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For Immediate Release
November, 16 2015, 08:00am EDT
Contact:
Kevin Zeese 301-996-6582, KBZeese@gmail.com
Evan Greer, 978-852-6457, press@fightforthefuture.org
TPP Protest to Blockade US Trade Rep
Kick Off of Campaign to Stop Unpopular Corporate Power Grab
WASHINGTON
A coalition of 63 organizations will hold a series of spectacle actions at multiple sites in Washington, DC to escalate a campaign that will stop the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
The events will begin on November 16th and go through November 18th. See Call to Action for #FallRising to Stop TPP, TTIP, & TiSA.
The first event will be held at the US Trade Representative building on 17th Street, NW between F and G. It will begin at Farragut Square at 8 AM and then move to the US Trade Representative at 8:30 AM where activists plan to blockade the building in a protest focusing on "TPP Equals Betrayal." Opponents to the TPP will focus on how the TPP betrays healthcare, workers and unions, family farms and safe food, the future of our planet and the future of the Internet.
To follow the protest on twitter follow #TPP, #StopTPP and for a live feed of the action visit @StopMotionsolo
Beginning at 4:30 PM, people will meet outside the US Chamber of Commerce near Lafayette Park for a march through the city. This march will feature luninary toilet paper roles.
The focus of the protests during the rest of the week will be the US Trade Representative, lobbyists for transnational corporations, the White House and Congress. Below is a schedule for the week.
Schedule for Fall Rising Protests Against the TPP
Monday, November 16
8AM - SHUT DOWN the USTR! March to US Trade Rep will begin at Farragut Square and march to US Trade Representative building at 600 17th NW.
4:30 pm -MASS ACTION/MARCH for TRADE JUSTICE! Begins at the Chamber of Commerce 1615 H St., NW for Mass Action/March and Rally to stop the TPP.
Tuesday November 17
11 am - Begins at DuPont Circle for the World is Rising International Solidarity march up Embassy Row! Stops at embassies of countries who are part of the TPP.
5 pm - Hackathon at First Trinity Lutheran Church, 4th and E Sts., NW. CLICK HERE to learn more about the Hackathon.
Wednesday, November 18
Morning - More actions to be announced.
12 pm - Petition delivery to Congress and possible press conference
Afternoon-Evening -- Protest the Dominion Cove Point gas export terminal and refinery being constructed across the street from a residential community in Calvert County, MD. We will travel to the community to join We Are Cove Point and Calvert Citizens for a Healthy Community for no gas exports! Why? TPP and TTIP would increase the export of fracked gas from the US to Japan (TPP) and the EU (TTIP), making it harder to stop gas export (and fracking upstream).
Fight for the Future is a group of artists, engineers, activists, and technologists who have been behind the largest online protests in human history, channeling Internet outrage into political power to win public interest victories previously thought to be impossible. We fight for a future where technology liberates -- not oppresses -- us.
(508) 368-3026LATEST NEWS
Israel Bombs Gaza's Only Cancer Hospital in 'US-Backed War Crime' as Death Toll Grows
One group noted that Israel "bombs hospitals, kills healthcare workers, blocks medicine, and destroys clinics—leaving Palestinians without treatment as disease spreads, starvation worsens, and people suffer."
Mar 21, 2025
U.S.-backed Israeli forces drew international condemnation Friday after bombing the only cancer hospital in the Gaza Strip, where more than 700 Palestinians including over 200 children have been killed this week and where the death toll from 532 days of genocidal assault is approaching at least 50,000.
Israel Defense Forces troops carried out an airstrike on the abandoned Turkish-Palestinian Friendship Hospital in Gaza's Netzarim Corridor, where the IDF launched what it called a "limited ground operation" earlier this week amid a ferocious wave of airstrikes that have killed at least 700 Palestinians, including 200 children and 112 women, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. More than 900 other Palestinians have been injured since Israel unilaterally broke a cease-fire.
Today, Israeli occupation forces blew up Gaza’s Turkish Friendship Hospital. It was the last hospital in Gaza that was able to treat cancer patients. This is a US-backed war crime.
[image or embed]
— CODEPINK ( @codepink.bsky.social) March 21, 2025 at 8:01 AM
"The ministry emphasizes that this criminal behavior of the occupation comes in line with the systematic destruction of the health system and the completion of the episodes of genocide," the Gaza Health Ministry said in a statement, adding that the renewed Israeli slaughter has brought the overall Gaza death toll since October 2023 to at least 49,617, with upward of 112,950 others injured, and approximately 14,000 more missing and presumed dead and buried beneath rubble.
The effects of Israel's bombing and invasion—which include widespread starvation and sickness—have been exacerbated by the "completem siege" imposed on Gaza in October 2023 and the forced displacement of around 2 million Palestinians.
The IDF said it bombed the Turkish-Palestinian Friendship Hospital because Hamas, which rules Gaza and carried out the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, was using the facility as "terrorist infrastructure." No evidence was provided to support this allegation; past Israeli claims of this nature have been
debunked.
In fact, the IDF had used the facility as a base from which snipers indiscriminately shot Palestinians including women and children who tried to cross what Israeli soldiers and veterans described as a "kill zone." One IDF veteran said that these random slayings have become "a competition between units" to see who can kill more people.
Turkish-Palestinian Friendship Hospital—which was built using a $34 million donation from Turkey—was the only one in Gaza equipped to treat cancer patients, although the facility had not been used as a hospital for over a year. Prior to Israel's onslaught, the hospital provided critical treatment to thousands of cancer patients.
In a statement Friday, the Turkish Foreign Ministry condemned Israel's latest hospital bombing.
"The deliberate targeting of a hospital providing healthcare services to civilians in Gaza is part of Israel's policy to render Gaza unlivable and force the Palestinian people into displacement," the ministry asserted, according toHürriyet Daily News. "We urge the international community to take firm and effective steps against Israel's unlawful attacks and systematic state terrorism."
Israeli forces have obliterated Gaza's medical infrastructure along with the rest of the densely populated strip. Last year, an independent United Nations commission found that "Israel has perpetrated a concerted policy to destroy Gaza's healthcare system as part of a broader assault on Gaza, committing war crimes and the crime against humanity of extermination with relentless and deliberate attacks on medical personnel and facilities."
The report detailed hundreds of IDF attacks on Gaza healthcare facilities and the killing or wounding of around 1,700 medical workers, calling such killings "widespread and systematic."
Israel is the subject of an ongoing
genocide case brought before the International Court of Justice in The Hague by South Africa. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant are also wanted by the International Criminal Court, also in The Hague, for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.
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One group noted who would actually complain: "Someone who depends on Social Security to buy groceries. Someone who depends on Social Security to pay rent. Someone who depends on Social Security to survive."
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As U.S. President Donald Trump's temporary leader of the Social Security Administration threatened to shut down the agency over an unfavorable court ruling on Friday, the billionaire commerce secretary came under fire for suggesting that only "fraudsters" will complain if they don't get their earned benefits.
U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick appeared on All-In—a podcast hosted by "four billionaire besties"—on Thursday. A brief clip of his interview, which lasted an hour and 45 minutes, made the rounds on social media Friday.
Lutnick told two of the hosts that if the SSA didn't send out checks this month, his 94-year-old mother-in-law "wouldn't call and complain," but "a fraudster always makes the loudest noise, screaming, yelling, and complaining."
Critics were quick to point out Lutnick's wealth. As More Perfect Unionposted, "His net worth is estimated at $2 billion."
Richard Phillips, pensions and tax policy director for U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Ranking Member Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.),
called the commerce secretary's comments "shameful."
"Nearly 40% of seniors rely on Social Security for a majority of their income and nearly 1 in 7 rely on it for more than 90% of their income," according to Phillips. "These people would call due to missing checks because their very survival depends on it."
The watchdog group Public Citizen similarly pushed back on social media, saying: "You know who actually makes the loudest noise? Someone who depends on Social Security to buy groceries. Someone who depends on Social Security to pay rent. Someone who depends on Social Security to survive. But billionaires like Howard Lutnick don't care about those people."
Groundwork Collaborative chief of policy and advocacy Alex Jacquez said in a statement that "the Trump administration just told seniors that they should shut up and sit down if they don't receive their Social Security checks on time. The real 'fraudsters' are Trump's out-of-touch billionaire donors and advisers denying seniors their hard-earned benefits to pay for their next tax giveaway."
Everett Kelley, president of the American Federation of Government Employees, a union for federal workers, also tied Lutnick's remarks to Republican tax ambitions—as well as a broader attack on the federal bureaucracy by Trump and the de facto leader of his Department of Government Efficiency( DOGE), billionaire Elon Musk.
"First, Elon called Social Security a 'Ponzi scheme' and said we need to eliminate it," Kelley said. "Then DOGE started trying to cut SSA staff. Now Lutnick says 'don't complain' when the payments stop. They are taking money from working-class people in order to give it to their rich friends."
As Common Dreamsreported earlier Friday, acting Social Security Administration Commissioner Leland Dudek is threatening to shut down the agency in response to a federal judge's Thursday order blocking DOGE's SSA "data grab." The Washington Post later revealed that the official "is consulting with agency lawyers and the Justice Department" about the possible shutdown.
Some political observers see the Republican administration's attacks on the SSA—and the rest of the federal government—as a major opportunity for the Democratic Party, which has minorities in both chambers of Congress.
"If Dems have any strategic mojo left, they will clip this and play it on a nonstop television ad loop in the two Florida districts holding special congressional elections," Helaine Olen of the American Economic Liberties Project said about the Lutnick interview. "Seniors will rightly whine when their checks don't show up."
Already, some seniors have publicly shared stories of benefits incorrectly shut off since Trump took office, and some congressional Democrats are taking aim at his administration. Rep. John Larson (D-Conn.), a longtime SSA defender who has framed the DOGE assault as a push toward privatization, posted the commerce secretary's video on social media.
"Trump and Musk's cuts to the Social Security Administration could lead to the delay, denial, and disruption of your EARNED BENEFITS," Larson said Friday. "For 40% of our seniors, Social Security is the only income they have. They can't just wait for their next check."
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The Social Security comments aren't the only reason the commerce secretary is facing intense criticism this week. On Wednesday, he told viewers of Fox News' "Jesse Watters Primetime" to buy stock in Musk's electric vehicle maker, Tesla. One watchdog leader noted that Lutnick "conveniently forgot to mention his family business empire holds nearly $840 million in the company."
The nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center on Friday filed a complaint with the Office of Government Ethics and an ethics official at the U.S. Department of Commerce, urging them to investigate Lutnick's comments about Tesla stock—which has been crashing due to protests of the company resulting from Musk's work for the Trump administration.
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Students and allies rallied outside the Washington, D.C. headquarters of the U.S. Department of Education on Friday for a "study-in" protest against President Donald Trump's plan to shut down the federal agency—a longtime policy goal of right-wing groups including the organization behind the infamous Project 2025—and other administration attacks on their future.
Protesters set up school desks with signs reading "Trump, Stop Stealing From Kids" and "Kids Deserve Good Schools" on a sidewalk outside the agency's main office. Sunrise Movement, the youth-led climate campaign that led the demonstration, vowed to "defend our schools, our futures, and our democracy" from attacks by Trump and Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency.
"If Trump and Musk want to destroy the futures of millions of students across the country, they will have to come through us," Sunrise Movement said on Instagram ahead of the protest.
On Thursday, Trump signed an executive order directing billionaire businesswoman-turned-Education Secretary Linda McMahon to "take all necessary steps to facilitate the closure of the Department of Education and return education authority to the states." Trump's order followed the Department of Education's announcement earlier this month that it would fire half of its workforce.
The executive order delighted conservatives, who have long targeted the agency tasked with protecting civil rights and equal access in schools, administering federal student aid programs, funding billions of dollars in scholastic loans and grants, and more. The Heritage Foundation, which led Project 2025—often described as a blueprint for a far-right takeover of the federal government—applauded the directive.
However, according to Sunrise Movement:
Abolishing the Department of Education would have severe impacts on students, teachers, and parents. Schools will face larger class sizes, fewer teachers, and severe underfunding, making it even harder for students to get the education they deserve. Pell Grants would be eliminated, putting higher education out of reach for millions. Programs that support students with disabilities, English learners, and low-income families—as well as funding for school safety, mental health services, and building repairs—will be slashed.
"Trump and Musk want to defund public schools so they can give their fellow billionaires a bigger tax break," 19-year-old Sunrise Movement schools organizing manager Adah Crandall of Washington, D.C. said Friday.
"We won't let them rob us of a good education," Crandall vowed, adding that she won't let "Musk and his goons" destroy her generation's future.
Wanya Allen, a student at Seminole State College of Florida and Sunrise Movement's Philadelphia community lead, said: "The Department of Education is a human right. We are responsible as the youth to take the torch from our ancestors to continue the fight."
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