeks ago, the Navajo Nation did not have a single case of COVID-19. But confirmed cases are now surging. On Tuesday, the Navajo health department reported its worst day yet: 42 new cases in 24 hours, bringing the total to 426. 

The viral outbreak now looms over the 27,000-square-mile reservation and its 150,000 residents, who refer to the disease as Dikos Ntsaaígíí-19. Thus far, 20 reservation residents have died from the disease. In New Mexico, a state where much of the Navajo land is located, the non-reservation death toll stands at 16. 

The Navajo Nation is awaiting emergency funds from the March 6 coronavirus aid package, which allotted $40 million to American Indian and Alaska Native communities, but does not know when it will get them. According to President Jonathan Nez, the reservation's coronavirus peak could be one month away. Citing bureaucratic obstacles and delays, the need for aid is urgent – and yet unmet.  

"We're barely getting bits and pieces," Nez told the New York Times on Thursday. "You have counties, municipalities, already taking advantage of these funds, and tribes are over here writing our applications and turning it in and waiting weeks to get what we need."  

Nation officials have implemented a curfew to limit the spread of the virus, and the Arizona National Guard airlifted masks, gowns, and other equipment to Kayenta, a town in Navajo County, Arizona. It also erected field hospitals in Chinle and Tuba City, both in Arizona.  

'We're already the poster child for the most vulnerable populations'

And the Indian Health Service (IHS), which serves 2.5 million American Indians and Alaska Natives, has received inadequate funding since its inception in 1955. 

"We're already the poster child for the most vulnerable populations in this country," Stacy Bohlen, head of the National Indian Health Board, told Politico. "This is not the place you want to skimp on resources if you want to hold the tide on this disease."

American Indians and Alaska Natives have a disproportionately higher chance of living in poverty, being uninsured, and having underlying health complications, according to the Department of Health and Human Services. 

The IHS has 71 ventilators and 33 intensive-care unit beds at its 24 hospitals in the Navajo Nation, the Wall Street Journal reported. 

The Navajo Nation said it has 170 hospital beds, 13 ICU beds, 52 isolation rooms, and 28 ventilators. Between the Nation and the IHS, demand for medical equipment could significantly outpace supply.

"When you look at the health disparities in Indian Country — high rates of diabetes, cancer, heart disease, asthma and then you combine that with the overcrowded housing situation where you have a lot of people in homes with an elder population who may be exposed or carriers — this could be like a wildfire on a reservation and get out of control in a heartbeat," Kevin Allis, chief executive of the National Congress of American Indians, told the Washington Post.

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The moon sets over the border fence between the U.S. and Mexico on March 14, 2017, in Hidalgo, Texas. (photo: John Moore/Getty)

Trump Signs Executive Order to Mine the Moon for Minerals
Jordan Davidson, EcoWatch
Davidson writes: "In the midst of a global pandemic, President Donald Trump found time earlier this week to sign an executive order for U.S. companies to mine the moon's mineral resources."

 

n the midst of a global pandemic, President Donald Trump found time earlier this week to sign an executive order for U.S. companies to mine the moon's mineral resources, according to Newsweek. 

The executive order makes it clear that the administration does not view space and celestial bodies as global commons, allowing for mining operations without any international treaties, as The Guardian reported.

"Outer space is a legally and physically unique domain of human activity, and the United States does not view space as a global commons," the order, called Encouraging International Support for the Recovery and Use of Space Resources, states.

According to Mining Technology, the order states that commercial partners participate in an "innovative and sustainable program" headed by the U.S. to "lead the return of humans to the Moon for long-term exploration and utilization, followed by human missions to Mars and other destinations." The document adds that successful long-term exploration of space will require commercial entities to recover and use resources, including certain minerals, in outer space.

While the order specifically noted that a return to the moon would allow the country to explore and exploit lunar minerals, it implied a future commercialization of the solar system would apply to "the Moon, Mars, and other celestial bodies," as The Palm Springs Desert Sun reported.

The U.S. never signed the 1979 moon treaty, which states that non-scientific use of space resources must be governed by international regulations. Then in 2015, Congress passed a law to allow American companies and citizens to use resources from the moon and asteroids, as Newsweek reported.

As The Guardian points out, the willingness to plunder natural resources is part and parcel with the administration's policies on Earth. The Trump administration has opened up wide swaths of public land to mining and rolled back environmental regulations in an attempt to prop up the coal industry.

The federal government has routinely ignored requests to update the main law governing hardrock mining, even as the planet careens towards a climate crisis. The law has been effectively untouched since its inception in 1872, according to The Palm Springs Desert Sun.

The U.S. interests in the moon seem to revolve around building a sustainable settlement. In 2024, the Artemis 3 mission will touch down at the moon's South Pole, brining one female and one male astronaut who will become the first moonwalkers of the 21st century, as Forbes reported. While that will be a brief visit, NASA has plans for future Artemis missions to create "a sustained lunar presence" in 2028.

The Artemis program is seen as a program to create a waystation for an eventual U.S. voyage to Mars, though it's not clear how these long-term plans will work nor what role private companies like SpaceX will play, as Popular Mechanics reported.

According to Popular Mechanics, "Scientists and researchers are investing a lot of time and resources in ways astronauts will be able to gather what's around them on the moon or on Mars in order to make building materials, life-sustaining shelter, and even renewable fuel for people staying on these celestial bodies."

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