A little bit of good news, lots of enraging news
What we take for granted
First, some good news:
With last Sunday’s newsletter and a post on Daily Kos, we raised over $7,000 for Alex Morse’s campaign. The people I’ve spoken to there are very, very grateful for all of your help.
Speaking of fundraising, Progressives Everywhere has now raised over $1 million of progressive candidates and causes! The fundraising has happened through this newsletter, blog posts, social media, and SEO (lots of candidates don’t set up ActBlue pages well, so I made my own to help them out). I’m very, very grateful for all of your help — I certainly don’t turn a profit on this endeavor, but having you subscribe and help out monetarily continues to encourage me and make it possible for me to continue.
On Sunday, soon after I sent the newsletter, a judge in Florida ruled again that the Jim Crow poll tax law passed by Republicans in 2019 is largely unconstitutional. Of course, Gov. Ron DeSantis is appealing the ruling, but it’s tremendous news. And as you might recall, we’re supporting Jessica Harrington, the awesome Democrat running against the author of the Jim Crow law — read our interview with her here!
Now, for the bad news: Everything else.
It’s hard to focus on anything but what’s happening in Minneapolis. Watching George Floyd lying face-first on the ground, helplessly and hopelessly begging for his life as a notoriously racist police officer chokes the existence out of him with his fucking boot — it’s enraging and heartbreaking and stomach-churning. And anyone who wants to equate rioting in a fucking Target superstore to the blatant murder of a man using the full force of the government is not only disingenuous, they’re part of the problem.
White Americans are too comfortable, not only with their place in society but also with the idea that American society will remain as it is forever. We’ve been taught that the United States is the pinnacle of democracy, that the laws that prop up the brutal and violent systems we have in place are immutable, that change is not possible. The Revolutionary War re-enactors of the Tea Party and GI Joe cosplayers of the alt-right like to march around, threatening to overthrow the “tyranny” of their “oppressors,” but they don’t actually mean it; they’re able to make a big stink because they know deep down that no one will stop them (as we saw in Michigan earlier this month) and believe that their positions in American hierarchy will never change.
And yet, we’ve seen regimes fall across the world (often with covert American help) and know that laws are only as good as the government’s ability to uphold them. And as the laws that entrench the current situation continue to be exposed, we are getting closer and closer to the point of no return.
Donald Trump already violates as many laws as he can, so why shouldn’t the people who are being endlessly murdered by cops? Trump and his corporate pals have looted the United States, so a Target is real small fucking potatoes. These two forces are getting closer to colliding. I know whose side I’m on.
The black community has been so abused for so long — most recently taking the brunt of the coronavirus pandemic —that it seems pretty clear that there’s nothing to lose by letting out their rage at the people systemically oppressing them. Here’s a good excerpt from a piece in the New York Times:
The anger exploding on the streets runs much deeper than the obvious hypocrisies in the disparate treatment of white, conservative protesters and a multiracial crowd of people objecting to police brutality. Over the last several weeks, there has been the taped murder of Ahmaud Arbery in Georgia, the vicious shooting of Breonna Taylor by the Louisville police and the killing of Tony McDade, a black trans man, by police officers in Tallahassee. These cases were ignored until public outcry forced the nation to pay attention, even as the public has been riveted to the news because of stay-at-home orders. Meanwhile, there is the highly publicized case of a white woman in Central Park calling the police on a black man when he asked her to put her dog on a leash. The potential consequences of that call were made clear by the killing of George Floyd.
But what is also unmistakable in the bitter protests in Minneapolis and around the country is the sense that the state is either complicit or incapable of effecting substantive change.
Of course, Donald Trump is only making it worse, tweeting out racist shit that then allows him to continue his campaign of grievances against Twitter. I wrote about that here.
Anyway, here’s some more bad news, which I’ll go into in the Sunday newsletter as well:
The Kansas legislature punted on Medicaid expansion because Republicans wanted it to include a devastating anti-abortion amendment. That, apparently, is more important than insuring 130,000 poor Kansans.
Missouri, on the other hand, will have Medicaid expansion on the ballot this year. In an effort to sabotage it, GOP Gov. Mike Parsons decided that the state will vote on the matter during the primary election, which always has a far lower turnout.
Like their pals over in Wisconsin, the Texas Supreme Court would rather people risk their lives than vote by mail.
OK, that’s enough for now. Tomorrow is my birthday! Celebrate with this guide to the best characters on the Comedy Bang! Bang! podcast, which is just about the only thing that can still make me laugh.
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