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Anti-ICE protester confronts California police in June
Further

All You Fascists Bound To Lose

We staggered through the darkest ever ostensible celebration of American independence mournfully grappling with what Rev. William Barber calls the "all-out attack on who we even claim we are trying to be." A tireless pillar of righteous rage, he takes a long, moral view and a tough, simple stand on fighting for our rights and moving forward from catastrophe: "All of us have to find our way together now." Hopefully, we'd add, with brass bands accompanying us.

The good Rev. Barber, of course, comes  to the fight against fascism armed with far more moral clarity and fortitude than most of the rest of us. His battle, both "a moral rebellion against Trump’s America" and against a deeper, longtime "architecture of inequality" since Frederick Douglas asked, "What to the slave is the 4th of July?" confronts a politics wed to nationalism, capitalism, exploitation and, in an especially "unholy relationship," religion, even as masked goons disappear our neighbors.

For the rest of us, Barber's resolve to bear witness, to build "a memory that resists the lie," takes many other, often mundane forms. We blunder forward as best we can. We seek strength and solace in small joys - friends, dogs, gardens, nature and solidarity - increasingly, at protests around the country, with music, often tubas. Kurt Vonnegut, always wise, was on it: "If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph: ‘The only proof he needed for the existence of God was music.'"

In St. Louis, the Funky Butt Band sang This Land Is Your Land. In Auburn CA, people sang Les Miserables' soaring Do You Hear the People Sing? In New York, the Street Beat Brass Band play; in Minneapolis, since George Floyd's murder, it's Brass Solidarity with This Little Light of Mine and I Wish I Knew How It Feels To Be Free. In Atlanta on No Kings Day, exuberant tubas drowned out the Proud Boys with Bella Ciao, a 19th-century Italian folk song turned anthem of freedom and resistance.


  - YouTube  www.youtube.com  

In Somerville MA, the Good Trouble Brass Band has joined forces with the Boston Area Brigade of Activist Musicians (BABAM) for parades and protests in "a tradition of resilience and community" to contribute "something that is loud and joyful." And here in Portland ME we boast and love our Ideal Maine Social Aid & Sanctuary Band - "Easy tunes with friendly people" - a community activist, consensus-governed band in the New Orleans street band tradition spreading joy and advocacy since 2017.

They've played and marched at pride, homelessness, voting rights, abortion rights, Veterans for Peace events; at puppet slams, neighborhood gigs like Porchfest; a fabulous, four-tiered May Day gala; food coop, bike coalition, park conservancy parties; at a small, moving, buoyant Kneeling Photo Art Project - "We Kneel For An Equitable Future" - four years ago during a COVID winter, in their masks and down coats and sailor caps. Searing echoes of make love and music, not war and fascism.

  - YouTube  www.youtube.com  

Entirely aptly, these messengers of hope, rage joy offer diverse music, from Civil Rights- era anthems to old folk faves to Brass Band classics. Adding some spice is feverish new entrant from left field, Boston's Celtic punk rock band Dropkick Murphys. Longtime, blue-collar supporters of workers' and veterans' rights, they've been bringing their furious energy to protests; says front man Ken Casey “I think everything we’ve been doing for the past 30 years was a kind of warm-up for the moment we’re in.”

The hardscrabble Casey - from a recent show: "This Magger guy in the audience was waving his fucking Trump hat in people’s faces, and I could just tell he wanted to enter into discourse with me...I’m not going to shut up, just out of spite” - was raised by his grandfather. His foundational lesson: "If I ever see you bullying someone, I’ll kick the shit out of you. And if I ever see you back down from a bully, I’ll kick the shit out of you." On July 4th, they released new album For the People. Its fiery first single, Who’ll Stand With Us? and a quick-cut, seething video are a gut-punch call-out against fascist scumbags and oligarchs, with all the fury the moment demands. Just whew. Onward, evidently.

Through crime and crusade
Our labor, it’s been stolen
We’ve been robbed of our freedom
We’ve been held down and beholden
To the bosses and bankers
Who never gave their share
Of any blood
Of any sweat
Of any tears

Who’ll stand with us?
Don’t tell us everything is fine
Who’ll stand with us?
Because this treatment is a crime
The working people fuel the engine
While you yank the chain
We fight the wars and build buildings
For someone else’s gain.

So tell me
Who will stand with us?

  - YouTube  www.youtube.com  

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a coal-fired power plant in Utah releases steam
News

Critics Warn Trump Plan for 'Zombie' Coal Plants Will Make Energy Dirtier and Costlier

Green groups warned Tuesday that the Trump administration's plan to invoke a bogus "energy emergency" in order to keep old, polluting coal-fired plants running will make electricity generation dirtier and more expensive while failing to produce enough power to keep up with surging demand.

On Tuesday, the U.S. Department of Energy published a resource adequacy analysis that includes plans for boosting fossil-fueled electricity generation, including at coal-fired plants. The report cites President Donald Trump's executive orders declaring a national energy emergency and strengthening the reliability and security of the nation's electric grid, and highlights the DOE's plan to classify aging fossil fuel plants as critical to system reliability. The administration is also likely to continue invoking Section 202(c) of the Federal Power Act and the Defense Production Act in order to extend the lifespans of older fossil fuel plants.

Although the analysis acknowledges that "old tools won't solve new problems," its methodology supports keeping expensive and polluting coal plants in operation. Dirty coal plants that continue to operate despite economic inefficiencies are sometimes called "zombie" plants.

"More clean energy will make the U.S. grid stronger, more reliable, and more resilient."

Not only does the report fail to state that the burning of fossil fuels is the leading driver of the climate emergency, it does not even mention the word "climate" once in its 73 pages. This tracks with the Trump administration's long-standing proscription of the term "climate change."

"The methodology released today is another attempt to push the false narrative that our country's energy future depends upon decades-old coal and gas plants, rather than clean renewables," said Sierra Club senior attorney Greg Wannier. "The only energy crisis faced by the American public is the catastrophic increase in costs that the Trump administration is forcing on the country's ratepayers."

Wannier noted that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and states "are already well equipped to meet any projected resource needs through the existing regulatory process, which ensures that electricity demand is reliably met at the least public cost."

"Any effort by DOE to override this process to forcibly keep coal plants online past their planned retirements would be an extraordinary and unlawful overreach of its regulatory authority," Wannier added. "It would be particularly harmful and costly to the communities living near these power plants who face the possibility of continued exposure to toxic levels of air and water pollution."

Ted Kelly, director and lead counsel for U.S. clean energy at the Environmental Defense Fund, said Tuesday:

The Trump administration is once again putting its thumb on the scale to help old, dirty power sources at the expense of air quality, public health, and higher energy bills for American families and businesses. This time it has issued a methodology that uses dodgy accounting to ignore all the clean energy we have at our disposal—including solar, wind, and battery technologies that are helping meet our nation's energy needs and support the reliability of our electric grid—in order to make a bogus case that these old, dirty power plants are needed. The administration's deeply flawed approach can't hide the fact that clean energy resources are helping keep lights on and lower electricity bills across the country, while keeping old, dirty power plants on life support will mean higher power bills for families and more toxic, cancer-causing pollution in the air we breathe.

The Trump administration has already used the nonexistent energy emergency in a push to fast-track fossil fuel permitting, keep fossil-fueled plants operating, and to wage lawfare against Democrat-controlled states trying to hold Big Oil financially accountable for its role in causing the climate emergency. In 2017, the first Trump administration also moved to bail out financially floundering coal and nuclear plants.

"No matter how they try to gussy it up, bailing out coal or other fossil fuels when low-cost solar and wind power is growing so quickly makes even less sense today than it did in 2017 when the previous Trump administration tried it before," Kit Kennedy, managing director for power at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), said in response to the DOE plan.

"It's ironic that the Energy Department is warning about reliability just days after Republicans in Congress repealed the clean energy tax credits," Kennedy added, referring to a provision in the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act signed by Trump on Friday.

NRDC cites analysts' predictions that the legislation will reduce additions of the electricity needed to meet rapidly growing demand and raise wholesale electricity prices as much as 25% by 2030 and up to 74% by 2035.

"More clean energy will make the U.S. grid stronger, more reliable, and more resilient—all while saving consumers money on their electricity bills," Kennedy said. "Bailing out old, dirty coal, gas, and oil plants would mean higher costs and a less reliable grid."

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Philly Municipal Strike
News

'Holding The Line': Municipal Workers' Strike Enters Second Week as Philly Refuses to Pay Living Wage

Philadelphia's largest municipal workers' strike in over 40 years is entering its second week after negotiations with the city broke down this weekend.

Over 9,000 sanitation workers, 911 dispatchers, water services workers, crossing guards, and other city employees walked off the job last week, demanding that the city increase their salary enough to meet the rising cost of living.

But even with trash piling up on the streets and other city services understaffed, Mayor Cherelle Parker (D) would not agree to the demands made by AFSCME District Council 33, Philadelphia's largest blue-collar union.

Parker has offered a pay increase of 8.75% over the next three years, which she described as historic.

But DC 33 president Greg Boulware said that's far too little for municipal workers, many of whom are among the city's "working poor," to survive.

"It's not like as if our members are making $80,000, $90,000 a year," Boulware said. "A 2% increase on those would be significantly higher than it would be on somebody making $40,000-$45,000 a year. So, her math truly is not mathing, and you're clearly not paying attention to the working people that are going on in this city."

 

The average municipal worker in Philadelphia makes around $46,000, which is $15,000 less than the median income in the city and less than half of what a single adult needs to live comfortably, according to a study by SmartAsset.

"We got people that work and repair the water mains and can't afford their water bill," Boulware said at a rally last week. "We got people that repair the runways at the airport and can't afford a plane ticket. I don't want to be rich. We just want a comfort inside the city that we serve daily."

The union initially asked for an 8% raise for the next four years, which the city dismissed. This weekend, they pared their proposal down to 5%, but the city still did not budge.

Parker has insisted that her smaller proposed increases are merely what is "fiscally responsible," and that the city cannot afford to offer more.

The union has disputed this, pointing out that Parker herself is budgeted to receive a 9% increase to her salary of more than $240,000. That increase alone is nearly half the current salary that the average DC 33 member makes in a year.

As of Monday, negotiations have stalled, with no clear end in sight. With a throng of picketers behind him, Boulware told NBC 10, a local affiliate, that the union was working on a third proposal, and that negotiations may resume Tuesday. But he seemed to expect more obstinacy from the city.

"We've been there to be able to sit and meet and negotiate," he said. "It doesn't seem like the city quite honestly wants to entertain any of the questions that we have about things and actually have a true dialogue... That's how you negotiate and that's not truly what's been going on."

Despite the city's refusal to budge, momentum around the strike has continued to grow. On Friday, rapper LL Cool J dropped out of a 4th of July festival in the city, saying, "There is absolutely no way I can perform across a picket line."

Other AFSCME councils around Pennsylvania have joined pickets in solidarity. This includes Philadelphia's Council 47, which represents thousands of "white collar" city workers.

With mounds of trash accumulating on streets, sometimes becoming as "tall as people," the environmental activists with the Sunrise Movement have also joined in the effort to pressure the city. On Monday, activists hauled bags of trash into the lobby of City Hall, labeled with the words "Meet DC 33 Demands" written in yellow tape.

AFSCME, meanwhile, has stated its resolve to fight on as the strike has gained national attention.

"City workers are holding the line until they get a FAIR contract with the wages and benefits they deserve," the national union's account wrote on X Monday. "One day longer, one day stronger, no matter what it takes."

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Missouri Gov. Mike Kehoe
News

'A Slap in the Face': Missouri's GOP Governor Repeals Voter-Approved Paid Sick Leave

Missouri's Republican governor on Thursday signed legislation repealing the paid sick leave portion of a ballot measure that the state's voters approved with nearly 60% support in the 2024 election.

The short-lived provision, which will officially be repealed on August 28, required Missouri employers to provide workers with an hour of paid sick time for every 30 hours of work. Businesses with 15 or more employees were required to provide up to 56 hours of earned paid sick time per year, and businesses with fewer than 15 employees were required to provide at least 40 hours of paid sick time.

The Missouri Budget Project estimated before its passage that the ballot measure's paid sick leave benefits would reach 728,000 private-sector workers in the state.

The bill that Republican Gov. Mike Kehoe signed Thursday, known as H.B. 567, also restricts increases in the state's minimum wage. The voter-approved initiative called for raising the state's minimum wage to $15 an hour in 2026 and indexing it to inflation thereafter. H.B. 567 eliminates the inflation adjustment.

The Missouri Chamber of Commerce and Industry, a business lobbying group, characterized H.B. 567 as its top legislative priority. The bill was led by state Rep. Sherri Gallick (R-62) and state Sen. Mike Bernskoetter (R-6).

Kehoe's Facebook post announcing his signature was deluged with comments from Missourians decrying the governor's decision to overturn the will of the public.

"We the people collected signatures," wrote one commenter. "We voted. And we passed Prop A into law. Remember you work for us. How dare you reverse the voice of your people?! The people you took an oath to serve."

Missouri Jobs With Justice, which helped lead the campaign for the ballot measure, said in a statement that "with Governor Kehoe's decision to sign H.B. 567 into law, workers will again face increased economic insecurity when balancing being sick with maintaining their job."

The group noted that Kehoe's support for repealing paid sick leave came after he "recently called a special session to approve spending millions of taxpayer dollars to subsidize billionaire-owned stadiums." On Thursday, Kehoe also signed legislation slashing the state's capital gains tax.

"Simply put, Missouri workers and their families do not deserve to see their newly earned paid sick leave stripped away," said Missouri Jobs With Justice. "Not only is this a slap in the face to workers asking for an opportunity to earn paid sick leave, it’s an insult to over 57% of Missourians who voted for Proposition A in November."

Throughout the process of pushing H.B. 567 through the Legislature, Missouri Republicans openly voiced contempt for voters who supported the paid sick leave and minimum wage initiative. One GOP lawmaker, state Rep. Mitch Boggs, said, "Of course the people voted for it."

"It'd be like asking your teenager if he wanted a checkbook," said Boggs.

 

State Rep. Ashley Aune (D-14), the Democratic leader in the Missouri House, said Thursday that "the governor's action today demonstrates the absolute disdain Republicans have for working Missourians."

"But in stripping workers of their legal right to earned sick leave," Aune added, "the governor and his allies have probably guaranteed this issue will be back on the ballot next year as a constitutional amendment that will place worker protections beyond their reach."

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President-Elect Trump Sentenced In New York Hush Money Case
News

Judicial Nominee Bove Deemed 'Unfit' Over Answers on Jan. 6, Third Trump Term

Emil Bove, a former attorney for U.S. President Donald Trump who has been nominated to serve as a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit, was denounced as "unfit" on Friday due to answers he gave on a Senate questionnaire.

As reported by CBS News, Bove on the questionnaire declined to rule out Trump being allowed to run for a third term even though the 22nd Amendment of the United States Constitution explicitly says that "no person shall be elected to the office of the president more than twice."

Rather, Bove declined to directly answer questions about Trump's eligibility for a third term and wrote that "as a nominee to the Third Circuit, it would not be appropriate for me to address how this Amendment would apply in an abstract hypothetical scenario."

Additionally, Bove declined to condemn the deadly riots at the United States Capitol building on January 6, 2021, in which Trump supporters violently attacked law enforcement officers and sent lawmakers fleeing for their lives. Instead, Bove asserted that "the characterization of the events on January 6 is a matter of significant political debate," and thus it would be "inappropriate to address this question."

Hundreds of Trump supporters were convicted of crimes related to the Capitol riots, although they were all given a blanket pardon by the president immediately after he returned to office earlier this year.

Progressive advocacy organization Stand Up America said that the results of the questionnaire left no doubt about Bove's unfitness to be a judge on the powerful Third Circuit.

"Emil Bove has no business on the federal bench. His words and actions show he is loyal to Donald Trump—not the Constitution, not the rule of law, and certainly not the American people," said Christina Harvey, the executive director of Stand Up America. 

"Last month, over 5 million people took to the streets to remind the Trump administration that we don't have kings in America," added Harvey. "Bove apparently missed the memo, and the day they taught the Constitution in law school. Bove is unfit for a lifetime appointment to one of the most powerful courts in the country, plain and simple. The Senate must reject his nomination."

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US-Israel-Palestine-Conflict-Protest-July-7-2025
News

'Guilty of Genocide': Protesters Condemn Trump-Netanyahu Meeting and Ethnic Cleansing Push

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that he'd nominated U.S. President Donald Trump for a Nobel Peace Prize during an Oval Office meeting on Monday. He did so shortly after the two reiterated their goal of forcibly removing Palestinians from the Gaza Strip, a policy that humanitarian groups have described as "ethnic cleansing."

The meeting went on with protesters assembled outside the White House from both Muslim and Jewish groups and other anti-war organizations who called on Trump to end military support for the Israeli government led by Netanyahu, who has been charged, along with his former defense minister, for war crimes by the International Criminal Court.

One demonstrator held a banner that read, "U.S. + Israel Guilty of Genocide."

"This is not a diplomatic visit. This is a disgrace," said Robert McCaw, Director of Government Affairs at the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). "Every handshake, every deal, every photo op [of Netanyahu] with American leaders stains the hands of all Americans with the blood of children from Gaza."

According to official estimates, more than 57,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel's military campaign in Gaza since 2023, including over 17,000 children. The total casualty number does not include the more than 11,000 estimated to be buried beneath rubble.

Other estimates suggest that the death toll is potentially much higher when factoring in the indirect effects of Israel's blockade of humanitarian aid, which have caused widespread hunger and disease.

"Netanyahu doesn't belong in D.C. He belongs in The Hague," wrote Medea Benjamin, co-founder of the anti-war group CodePink on X.

 

Anti-war Jewish groups and figures were among some of the loudest voices.

Another protester, Yehuda Cohen, the father of an Israeli hostage who has been trapped in Gaza since October 7, 2023, called on Trump to "force Netanyahu to end the war and go for a hostage deal," which would allow his 21-year-old son Nimrod to return home.

He echoed the accusation that the families of many other hostages still in Gaza have leveled at Netanyahu, that he has sabotaged efforts at a cease-fire to maintain his tenuous hold on power.

"He's got right-wing extremists in his coalition who want the total occupation of the Gaza Strip," Cohen said. "They want to rebuild settlements there, and that's why they are threatening that they will withdraw from the coalition if we go for a cease-fire."

Cohen was part of a separate rally organized by the group New Jewish Narrative, which brought dozens of protesters to the White House in anticipation of Netanyahu's visit.

"When Trump sits across from Netanyahu on Monday, I hope he doesn't just nod along," said Hadar Susskind, the group's president. "I hope he demands an end to the war. I hope he uses all of the leverage he has to bring an end to this war, to rush humanitarian aid into Gaza, and to bring all of the hostages home."

Those calls not only fell on deaf ears, they were thoroughly doused once the meeting began. Trump and Netanyahu seemed to be moving in lockstep, with both reiterating their desire to carry out a plan to permanently expel Palestinians from Gaza, which Trump first proposed publicly in February.

Netanyahu told reporters that he and Trump were working on negotiations with other countries that could take in the people of Gaza who'd been relocated.

"We're working with the United States very closely about finding countries that will seek to realize what they always say, that they wanted to give the Palestinians a better future. I think we're getting close to finding several countries."

Netanyahu framed this as a humanitarian effort to allow Palestinians to leave the "prison" in Gaza and suggested that those who want to stay "can stay." However, the prime minister's recent comments to the Israeli Knesset have shown that making Gaza uninhabitable so its residents will be forced to move is his explicit goal.

In leaked comments obtained by the Israeli magazine +972 in June, Netanyahu assured legislators: "We’re destroying more and more homes—they have nowhere to return to. The only natural outcome will be that Gazans will want to emigrate out of the Strip. Our main problem is with receiving countries."

In comments to NBC News Tuesday, Mustafa Barghouti, a politician with the Palestinian National Initiative Party, described Netanyahu's claim that migration from Gaza would be "voluntary" as a farce.

"When they say it would be voluntary, that is so misleading," Barghouti said. "When you bomb people every day, when you starve people for 126 days, who can call that a voluntary decision?"

[Update: This article has been edited to clarify that the rally hosted by New Jewish Narrative, at which Yehuda Cohen spoke, was a separate event from the one organized by the group American Muslims forPalestine.]

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