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Climate Groups Warn Third-Party Vote 'Could Hand Our Planet's Future Over to Trump'
"Every vote for Dr. Jill Stein or Cornel West instead of Kamala Harris makes it more likely that Donald Trump will win," wrote a coalition of leading environmental groups.
Oct 25, 2024
A coalition of leading U.S. environmental groups warned Thursday that a third-party vote in next month's election could help usher in climate disaster by improving Republican nominee Donald Trump's chances of victory, a risk they said the planet can't afford as time runs out to avert catastrophic warming.
Voting for Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, in the November 5 election is imperative because they represent "our best chance at making more progress over the next four years," 350 Action, the Center for Biological Diversity Action Fund, Climate Emergency Action, Earthjustice Action, Food and Water Action, Friends of the Earth Action, and other climate groups wrote in an open letter addressed to "potential supporters of Jill Stein or Cornel West."
While the letter thanks Stein, the Green Party candidate, and West, who is running as an Independent, "for raising important issues in this election," the groups argued that Harris "is the only candidate with a record of success addressing climate change," pointing to her tie-breaking vote in support of the Inflation Reduction Act and legal action against oil companies during her tenure as California's attorney general.
Trump, by contrast, "waged the worst White House attack ever against the environment and public health while in office," the groups wrote.
One analysis estimates that a second Trump presidency could result in an additional 4 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions by 2030, negating recent progress in renewable energy development and inflicting large-scale climate damage. Fossil fuel industry attorneys and lobbyists are already drawing up executive orders for Trump to sign should he prevail on November 5.
"He has made clear that his second term will be even more extreme, drawing from the detailed anti-environment proposals and plans contained in Project 2025," the climate coalition wrote in the open letter. "Every vote for Dr. Jill Stein or Cornel West instead of Kamala Harris makes it more likely that Donald Trump will win."
In a separate social media thread on Thursday, the youth-led Sunrise Movement—a signatory of the new open letter—wrote that "this election will decide the temperature on our planet for thousands of years."
"It will decide if we have a fighting chance to stop the climate crisis or not," the group added. "Voting alone or voting third party won't save us. Let's be honest—financing a genocide, competing on who can be crueler to immigrants, or thumbs-upping fracking is fucked. A Harris presidency won't stop violence. No president ever will."
"But neither will disengaging or throwing away our votes. This election might not save the world but it will set the scene," said Sunrise, which has been working to mobilize young voters in swing states to back Harris. "We have six years to stop the climate crisis and we can't afford to give four of them away to Trump. What your summers look like in 2047, where your family might live in 2063, whether tens of millions of more people become climate refugees or not will be deeply impacted by the election results."
And we have to vote like it because since 1968, no 3rd party candidate has won a single state, let alone the presidency.
So yes—we must vote, and we have to do so much more if we truly plan to win.
— Sunrise Movement 🌅 (@sunrisemvmt) October 24, 2024
Tens of millions of ballots have already been cast in dozens of states across the U.S. ahead of Election Day, with officials reporting record turnout in battlegrounds such as Michigan and Georgia.
Stein and West are among several third-party candidates on the ballot in critical states that could decide the presidential contest. Recent polling has shown that Stein and West are both polling around 1% in the key state of Michigan, where Harris and Trump are in a dead heat.
Michigan has received significant attention this election cycle given that it was the birthplace of the Uncommitted National Movement, which began as a primary campaign effort to push President Joe Biden to halt U.S. support for Israel's assault on the Gaza Strip.
The movement has since shifted its focus to pressuring Harris to back an arms embargo against Israel, something she has declined to do. While Uncommitted opted against endorsing Harris last month, it said it opposes the Republican nominee and warned that "third-party votes in key swing states could help inadvertently deliver a Trump presidency given our country's broken Electoral College system."
"We are going to be voting for the world's climate future even if we are reluctant to admit it."
Stein has dismissed the notion that she's a potential "spoiler" candidate, arguing her supporters would likely opt to stay home instead of vote for Harris or Trump if there was no third-party choice.
But speaking in Michigan earlier this month, Stein supporter Kshama Sawant—a former member of the Seattle City Council—acknowledged that "we are not in a position to win the White House" and said she views the Green Party candidacy as an opportunity to "deny Kamala Harris the state of Michigan."
"And the polls show that most likely Harris cannot win the election without Michigan," Sawant added.
That approach could be devastating for the planet, progressive lawmakers and climate advocates have argued.
"If Donald Trump is elected, the struggle against climate change is over," Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) wrote in a social media post on Thursday. "The United States will withdraw from the movement toward sustainable energy."
Kumar Venkat, a carbon footprint analyst, wrote in an op-ed for Common Dreams on Friday that "if elected, it is reasonable to expect that Harris will build on the Biden administration's work and keep the U.S. on the net-zero path."
"Donald Trump has made it exceedingly clear that he does not believe climate change is even a problem," Venkat wrote. "Between Project 2025 pushing for a 'whole-of-government unwinding' of U.S. climate policy and the fossil fuel industry drafting detailed plans to dismantle the Biden administration's climate rules, it is a safe bet that we will no longer be on a trajectory to net-zero emissions if Trump is back in the White House."
"We are going to be voting for the world's climate future," he added, "even if we are reluctant to admit it."
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A Note on the 'Lesser of Two Evils' Voting Argument in 2024
Why people, and radicals in particular, fail to grasp the reasoning behind this argument is truly mind-boggling.
Sep 10, 2024
One of the most bewildering reactions on the part of certain segments of the U.S. left (whatever that means these days) is that every time there is a crucial election, and the voice of reason dictates casting a ballot in a direction which will help the most to keep out of public office the most extreme, and often enough the positively nuts, candidate in the race, is to scream that this is a case of “the lesser of two evils” thinking and to imply in turn that the one making such an argument is, somehow, a sellout.
Noam Chomsky, of all people, has been the recipient of such brainless reactions for much of his life as he has repeatedly made the argument that voting for a third-party or independent candidate in a swing state would accomplish nothing but increase the possibility of the most extreme and positively nuts candidate winning the election.
Why people, and radicals in particular, fail to grasp the reasoning behind such an argument is truly mind-boggling. Either they don’t understand the nature of U.S. politics, with its winner-take-all election system, or they are simply wrapped up in the “feel-good” factor in politics to even notice such subtleties. But since even a fairly bright elementary student would most likely be able to understand the difference between a winner-take-all election system and proportional representation, it would be logical to conclude that what we have here is nothing less than a display of the politics of feeling good, which basically translates to acting in whatever manner makes one feel good, politically speaking, regardless of the consequences of those actions.
Now, one might say that when the Comintern adopted Stalin’s thinking in the 1920s that “social democracy is objectively the moderate wing of fascism” and proceeded later to lump together Hitler’s Nazi party and the German Social Democratic Party that it was doing so out of conviction that the capitalist world was teetering on the brink of collapse and that the communists would inevitably emerge as the victorious party.
But what is the excuse of the tiny segment of U.S. self-professed radicals who fail to see that in order to advance the program of socialism we must first defeat Trump at the ballot box? Incidentally, this also happens to be the official stance of the Communist Party USA. Yet, one can already hear the argument that U.S. communists must have also fallen victims of the picking a lesser of two evils mental attitude. However, in numerous conversations I've had with radicals (leftists, anarchists, and communists) across Europe, their own thinking was also in line with the reasoning of the Communist Party USA—namely, that priority number one of U.S. progressive voters should be to defeat wannabe dictator Donald Trump in the upcoming U.S. presidential election.
Can this be done by voting in a swing state for someone like Cornel West or Jill Stein when these candidates have zero chance of winning? My chances of being attacked and killed by a shark, which are estimated to be one in 3.75 million, are far greater than either of these two candidates making it to the White House in November 2024.
Oh, but I forgot! Such realizations hardly matter in comparison to how good it might make one feel by voting for a candidate outside of the two existing parties. Who cares if the candidate who would love to turn the U.S. into an autocracy wins the election? The other candidate is simply the lesser of two evils, which is like saying that it makes no difference to live under a political regime that is inadequate in realizing the ideals of a decent society and one that is bent on a process of societal fasticization.
Still, there is something even more bewildering with the lesser-of-two evils dictum that is thrown around by small segments of the left. Generally speaking, as Noam Chomsky has pointed out, there have been two doctrines about voting: the official doctrine, “which holds that politics consists of showing up every few years, pushing a lever, then going back to one’s private pursuits,” and the “left doctrine.” For the latter, “politics consists in constant direct popular engagement in public affairs, including a wide variety of activism on many fronts. Occasionally an event comes up in the formal political arena called an ‘election….’ It’s at most a brief departure from political engagement.”
The third doctrine about voting, which is the “lesser of two evils” principle, has appeared on the political scene rather recently and, as Chomsky highlighted, is “now consuming much debate on the left.” The debate, he went to say, “also falls within the official doctrine, with its laser-like focus on elections.”
Most leftists, radicals and communists know fully well what the Democratic Party represents. Moreover, the recently held Democratic National Convention, with its pathetic effort to reclaim the mantle of "freedom” in a simultaneous display of militaristic jingoism, gave us ample warnings of what lies ahead. It takes no political genius to see that Kamala Harris is yet another centrist and wholly opportunistic Democrat who will change her tune as the circumstances dictate. Or, as the British political philosopher John Gray aptly put it, to recognize that she has “been abruptly transformed by compliant media from a vice-president commonly acknowledged to be barely competent into an uplifting national leader.”
Leftists, radicals and communists living in capitalist societies know that elections are hardly the stuff of political participation that will turn things around. Only grassroots activism can bring about meaningful change. But whenever elections come up, and proportional representation is not in the picture, we hold our nose and vote for the lesser-known threat to what is left of the democracy we have. And then we go back to real activism in order to change society and the world for the better.
It's not complicated.
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Voting for President Is Not an Exercise in Personal Expression
Whatever flaws you may see in Joe Biden, he is the only actual alternative to Trump’s reign.
Nov 26, 2023
Many Americans are unhappy about the likely 2024 choice being offered them for president—Joe Biden versus Donald Trump. However, two third-party alternatives surfaced recently: Jill Stein of the Green Party and West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin, who appears to be seeking the “No Labels Party” nomination.
They join two other non-major-party candidates, anti-vaxxer Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and left-wing intellectual and activist Cornel West.
These candidates appear to offer voters a broad menu of political ideologies and beliefs from which to choose—from Kennedy’s contention that Americans are enslaved by vaccination record-keeping to Manchin’s claimed centrism to West’s plans for abolishing poverty and Stein’s condemnation of corporate-dominated politics.
Voting for Nader, the candidate who appeared to have stronger liberal credentials, proved to have far-reaching consequences—but the opposite of what most Green Party voters would likely have desired.
One thing that is not on the third-party menu is an opportunity to vote for someone who could actually become president. There isn’t a ghost of a chance Jill Stein, Joe Manchin, Robert F. Kennedy, or Cornel West will be elected.
Nonetheless, their campaigns could have a powerful impact: helping elect Donald Trump. The Green Party achieved an equivalent disaster before.
In 2000, the Green Party fielded a candidate, Ralph Nader, against Republican George W. Bush and Democrat Al Gore. In what turned out to be a remarkably close election, the result turned on Florida.
Nader received 97,488 votes in the state, votes that otherwise would have tilted strongly in favor of Gore: In his book, Crashing the Party, Nader acknowledges that 13% more of his voters would have gone for Gore than for Bush. These 12,700 votes would have given Gore an indisputable victory.
Instead, the vote was close enough for a right-wing Supreme Court to be in a position to halt the voting when Bush was only 537 votes ahead, bestowing Florida—and the presidency—on Bush.
How did voting for the Green Party work out?
Foreign Policy: The neocons around Bush had long targeted Iraq for overthrow. Following 9/11, they lied us into an invasion that led to 4,500 dead American soldiers, more than 165,000 dead Iraqi civilians, and a Middle East in the chaos that spawned ISIS.
Climate change: In Al Gore, we could have had a president in 2001 who really understood the climate threat. Instead, we had the pro-oil Bush presidency, initiating nearly two decades of political stagnation on the emerging climate crisis.
Democracy and Constitutional Rights: Bush got to appoint two right-wing Supreme Court justices, who joined three other Republican Justices to give us the 5-4 decision in the money-rules-all Citizens United case. The two Bush justices were also part of 5-4 majorities in cases that (1). invented a personal constitutional right to own firearms, and (2). eviscerated the Voting Rights Act, precipitating an avalanche of laws disenfranchising large numbers of minority, elderly, and youth voters.
Voting for Nader, the candidate who appeared to have stronger liberal credentials, proved to have far-reaching consequences—but the opposite of what most Green Party voters would likely have desired.
Third party candidates regularly tell us we’re entitled to express our own views in voting. But voting for president is not an exercise in personal expression and it is not like seeking your true love or dream candidate. Voting is what you do to effect the best outcome for your country among the real possibilities.
The GOP has ceased to be a normal party that respects majority rule and the rule of law, and Donald Trump has made clear his intentions of dismantling our democracy. Whatever flaws you may see in Joe Biden, he is the only actual alternative to Trump’s reign.
It’s as simple as this: If you vote for supposed “progressives” Jill Stein or Cornel West, you’re reducing the votes needed to stop Trump.
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Cornel West Defends Accepting Campaign Cash From Right-Wing Billionaire Harlan Crow
"Despite my deep political differences with brother Harlan Crow (who is an anti-Trump Republican), I've known him in a nonpolitical setting for some years and I pray for his precious family," said the presidential candidate.
Oct 19, 2023
Independent U.S. presidential candidate and progressive scholar Cornel West on Thursday responded to criticism he is facing for taking money from billionaire GOP megadonor Harlan Crow, known for lavishing right-wing U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas with gifts.
After reviewing Federal Election Commission filings, NBC News on Wednesday reported on Crow's August donation of $3,300, the maximum that an individual can directly give to a campaign.
"As an Independent candidate and a free Black man, I accept donations within the limits of no PACs or corporate interest groups that have strings attached," West wrote Thursday on X, formerly Twitter. "I am unbought and unbossed. Despite my deep political differences with brother Harlan Crow (who is an anti-Trump Republican), I've known him in a nonpolitical setting for some years and I pray for his precious family."
Former President Donald Trump is the Republican front-runner, based on polling, despite his multiple criminal indictments and arguments he is constitutionally disqualified from holding office again.
"I find it hypocritical for those who highlight his $3,300 donation to my campaign but can't say a mumbling word about the PAC-driven billion dollars to support the genocidal attack in Gaza sponsored by their candidate!" West added, pointing to Israel's ongoing assault of the strip. "I'm fighting for truth, justice, and love! Onward!"
West, a longtime professor and activist, launched his 2024 campaign as a People's Party candidate in June. Later that month, West revealed he would instead seek the Green Party nomination. He announced the Independent run earlier this month. His campaign platform centers justice on all issues, from education and the environment to health, immigration, LGBTQ+ rights, race, voting, and work.
"People are hungry for change," West said on X October 5. "They want good policies over partisan politics. We need to break the grip of the duopoly and give power to the people. I'm running as an Independent candidate for president of the United States to end the iron grip of the ruling class and ensure true democracy!"
ProPublica has released various reports this year detailing how Crow, a real estate developer, has treated Thomas to luxury vacations, bought the home of the Supreme Court justice's mother, and contributed to the private school tuition for a great-nephew he raised.
Amid mounting calls for new Supreme Court
ethics rules, a U.S. Department of Justice probe, and Thomas' recusal from cases or even resignation, Crow in April gave a wide-ranging interview to The Wall Street Journal in which he described West as "a good friend."
Crow has also given to the presidential campaigns of Republicans, including ex-New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley, and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.
Throughout his campaign, West—like fellow candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who recently switched from a Democrat to an Independent—has faced allegations that his candidacy could impact a close race between Democratic President Joe Biden, who is seeking reelection, and Trump.
In 2020, West endorsed U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who was seeking the Democratic nomination. In August, West suggested Sanders is supporting the president's reelection bid because "he's fearful of the neo-fascism of Trump" and accused Biden backers in general of being dishonest about the administration's economic achievements.
Asked about West's comments on CNN later that month, Sanders said that "where I disagree with my good friend of Cornel West is I think in these really, very difficult times, where there is a real question whether democracy is going to remain in the United States of America... I think we have got to bring the entire progressive community to defeat Trump or whoever the Republican nominee will be."
"Support Biden, but at the same time... demand that the Democratic Party, not just Biden, have the guts to take on corporate greed and the massive levels of income and wealth inequality that we see today," Sanders added, noting his own willingness to challenge the president and party with which he caucuses.
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Warnings of Trump-Like Insurrection Ahead of Bolsonaro Rallies in Brazil
"The people of Brazil have struggled for decades to secure democracy from military rule, Bolsonaro must not be permitted to rob them of it now."
Sep 06, 2021
As supporters of Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro prepare to take to the streets for orchestrated demonstrations Tuesday, warnings within the country and across the world are growing that the embattled right-wing leader is seeking to foment an insurrection or possibly a military coup with similar undertones to the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol incited by former President Donald Trump.
"We are gravely concerned about the imminent threat to Brazil's democratic institutions--and we stand vigilant to defend them ahead of 7 September and after."
--Open Letter
"Right now, President Jair Bolsonaro and his allies--including white supremacist groups, military police, and public officials at every level of government--are preparing a nation-wide march against the Supreme Court and Congress on 7 September, stoking fears of a coup in the world's third largest democracy," said over 150 lawmakers, academics, and former government officials in a joint statement issued Monday.
Among the signatories of the statement--spearheaded by Progressive International--are ex-national leaders including former Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero and former Colombian President Ernesto Samper; current parliamentarians such as Greece's Yanis Varoufakis, Jeremy Corbyn in the United Kingdom, and U.S. Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.); academics including Noam Chomsky and Cornel West; and other notable leftist figures like Argentine artist and Nobel Peace Laureate Adolfo Perez Esquivel.
The signers noted that "Bolsonaro has escalated his attacks on Brazil's democratic institutions in recent weeks. On 10 August, he directed an unprecedented military parade through the capital city of Brasilia, as his allies in Congress pushed sweeping reforms to the country's electoral system, widely considered to be one of the most trustworthy in the world. Bolsonaro and his government have threatened--several times -- to cancel the 2022 presidential elections if Congress fails to approve these reforms."
The letter continues:
Now, Bolsonaro is calling on his followers to travel to Brasilia on 7 September in an act of intimidation of the country's democratic institutions. According to a message shared by the president on 21 August, the march is preparation for a "necessary counter-coup" against the Congress and the Supreme Court. The message claimed that Brazil's "communist constitution" has taken away Bolsonaro's power, and accused "the judiciary, the left, and a whole apparatus of hidden interests" of conspiring against him.
"Members of Congress in Brazil have warned that the 7 September mobilization has been modeled on the insurrection at the United States Capital on 6 January 2021, when then-President Donald Trump encouraged his supporters to 'stop the steal' with false claims of electoral fraud in the 2020 presidential elections," the letter states. "We are gravely concerned about the imminent threat to Brazil's democratic institutions--and we stand vigilant to defend them ahead of 7 September and after."
"The people of Brazil have struggled for decades to secure democracy from military rule," the progressives conclude. "Bolsonaro must not be permitted to rob them of it now."
Opposition lawmakers have previously warned that Bolsonaro is attempting to ape Trump's failed electoral subversion effort by making spurious claims that Brazil's electronic voting is susceptible to tampering, and that he would have won the 2018 election in the first round were it not for fraud.
Recent polls put Bolsonaro's approval rating at a historically low 23% as he faces a series of massive protests and calls for impeachment over his administration's mishandling of the Covid-19 pandemic, corruption scandals, a weakening economy, and accusations of genocide and ecocide for his exploitation of the Amazon and disregard for the nation's Indigenous people.
With Brazil's Independence Day observed on September 7, critics warn Bolsonaro is exploiting the national holiday to stir his base and further entrench hostility to the nation's democratic systems.
"The time has come to declare our independence for good, to say we will not allow some people in Brasilia to impose their will on us," the president said in a thinly veiled swipe at the Supreme Court and Congress during a speech to supporters last week. "The will that matters is yours."
He added: "If you want peace, get ready for war."
"Bolsonaro supporters are very reactionary, they're going to want to go to war. The president can't control it if there's violence. He's taking a calculated risk."
--Andre Rosa, political consultant
Critics say Bolsonaro--a former army captain who has waxed nostalgic for the country's former U.S.-backed military dictatorship--is making a dangerous gambit that could provoke violence. Numerous social media posts promoting Tuesday's rallies contain violent imagery, with the slogan "independence or death" trending on Twitter.
"Bolsonaro supporters are very reactionary, they're going to want to go to war," political consultant Andre Rosa told Agence France-Presse. "The president can't control it if there's violence. He's taking a calculated risk."
Marcelo Zero, a senatorial adviser for the leftist Worker's Party (PT), accused Boslonaro of trying to co-opt Independence Day.
"Bolsonaristas think they are the only patriots, therefore, they are the only ones eligible to participate in September 7," wrote Zero. "They are the only 'green and yellows,' the rest are riffraff of another color. Those who oppose them--who disagree with them in any way--are not real Brazilians. They are traitors who should leave the country or, as the president candidly said, go to the 'end of the beach'--a dictatorship-era military euphemism for execution."
Graciele Marques dos Santos, a PT city councilwoman in Sinop, Mato Grosso state, told The Guardian that many of Bolsonaro's supporters consider him "a messenger of God."
"I think we could see tragedies. People here feel so angry," said dos Santos. "The head of our nation is someone who incites hatred and violence. It's awful, it's horrible."
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With Election Days Away, Bernie Sanders Headlines Get-Out-the-Vote Rally for Nina Turner
In his keynote speech, Sanders said corporate interests are pulling out all the stops to defeat Turner because "they know that when she is elected, she is going to stand up and take them on in the fight for justice."
Jul 31, 2021
Just days out from the closely watched August 3 Democratic primary contest in Ohio's 11th congressional district, Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont headlined a get-out-the-vote rally in Cleveland on Saturday for progressive candidate Nina Turner, whose grassroots campaign is facing an establishment opponent backed by high-profile party leaders and corporate cash.
In his keynote speech at the event, Sanders spotlighted Turner's ambitious policy platform and argued that--if she prevails in the special election against Cuyahoga County Democratic Party Chair Shontel Brown--the Ohio progressive would play a significant role ushering much-needed legislation through the narrowly divided Congress.
"Nina will stand with me in saying that today, we've got to expand Medicare to cover dental, hearing aids, and eyeglasses," said the Vermont senator. "But Nina knows... that we have got to go further than that, and join every other industrial country--guarantee healthcare to all through a Medicare for All, single-payer program."
Sanders went on to note "the incredible amount of money that the powerful special interests of this country are spending trying to defeat Nina." As The Intercept reported earlier this week, well-heeled donors "with long histories of support for Republican candidates" are bankrolling Brown's campaign either directly or through Democratic Majority for Israel (DMFI), a political action committee that has resorted to falsely portraying Turner as an opponent of a higher minimum wage, universal healthcare, and immigration reform.
"Why is it that the drug companies, the insurance companies, the fossil fuel industry, and Wall Street, and people who supported Donald Trump are pouring millions of dollars into this campaign to defeat Nina Turner?" Sanders asked Saturday. "And the answer is pretty simple: They know that when she is elected, she is going to stand up and take them on in the fight for justice."
The rally also featured speeches by Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison and Cornel West, one of the nation's foremost public intellectuals.
"Who's willing to serve everyday people? Nina Turner," West said in his characteristically fiery remarks, grabbing and pointing to an audience member's campaign sign.
"She represents the best of love, of freedom, of wounded-healing, of joy-spreading, and that is a moral and a spiritual achievement that's not just about politics," West continued. "And that's why we can say to some of our brothers and sisters who are part of the corporate wing of the Democratic Party with their milquetoast neoliberalism: We want vision, integrity, we want a focus on the least of these, the poor, the working class, everyday people."
The special election to fill the seat left vacant by former Rep. Marcia Fudge--who is now serving as head of the Department of Housing and Urban Development--has become a proxy battle between national progressive forces and the Democratic establishment, which has thrown its support behind Brown in the waning days of the campaign.
Rep. James Clyburn of South Carolina, the third-ranking Democrat in the House of Representatives, endorsed Brown late last month, just two weeks after erstwhile Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton announced her support for the Cuyahoga County Democratic Party chair. Clyburn is reportedly flying into Ohio this weekend to stump for Brown.
Turner, meanwhile, has won the backing of prominent progressive lawmakers and advocacy groups, including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), the youth-led Sunrise Movement, Justice Democrats, and Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), chair of the nearly 100-member Congressional Progressive Caucus.
A former Ohio state senator, Turner has also racked up endorsements from local lawmakers and the state's largest newspaper, the Cleveland Plain Dealer.
According to OpenSecrets, the special election is shaping up to be the most expensive House race of the year. Turner "has held a consistent fundraising lead, raising $3.8 million total," the outlet noted last week in an analysis of campaign finance data. Turner's campaign has touted its strong support from small-dollar donors.
"Turner's top supporters included the Service Employees International Union PAC, the Amalgamated Transit Union PAC, and the Congressional Progressive Caucus PAC, contributing $5,000 each," OpenSecrets found. "She also received support from the Medicare for All PAC, a leadership PAC associated with Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), and the Rooted in Community Leadership PAC."
As the Cleveland Plain Dealer reported last weekend, "much of Brown's support this election has been aided by the Israel lobby."
"Aside from DMFI PAC, more than $536,000 of Brown's total fundraising has come through Pro-Israel America PAC," the newspaper observed. "Another pro-Israel PAC, NORPAC, has collected around $49,000 for Brown."
In her speech at Saturday's rally, Turner declared that her "people-centered agenda has some people very afraid," pointing to the super PACs attacking her campaign.
"Why are they spending all that money on little ol' me? I just want to know. Inquiring minds want to know," Turner said. "And I'm so glad you asked. They like the way things are now. They like it that so few people have so much and so many people have so little. They like a healthcare system that lets them pick our pockets or our pocketbooks and people can't get healthcare. They profit from a system of tax cuts for the rich. They do not want an America as good as its promise, and they are investing millions to ensure that our voices are silenced."
"Well let me tell you something 11th congressional district," Turner continued. "We're going to make sure that they understand that big money can't defeat big ideas and conscious-minded people."
Following the rally, Turner, Sanders, West, and Ellison led a march to the polls, which are currently open for early voting.
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New People's Party Rises Amid Grim Election Options
Facing an election between a centrist Democrat and a fascist, the new Movement for a People’s Party aims to prevent such sparse electoral choices in the future.
Sep 01, 2020
In a surreal year that has spiraled from surging hopes for a Bernie Sanders presidency to today's pandemic-hemmed fear and a tight election between centrist Democrats and fascistic Republicans, now may be just the right time for a new political party.
As voters face a dismal "lesser of two evils" election in which a Biden/Harris ticket represents the only alternative to four more years of Trumpian fascism and racism, the Movement for a People's Party aims to prevent such dreary and sparse choices in the future.
"We're going to get that neo-fascist out of the White House, and we're going to build a People's Party and get to work," said former Ohio state Senator Nina Turner, chair of Bernie Sanders's 2020 presidential campaign, as she culminated the first-ever online creation of a political party on Sunday, August 30, following five hours of webinar speeches melding outrage and inspiration.
On the heels of the Democratic and Republican national conventions, the Movement for a People's Party (MPP) speakers blasted this "duopoly" for its long bipartisan allegiance to corporate power, oligarchy, and militarism. Speaker after speaker skewered the Democratic Party and its nominee for decades of adherence to corporate and Wall Street interests, military spending increases and war, and its refusal to support Medicare for All, even amid a deadly pandemic.
"Speaker after speaker skewered the Democratic Party and its nominee for decades of adherence to corporate and Wall Street interests, military spending increases and war, and its refusal to support Medicare for All, even amid a deadly pandemic."
By press time today, 7,639 convention participants (among viewers and online listeners, who numbered roughly 95,000 on Periscope) had voted to approve the official creation of the People's Party. As of now, organizers say, there are three active state chapter Twitter pages--Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Ohio--and the MPP's all-volunteer crew is working on building local chapters in other states. Organizers aim to tap local activists across the country to help launch party chapters as well as state-level hubs and nine regional branches.
The day-long virtual convention--which also featured Dr. Cornel West, Danny Glover, Marianne Williamson, Tim Black, Amaya Wangeshi, and other progressive icons, podcasters, and organizers--builds on more than two years of MPP organizing.
The stakes of the moment are starkly clear: a raging pandemic, soaring unemployment and poverty, and a fascist and racist president versus a Democratic nominee who has stated, "nothing would fundamentally change." Against this backdrop, speakers warned against both the continuation of Trump and the perils of a Democratic Party that relies on corporate money and stifles fundamental change.
Actor and activist Danny Glover said "in face of growing fascism . . . when peaceful protesters are viciously attacked . . . if we don't act now, we'll find ourselves in a darker moment than we can imagine."
Cornel West, citing the "marvelous militancy" rising in the streets, called for a "prophetic fight-back that is intersectional," in a multiracial, multigenerational movement to combat "the neofascist in the White House," and the "milquetoast neoliberals who keep voting for his military budgets," along with "unbelievably grotesque levels of inequality."
From the convention's opening moments, the rage and hope were palpable. Host Nick Brana, MPP's national director and a veteran of Bernie's 2016 campaign, provided a stark lay of the land. "The kind of crises we are facing indicates the two parties can't deliver what we need," said Brana in his opening remarks. "There's a word for that--it's called a failed state."
A short, well-produced video sketched out today's crises: three billionaires holding more wealth than the bottom half of society; an eviction crisis threatening to make millions homeless; 140 million Americans poor or low-income--even before the pandemic; rampant flooding, fires, and tornados propelled by climate chaos; and a plague of police racism and violence, giving rise to mass protests for racial justice.
The People's Party platform offers a familiar progressive palette, having "emerged from Bernie Sanders's first presidential campaign platform," according to the MPP. "It was developed, voted on and adopted by our members in March of 2018," they state. The agenda includes: A "twenty-first century economic bill of rights;" including Wall Street reforms and public banking; a wealth tax; Medicare for All; a Green New Deal; free public college and elimination of student debt; restorative justice and an end to mass incarceration; and expansions of social security and veterans care.
Democrats' failure to confront corporate power and interests was a dominant theme throughout the convention.
Cheng-Sim Lim, a Bernie delegate and Healthcare for All organizer in Los Angeles, articulated the urgency of Medicare for All. Lim volunteered for President Obama's Organizing for America until she found that the promise of a public option was just "bait and switch . . . we were puzzled why Obama wouldn't fight for the chief plank of his campaign," she said. In California, Lim noted, Democrats pushed for single-payer until Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed it--then resisted single-payer when they held legislative majorities and had Democratic governor Jerry Brown in office.
Omar Fernandez, president of the American Postal Workers Union of Vermont, noted a bipartisan history of neglecting the postal service. In 2006, he said, Congress passed bipartisan legislation--the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act--that has been "concrete around our necks. . . . If it wasn't for this law, we would have six years of profit now." Fernandez added, "oligarchs and corporations already have two parties that take care of them. We need a party that takes care of us."
Chris Smalls, a warehouse worker who was fired by Amazon for his activism and then founded the Congress of Essential Workers, said, "Capitalism doesn't separate itself from racism." He said he was "tired of the Democratic Party giving a lot of lip service and not much action."
Author and journalist Chris Hedges brought his brand of eloquent fire and brimstone: "There's only one choice in this election: the consolidation of oligarchic power under Donald Trump, or the consolidation of oligarchic power under Joe Biden. . . . Only one thing matters to oligarchs--the primacy of corporate power, which has extinguished our democracy and left most of the poor and working class in misery."
Hedges also lobbed a blistering critique of Senator Bernie Sanders for enthusiastically supporting the Democratic nominees in 2016 in 2020, instead of backing independent protest movements from the left following his primary losses. "Sanders was a dutiful sheepdog then and is a dutiful sheepdog now."
(Sanders was notably absent from the MPP launch, but there's no mistaking the Vermont Senator's impact, from the platform to the organization's genesis. The MPP stems from the 2017 Convergence Conference and the Draft Bernie movement. As organizers described via a Twitter direct message, "Bernie declined Draft Bernie's offer, so after the Convergence, Draft Bernie became [the] Movement for a Peoples Party in late 2017," founded largely by Bernie 2016 staff, delegates and volunteers.)
Also memorable was a short presentation from Maebe A Girl, the first drag queen to be elected to public office, as a member of the Silverlake Neighborhood Council in Los Angeles. Identifying as "trans-feminine and non-binary," Maebe said the current two-party system is "only working for big business and the corporate elite. . . . Let this be the last time we invite blue no matter who."
While domestic policies and movements were the primary focus, there were at least a few nods to cutting runaway military spending and wars.
Medea Benjamin, co-founder of Code Pink and a longtime author and activist, highlighted bipartisan support for wars and militarism, calling the People's Party "an alternative to the war parties . . . that kill and kill and kill with no remorse." Earlier this year, Benjamin noted, progressive Democrats could not persuade their party colleagues to support a modest 10 percent proposed cut to the ever-bloated Pentagon. "We need a party that will bury once and for all the Monroe doctrine of regime change," Benjamin added, a party that "promotes international solidarity."
In her powerful closing, Turner invoked Langston Hughes's searing 1938 poem, "Kids Who Die," with its refrain, "don't believe in the lies, the bribes, the contentment, and a lousy peace." When millions of Americans face eviction, many more millions are in poverty, "when children go to bed hungry every night," and "even in a pandemic we can't get healthcare for everybody," said Turner, "we are going to put in the work so we have a whole peace, not a lousy peace."
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Cornel West Says 'Neo-Fascist Gangster' Trump and Neoliberal Democrats Expose America as 'Failed Social Experiment'
"I thank God people are in the streets," said the Harvard philosopher and activist. "Can you imagine this kind of lynching taking place and people are indifferent? People don't care? People are callous?"
May 30, 2020
Harvard University philosophy professor Dr. Cornell West appeared on CNN Friday night amid nationwide protests over the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minnesota and offered a searing indictment not just of white supremacy, the neo-fascism of President Donald Trump, and a criminal justice system that repeatedly brutalizes the poor and people of color--but also of a deep depravity that exists within the neoliberal capitalist system of the 21st Century in the United States that dominates both major political parties.
"When you talk about the masses of black people--the precious poor and working-class black people, brown, red, yellow, whatever color--they're the ones left out and they feel so thoroughly powerless, helpless, hopeless--then you get rebellion."
--Dr. Cornell West, Harvard UniversityAs protests raged in Minneapolis, outside Trump's White House, and U.S. cities nationwide--including Atlanta, Chicago, New York, Cleveland, and Oakland--West told CNN's Anderson Cooper in an interview, "I think we are witnessing America as a failed social experiment."
"What I mean by that," explained West, "is that the history of black people for over 200 and some years in America has been looking at America's failure. Its capitalist economy could not generate and deliver in such a way that people could live lives of decency. The nation-state, it's criminal justice system, it's legal system could not generate protection of rights and liberties. And now our culture, of course is so market-driven--everything for sale, everybody for sale--it can't deliver the kind of nourishment for soul, for meaning, for purpose."
West explained the current anger over Floyd's murder by police--one of whom, officer Derek Chauvin, was arrested Friday and charged with 3rd-degree murder and manslaughter--adds to a "perfect storm" of multiple failures and inequities that pre-exist under an American imperial system that people like Martin Luther King, Jr. and others have been warning about since the middle of last century.
"When I saw those pictures there of Atlanta," West said, "you could see Brother Martin right there in Atlanta, saying: 'I told you about militarism. I told you about poverty. I told you about materialism. I told you about racism in all of its forms. I told you about xenophobia.' And what you're seeing in America is those chickens coming home to roost. You are reaping what you sow. And in this instant, you have Brother George--it is so clear--it was a lynching at the highest level. Nobody can deny it."
While solidarity protests erupted far beyond Minneapolis Friday night in outrage over Floyd's murder--and the killing by police of other black, brown, and other marginalized victims--West said, "I thank God people are in the streets. Can you imagine this kind of lynching taking place and people are indifferent? People don't care? People are callous?"
Watch:
West denounced President Donald Trump as the "neo-fascist gangster in the White House," but said the failure of the nation--one that allows for endemic inequality and a culture of greed and consumerism that tramples on the rights and dignity of poor people and minorities decade after decade--goes much beyond the current president.
"The system cannot reform itself," West argued and pointed to a dynamic in which identitarian representation is asked to be a stand in for class equality, shared prosperity, and a functional democracy that actually expresses the will of the people and satisfies the material needs of the working people and the poor.
"We've tried black faces in high places," he said. "Too often our black politicians, professional class, middle class become too accommodated to the capitalist economy, too accommodated to a militarized nation-state, too accommodated to the market-driven culture of celebrities, status, power, fame, all that superficial stuff that means so much to so many fellow citizens."
"You've got a neoliberal wing of the Democratic Party that is now in the driver's seat with the collapse of brother Bernie [Sanders] and they really don't know what to do," West added, "because all they want to do is show more black faces--show more black faces. But often times those black faces are losing legitimacy, too--because the Black Lives Matter movement emerged under a black president, a black attorney general, and a black Homeland Security, and they couldn't deliver. So when you talk about the masses of black people--the precious poor and working-class black people, brown, red, yellow, whatever color--they're the ones left out and they feel so thoroughly powerless, helpless, hopeless--then you get rebellion."
According to West, the nation faces a choice now between "nonviolent revolution" and continuing the status quo failures. "And by revolution what I mean is the democratic sharing of power, resources, wealth and respect," he explained. "If we don't get that kind of sharing, you're going to get more violent explosions."
While reiterating the inherent dangers of Trump, West said one benefit of the president is that he tells the world exactly who he is. On the hand, the broader failures of the system under the neoliberal capitalist economy is rarely called out or revealed for what it is.
"White supremacy is going to be around for a long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long time, don't be surprised when this happens again," West said.
"But the question is we must fight," he concluded. "Even in the moment where we have a failed social experiment, we must fight. We must have an antifascist coalition against what's going on in the White House and the Republican Party. And we have to tell the truth about the milquetoast, cowardly activity too often we see too often in the neoliberal wing of the Democratic party. And we must be critical of ourselves in terms of keeping alive the highest moral and spiritual standards of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Fanny Lou Hammer and Ella Baker. And you see that work in the sould of brother George Floyd's family."
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Will Biden's Dog Whistles for Racism Catch Up with Him?
Apt to be a big political liability among voters who normally vote Democratic in large numbers, the presumed frontrunner's troubling past on these issues is an incontrovertible reality
May 23, 2019
In a party that officially condemns dog-whistle appeals to racism, Joe Biden is running on Orwellian eggshells. Whether he can win the Democratic presidential nomination may largely depend on the extent of "doublethink" that George Orwell described in 1984 as the willingness "to forget any fact that has become inconvenient."
It is an inconvenient fact that Biden has a political history of blowing into dog whistles for racism. More than ever, the Democratic electorate is repelled by that kind of pitch. If his dog-whistling past becomes a major issue, the former vice president and his defenders will face the challenge of twisting themselves into rhetorical pretzels to deny what is apparent from the video record of Biden oratory on the Senate floor that spanned into the last decade of the 20th century.
Biden is eager to deflect any prospective attention from his own history of trafficking in white malice and racial division. When he tweeted this week that "our politics today has become so mean and petty--it traffics in division and our president is the divider in chief," Biden was executing a high jump over the despicably low standards set by Donald Trump.
A key question remains: Does it matter that Biden was a shrill purveyor of tropes, racist stereotypes and legislation aimed at African Americans? During pivotal moments in the history of race relations in this country, from the 1970s to the 1990s, Biden's hot air manifested as pitches to white racism. From the outset of his career on Capitol Hill, he even stooped to reaching out to some of the worst segregationist senators from the South to advance his legislative agenda against busing.
As Adolph Reed and Cornel West noted this month in the Guardian, Biden began his racially laced approach to lawmaking soon after arrival in the Senate, when he "earned sharp criticism from both the NAACP and ACLU in the 1970s for his aggressive opposition to school busing as a tool for achieving school desegregation."
That was no fluke. "In 1984," Reed and West recount, Biden "joined with South Carolina's arch-racist Strom Thurmond to sponsor the Comprehensive Crime Control Act, which eliminated parole for federal prisoners and limited the amount of time sentences could be reduced for good behavior. He and Thurmond joined hands to push 1986 and 1988 drug enforcement legislation that created the nefarious sentencing disparity between crack and powder cocaine as well as other draconian measures that implicate him as one of the initiators of what became mass incarceration."
It's likely that no lawmaker did more to bring about the mass incarceration of black people during recent decades than Joe Biden. In an understated account last week, The Hill newspaper reported that Senator Biden "was instrumental in pushing for the [1994] crime bill, which critics have said led to a spike in incarceration, particularly among African Americans."
Yet Biden is now eager to project an image as a longtime ally of people of color. In short, journalists Kevin Gosztola and Brian Sonenstein wrote recently, he is in a race between his actual past and his PR baloney.
As the leading advocate for what became the infamous 1994 crime bill, Biden stood on the Senate floor and declared: "We must take back the streets. It doesn't matter whether or not the person that is accosting your son or daughter or my son or daughter, my wife, your husband, my mother, your parents, it doesn't matter whether or not they were deprived as a youth. It doesn't matter whether or not they had no background that enabled them to become socialized into the fabric of society. It doesn't matter whether or not they're the victims of society. The end result is they're about to knock my mother on the head with a lead pipe, shoot my sister, beat up my wife, take on my sons."
And Biden proclaimed with fervor that echoed right-wing dogma: "I don't care why someone is a malefactor in society. I don't care why someone is antisocial. I don't care why they've become a sociopath. We have an obligation to cordon them off from the rest of society."
Paste writer Shane Ryan pointed out the unsubtle subtexts of Biden's speechifying: "This is the language of demonization, and even without the underlying racial element, it would be offensive to describe Americans this way, and to brush aside the societal conditions that lead to violent crime as though they're irrelevant. But, of course, the racial element is not just present, but profound. It's impossible to read these remarks, complete with dehumanizing rhetoric, without coming to the conclusion that Biden is, in fact, talking about black crime."
At the time, even some of the members of Congress who ended up voting for the crime bill loudly warned about its dangerous downsides. One of them was Bernie Sanders (who I actively support in his run for president). While swayed by inclusion of the Violence Against Women Act in the bill, Sanders said in an April 1994 speech on the House floor: "A society which neglects, which oppresses and which disdains a very significant part of its population--which leaves them hungry, impoverished, unemployed, uneducated, and utterly without hope--will, through cause and effect, create a population which is bitter, which is angry, which is violent, and a society which is crime-ridden. And that is the case in America, and it is the case in other countries throughout the world."
In 2016, Biden was continuing to defend his key role in passage of the landmark crime bill. During recent months, gearing up for his current campaign, Biden acknowledged some of the law's negative effects while still defending it and denying its huge impacts for mass incarceration. And Biden has avoided copping to--much less expressing remorse for--the toxic, racially laced rhetoric that he used to promote the bill. He simply refuses to renounce the Senate-floor oratory that he deployed to propel the legislation to President Clinton's desk.
Unfortunately for Biden, online video is available that conveys not only his words but also the audibly arrogant tone with which he delivered them.
What does all this add up to? Anyone who doubts that Biden methodically mined racist political shafts for decades should read the well-documented New York magazine piece "Will Black Voters Still Love Biden When They Remember Who He Was?" It's devastating.
The New York article, by journalist Eric Levitz, begins with the tip of a very cold white iceberg: "Biden once called state-mandated school integration 'the most racist concept you can come up with,' and Barack Obama 'the first sort of mainstream African American who is articulate and bright and clean.' He was a staunch opponent of 'forced busing' in the 1970s, and leading crusader for mass incarceration throughout the '80s and '90s. Uncle Joe has described African-American felons as 'predators' too sociopathic to rehabilitate--and white supremacist senators as his friends."
Such clear overviews of Biden's racial behavior in politics have been rare. And news media have not illuminated what all this has to do with "electability." Turnout from the Democratic Party's base will be crucial to whether Trump can be defeated in November 2020. Biden's record of dog-whistling is made to order for depressing enthusiasm and turnout from that base, especially among African Americans.
Apt to be a big political liability among voters who normally vote Democratic in large numbers, Joe Biden's historic dog-whistling for racism is an incontrovertible reality. Denial of that reality could help him win the party's nomination--and then help Donald Trump get re-elected.
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Chelsea Manning and the New Inquisition
The celebrated U.S. Army whistleblower has always insisted her leak of the classified documents was prompted solely by her own conscience and she has refused to implicate WikiLeaks and its founder Julian Assange
Mar 18, 2019
The U.S. government, determined to extradite and try Julian Assange for espionage, must find a way to separate what Assange and WikiLeaks did in publishing classified material leaked to them by Chelsea Manning from what The New York Times and The Washington Post did in publishing the same material. There is no federal law that prohibits the press from publishing government secrets. It is a crime, however, to steal them. The long persecution of Manning, who on March 8 was sent back to jail for refusing to testify before a grand jury, is about this issue.
If Manning, a former Army private, admits she was instructed by WikiLeaks and Assange in how to obtain and pass on the leaked material, which exposed U.S. war crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq, the publisher could be tried for the theft of classified documents. The prosecution of government whistleblowers was accelerated during the Obama administration, which under the Espionage Act charged eight people with leaking to the media--Thomas Drake, Shamai Leibowitz, Stephen Kim, Manning, Donald Sachtleben, Jeffrey Sterling, John Kiriakou and Edward Snowden. By the time Donald Trump took office, the vital connection between investigative reporters and sources inside the government had been severed.
Manning, who worked as an Army intelligence analyst in Iraq in 2009, provided WikiLeaks with over 500,000 documents copied from military and government archives, including the "Collateral Murder" video footage of an Army helicopter gunning down a group of unarmed civilians that included two Reuters journalists. She was arrested in 2010 and found guilty in 2013.
The campaign to criminalize whistleblowing has, by default, left the exposure of government lies, fraud and crimes to those who have the skills or access, as Manning and Edward Snowden did, needed to hack into or otherwise obtain government electronic documents. This is why hackers, and those who publish their material such as Assange and WikiLeaks, are being relentlessly persecuted. The goal of the corporate state is to shroud in total secrecy the inner workings of power, especially those activities that violate the law. Movement toward this goal is very far advanced. The failure of news organizations such as The New York Times and The Washington Post to vigorously defend Manning and Assange will soon come back to haunt them. The corporate state hardly intends to stop with Manning and Assange. The target is the press itself.
"If we actually had a functioning judicial system and an independent press, Manning would have been a witness for the prosecution against the war criminals he helped expose," I wrote after I and Cornel West attended Manning's sentencing in 2013 at Fort Meade, Md. "He would not have been headed, bound and shackled, to the military prison at Fort Leavenworth, Kan. His testimony would have ensured that those who waged illegal war, tortured, lied to the public, monitored our electronic communications and ordered the gunning down of unarmed civilians in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen were sent to Fort Leavenworth's cells. If we had a functioning judiciary the hundreds of rapes and murders Manning made public would be investigated. The officials and generals who lied to us when they said they did not keep a record of civilian dead would be held to account for the 109,032 'violent deaths' in Iraq, including those of 66,081 civilians. The pilots in the 'Collateral Murder' video, which showed the helicopter attack on unarmed civilians in Baghdad that left nine dead, including two Reuters journalists, would be court-martialed."
Manning has always insisted her leak of the classified documents and videos was prompted solely by her own conscience. She has refused to implicate Assange and WikiLeaks. Earlier this month, although President Barack Obama in 2010 commuted her 35-year sentence after she served seven years, she was jailed again for refusing to answer questions before a secret grand jury investigating Assange and WikiLeaks. While incarcerated previously, Manning endured long periods in solitary confinement and torture. She twice attempted to commit suicide in prison. She knows from painful experience the myriad ways the system can break you psychologically and physically. And yet she has steadfastly refused to give false testimony in court on behalf of the government. Her moral probity and courage are perhaps the last thin line of defense for WikiLeaks and its publisher, whose health is deteriorating in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, where he has been holed up since 2012.
Manning--who was known as Bradley Manning in the Army--has undergone gender reassignment surgery and needs frequent medical monitoring. Judge Claude M. Hilton, however, dismissed a request by her lawyers for house arrest. Manning was granted immunity by prosecutors of the Eastern District of Virginia, and because she had immunity she was unable to invoke the Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination or to have her attorney present. The judge found her in contempt of court and sent her to a federal facility in Alexandria, Va. Hilton, who has long been a handmaiden of the military and intelligence organs, has vowed to hold her there until she agrees to testify or until the grand jury is disbanded, which could mean 18 months or longer behind bars. Manning said any questioning of her by the grand jury is a violation of First, Fourth and Sixth Amendment rights. She said she will not cooperate with the grand jury.
"All of the substantive questions pertained to my disclosures of information to the public in 2010--answers I provided in extensive testimony, during my court-martial in 2013," she said on March 7, the day before she was jailed.
"I will not comply with this, or any other grand jury," she said later in a statement issued from jail. "Imprisoning me for my refusal to answer questions only subjects me to additional punishment for my repeatedly-stated ethical objections to the grand jury system."
"The grand jury's questions pertained to disclosures from nine years ago and took place six years after an in-depth computer forensics case, in which I testified for almost a full day about these events," she went on. "I stand by my previous public testimony."
Manning reiterated that she "will not participate in a secret process that I morally object to, particularly one that has been historically used to entrap and persecute activists for protected political speech."
The New York Times, Britain's The Guardian, Spain's El Pais, France's Le Monde and Germany's Der Spiegel all published the WikiLeaks files provided by Manning. How could they not? WikiLeaks had shamed them into doing their jobs. But once they took the incendiary material from Manning and Assange, these organizations callously abandoned them. No doubt they assume that by joining the lynch mob organized against the two they will be spared. They must not read history. What is taking place is a series of incremental steps designed to strangle the press and cement into place an American version of China's totalitarian capitalism. President Trump has often proclaimed his deep animus for news outlets such as The New York Times and The Washington Post, referring to them as the "enemy of the people." Any legal tools given to the administration to shut down these news outlets, or at least hollow them of content, will be used eagerly by the president.
The prosecutions of government whistleblowers under the Espionage Act, warrantless wiretapping, monitoring of the communications of Americans and the persecution of Manning and Assange are parts of an interconnected process of preventing any of us from peering at the machinery of state. The resulting secrecy is vital for totalitarian systems. The global elites, their ruling ideology of neoliberalism exposed as a con, have had enough of us examining and questioning their abuses, pillage and crimes.
"The national security state can try to reduce our activity," Assange told me during one of our meetings at the embassy in London. "It can close the neck a little tighter. But there are three forces working against it. The first is the massive surveillance required to protect its communication, including the nature of its cryptology. In the military everyone now has an ID card with a little chip on it, so you know who is logged into what. A system this vast is prone to deterioration and breakdown. Secondly, there is widespread knowledge not only of how to leak, but how to leak and not be caught, how to even avoid suspicion that you are leaking. The military and intelligence systems collect a vast amount of information and move it around quickly. This means you can also get it out quickly. There will always be people within the system that have an agenda to defy authority. Yes, there are general deterrents, such as when the DOJ [Department of Justice] prosecutes and indicts someone. They can discourage people from engaging in this behavior. But the opposite is also true. When that behavior is successful it is an example. It encourages others. This is why they want to eliminate all who provide this encouragement."
"The medium-term perspective is very good," he said. "The education of young people takes place on the internet. You cannot hire anyone who is skilled in any field without them having been educated on the internet. The military, the CIA, the FBI, all have no choice but to hire from a pool of people that have been educated on the internet. This means they are hiring our moles in vast numbers. And this means that these organizations will see their capacity to control information diminish as more and more people with our values are hired."
The long term is not so sanguine. Assange, along with three co-authors--Jacob Appelbaum, Andy Muller-Maguhn and Jeremie Zimmermann--wrote a book titled "Cypherpunks: Freedom and the Future of the Internet." It warns that we are "galloping into a new transnational dystopia." The internet has become not only a tool to educate, they write, but the mechanism to create a "Postmodern Surveillance Dystopia" that is supranational and dominated by global corporate power. This new system of global control will "merge global humanity into one giant grid of mass surveillance and mass control."
"All communications will be surveilled, permanently recorded, permanently tracked, each individual in all their interactions permanently identified as that individual to this new Establishment, from birth to death," Assange says in the book. "I think that can only produce a very controlling atmosphere."
"How can a normal person be free within that system?" he asks. "[He or she] simply cannot, it's impossible."
It is only through encryption that we can protect ourselves, the authors argue, and only by breaking through the digital walls of secrecy erected by the power elite can we expose the abuses of power. But ultimately, they say, as the tools of the state become more sophisticated, even these mechanisms of opposition will be difficult and perhaps impossible to use.
"The internet, our greatest tool of emancipation," Assange writes, "has been transformed into the most dangerous facilitator of totalitarianism we have ever seen."
That is where we are headed. A few resist. Assange and Manning are two. Those who stand by passively as they are persecuted will be next.
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