August, 06 2024, 10:32am EDT
OCUS reaction to Kamala Harris Selecting Tim Walz as VP
In response to reports of Kamala Harris’s selecting Tim Walz as her vice presidential candidate, Collin Rees, Political Director of Oil Change U.S., said:
“Kamala Harris picking Tim Walz as her running mate is an encouraging sign that she’s willing to listen to the Democratic base. Walz’s collaboration with a progressive legislature in Minnesota has led to significant wins for working people, including important climate victories with a 100% carbon-free by 2040 law and a $2 billion climate spending program. At the same time, his lack of action to stop the Line 3 pipeline shows a troubling deference to fossil fuel interests. This campaign is an opportunity for Walz to put people before fossil fuel profits.
“The Harris-Walz campaign must continue to be bold and put forward a visionary agenda to address the climate crisis and end fossil fuels with a just transition. Our future hinges on leaders who will prioritize transitioning away from fossil fuels and tackling the climate crisis with urgency.”
Oil Change U.S. is dedicated to supporting real climate leadership, exposing the true costs of fossil fuels, and building a just, equitable, and renewable energy future in the United States.
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Nearly 1,000 'Workers Over Billionaires' Protests Planned Across US for Labor Day
"This is about workers showing up and demanding what workers deserve all across the country," said Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers.
Aug 29, 2025
Unions and progressive organizations are planning nearly 1,000 "Workers Over Billionaires" demonstrations across the United States this Labor Day to protest President Donald Trump's assault on workers' rights.
The day of national action has been organized by the May Day Strong coalition, which includes labor organizations like the AFL-CIO, American Federation of Teachers, and National Union of Healthcare Workers, as well as advocacy groups like Americans for Tax Fairness, Indivisible, Our Revolution, and Public Citizen.
"Labor and community are planning more than a barbecue on Labor Day this year because we have to stop the billionaire takeover," the coalition says. "Billionaires are stealing from working families, destroying our democracy, and building private armies to attack our towns and cities."
Since coming into office, the Trump administration has waged war on workers' rights. Among many other actions, his administration has stripped over a million federal workers of their right to collectively bargain in what has been called the largest act of union busting in American history and dramatically cut their wages.
He has also weakened workplace safety enforcement, eliminated rules that protected workers against wage theft, and proposed eliminating the federal minimum wage for more than 3.7 million childcare and home workers.
Despite Trump's efforts, Americans still believe in the power of collective action. According to a Gallup poll published Thursday, 68% of Americans say they approve of labor unions, the highest level of support since the mid-1960s.
"Just like any bad boss, the way we stop the takeover is with collective action," the coalition says on its website.
The May Day Strong coalition previously organized hundreds of thousands of workers to take to the streets for International Workers Day, more commonly known as "May Day." On Monday, rallies are once again expected across all 50 states.
Four months later, their list of grievances has grown even longer, with Republicans having since passed a tax cut expected to facilitate perhaps the largest upward transfer of wealth in US history, featuring massive tax breaks for the wealthy paid for with historic cuts to the social safety net.
"There are nearly 1,000 billionaires in the country with a whopping $6 trillion, and that is still not enough for them," said Saqib Bhattie, executive director of the Action Center on Race and the Economy, another group participating in the protests. "They are pushing elected officials to slash Medicaid, [Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program] benefits, and special education funding for schools in order to fund their tax breaks. We need to claw back money from the billionaire. We need to push legislation to tax billionaires at the state and local levels. We need to organize to build the people power necessary to overcome their money."
The group also plans to respond to Trump's lawless attacks on immigrants and his militarized takeovers of American cities.
"This Labor Day," said Lisa Gilbert, co-president of Public Citizen, "we continue the fight for our democracy, the fight for the soul of our nation, the fight against the vindictive authoritarian moves Trump and the billionaire class aimed at stealing from working people and concentrating power."
"This is about workers showing up and demanding what workers deserve all across the country," said Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers. "This Labor Day is really different, because it's not just labor unions, as important as we may be to the workers we represent. It has to be all workers and all working families saying enough. Workers and working families deserve the bounty of the country."
May Day Strong will host a national "mass call" online on Saturday. The locations of the hundreds of protests on Monday can be found using the map on May Day Strong's website.
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Social Security Data Chief Who Blew Whistle on DOGE Resigns, Citing 'Culture of Fear'
Social Security Administration chief data officer Charles Borges described "fear and anxiety over potential illegal actions resulting in the loss of citizen data" in his resignation letter.
Aug 29, 2025
A federal worker who filed a shock whistleblower report alleging that employees of the Department of Government Efficiency had potentially compromised Americans' Social Security data abruptly resigned on Friday.
In a letter obtained by independent journalist Melissa Kabas, Social Security Administration (SSA) chief data officer Charles Borges said that he was "involuntarily" stepping down from his position at the agency due to "serious... mental, physical, and emotional distress" caused in the wake of his whistleblower report.
Borges said that after filing his report with the help of the Government Accountability Project, he was subjected to "exclusion, isolation, internal strife, and a culture of fear" that created a hostile work environment and made "work conditions intolerable."
Borges then recounted that he filed the whistleblower report because he was concerned that Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) employees had uploaded Americans' Social Security information onto a cloud server that he believed was vulnerable to external hackers.
"As these events unfolded, newly installed leadership in IT and executive offices created a culture of panic and dread, with minimal information sharing, frequent discussions on employee termination, and general organizational dysfunction," Borges claimed. "Executives and employees were afraid to share information or concerns on questionable activities for fear of retribution and termination."
Borges concluded by saying that the total lack of visibility into the actions of DOGE employees who were handling Americans' most sensitive data created a sense of "fear and anxiety over potential illegal actions resulting in the loss of citizen data."
The report, whose existence was made public earlier this week, contends that Borges has evidence of a wide array of wrongdoing by DOGE employees, including "apparent systemic data security violations, uninhibited administrative access to highly sensitive production environments, and potential violations of internal SSA security protocols and federal privacy laws by DOGE personnel."
At the heart of Borges' complaint is an effort by DOGE employees to make "a live copy of the country's Social Security information in a cloud environment" that "apparently lacks any security oversight from SSA or tracking to determine who is accessing or has accessed the copy of this data."
Should hackers gain access to this copy of Social Security data, the report warns, it could result in identity theft on an unprecedented scale and lead to the loss of crucial food and healthcare benefits for millions of Americans. The report states that the government may also have to give every American a new Social Security number "at great cost."
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Global Sumud Flotilla Set for Latest Attempt to 'Break Israel's Illegal Siege on Gaza'
"Our boats carry more than aid. They carry a message—the siege must end. The greater danger lies not in confronting Israel at sea, but in allowing genocide to continue with impunity."
Aug 29, 2025
Palestine defenders are preparing for the latest—and largest—Freedom Flotilla Coalition mission to set sail for Gaza in an attempt to break Israel's US-backed genocidal siege on the embattled Palestinian territory.
Dozens of boats carrying hundreds of activists from as many as 44 nations are set to take part in the Global Sumud Flotilla—sumud means "perseverance" in Arabic—as it attempts to run Israel's naval blockade and deliver desperately needed humanitarian aid including food, medicines, and baby formula to the starving people of Gaza.
"We are a coalition of everyday people—organizers, humanitarians, doctors, artists, clergy, lawyers, and seafarers—who believe in human dignity and the power of nonviolent action," Global Sumud Flotilla's website explains.
In addition to "everyday people," flotilla participants include Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg, American actress Susan Sarandon, Irish actor Liam Cunningham, leftist Portuguese parliamentarian Mariana Mortágua, former Barcelona Mayor Ada Colau, and Mandla Mandela, the grandson of former South African President Nelson Mandela.
Israel "is starving and killing the people of Gaza," Mandela—whose grandfather was not only a hero of his country's anti-apartheid struggle but also a staunch supporter of Palestinian liberation—said Friday on behalf of the South African flotilla delegation. "We are a diverse group of international activists calling for urgent global action to compel Israel to open Gaza's borders to aid and end its genocide of the Palestinian people."
"We ask that South Africans of conscience join us," he added. South Africa is leading an ongoing genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague that is officially or informally supported by around two dozen nations.
Colau said earlier this week that "to end the genocide in Gaza is the duty of all of us, so we have to do what is in our power to do it if governments, including the government of Spain, do not do what they can to stop the criminal state of Israel."
Spain has joined the ICJ genocide case against Israel, has formally recognized Palestinian statehood and urged other nations to do so, and has taken significant steps toward an arms embargo on Israel.
"Although Spain has positioned itself more than other governments and recognized the Palestinian state, words are not enough when thousands of children are being killed," Colau said Friday in an interview with RTE.
At least 18,500 children are among the more than 63,000 Palestinians killed by Israeli forces in Gaza since October 2023—although the official Gaza Health Ministry figures are likely a vast undercount, according to peer-reviewed studies.
"This is my third attempt to try to sail with humanitarian aid to break Israel's illegal siege on Gaza and open up a humanitarian corridor," Thunberg, who is a member of the flotilla steering committee, told Middle East Eye Thursday.
"There have been 38 previous attempts just for the Freedom Flotilla Coalition (FFC) and now with the Global Sumud Flotilla," Thunberg continued. "This is unprecedented. We are mobilizing people from all over the world with dozens of boats sailing from Barcelona first, and then more boats joining us from other ports around the Mediterranean Sea."
"We are doing this because we are facing a genocide," she added. "We are seeing people being deliberately deprived of their basic means to sustain life. And this is a continuation of the suffocating oppression that Palestinians have been living under for decades, and we simply have no choice if we have any sense of humanity left, we cannot just sit by and watch this unfolding."
The Gaza Famine—officially declared last week by the authoritative Integrated Food Security Phase Classification—has claimed at least hundreds of Palestinian lives in what experts say is an engineered effort by Israel. The International Criminal Court arrest warrants issued last year for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, who ordered the "complete siege" on Gaza fueling the famine, list forced starvation, along with murder, as alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes committed by the pair.
Earlier this year, the FFC vessels Conscience, Madleen, and Handala each separately tried to break the blockade but were thwarted by Israeli forces in international waters, an apparent violation of maritime law. Flotilla activists were beaten, kidnapped, jailed, interrogated, and deported by Israel.
Fifteen years ago, Israeli forces raided one of the first FFC convoys carrying humanitarian aid to Gaza. The Israeli attackers killed nine volunteers aboard the MV Mavi Marmara, including Turkish-American teenager Furkan Doğan.
The Sumud Flotilla comes as Israeli forces ramp up Operation Gideon's Chariots 2, a campaign of conquest, occupation, and ethnic cleansing of Gaza backed by the administration of US President Donald Trump. On Thursday, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich proposed the systematic annexation of Gaza over the coming months if Hamas keeps fighting, as well as the implementation of Trump's plan to ethnically cleanse the Palestinian exclave and transform it into the "Riviera of the Middle East."
Israel's siege of Gaza has been in effect in varying degrees of severity since 2006 in response to Hamas' rise to power in the strip.
"The idea is to put the Palestinians on a diet, but not to make them die of hunger," a senior adviser to then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said at the time.
Now Palestinians are dying of hunger, and the world has increasingly had enough.
"Our boats carry more than aid," Global Sumud Flotilla said. "They carry a message—the siege must end. The greater danger lies not in confronting Israel at sea, but in allowing genocide to continue with impunity."
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