12 December 20
The Only Thing That Can Sink RSN Is “Horrible” Fundraising
Bad or poor fundraising won’t do it. For RSN to get into any kind of serious trouble the fundraising has to be flat-out horrible.
Yesterday twenty five thousand people visited Reader Supported News, 21 contributed. That must necessarily lead to a crisis.
All it takes is “reasonable” support.
Marc Ash
Founder, Reader Supported News
If you would prefer to send a check:
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12 December 20
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RSN: Marc Ash | Behind Closed Doors, the Old Biden Bashes Progressives
Marc Ash, Reader Supported News
Ash writes: "Yesterday, The Intercept posted leaked recordings from a meeting President-Elect Joe Biden had with civil rights leaders."
esterday, The Intercept posted leaked recordings from a meeting President-Elect Joe Biden had with civil rights leaders. The big takeaway is Biden’s contention that the “Defund the Police” meme was responsible for poor Democratic performance in the down-ballot races in the recent election cycle. Biden was quoted as lamenting the defund the police meme, saying it was “how they beat the living hell out of us across the country.”
Predictably, Biden blamed the Progressive wing of the Democratic party and Black Lives Matter, both groups who advocate police reform and consider defunding problematic police departments a legitimate tool for accomplishing that.
All of which misses the point of why the Democrats performed below expectations. Typically, during a presidential election cycle, the presidential candidates are expected to pull the down-ballot candidates along by presenting a vision for where the country needs to go and what needs to be done to accomplish it. The candidate whose vision best inspires the voters is most often the winner.
The 2020 campaign was a weird one, however, on a number of levels. The winner was not very inspiring at all and the loser was arguably one of the most inspiring in American history. It was Trump, not Biden, who drove record voter turnout, among Republicans and Democrats alike. You were either inspired to vote Trump in or inspired to vote Trump out, but Trump was absolutely the defining figure.
Biden’s campaign wasn’t based on a politically tangible vision. He ran on a platform of “Saving the soul of America.” Admirable but vague. An agenda of national soul salvation isn’t really something the voters can sink their teeth into as a to-do list.
The Democrats did very well in 2018 and comparatively poorly just two years later, in 2020. Conservative Democrats claimed credit in 2018 and blamed Progressives in 2020. Anyone surprised by that please raise your hand!
The reality was that, in 2018, the Democratic platform was issues-driven, saving Obamacare in the face of repeated Republican attempts to dismantle it, and in 2020 it was fear-driven, fear of another four years of Donald Trump. It was that fear and not a platform for action that defined the Democratic effort in 2020. Unsurprisingly, the Democrats got what they ordered, a defeat of Trump, but they didn’t get a policy mandate because they did not articulate one.
There is an old red-herring myth that Progressive policies terrify voters. The truth is that Progressive policies are far more likely to terrify business-friendly politicians, Republicans and Democrats alike, than voters, Republicans and Democrats alike. What has never been proven is that the Progressive outreach to conservative communities doesn’t work. In fact, it often works quite well.
When Democrats run on progressive policies and visions, they get 2018. When they run on fear and political marketing, they get 2020 if they are lucky. If they’re not lucky, they get 2016.
It’s not the voters who don’t respond to Progressive platform initiatives, it’s the political donors. Vision, outreach, and courage are what the voters respond to.
Yes. We. Can.
Marc Ash is the founder and former Executive Director of Truthout, and is now founder and Editor of Reader Supported News.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.
A supporter of U.S. president Donald Trump holds a flag in front of the Supreme Court as the court reviews a lawsuit filed by Texas seeking to undo President-elect Joe Biden's election victory in Washington, U.S., December 11, 2020. (photo: Joshua Roberts/Reuters
Supreme Court Shuts Door on Trump Election Prospects
Nina Totenberg and Barbara Sprunt, NPR
Excerpt: "The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday night rejected an eleventh hour challenge to Joe Biden's election as president."
The court's action came in a one-page order, which said the complaint was denied "for lack of standing."
Texas, supported by President Trump, tried to sue Pennsylvania, Georgia, Wisconsin, and Michigan, claiming fraud, without evidence. But in order for a state to bring a case in court, especially the Supreme Court, a state must show it has been injured. In essence, the court said Texas could not show that it was injured by the way other states conducted their elections.
"Texas has not demonstrated a judicially cognizable interest in the manner in which another State conducts its elections," the court wrote.
Justice Samuel Alito, joined by Justice Clarence Thomas, wrote that in their view the court does "not have discretion to deny the filing of a bill of complaint in a case that falls within our original jurisdiction."
But the two said that while they would have allowed the filing of the complaint, they would not have granted Trump or Texas, any of the relief they sought.
Kevin McCarthy, the top ranking Republican in the U.S. House of Representatives, had earlier in the day attached his name to 125 fellow House Republicans who supported Trump's longshot bid. McCarthy was the most notable congressman to back the suit.
On Tuesday, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued four states where Biden had been certified the winner: Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. The suit, filed directly in the Supreme Court, was styled as "an original" case, pitting one state against another.
Paxton claimed that the targeted states made changes to election procedures due to the pandemic that violated federal law. He alleged the changes enabled voter fraud. And he asked the Supreme Court to extend the Dec. 14 deadline for the Electoral College electors to cast ballots in those four states, contending more time was needed to allow investigations of the election results.
Paxton's suit came in the face of repeated findings by state officials, including Republican state officeholders, certifying the results, as well as statements by U.S. Attorney General William Barr that the Justice Department did not find evidence of widespread fraud in this year's election.
The Texas suit set in motion a cascade of legal motions at the high court. Not only did President Trump seek to join the Texas suit, so did 17 other states — all overwhelmingly won by Trump. More support would follow, including the brief filed by a majority of the GOP members of the U.S. House of Representatives.
Late Thursday the four targeted states struck back in briefs filed in the Supreme Court.
"Texas invites this court to overthrow the votes of the American people and choose the next president of the United States," wrote Georgia Attorney General Christopher Carr, chairman of the Republican Attorneys General Association. "That Faustian invitation must be firmly rejected," he said.
"Georgia did what the Constitution empowered it to do," the state's brief said. It "implemented processes for the election, administered the election in the face of logistical challenges brought on by Covid-19, and confirmed and certified the election results — again and again and again. Yet Texas has sued Georgia anyway."
Pennsylvania was equally acerbic. "The court should not abide this seditious abuse of judicial process, and should send a clear and unmistakable signal that that abuse must never be replicated," it said in its brief. And Wisconsin said the Texas bid "to nullify [Wisconsin's] choice [for president] is devoid of a legal foundation or factual basis."
It was unclear how or why Paxton, the Texas attorney general, decided to carry Trump's water in the case. Especially since all four targeted states have Republican-controlled legislatures, and to date, both state and federal courts at lower levels, including Trump-appointed judges, have found the fraud allegations baseless.
The unprecedented nature of the Paxton suit, plus the fact that the state's chief appellate lawyer, Kyle Hawkins, did not sign the Texas brief as he usually would do, has spurred speculation that Paxton is seeking a pardon. He is currently under indictment over securities fraud, and is being investigated by the FBI on bribery and abuse of power allegations.
Although the Supreme Court has jurisdiction over disputes between states, such cases are rare, and are almost exclusively confined to disputes that can't be handled by other courts, such as those over borders or water rights.
Earlier this week, the Supreme Court rejected an effort to block Pennsylvania from certifying its election results in favor of Biden. Trump distanced himself from the legal blow and hitched his wagon instead to the Texas lawsuit, calling it "the case that everyone has been waiting for."
Trump reportedly had conversations with some of the Republican attorneys general who were meeting this week in Washington, urging them to support the Texas lawsuit. And several news organizations reported that Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, had agreed to represent Trump in the event the Supreme Court had agreed to hear the case.
Initial reaction to the Texas suit, however, has been dismissive at best. Sen. John Cornyn, R- Texas, told CNN that he "frankly struggle[d] to understand the legal theory" of the suit, noting that election disputes in our system are "decided at the state and local level and not at the national level."
The Texas suit had other problems. First was the question of legal standing. Essentially, how do Texas, or the states joining it, have legal standing to complain about the procedures for voting and counting votes in other states?
Next, the Texas lawsuit asked the Supreme Court to delay the vote in four targeted states, but as professor Edward Foley of the Moritz College of Law observed, the date for electors to cast their votes is set by federal law under the Constitution, which requires that the day "shall be the same throughout the United States."
The date chosen by Congress this year is Dec. 14.
Rick Hasen, an election law expert at the University of California, Irvine called Paxton's lawsuit "dangerous garbage."
"This is a press release masquerading as a lawsuit," he wrote.
"It's too late for the Supreme Court to grant a remedy even if the claims were meritorious (they are not)," he wrote.
On Friday evening after the decision, Hasen wrote that the fact that "courts across the nation, with both Democratic and Republican judges, held the line for the rule of law" is "something really to celebrate."
Benjamin Ginsburg, a longtime election law guru for the Republican Party, told CNN on Wednesday that he didn't think "for an instant" that the Supreme Court would consider taking up the case.
That said, with three Trump appointees on the court, and a newly strengthened 6-3 majority of conservative Republican-appointed justices, the president apparently believed that the Supreme Court would view the case differently than did "election experts." He was wrong.
Trump later weighed in on the decision on Twitter. "The Supreme Court really let us down," he wrote. "No Wisdom, No Courage!"
Barring unforeseen events, the result of the court's action is that on Monday, the Electoral College delegates in each state will cast their ballots, and Joe Biden will formally become the president-elect, with only one more step, in the House of Representatives where the Electoral College votes are certified, before he is sworn in on January 20th.
Dr. Stephen Hahn, commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. (photo: Graeme Jennings/AP)
White House Apparently Threatened to Fire FDA Chief Unless Pfizer Vaccine Was Approved
Kaitlan Collins, Kevin Liptak and Jim Acosta, CNN
Excerpt: "White House chief of staff Mark Meadows told Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Dr. Stephen Hahn he needed to grant an emergency use authorization for Pfizer/BioNTech's coronavirus vaccine by the end of Friday, and if not, he would have to resign."
On the eve of the FDA’s all but certain approval of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine, a Trump administration official cast a totally unnecessary pall of public doubt over the process by threatening to fire the FDA director if the vaccine were not approved by the end of the day on Friday. The FDA appears to have done its job well under high-stress circumstances. The vaccine is in fact now approved and, given the relevant scientific and public health parameters, there is every reason to believe it should have been. - MA/RSN
Another person familiar with matter, who also confirmed the demand that the vaccine be authorized by the end of Friday, said President Donald Trump has been venting about the FDA chief since the vaccine was rolled out in the UK earlier this week.
The FDA announced the authorization late Friday night.
Meadows and Hahn had a call Friday morning. A White House official said they do not comment on private conversations but the chief "regularly requests updates on the progress toward a vaccine."
Hahn quickly disputed the description of the conversation, which was first reported by The Washington Post, but the news is likely to raise additional questions about the extent to which Trump administration political interests are involved with the vaccine authorization process, and could undermine public confidence in the effort.
"This is an untrue representation of the phone call with the Chief of Staff. The FDA was encouraged to continue working expeditiously on Pfizer-BioNTech's (emergency use authorization) request," Hahn said in a statement Friday afternoon. "FDA is committed to issuing this authorization quickly, as we noted in our statement this morning."
A White House official familiar with the conversation between Meadows and Hahn said it's doubtful the FDA commissioner would have actually been fired. The blunt warning from the chief of staff that he might as well resign if Pfizer's emergency use authorization wasn't granted by Friday was a larger sign of the President's frustration, this person said.
Public health experts have been fearful all along that White House officials would put undue pressure on the authorization process and, in turn, compromise public confidence in the vaccine, a source close to the White House coronavirus task force told CNN.
This source said it's unclear why Meadows would make such a threat so late in the process, at a time when the authorization was expected imminently.
Dr. Moncef Slaoui, the head of the US government's effort to develop a vaccine against Covid-19, told CNN's Jake Tapper on "The Lead" Friday he was concerned about the reports' potential effect on undermining confidence in the vaccine's safety.
"Yes, I think there is an opportunity there for people to see undue pressure if the story is right," he said while also defending the FDA's authorization process, which he described as "an effective, transparent, thorough, in-depth review."
Trump has grown impatient with the authorization process in recent weeks, with one person familiar with the President's thinking telling CNN that Trump wants to rush out as many vaccines as possible before he leaves office.
On Friday, he called the FDA "a big, old, slow turtle."
"Get the dam vaccines out NOW, Dr. Hahn @SteveFDA," Trump tweeted. "Stop playing games and start saving lives!!!"
President-elect Joe Biden, in remarks Friday afternoon at an event announcing additional top administration picks, did not address the news of the Meadows demand to Hahn but urged the public to have faith in the vaccine and expressed gratitude "to the scientists and the public experts who evaluated its safety and efficiency, free from political influence."
"I want to make it clear to the public, you should have confidence in this -- there is no political influence," Biden said. "These are first-rate scientists taking their time looking at all of the elements that need to be looked at. Scientific integrity led us to this point."
Video shared on social media shows a car driving through a crowd of protesters in Times Square on Thursday. (photo: Datainput)
6 Injured After Driver Rams Into Black Lives Matter Protest in New York City
Stephanie K. Baer, BuzzFeed
Baer writes: "Multiple people were struck by a vehicle during a protest Friday afternoon in New York City."
The driver of the vehicle was taken into custody Friday afternoon.
It was not immediately clear how many people were injured, but preliminary information indicated that their injuries were not life-threatening, a spokesperson for the New York Police Department told BuzzFeed News. It was also not clear if the collisions were intentional.
The incident occurred at about 4:08 p.m. at East 39th Street and Third Avenue. Officials initially said demonstrators had gathered in the area to call for justice for George Floyd, the 46-year-old Black man whose killing by Minneapolis police sparked global protests against police brutality and racial injustice. However, local outlets reported that protesters were marching in solidarity with ICE detainees who are on a hunger strike at the Bergen County Jail in New Jersey.
The driver of the vehicle has been apprehended, officials said.
Video of the scene showed a large presence of first responders in the intersection.
A witness told NBC New York that a BMW had "sped through" the intersection.
"I hear people screaming in the front. I look behind me. The woman is plowing through. I run out of the way," she said, adding that she saw "bodies flying" and had to dodge a bike that "came flying for [her] face."
'The ban added to the country's growing teacher deficit.' (photo: Ran Zheng/The Intercept)
Trump's Ban on Foreign Workers Has Left Schools With Teacher Shortages
Hannah Critchfield and Liz Donovan, The Intercept
Critchfield writes: "When Darlin Delgado arrived in the Philippines in January, she was there as both an educator and a parent."
Even as the ban will expire on December 31, some school districts that rely on foreign teachers will still have vacancies next semester.
A high school principal from Rancho High School in Las Vegas, she’d traveled over 7,000 miles in search of qualified teachers for special education students like her son.
“Our mentality when we’re there is hiring the best for all our kids,” said Delgado, who makes this recruitment trip alongside other principals in her district each year. “They have to have a master’s degree and at least three years of teaching experience in the Philippines for them to come — if you’re a special ed teacher trained here in the United States, you don’t have to have that.”
In the United States, special education teachers are in short supply, as they are for other essential subjects like math and science. For years, public school districts in states with low teacher pay across the country have relied on foreign workers for these hard-to-fill positions.
The Clark County School District was on track to bring more than 140 teachers, most of them special education instructors, from abroad ahead of the start of this academic year. Two were headed to Delgado’s school.
But in June, President Donald Trump abruptly froze visas for temporary foreign workers, leaving teachers with pending contracts in limbo. The administration justified the ban by declaring that it would prevent foreign workers from taking American jobs during an unemployment crisis fueled by the Covid-19 pandemic. The move was consistent with previous efforts of White House adviser Stephen Miller — the architect behind the president’s anti-immigration policies — who has for years sought to eliminate or significantly limit foreign work visas.
Administrators like Delgado were caught off-guard, as they were actively recruiting teachers and already scrambling to adapt to an academic year amid a pandemic. It cut the number of foreign workers hired on the country’s most common teaching visa in half nationwide. The ban added to the country’s growing teacher deficit, leaving many schools with dozens — sometimes hundreds — of unfilled positions at the start of the school year.
Those teachers would have served some of America’s most vulnerable kids, administrators say. “Eighty-eight of the teachers that we had offered jobs to are special education teachers, which is a critical shortage, not only in Nevada, but nationally,” said Jesus Jara, superintendent of the Clark County School District.
The ban on J-1 visas — the federal government’s largest visa program, often used as a tool to recruit laborers for hard-to-fill jobs — is in effect until December 31 and was temporarily blocked by the courts on October 1. The ruling, from federal Judge Jeffrey S. White at the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, immediately allowed plaintiffs in the case to begin bringing foreign employees from abroad. But by then, the damage had already been done. Nearly six months after Trump’s announcement, as the end of his term approaches, some of these positions are still open. Other vacancies have been resolved with a Band-Aid solution — through hiring long-term substitutes or unlicensed teachers.
“When the president signed the executive order,” said Jara, “it really closed a teacher pipeline and created vacancies in high-need areas.”
“We Don’t Have the Candidates”
The effects of Trump’s visa ban reverberated through public schools around the country.
In September 2019, the Ector County Independent School District in Odessa, Texas, of “Friday Night Lights” fame, had 69 teachers from the Philippines, India, Spain, and Jamaica in its classrooms. This year, the district planned to add 43 more.
Fifteen hundred miles away in Fayetteville, North Carolina, the Cumberland County district sought to hire 78 new teachers from Venezuela, Colombia, Peru, and Mexico, adding to its roster of more than 300 instructors hired from abroad last year.
Louisiana’s public schools were planning to hire 73 foreign language instructors, mostly from French-speaking countries, including France, Belgium, and Canada.
And Denver Public Schools, in Colorado’s capital, anticipated bringing on 13 Spanish teachers from the Iberian Peninsula.
Last year, there were 3,454 teachers hired through the J-1 visa, according to Michael J. Cavey, a spokesperson for the State Department, which oversees the exchange program. As of September 2020, when schools launched into their new academic year — many remotely or with hybrid learning — just 1,620 J-1 teachers were in U.S. classrooms.
International teachers already in the United States with existing contracts — a J-1 teaching visa is valid three to five years — were not affected by the ban. But many new would-be teachers who had received job offers from districts across the country never made it to the United States. And there aren’t enough American teachers to fill these open jobs — a combination of increasingly low teacher pay in many districts and fewer young people entering the teaching field after graduating college, school leaders said.
“We’re going to be half the semester in and not have teachers,”said Gerald Hernandez Jr., principal of E.E. Miller Elementary School in Cumberland County, North Carolina, which still had two vacancies for Spanish instruction when the school opened its doors in September. “We don’t have the pool of candidates in North Carolina to fill the positions, so it’s difficult to find someone.”
Children Falling Behind
The proclamation was met with resistance from Congress, including Rep. Dana Titus, a former educator and Democrat from Nevada, whose children attend the Clark County School District.
“These teachers aren’t competing with people who want these jobs; they’re filling jobs that are empty, that nobody’s taken, that we need,” Titus told The Intercept. “In the meantime, you’ve got children who are falling behind, especially those with special needs.”
Titus’s office drafted a letter to the president asking that exemptions be made for foreign teachers in Las Vegas.
“They’re letting in health care workers from foreign countries, but not teachers,” said Titus. “It just doesn’t make any sense.”
In Louisiana, officials were flabbergasted by the proclamation. The state, which considers French a “heritage language,” relies on foreign teachers to run classrooms in French-immersion public schools. At the time of the announcement, they had already recruited 73 teachers, set to arrive later that summer and head classrooms of some 2,000 students combined.
“As soon as that proclamation came out, it was immediately clear that this was a huge issue for us in that those J-1 visas are absolutely the ones that we rely on for the teachers who come to work in the French-immersion system across the state,” said Matt Mick, communications officer of the Council for the Development of French in Louisiana, or CODOFIL, a state agency under the Office of Cultural Development.
Since students were already adapting to virtual learning because of the pandemic, administrators were concerned about the potential for even a slight delay in native French immersion. “When you add that on top, you’re looking at a pretty, pretty significant impact,” Mick said.
CODOFIL lobbied the Departments of State, Homeland Security, and Labor for an exception to the ban. The exception was granted in July because of CODOFIL’s existing exchange programs under a bilateral agreement with the French government to bring in workers under the J-1 program. When asked whether any other school districts had been granted a similar exception, a State Department spokesperson said that “districts other than Louisiana public schools hosted J-1 teachers between July 15 and October 1,” but would not specify how many exceptions were granted.
Because of the waiver, 49 French teachers and 21 Spanish teachers were granted visas and allowed to travel to Louisiana in time for the start of the school year. Other districts that were hiring for subjects like mathematics, science, and special education were still unable to recruit from abroad.
“Blow to Our Public School System”
Some schools opted to hire less qualified or unlicensed teachers to alleviate the gap created by the loss of this foreign teacher pipeline.
“That’s the compromise I had to make,” said Hernandez of North Carolina. “I’m not hiring a certified candidate, I’m hiring somebody that pretty much qualifies to be a teacher assistant.”
Joseph Uy, principal of Gwendolyn Woolley Elementary School in Clark County School District, who had traveled to the Philippines with Delgado, has filled his open positions with long-term substitutes in the past. These teachers, however, don’t have the experience of the foreign teachers he planned to hire and require assistants to keep up with the needs of the students, he said. “I’m having three people do the job of one.”
Delgado knows firsthand how disruptive an inconsistency in the classroom can be for students like her son. Before the district started recruiting teachers under the J-1 program in 2017, her son spent several years in elementary school under instruction of a long-term substitute. “Obviously as a parent, I can tell you that that’s a challenge for a student that has special needs,” she said. “You need routines.”
The October 1 ruling reversing the ban made it possible for some districts to hire teachers that will be in U.S. classrooms by January.
But this late in the school year, bringing over enough teachers remains a challenge. About 40 of the teachers the Clark County School District originally planned to hire declined their delayed offer to teach in the United States.
The district will still have more than 150 vacancies when students return from winter break, according to administrators.
“[The decision] was a real blow to our public school system,” said Jara, the school’s superintendent. “And ultimately, it’s negatively impacting our children.”
A demonstration in Malaga, Spain, last month in support of Sahrawi rights in Western Sahara, a former Spanish colony. (photo: Jorge Guerrero/AFP/Getty Images)
US Recognizes Morocco's Occupation of Western Sahara in Latest Betrayal of Sahrawi People
Democracy Now!
Excerpt: "We continue to examine the U.S.-brokered deal between Morocco and Israel to normalize relations. As part of the deal, the U.S. will become the first country in the world to recognize Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara, which Morocco has occupied since 1975 in defiance of the international community."
orocco and Israel have agreed to establish diplomatic relations has part of a U.S.-brokered deal, Morocco the fourth Arab nation to establish ties with Israel since August. As part of the deal, the United States agreed to become the first country in the world to recognize Morocco’s sovereignty over occupied Western Sahara — what many consider to be Africa’s last colony. It’s due to open a consulate in the occupied city of Dakhla, where there are few, if any, U.S. citizens. Morocco has occupied much of the resource-rich territory since 1975 in defiance of the United Nations and the international community. Thousands of Sahrawis have been tortured, imprisoned, killed and disappeared while resisting the Moroccan occupation. Following Morocco’s invasion in 1975, about half the Sahrawi population fled to neighboring Algeria, where they’ve lived for the past 45 years in refugee camps in the middle of the desert. The deal comes less than a month after a nearly three-decade-old ceasefire ended in Western Sahara.
Joining us from Spain is Mouloud Said, a representative in Washington of the Polisario Front, the Sahrawi liberation movement seeking independence. Also with us, in the United States, Stephen Zunes, professor of politics and international studies at the University of San Francisco, the co-author of Western Sahara: War, Nationalism, and Conflict Irresolution.
We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Stephen Zunes, if you can make that link between Morocco recognizing Israel and the U.S., in exchange, it seems, officially accepting Morocco’s annexation of the occupied Western Sahara?
STEPHEN ZUNES: It was clearly a quid pro quo. Though the United States has been, in effect, supporting Morocco’s occupation for many years, just as it has been supporting Israel’s occupation for many years, Trump, in both cases, has gone well beyond what previous administrations of both parties have done, and violated long-standing international legal norms — in the case of Palestine, recognizing Jerusalem as solely Israel’s capital, moving the U.S. Embassy there, and recognizing Israel’s illegal annexation of Syria’s Golan Heights.
In the case of Morocco, it’s even worse, because it’s not just talking about recognizing an illegal annexation of a portion of a country, but an annexation of an entire country. And in the case of Western Sahara, remember, Western Sahara, the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic, has been recognized by over 80 nations around the world and is a full member of the African Union. In a sense, Trump is now recognizing the takeover of one African nation by another. Again, this is unprecedented, since the signing of the United Nations Charter, for the United States — or any nation, really — to recognize such a brazen violation of international legal norms.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to go to Madrid, Spain, to get the response of Mouloud Said. You represent the Polisario Front in Washington, D.C., though you’re in Spain right now. Can you talk about what this means, the Trump administration doing something that has not been done by any country in the world, recognizing the annexation of Western Sahara? What does this mean for the Sahrawi people?
MOULOUD SAID: Good morning, Amy, and thank you for having me.
The Sahrawi government condemns and regrets this decision taken by President Trump, which breaks away from all the previous administration policies. But this decision is not going to change the facts that the Sahrawi Republic is a full member of the African Union, that Morocco occupies part of this territory. And it’s not going to change the nature of the conflict. This decision, it was done without advancing any legal argument, because they will not find it anywhere. And Western Sahara is not just a piece of real estate that President Trump can give; it’s a territory that belongs to its people and a full-fledged member of a continental organization. Like was very well said by Professor Zunes, this is the first time that a country is trying to ignore another member state, as if the African Union did not exist, as if the Sahrawi Republic was not a member of the African Union. And so, this is really something that we condemn this position, but it’s not going to change on anything the situation, because the Sahrawi people are going to continue with their struggle. We are not going to stop. And this is — you said this is the first power that recognizes; it’s the first power that violates international law, bluntly, in the Western Sahara. And since it’s a violation of international law, it is not going to have any effect on the issue.
By the way, already the European Union came up with a statement disassociating itself from this decision, and the United Nations. And I want to take this opportunity to thank the senators that acted so promptly, and members of Congress, in particular Senator Jim Inhofe; Senator Patrick Leahy; and Eliot — Congressman Eliot Engel, the chairman of the international relations committee; Congresswoman Betty McCollum; and others, that disassociated themselves, and some of them even condemned this kind of decision.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to go right now inside occupied Western Sahara to Laayoune to speak with Nazha El-Khalidi, who is inside her home, where many are in their homes, but police have laid siege to the area. And, Nazha, I wanted to welcome you to Democracy Now! You’re a journalist, as well, with Équipe Média. You’ve been arrested by the Moroccans. Can you respond to the Trump administration recognizing Morocco’s sovereignty over your territory and what this means for you? What is the situation inside?
NAZHA EL-KHALIDI: Thank you very much, Amy Goodman. And thanks to Democracy Now! for talking to us and give to the Sahrawi activists from the occupied territory of Western Sahara the opportunity to share their stories and to share testimonies of victims.
Regarding the situation in the occupied territory, there is a major crackdown on the Sahrawi rights, on the Sahrawi — on the freedom of speech, on the freedom of movement, on the freedom of assembly. Especially after Morocco violated the ceasefire and the wars start again, Morocco started a wave of arrests against Sahrawi activists in the occupied territory, the oppression and the repression against the Sahrawi peaceful movements raising day by day, and Morocco keep arresting people. Now there are dozens of Sahrawi activists who are behind bars in Moroccan prisons. The people in Western Sahara are not allowed to express themselves. There are no press agencies on the ground that can document the violations against Sahrawi human beings in here. Morocco is continue closing the territory on front of the international observers, international activists and international journalists. So, we determine and we describe Western Sahara as a black hole, as it was described by RSF reports two years ago and by international organizations. It’s completely closed, and we are suffering in silence.
Regarding the Donald Trump recognition, we believe that this will not erase our legitimate right to freedom and independence. Sahrawi people is continue struggling. And we are not surprised, since we have been betrayed by the international community for over 30 years, where we were waiting for a peaceful solution from the United Nations, that we have been promised by the United Nations. There is a mission to organize a fair referendum and to offer the opportunity to Sahrawi people to vote and to determine their own future by themselves. So we are not surprised by, like, the recognition from Trump. And I think the status of Western Sahara is already determined by international law, so not by a tweet of a president who is already on his way out. So, the international law is clear and is set out in successive United Nations Security Council resolutions that were authored by the U.S. itself, and that Western Sahara’s status will be determined by a referendum.
We hope the incoming Biden administration will return the U.S. to a nation that respects long-standing international law and that will use its influence to encourage the meaningful — the United Nations-led peace talks on Western Sahara that have been neglected. We hope that the new U.S. administration will resolve the long-standing conflict in Western Sahara and help deliver what the Sahrawi people have long been promised by the United Nations, which is a promise to give them a simple right, which is the vote for our freedom. So, the Donald Trump recognition will not stop the Sahrawi struggle and will not end the Sahrawi beliefs in achieving legal rights and fighting for legal rights, which is independence and establish their state on their land.
AMY GOODMAN: Finally, I wanted to ask Steve Zunes about this latest report in Reuters that talks about the U.S. planning to sell — negotiating the sale of at least four sophisticated large aerial drones to Morocco — not clear whether it is related to this, though it’s coming at the same time. And you have the longtime supporter of Israel, the outgoing congressman, head of the House Foreign Relations Committee, Eliot Engel, while applauding the relationship between Jerusalem and Rabat, warned the Trump administration against casting aside legitimate, multilateral avenues of conflict resolution, doing something no other country in the world has done. Professor Zunes, you have 30 seconds.
STEPHEN ZUNES: The drone sale was of concern, because it’s illegal for the United States to support — to provide invading armies with this kind of sophisticated equipment. But now that Western Sahara is recognized as part of Morocco, suddenly it’s an internal conflict. And so, this paves the way for this kind of equipment, which could be used in counterinsurgency situations.
In terms of Engel, it’s important that someone who is so strongly for Israel is willing to break with the administration on this point. The question is what Biden is going to do, because Biden could reverse the annexation — recognition of the annexation with a stroke of a pen. But he’d be under a lot of pressure because then Morocco could use this as an excuse to nullify their recognition of Israel. So, Biden is going to be in a lot of pressure by pro-Israel groups not to rescind Trump’s order. So, it’s good that you have somebody like Engel who is challenging Trump’s decision.
AMY GOODMAN: And finally, Mouloud Said, the status of the ceasefire between Morocco and the Polisario?
MOULOUD SAID: Since the Moroccans invaded — I mean, crossed the buffer zone — and this was stated by the president of the Sahrawi Republic, Mr. Brahim Ghali — we’d say that the ceasefire was over, and therefore we are back to square one, to the situation in which we found ourselves in 1991. So right now there is the war going on from the south of Western Sahara to the north, from Guerguerat to Mahbes. So, the ceasefire is not anymore. It’s over. Now it’s just a war that will continue until the final liberation of the remaining part of the territory. And it’s sad that this decision by Mr. Trump comes on the day of the international — the day that everybody was celebrating the human rights, the anniversary of the Human Rights Declaration.
AMY GOODMAN: Mouloud Said, I want to thank you for being with us, representative of the Polisario Front in Washington, D.C. Professor Stephen Zunes from the University of San Francisco. And, Sahrawi journalist Nazha El-Khalidi, thank you so much for being with us from occupied Laayoune.
Extinction Rebellion members in London. (photo: Crispin Hughes/Panos Pictures/Redux)
To Force Climate Action, We Need More Than Just Protests
Edward Carver, Jacobin
Carver writes: "In November 2018, two climate activist groups crashed onto the public stage."
Two years ago, the Sunrise Movement and Extinction Rebellion both captured media attention through bold direct action. Since then, Sunrise has combined protest with political work challenging fossil-fuel interests. XR and other groups tepid about electoral politics should do the same.
In Washington, DC, the Sunrise Movement occupied Nancy Pelosi’s office, demanding a Green New Deal (GND). In central London, Extinction Rebellion (XR) seized five bridges, blocking traffic with their camps and getting arrested at an even faster rate than Sunrise.
A month earlier, an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report had declared that humanity had only twelve years to act to limit ecological catastrophe. Student strikes led by Greta Thunberg were kicking off across the world; it felt like a new era in climate activism.
Both Sunrise and XR engage in nonviolent direct action, and much of their activity is run by semiautonomous local chapters: Sunrise has over four hundred “hubs” in the United States, while XR has nearly five hundred in Britain and dozens of other countries. Yet they follow starkly different approaches to politics. XR has stayed mostly on the “outside,” pushing for change through protests and cultural renewal, while Sunrise has combined such actions with direct political involvement.
In last December’s British election, XR sat on the sidelines, proclaiming itself “beyond politics” even as parties with a decent climate plan challenged a right-wing prime minister with an abysmal climate record. By contrast, Sunrise mobilized to help oust Donald Trump, a climate change denier, even though the alternative candidate was uninspiring.
XR’s abstention can’t be blamed for the Labour Party’s loss, and Sunrise played a relatively small role in Donald Trump’s defeat. But Sunrise’s electoral efforts have helped propel many pro-climate candidates to victory — and pushed Democrats to take bolder policy stands. Beyond its short-term results, Sunrise has begun to build a political machine that could be a model for other climate activist groups including XR and Fridays for Future (FFF), the main organization behind the school strikes.
XR and FFF are larger and better-known internationally than Sunrise, and this makes it all the more important that they channel their energies strategically. With the planet heating up and less than a decade to act, it’s time for climate activist groups to convert their disruptive capacity into concrete political influence.
The Sunrise Machine
Though run by young people, Sunrise has matured into a political force. Its founders cut their teeth on pipeline and divestment campaigns in the mid-2010s, and they were inspired by Bernie Sanders’s 2016 primary run. They launched Sunrise in 2017 as a hybrid group that would protest and do electoral organizing, including by campaigning for pro-GND, left-wing candidates.
It recently helped New York’s Jamaal Bowman and Missouri’s Cori Bush to upset primary wins over establishment Democrats in blue seats, ensuring their election to Congress. Sunrise also produces savvy ads, such as one that dubbed Senator Ed Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat who faced an establishment challenger, the “Green New Dealmaker.”
After Sanders’s defeat, Sunrise could have shut down its operations. Instead, it kept building them to beat Trump and help down-ballot candidates. This summer, Sunrise executive director Varshini Prakash was invited to join the Biden-Sanders unity task force on the climate. She helped convince Biden’s team that a strong climate platform was a political winner, especially with young voters. Now, Sunrise is in a position to pressure him to follow through on his declaration that climate is his “number one issue.”
Ahead of November’s election, Sunrise reached millions of young voters by phone and through social media. It helped fuel a surge of youth turnout; eighteen- to twenty-nine year olds were a bigger share of the electorate, even as the number of elderly voters also increased.
Young people ultimately put Biden over the top, with “net youth votes for Biden” exceeding his margin of victory in decisive swing states. Meanwhile, the GND had success down-ballot. Ninety-two of ninety-three House cosponsors of the GND resolution won reelection, including four in swing districts. (There are 101 cosponsors in the 435-member House, but several are retiring; fourteen out of a hundred Senators cosponsor the resolution.)
Sunrise’s decision to go all in for Biden was controversial on the Left, but it helped lead to immediate, consequential change, however insufficient. Its bolder efforts may take more time to pay off. Targeting “Red to Green New Deal” seats, it campaigned for eight left-wing candidates taking on Republican incumbents in Congress — but none came close to winning.
Still, it was always going to be difficult to go from zero to GND in just two years. And Sunrise is helping to build networks and institutional capacity for the future.
A Not So Rebellious Rebellion
From the start, XR’s orientation has been rather different. One cofounder, Gail Bradbrook, is a scientist and former NGO project manager. A miner’s daughter, she today lives in Stroud, a prosperous English town with a bobo vibe; she has said she was inspired to start XR after using psychedelics in Latin America.
In 2018, before the bridge-taking in London, Bradbrook and others started giving a “Heading for Extinction” talk across Britain. It was heavy on science and light on power dynamics. “Climate change is not a political issue, it’s a moral issue,” they said.
Some of the same messaging has endured. Last year, my local XR chapter proclaimed itself “A-political” and “neutral” on social media, arguing for “cross-party” solutions. The press team recently wrote on Twitter that XR was “not a socialist organization.”
This approach has doubtless succeeded in drawing in some people who wouldn’t join a left-wing organization or are alienated from politics. It’s also unleashed a surge of energy, tapping into a talent for spectacle among its activists.
Before protests, they “paint the streets” with brightly colored posters, flags, and badges, many adorned with XR’s signature hourglass. During protests, they samba, hula-hoop, and move through synchronized “mourning” rituals (for the dying natural world), all while the police try to remove them from the streets.
Last year, its protests helped prompt the UK parliament to declare a climate emergency and strengthen its decarbonization plan. Yet this didn’t mean substantive climate action. In general, XR hasn’t had the concentrated or measurable political influence that Sunrise has.
On a given week, when major actions aren’t on, XR activists might create community gardens, lobby local councils, or form tree protection brigades at construction sites. This is laudable work, but not enough to bring the drastic structural change that’s needed. XR activists call themselves “rebels” and refer to multiday actions as “uprisings” even when these events’ end times are announced in advance. But what exactly is XR rebelling against?
As political ecologist Heather Alberro wrote recently in the Conversation, “[W]ithout a political analysis of the problem, XR risks leading a mass of motivated people nowhere.” Indeed, the people at BP, Barclays, Ineos, and Conservative campaign headquarters can’t be very worried about XR in its current form — it presents little direct challenge to their power. Boris Johnson’s own father, himself a Tory, joined the street protests, as if to stamp them “nonthreatening.”
XR sat out Britain’s December 2019 general election, aside from a few publicity stunts, and refused to draw distinctions between parties. When Labour slightly dialed back its climate commitments due to union concerns that a rapid green transition would hurt workers, XR dressed the party down rather than sizing it up next to the Tories. This revealed a lack of perspective — a puritanical bent — and an unwillingness to seek common ground with the working class.
XR’s main foray into politics has come via its push for “citizens’ assemblies” in which randomly selected juries of non-party, non-experts set policy. It recently lobbied for a Climate and Ecological Emergency bill in Parliament, putting major focus on such assemblies. Very few MPs support the bill.
Citizens’ assemblies, while an interesting idea, are hardly a cure-all. To demand them is to delay addressing the most difficult political questions; it indicates a naïve belief that presenting “the truth” convincingly is enough to effect change. Indeed, “tell the truth” is one of XR’s demands and slogans.
Society will never be a courtroom where facts are adjudicated free from vested interests. Citizens’ assemblies or not, the powerful will frame the terms of debate, and so XR should focus on countering the power of entrenched interests, rather than questioning their morality. Its strategy of rendering climate inaction “criminal” and denouncing “politicians” for “not caring” is little more effective than judging people for using plastic water bottles. It needs to push for a fairer political and economic system.
Disempowering Structure
Fortunately, XR does appear to be moving in this direction. But in order to successfully push for a reordering of power dynamics in society, it needs to sort out its own internal ones.
Neither Sunrise nor XR is perfectly inclusive or democratic. Sunrise supports a just transition and has partnered with worker organizations like Fight for $15 and Raise Up NC, but activists report that its base remains disproportionately white and middle-class.
According to a letter that six of Sunrise’s founders wrote in September, people of color have “experienced tokenization and felt that their voices as leaders aren’t heard at the national or hub level.” Despite these weaknesses, Sunrise has at least built a diverse leadership: roughly half of its hundred staff members are people of color.
XR’s leaders often have trouble even seeing that they sit at the top of power structures, in the organization as in society. These internal issues are a symptom of its wider focus on moral appeals over power dynamics.
At many protests last year, XR activists chanted “police!/we love you/we’re doing this for your children too” — without realizing how much this alienated those with a very different relationship with police. XR’s street tactics and internal culture have ended up glorifying activists who are more willing and able to risk arrest.
This blindness owes to its organizational structure. The call for a nonhierarchical “holacracy” has benefits: the lack of rigidity can be a refreshing alternative to party meetings with dry debates on quorum rules. Yet in reality, XR’s de facto leaders have outsized power, and rank and filers have little way to replace them or hold them accountable. The press team, for example, shapes XR’s image for all the world to see.
Such dominance by unelected insiders is partly the result of what US feminist Jo Freeman once called the “tyranny of structurelessness.” She argues that every group forms hierarchies and that keeping them informal makes it harder to hold leaders accountable: better, perhaps, to have a transparent hierarchy than one that purports not to exist.
In the US, Sunrise has its own structural issues. Like XR, it has no formal membership or dues-paying system: the rank-and-file do not get to choose their leaders. But they are at least chosen in a transparent way, through an open hiring process.
XR, in contrast, is a volunteer-run organization without paid staff. Many of the volunteers are full-time, and the work they put in is admirable. But this setup perpetuates the dominance of those who don’t need paid employment — and makes it harder for people without economic advantages to take on leadership. (XR does give modest living stipends to some coordinators, but only once they’ve established themselves as volunteers.)
Sunrise has adopted the legal structure of a major nonprofit. Its fundraising team brought in about $13 million this year through two entities, a 501(c)3 and a 501(c)4. The latter is less appealing to donors (i.e., provides fewer tax benefits), but allows Sunrise to engage in politics more directly. Sunrise also has a political action committee that receives direct donations.
Though exerting influence in the twenty-first century political arena may require this funding, Sunrise’s professionalization has democratic drawbacks. It risks becoming just another advocacy group, channeling money from foundations that don’t have the same priorities as its activist base, which has little control over how money is spent. Activists have been sidelined in environmental groups before; one political scientist wrote of how they had been used as “organizational wallpaper, a collective backdrop for professional advocacy.”
How XR makes financial decisions is unclear. XR’s leaders have set up two private companies, Compassionate Revolution and Climate Emergency Action, to receive grants and donations, which have totaled at least $2 million since 2018. Those who control the funds aren’t accountable to XR’s rank and file. (The XR press team declined to respond to requests for comment for this article).
More democracy within XR could change its priorities or even its political approach. A first step would be to learn from a democratic step that Sunrise took. In late 2019, its leaders asked rank and filers to vote on whether to endorse a candidate in the Democratic primaries. They said yes, and selected Sanders. Sunrise then put its institutional resources behind his campaign — coming within striking distance of a monumental victory for the climate movement.
Ideas Beneath the Movements
Any activist group needs a sound theory of change and a clear strategy for gaining influence. Sunrise’s founders spent nine months planning with the help of an activist training institute. They built a strong narrative around justice — intergenerational, economic, racial — and developed a bold, positive vision for the future, with a plan focused on creating jobs and producing clean energy.
They engaged in nonviolent direct actions, while also building political power, partly through elections. They decided not to try to “persuade” the Right, but instead to look for climate “champions” who would refuse political donations from fossil-fuel interests and push for a GND.
XR’s founders, conversely, are stuck on the idea that achieving radical change requires mobilizing 3.5 percent of the population (in the UK, 2.3 million people; in the US, 11.5 million). This figure comes from Erica Chenoweth’s Why Civil Resistance Works. Yet her research focuses on movements against authoritarian regimes, and doesn’t necessarily apply in a liberal-democratic context.
What’s more, this approach relies on the moral authority of those rebelling; middle-class white people can’t expect to engender the same response as oppressed groups who participated in, say, India’s liberation movement. And finally, no single social movement will be enough to address the climate crisis. The most effective groups will be those that partner well with others.
Though its rebranded international outfit rightly calls for a “movement of movements,” XR spent a long time in semi-isolation. Instead of joining the Thunberg-led global climate strike in September 2019, XR scheduled its own rebellion for the next month. And despite recent efforts to reach out to workers of all races, XR hasn’t made inroads with trade unions — remarkably, its proposed bill doesn’t even mention them.
At its worst, XR is more of a moral crusade than a focused effort to exact change. According to a new study, “[M]any XR activists we spoke to had little confidence in victory. As a result, there is a strain of apocalyptic thinking present in the movement. This is evident in its nihilistic artistic expressions and the popularity of Jem Bendell’s work, which suggests that societal collapse, due to climate breakdown, is inevitable.”
In this way, XR looks like failed ’60s movements that focused too much on moral and spiritual one-upmanship — the apocalypse is coming, but it’s not my fault. Indeed, though the group calls for collective action, it maintains a strong strain of individualism. XR and FFF activists are relatively likely to believe in the effectiveness of lifestyle environmentalism, the new study noted.
Sunrise activists have been quicker to recognize that power disparities, and not moral deprivation, are the main cause of the climate crisis — and the best way to solve it is by taking power back. Environmental moralizing doesn’t work; indeed, it can limit the appeal of the movement. Most people will never be inclined to trippy awakenings.
Beyond Protests
Although it’s not always evident from its press team’s rhetoric, XR has moved to the left. Esther Stanford-Xosei, an activist who supports colonial reparations, has taken a leading role. Many branches and chapters have started to partner with racial justice groups, and some have added a “demand” for global justice — calling for a green transition that helps marginalized groups and honors indigenous rights.
The emphasis is evident in XR’s new “Heading for Extinction” talk, much different than the 2018 version. “The world’s most pressing problems are closely interlinked,” it says. “And at the heart of it all is power. Power, financial and governmental, is concentrated in the hands of a very small minority of humanity. Think political leaders, think global corporations, think financial institutions.”
It’s not just rhetoric — XR’s actions have become more targeted. At its most recent rebellion, in September, it held protests at right-wing think tanks that spread misinformation on climate change, and in the City of London (where XR held a “walk of shame” tour explaining the role that financial institutions play in the climate crisis).
XR activists also blocked road access to two of Rupert Murdoch’s printing presses, limiting the circulation of right-wing British newspapers for one day — to draw attention to the fact that the so-called free press is dominated by Murdoch’s News Corp and has a terrible record of reporting on the climate.
Not surprisingly, the establishment pushed back. Both major UK political parties condemned the action, and the government moved to potentially classify XR as an “organized crime group.” One of the billionaires behind the Climate Emergency Fund, a 501(c)3 which gave XR $350,000 last year, also denounced the Murdoch action; the fund will no longer support XR, the Telegraph reported. XR has also just announced a financial disobedience campaign meant to draw attention to the “political economy’s complicity” in the climate crisis.
Yet no matter how well-targeted, protests won’t be enough. Some branches of XR have shown themselves to have a left orientation, but the organization’s leaders remain wary of organizing around a left approach — and haven’t adopted the global justice demand.
Moving forward, XR, like society at large, needs structural change. It must tell the truth about conservative politics, rally around a progressive vision, make movement leaders more accountable, and build an in-house electoral machine.
Sunrise is like a turbine that turns disruption into political power. Other activist groups, like XR and FFF, need to get out the rotors and start learning energy conversion as well. Two years have passed since the IPCC’s grave warning, and every year that passes without change means far more human suffering and ecological destruction. We don’t have time to dream of a world beyond politics.
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