Racists hate being called racists
Free fallin'
Welcome to a Tuesday evening premium edition of Progressives Everywhere!
I’m in Upstate New York for a few days and just saw an old man walking down a dusty road with a sizable speaker that was strapped across his chest like a Baby Bjorn and blasting Tom Petty’s “Free Fallin’.” I’m not sure whether he was trying to send a message or just hoping to leave this world for a while, but I was jealous either way.
And with that important personal update out of the way, let’s get to the news.
Oh, quick thing before we start: I want to start building a community around Progressives Everywhere and bringing the voices of leaders and activists more directly to members here. One idea I’ve been considering is beginning regular Clubhouse talks that feature interactive conversations with lawmakers, activists, and other interesting people. Would you be into that?
Yes! I'd love to join
Could be! I'd at least try it.
Nah
Important News You Need to Know
Gun Violence
Americans are beginning to resume some semblance of the lives they lived before the COVID-19 pandemic, returning to schools, offices, public gatherings, and round-the-clock TV coverage at the scene of the latest mass shooting event. (There were plenty of mass shootings in Black neighborhoods last year, but the media doesn’t cover them.)
Last week, eight people, including six Asian women, were slaughtered in Atlanta, and yesterday, ten people were mowed down inside a grocery store in Boulder, Colorado. While gun policy was back-burnered during the international health and economic emergency, it has very quickly re-emerged now that white people are getting killed in bunches.
So, will anything actually happen?
Democrats in the Senate have two choices: They can end the filibuster and enact serious gun control laws (as President Biden called for today) or they can act feckless and be complicit in the mass slaughters. News reports are already emerging about the lack of political will to push anything big, and you can see Democratic strategists beginning to lay the groundwork for shirking responsibility:
There will never be 10 Republicans willing to act on gun reform. Already, Mitch McConnell is blaming the shooting on mental illness, which is as cynical as it gets given his work to shepherd through budgets that slashed Medicaid and funding for programs that benefit people with severe mental illnesses.
The NRA, Fox News, and Republican lawmakers might be loud, but there is no actual political risk for Democrats on this — a whopping 71% of Americans supported banning high capacity ammunition magazines, a category that includes the AR-15, the preferred weapon of mass murderers.
In fact, blocking gun control isn’t even politically advantageous. After Sandy Hook, bipartisan legislation on background checks came to the Senate floor and failed to pass the filibuster, with five Democrats voted against it. Four of those five — Heidi Heitkamp, Mark Pryor, Max Baucus, and Mark Begich — went on to lose re-election.
I’m working on a larger story on gun policy for Sunday’s newsletter — and in doing so, may cite some of the facts I’ve laid out above — so I’ll leave it there for now.
Voting Rights
With the legislative session due to close at the end of the month, the seemingly endless saga of the Republican Party’s assault on voting rights in Georgia may well be rounding the corner to some kind of conclusion.
The state Senate today voted to approve a package of voting law changes that will, among other things, create a more arduous voter ID system for mail ballots, dramatically restrict ballot drop boxes, and give the legislature the ability to take over local and county elections. They really waffle on that whole local control thing, huh?
All of these measures will have a disproportionately negative impact on Black voters, as would have the proposed ban on Sunday voting that got beaten back by public outrage. But please, do not call them racists:
Majority Leader Mike Dugan, a Republican from Carrollton, asked opponents of the bill to tone done rhetoric on proposals he said would improve elections. He objected to the characterization of the legislation as being similar to Jim Crow laws that disenfranchised Black voters.
“It’s demeaning to all the people who came before that actually had to work their tails off to get those laws repealed,” Dugan said. “The hyperbole is unfortunate.”
Black activists throughout Georgia and throughout the country have called the voter suppression bills racist, Sen. Raphael Warnock, the pastor at Martin Luther King Jr.’s church called the bills “Jim Crow in new clothes,” but we should definitely let this guy decide what is and isn’t racist:
As it turns out, there are few things racists hate more than being called racists. They truly a fit over it, the ultimate “doth protest too much, methinks,” especially when they continue on pushing whatever racist narrative or policy that earned them the label of racist.
Incidentally, I’m working on a Senate race in Wisconsin right now and am watching Sen. Ron Johnson do the exact same thing. A few weeks ago, he made some egregiously racist comments about how he wasn’t scared of the marauding white rioters during the Capitol insurrection but would have been scared had they been Black Lives Matter protestors. He kept doubling down on the idiotic statement, so we put up a billboard near his house, calling him out for it, which in turn really pissed the guy off.
Now, I’m not showing you the video below to solicit any donations for the campaign, I just think it’s really wild to see such an ignorant racist basically swallow a grenade and, having set the billboard up, and am proud to have helped him pull the pin:
Again, not a solicitation for donations — just wanted to share the fact that I’m getting under Ron Johnson’s skin.
Housing
We haven’t focused all that much on housing policy here in the newsletter, but tackling America’s racist, classist zoning laws is an imperative step in the uphill fight to fix the country’s affordable housing crisis. That makes this a big deal:
The bipartisan bill would authorize $1.5 billion for federal grants to local governments that commit to increase their supply of local housing, to be distributed over the next five years.
The legislation aims to address the U.S. affordable housing crisis by giving local leaders resources to overcome obstacles to new construction, such as density-unfriendly or discriminatory zoning regulations. Eligible local governments, including regional coalitions, will be able to apply for grants to build out “housing policy plans” — local roadmaps that, taken together, promise a way out of the nation’s housing crisis.
Once again, this won’t get 10 Republican votes, even if it is co-sponsored by Ohio Sen. Rob Portman, so it’s only going to pass either via reconciliation or if the filibuster gets blown up.
Philadelphia: The American Rescue Plan provided a big chunk of money for housing — $5 billion to reduce homelessness, over $21.5 billion for the emergency rental assistance fund, and $5 billion in emergency housing vouchers — and it’s beginning to trickle down to cities and other localities. Philadelphia will have $97 million to disperse — more $30 billion more than the last two stimulus combined — and applications begin later this month. From what I hear from local leaders across the country, the money from the ARP is going to be a game-changer.
Really Dumb Stuff
Wisconsin: The gerrymandered Republican-dominated legislature passed a number of hyper-partisan, shitty right-wing bills today. They include:
Barring the government or employers from mandating that employees receive COVID-19 vaccinations.
Stripping Governor Tony Evers of control over the billions of dollars from the American Rescue Plan and giving it to the GOP legislature (despite full Republican opposition to the stimulus).
Barring the mandated closing of places of worship during similar pandemics.
Empowering an investigation into the 2020 election and the Big Lie that the GOP continues to push.
It’s naked cynicism and forward-looking cruelty, prioritizing reactionary outrage over public health and safety. Evers is going to veto the funding bill at the very least, which will set up a lawsuit from Speaker Robin Vos, who is the most hypocritical of them all.
Arkansas: A few months ago, Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban briefly stopped the pre-game rendition of the national anthem, which true predictable outrage. Now, as in Wisconsin, legislators are harnessing that rabid right-wing furor and using it to fuel performative legislation:
When I was in high school and worked in the clubhouse and dugout for a Minor League baseball team, I used to stand along the first base line with the players before the game and listen to whichever local chorus or child they have sing the national anthem. The players used to time each singer, turning it into a competition because otherwise they would have melted from boredom during that minute or so. I can’t imagine high school kids are going to be much more reverent.
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