October, 01 2021, 12:31pm EDT
Patriotic Millionaires Celebrate Progressives Holding Strong on BIF to Protect Biden Agenda
"The vast majority of the President's overwhelmingly popular Build Back Better Agenda is contained within the reconciliation bill, not the infrastructure bill."
WASHINGTON
In response to Speaker Pelosi's decision to push back the vote on the bi-partisan infrastructure bill, the Patriotic Millionaires Chair Morris Pearl, a former managing director at BlackRock, Inc., released the following statement:
"Last night was not just a victory for progressives, it was a victory for President Biden, the entire Democratic party, and the American people. The vast majority of the President's overwhelmingly popular Build Back Better Agenda is contained within the reconciliation bill, not the infrastructure bill. The reconciliation bill contains the investment in American families and tax hikes on the wealthy that Democrats ran on last November, and it's what voters expected when they delivered them control of the federal government.
In order to ensure the reconciliation bill passes, it must be tied directly with the infrastructure bill. There is no reason to pass infrastructure before reconciliation, and members of the House who pledged to vote no on infrastructure should be celebrated for their defense of the President's agenda."
The Patriotic Millionaires is a group of high-net worth Americans who share a profound concern about the destabilizing level of inequality in America. Our work centers on the two things that matter most in a capitalist democracy: power and money. Our goal is to ensure that the country's political economy is structured to meet the needs of regular Americans, rather than just millionaires. We focus on three "first" principles: a highly progressive tax system, a livable minimum wage, and equal political representation for all citizens.
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'Stop Sending Arms': Global Day of Action to End Israel's Assault on Gaza
"The Global Day of Action must serve as a wake-up call to states that continue to supply arms to all parties to the conflict in Gaza that they are at risk of being complicit in war crimes," said one campaigner.
May 02, 2024
The straightforward demand consistently made by human rights experts, a top European Union official, and college students across the U.S. and in a growing number of countries formed the basis for a Global Day of Action on Thursday, with 250 groups organizing direct actions to call on governments around the world to "Stop Sending Arms" to Israel.
Groups including Amnesty International, the Norwegian Refugee Council, and the Center for Jewish Nonviolence helped organize actions in at least 12 countries, "with a strategic emphasis on countries with significant arms exports" and an "aim to resonate globally."
Protest events including rallies, "die-ins," and the projection of messages and images on government buildings were organized in countries including the United States—the top supplier of arms to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF)—Canada, Germany, Australia, South Korea, and Slovakia.
"The Global Day of Action must serve as a wake-up call to states that continue to supply arms to all parties to the conflict in Gaza that they are at risk of being complicit in war crimes and other violations of international law," said Erika Guevara Rosas, senior director for research, advocacy, policy, and campaigns at Amnesty International.
The groups and their supporters amplified the global campaign on social media using the hashtags #StopSendingArms and #CeasefireNOW.
The day of action comes a day after dozens of universities in the United Kingdom were warned by a legal group that they could be criminally liable for investing in weapons manufacturers that provide arms to Israel, and days after Amnesty International filed a report with the U.S. government detailing specific attacks on Palestinian civilians by the IDF in which Israel used weapons provided by the United States.
Dozens of U.S. and international lawyers, including some from President Joe Biden's own administration, have warned the White House that Israel's actions in Gaza—which have killed at least 34,596 Palestinians since October, the majority of whom have been women and children—violate international law.
The Friends Committee on National Legislation (FCNL) in the U.S. noted that calls for divestment from Israel have spread across U.S. college campuses in recent weeks, despite violent crackdowns by police forces.
"While students have been calling on their universities to divest from Israel, FCNL is urging our government to stop military aid," said the group. "It's clear there's a growing demand to end U.S. complicity in the war in Gaza."
Organizers in Australia displayed signs reading, "Every F-35 [fighter jet] contains some Australian parts and components."
"Around the world, people are demanding their governments end complicity in [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu's war," said Heather McPherson, a member of the Canadian Parliament representing the New Democratic Party. "In Canada, the NDP calls on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly to impose a two-way arms embargo. End the suffering!"
Organizers called on arms experts, journalists, academics, and legal professionals to join the Global Day of Action and call for a "comprehensive arms embargo" on Israel "to stop the transfer of weapons, parts, and ammunitions being used to fuel violations of international law in the occupied Gaza Strip."
Guevara Rosas said that "following the conclusion by the International Court of Justice that there is a plausible risk of genocide in Gaza and in light of the obligation under international law of all states to prevent genocide, governments that continue to supply arms to Israel may find themselves in breach of the Genocide Convention."
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'Their Blood Is on Gene Block': UCLA Students Injured in Violent Police Raid
Officers in military gear fired flash-bang munitions and used batons to clear a nonviolent encampment calling for an end to Israel's U.S.-backed war on Gaza.
May 02, 2024
Los Angeles police wearing riot gear launched a violent attack on a pro-Palestinian encampment at UCLA early Thursday, using flash bangs and firing impact munitions at students demanding an end to their university's complicity in Israel's war on Gaza.
Video footage posted to social media by reporters present at the scene shows officers firing multiple "less lethal" munitions and sound-concussive devices at student demonstrators as they closed in on the encampment, which UCLA's leadership has declared unlawful.
Police reportedly arrested dozens of students as they advanced on the encampment.
"They'd rather shoot kids than stop this genocide," said one observer.
Police fire multiple impact munitions at protestors. 4:38am pic.twitter.com/960I4iVMtt
— Sergio Olmos (@MrOlmos) May 2, 2024
Graeme Blair, an associate professor of political science and member of Faculty for Justice in Palestine at UCLA, told the university's student newspaper early Thursday that police officers "violently dragged" students from the Gaza solidarity encampment and that some demonstrators were "visibly injured."
"Their blood is on Gene Block and the UC administration's hands for a series of catastrophic decisions over the last two days," said Blair, referring to UCLA's chancellor. "It did not need to be this way."
Blair said UCLA professors inside the encampment "plan to be arrested alongside students who have done nothing but talk about a genocide taking place in Palestine."
Matt Barreto, a professor of Chicano studies and political science, told the Los Angeles Times that "our job is to stand up for their First Amendment rights, their rights on their own campus."
Police arrest protestor 4:55am pic.twitter.com/udgS0Terc9
— Sergio Olmos (@MrOlmos) May 2, 2024
The police raid came 24 hours after Los Angeles officers and campus security stood by as a pro-Israel mob violently attacked pro-Palestinian demonstrators. Dozens of students were reportedly taken to hospitals for treatment following the assault.
The Daily Bruin, whose student journalists were on the scene, reported Thursday that police "continued to detain protesters in the encampment as the clock struck 4:00 am, marking one week since the initial erection of the solidarity encampment by the UC Divest Coalition and Students for Justice in Palestine at UCLA."
"At 4:05 am, a slew of loud noises presumed to be flash bangs went off," the newspaper added. "Dozens of protesters exited the encampment by climbing through the bushes near Powell Library onto the Janss Steps lawn. Protesters chanted, 'Gene Block, you can't hide, we charge you with genocide' and, 'We are students' as smoke from the presumed flash bangs thickened above Dickson Plaza."
The police crackdown at UCLA is part of a broader wave of police repression on campuses nationwide as universities refuse to grant their student's calls for divestment from companies profiting off Israel's assault on Gaza. More than 1,000 student demonstrators have reportedly been arrested across the U.S. so far.
"It is no accident that this indefensible police crackdown comes in service of an indefensible war," The Intercept's Natasha Lennard wrote in a column Wednesday following the violent police raid at Columbia University in New York. "The very extremity of protest repression speaks to desperation on the part of institutions of the American establishment."
"Israel's decimation of Gaza has—at least for millions more people—given lie to the redemptive myths of the post-World War II political liberal order," Lennard added. "Young people, even the children of the elite, even children of Zionists, are standing with Palestine. Their peaceful acts of protest count as disruptive because they count as un-American—which should be a badge of honor amid a U.S.-backed genocide."
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'Tragic and Unjust': Trump Judges Grant Biden DOJ Request to Toss Youth Climate Case
"We will keep fighting for climate justice," said one plaintiff, "but this is another dark day for protecting young people from climate harm imposed by their government."
May 02, 2024
A panel of three Trump-appointed judges on Wednesday granted the Biden Justice Department's request to have a landmark youth climate case dismissed, another setback for a long-running effort to hold the U.S. government accountable for damaging the planet and violating the rights of younger generations.
The order handed down by a 9th Circuit Court of Appeals panel instructs an Oregon district court to toss Juliana v. United States for lack of standing, siding with the Justice Department's emergency petition for a writ of mandamus—which the DOJ itself describes as "an extraordinary remedy" that "should only be used in exceptional circumstances of peculiar emergency or public importance."
Julia Olson, co-executive director of Our Children's Trust, a public interest law firm backing the youth plaintiffs, said in a statement Wednesday that "the Biden administration was wrong to use an emergency measure to stop youth plaintiffs from having their day in court."
"The real emergency is the climate emergency," said Olson. "This emergency was not created by these young people, who have just been stripped of their fundamental constitutional rights by one of the highest courts in our country. Children deserve access to justice."
Calling the 9th Circuit decision "tragic and unjust" and "wrong on the law," Olson said the legal fight is "not over" and stressed that President Joe Biden "can still make this right by coming to the settlement table."
"We will keep fighting for climate justice, but this is another dark day for protecting young people from climate harm imposed by their government."
Juliana v. United States was brought in 2015 by 21 young Americans who argued the federal government has violated their "fundamental constitutional rights to life, liberty, and property" by continuing to allow the extraction of fossil fuels despite knowing their central role in destructive planetary heating.
Three consecutive administrations have worked aggressively to prevent a trial, deploying emergency legal tactics to delay and derail the youth-led case even as climate impacts became increasingly devastating in the U.S. and around the world.
Mat dos Santos, general counsel of Our Children's Trust, warned last month that "it's a mistake" for the Biden administration to "take this position in an election year, especially when young voters continue to be more and more disenchanted with the current administration and the permitting of big fossil fuel projects."
"This is an opportunity for the administration to do right by young people," he added.
Earlier this year, just before parties to the case were set to receive trial dates from a federal judge in Oregon, the Biden Justice Department filed a motion to stay the case and then another to have it tossed, drawing outrage from the youth plaintiffs. Dozens of members of Congress have weighed in on the side of the plaintiffs, arguing they should be allowed a trial to present their arguments and evidence.
Avery McRae, one of the plaintiffs, said in response to the 9th Circuit order on Wednesday that "every time we get a decision as devastating as this one, I lose more and more hope that my country is as democratic as it says it is."
"I have been pleading for my government to hear our case since I was 10 years old, and I am now nearly 19," said McRae. "A functioning democracy would not make a child beg for their rights to be protected in the courts, just to be ignored nearly a decade later. I am fed up with the continuous attempts to squash this case and silence our voices."
Another plaintiff, Nathan Baring, said that "we will keep fighting for climate justice, but this is another dark day for protecting young people from climate harm imposed by their government."
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