27 June 22
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There's only one strategy to save our rights
Like many of you, I found it a difficult weekend. As Friday’s decision by the six Republican nominees on the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade sank in — along with Clarence Thomas’s threat to use the same logic to put a whole range of other rights on the chopping block, including marriage equality and full access to contraception — I became aware once again just how fragile are the rights we assumed we had. In just two days last week, the court deferred to the states on reproductive rights but struck down reasonable efforts by states to prevent gun violence.
There is no logic here — just ideology.
This has been the pattern for a decade or more. Even before Trump’s nominees were confirmed, the court’s conservatives had expanded the rights of corporations to flood our democracy with money while gutting the Voting Rights Act.
What to do? Like many of you, I vacillate from outrage to despair.
We have lost control of the Supreme Court. Many believe we’re about to lose control of Congress. Children are being gunned down by assault weapons. States are banning books about racism. Having gutted the Voting Rights Act, conservatives are leveraging every form of voter suppression they can, while the Senate — nominally under Democratic control — cannot pass a bill to protect the vote. Climate disaster looms yet we are doing little to stop it. Meanwhile, the man who engineered an attempted coup is still free to run for reelection and the Republican Party is slouching toward fascism.
We can protest all we want, but everything we believe in depends on politics and power. Which is why the most important thing we can do now is to mobilize like mad for the midterm elections. We need enough Democrats in the House and Senate to carve out exemptions from the filibuster and pass national laws that guard reproductive rights, sexual rights, marriage rights, voting rights, and the planet.
I know, I know. Democrats already have majorities in the House and Senate, yet that hasn’t been enough. The only answer is larger majorities — with Democrats who are not afraid to be Democrats, who have spine and care about the country, protect the Constitution, and preserve the world.
All of this is on the ballot in November.
My small contribution is found on these pages and in the videos I make with my young colleagues at Inequality Media — such as the one we just did, below, on the Supreme Court’s decision to reverse Roe and the threat it poses to other rights.
I keep telling the young people I work with and in the classes I teach that I grew up in an America that expanded constitutional rights, battled racism and protected voting rights, and enlarged the middle class. I tell them that if we did it then, we can do so again. They hear me but I’m not sure they believe me. Their young lives have been marked mostly by public failure. Many were motivated to vote for Barack Obama in 2008 and 2016, and against Trump in 2020, but their patience is wearing thin.
My scribbles on this page along with the videos are means of fighting back — spreading the word, educating people about what’s at stake and why we must take action, and arming people with arguments they need to make the case to those not yet convinced. So when I ask you to please share, I ask in the spirit of a political act. Sharing as a means of edifying, organizing, and mobilizing. Sharing to make our voices heard. Sharing for ideals that still burn bright.
Jens Stoltenberg speaks during the press conference to preview the Nato summit in Madrid on Monday. (photo: Kenzo Tribouillard/AFP/Getty Images)
Alliance’s leader says this week’s summit will agree its most significant transformation in a generation
Jens Stoltenberg added that the military alliance’s existing forces in the Baltic states and five other frontline countries would be increased “up to brigade levels” – doubled or trebled to between 3,000 and 5,000 troops.
That would amount to “the biggest overhaul of our collective defence and deterrence since the cold war,” Stoltenberg said before the meeting of the 30-country alliance, which runs from Tuesday to Thursday this week.
The rapid reaction Nato Response Force currently numbers up to 40,000 but the proposed change amounts to a broader revision in response to Russian militarisation, which also includes bringing stocks of munitions and other supplies further east.
The Norwegian secretary general conceded he could not make any promises about the progress of applications by Sweden and Finland to join Nato, because objections raised by Turkey to their membership remained unresolved.
Stoltenberg said Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, had agreed to meet the Swedish prime minister, Magdalena Andersson, and Finland’s president, Sauli Niinistö, on Tuesday in Madrid to try to resolve the issue.
But he played down hopes of a breakthrough at the meeting on the margins of the Nato event. “It’s too early to say what kind of progress you can make by the summit,” he told a press conference.
Turkey has said it will block the applications of Sweden and Finland unless it receives satisfactory assurances that the Nordic countries are willing to address what it regards as support for Kurdish groups it designates as terrorist organisations.
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, will also address the summit, where he is expected to follow on from a plea made on Monday at the G7 meeting in Germany for western countries to provide arms so the war does not “drag on over winter”.
Stoltenberg said Nato would agree “a strengthened, comprehensive assistance package” for Kyiv, including immediate help to “secure communications, anti-drone systems and fuel” and longer-term assistance in transitioning from Soviet standard arms and equipment to their western equivalents.
But while the state of the war, now in its fifth month, is likely to dominate the summit, Nato itself will only offer limited direct support because its members do not want to enter into a fully fledged war with Russia. Arms supplies are instead made by member states.
Nato maintains eight battle groups across eastern Europe, aimed at acting as an initial frontline defence in the event of a Russian invasion. Four are in the Baltic states and Poland and were supplemented by the creation of four more in Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia following the attack on Ukraine.
Germany said earlier this month it would contribute a brigade of troops to defend Lithuania, where the country leads a 1,000-member battle group, although it emerged that the bulk of the extra 3,500 Berlin intends to contribute will be based on its own soil, ready to move further east quickly if needed.
Stoltenberg said he expected other Nato members to make similar announcements to defend the countries for which they are responsible. Extra troop numbers would be made up by “pre-assigned forces in their home country” who would regularly exercise in the countries to which they had been linked, he added.
Britain contributes about 1,700 troops to a multinational battle group it leads in Estonia. The defence secretary, Ben Wallace, said nearly a fortnight ago it was highly likely the UK would assign hundreds more troops in support of Estonia.
But Stoltenberg said there would not be a one-size-fits-all model, suggesting that not every battle group would be increased to the size of a full brigade. Canada leads the battle group in Latvia, where it contributes 700 troops from a total of about 1,000, while the US is responsible for Poland.
Nato released figures showing that defence spending among its 30 members was expected to increase by 1.2% in real terms in 2022, the slowest growth rate in eight successive years of growth.
Nine countries are projected to exceed the 2% of GDP target, led by Greece on 3.76% and the US on 3.47% with Britain sixth on 2.12%, down marginally on the two previous years. France spends 1.9% and Germany 1.44%.
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