With the Supreme Court on a holy war to protect guns, fetuses, and big polluting corporations, among others, there’s a real and growing sense of panic among progressives, women, environmentalists and liberal and left-leaning Americans about the future. The Court has also agreed to put on the docket for next term a case about election law that would give the states virtually total power to conduct elections any way they want–meaning that GOP-led legislatures could give electoral votes to their candidate even if he/she lost the election in that state. It’s a scary time.
And what’s the response been? Nancy Pelosi was campaigning for anti-abortion and pro-gun Democrat Henry Cuellar in south Texas on the day the Dobbs decision came down. With her help and lots of DCCC money Cuellar squeaked past his pro-choice opponent. Joe Biden responded to the Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade by making an empty speech and then cutting a deal with Mitch McConnell to appoint, wait for it, an anti-abortion judge to a federal seat. Liberal groups, many of whom promised to be in the streets and shut down the country if abortions were outlawed, mostly complained on social media and used the decision to raise money.
Flying solo, Scott talks with return guest, public health worker and organizer Hope Neyer (@heyneyer) with Shutdown DC (@ShutDown_DC) about the end of Roe v. Wade. They discuss above ground and underground actions at the end of Roe v. Wade, de-legitimatizing SCOTUS, right-wing backlash, the impacts of the overturning of Roe on blue states, red states and marginalized communities.
June 17th is the 50th anniversary of the Watergate break in. In 1972, five men were arrested breaking into the Democratic National Committee HQ at the Watergate Hotel in Washington D.C. They were part of a group that operated out of the Nixon White House called the “Plumbers.” Their job was to investigate leaks in the White House and conduct other surveillance and sabotage against Nixon’s political enemies.
One of the heads of the White House Plumbers was Egil “Bud” Krogh. Krogh passed away in 2020, but before his death, he co-wrote a memoir of his experience in the Nixon Administration’s secret espionage unit with his son Matt Krogh.
Clearly, the Green and Red Podcast is a fly in someone’s ointment. YouTube has taken down our episode about America’s culture wars calling it “misinformation” and “inappropriate.”
What did we say? We talked about guns, abortion rights, Texas, and the bleak state of American society and politics–in other words, what you see every day. Social media enables right-wing violence, the big lie, and COVID denial, but they canceled Green & Red’s discussion of those realities.
They let right wingers and anti-vaxxers go crazy on those platforms, but not us. Free speech isn’t really that free.
Texas’ right wing establishment has waged war on abortion and abortion providers for many years. In 2013, Texas HB 2 closed 23 abortion clinics and led to an 11 hour filibuster by State Senator Wendy Davis and mass occupation of the state capital by pro-choice protestors. Earlier this year, the passage of SB 8 put bounties on anyone associated with providing an abortion. Texas abortion providers have already been preparing for escalated legal action and criminalization of the practice. Now with the likely overturning of Roe vs. Wade, that is becoming more real.
Bob and Scott host Candice Bernd (@candicebernd), Senior Editor and Reporter at Truthout, about her new article “Texas Abortion Funds Work to Reduce Looming Harms of Post-“Roe” Criminalization.”
Last week, a draft of a brief overturning Roe v. Wade was leaked to Politico causing an uproar in many sectors. This decision will put the health and safety of millions of women in jeopardy. Predictably, the establishment focused on catching the leaker. Outrage hit Twitter. And the left hit the streets.
In a series of episodes, Green and Red will focus on how grassroots direct action and mutual aid groups are organizing in the wake of this political tidal wave. Before Roe, we saw underground movements to support women seeking abortions. After the 1973 ruling on Roe, we saw grassroots activists doing clinic defense in the face of violent right wing protests that included assassination of abortion providers and clinic bombings. Now as we’re looking at a time where Roe could be overturned, we’re going to be talking over the next couple of episodes about what’s next for direct action and mutual aid at the end of Roe vs Wade.
cross-posted from Medium by Scott Parkin he·ge·mo·ny | 1.) preponderant influence or authority over others; 2.) the social, cultural, ideological, or economic influence exerted by a dominant group Recently, it…
As the head of NATO says that the allies are prepared to support the Ukraine war effort for years to come, and Biden asks Congress for another $33 billion in war aid, we take a look at the anti-war movement over the past decades. From Bush’s invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, to Obama’s drone wars to military build-ups in Asia and eastern Europe, the U.S. public has been lost in a fog of never ending war with critical voices for peace being the only light.
In our latest episode, we talk with long time peace activist and co-founder of the anti-war group Code Pink, Jodie Evans. We discuss the recent history of anti-war movements and the state of them today. Campaigns against war mongering politicians and arms manufacturers waged by Code Pink. The connection between the military industrial complex and the climate crisis, and the recent silencing of anti-war voices like Chris Hedges, Abby Martin and Lee Camp.
“Before you diagnose yourself with depression or low self-esteem, first make sure you are not, in fact, just surrounded by assholes.”
-William Gibson
Hiding out in the Good Friday press dump, the Biden administration announced it was opening up more public land to oil and gas drilling. The New York Times reported it as Biden trying to bring down high gas prices and save some sort of face for the 2022 elections. This is a reversal of his 2020 campaign promise to end new oil and gas leasing. It locks in new fossil fuel extraction despite his pledge to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The consultation prize for environmentalists is a sharp increase in cost for oil companies.
Former Student for a Democratic Society Dick Flaks once said “the people who are running society are the corporate liberals. They want to stabilize, not repress.” They want to stabilize business as usual and even extreme repression, as we saw under Trump, becomes destabilizing. It’s why you saw everyone from Wall Street CEOs like Chase’s Jamie Dimon to the anti-worker National Association of Manufacturers to the Wall St. Journal saying the 2020 election wasn’t stolen and denouncing the Capitol Riot.
The ruling class prefers corporate liberals like Joe Biden or Jeb Bush than a lunatic like Trump at the helm. Unfortunately, for the rest of us and fate of human existence on this planet, they also prefer having oil and gas as part of their “business as usual.” This is why Democrats like Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema were top recipients of oil and gas dollars. It’s also why Manchin and Sinema and 50 Republican senators have so much sway over our political system. The oil and gas industry gave over $139 million to both parties into the 2020 election.
And currently, it’s why Biden is now reversing course on public lands oil and gas drilling permits.
If it wasn’t Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema blocking legislation for oil and gas, it’d be two other Democrats. The political system, by design, is inherently corrupt. It is owned by the oil and gas sector, as well as a variety of other industries (banks, real estate, manufacturers) that want to keep things stable for an ever-growing economy.
Keep It in the Ground
BOEM lease auction disruption at the New Orleans Superdome in 2016. Pic via Center for Biological Diversity
In 2015-2016, I worked with others to organize disruptions at Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) and Bureau of Land Management (BLM) public ocean and land auctions in a campaign to keep fossil fuels in the ground on public lands. Obama had rejected the permit for the Keystone XL (KXL) pipeline in 2015 after a four year campaign and many within the climate movement had high hopes and we next moved to get him to ban fossil fuel extraction on public lands.
Our campaign continued to build and organize. The central strategy was the disruption of federal BLM and BOEM auctions where the leases were being sold off to the highest bidder. We organized protests and disruptions across the West targeting federal auctions in Colorado, Nevada and Utah. The tactic fit into a strategy of drawing attention to the administration’s policy of lease sales, disrupting them where we could and growing a bigger bolder movement.
The disruption of public lands auctions had become widely known after climate activist Tim DeChristopher had successfully bid $1.8 million for leasing rights to drill on 14 parcels of land. He was a student at the time and didn’t have the money. Consequently, Tim was charged by the U.S. Department of Justice with a federal felony and spent 21 months in prison.
In the New Orleans Superdome, we had our biggest splash as we marched 200 people into the middle of BOEM auction where they were selling off leases in the Gulf of Mexico. As Gulf organizer Cherri Foytlin put it,“We want to stop these lease sales. As long as these leases go through, [industry] is tying us to an archaic economy and an archaic way of doing things that is destroying our earth.”
As part of that campaign, I also attended an Obama fundraiser in Columbus OH that year and disrupted his address at the Ohio Democratic Party “Annual State Dinner” calling on him to end the federal public leasing program. He laughed and bantered back and forth with us until police took us away. I got banned from the Greater Columbus Convention Center for a year.
But, ultimately, in his remaining days in office, Obama did nothing to end fossil fuel extraction on public lands. Despite his rhetoric of “hope and change,” Obama was just another corporate liberal dedicated to keeping the economy stable for corporations and the ruling class.
Build a ferocious movement
It’s not lost on many of us that Biden’s reversal comes just weeks after the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (UNIPCC) most recent dire warnings about it being a “now or never” moment on climate. Many from the reformist environmental non-profit industrial complex think that asking Democrats nicely will get us what we need. As during the Clinton and Obama eras, that’s clearly not working.
Centrist Democrats are also waging war on the left flank of their own party and racial justice and labor movements. When Biden says that we need to FUND the police and centrist Democrats in the Senate sink a key Dept. of Labor nominee, it’s a clear message that the forces of neo-liberalism and law and order run deep within the party.
In struggles around fossil fuels, it’s no different. From crackdowns on water protectors at Standing Rock and Line 3 to Manchin siding with Republicans to kill climate legislation, it happens over and over.
We need a bigger more ferocious climate movement. There needs to be much less compromise and playing electoral games with the Democrats. People are hungry for militancy. We see that militancy at fights around pipelines, old growth logging, development of luxury homes in Detroit and other points of destruction, but we need to meet the crises in our world at a greater scale.
A little historical perspective.
In 1935 rubber workers in Akron, Ohio formed a union called the United Rubber Workers Union. They created 39 local chapters and begin a strike against poor working conditions, low wages and few benefits. The American Federation of Labor attempted to call off the strike. So thousands left abandoned union leadership, and instead used sit-down strikes and long picket lines to win their demands. The mayor of Akron attempted to send the police in to put down the strike, but police refused to face off against thousands of organizer workers.
By 1969, draft resisters had built a formidable movement against the war in Vietnam. Their disruptive actions sparked a shift in tactics from legal protest to mass civil disobedience, drawing the Johnson administration into a confrontation with activists who were largely suburban, liberal, young, and middle class — the core of Johnson’s Democratic constituency.
Pictured in this photo, Quaker Robert Eaton not only was arrested in civil disobedience actions, he spent three years in prison for draft resistance.
Right now, lots of talking heads and armchair pundits are talking about how weak and ineffective the left is. But, everywhere I go as an organizer and every time I look at my inbox, people are reaching out to get involved and get involved with action. Organizing is the act of building power and mobilizing is the act of using the power you’ve built. Our power is already here, we just need to organize it. So, get busy, the ruling class won’t overthrow itself.
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