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Heather Cox Richardson, I love and respect you for this one. More power to you.

Joe Knows Us, he said.

I needed to hear that, she said.

And Black women, our most elegant and most trashed, saved us on November 3rd, producing the white fear that produced January 6th.

Let’s roll, friends of Heather. Let’s roll.

Sandy

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Yesterday evening, I read again the total forum response to yesterday’s anti-vax conundrum. A lot of information shared as is par for our course. There was one comment I posted because I became disheartened by the question posed which I know so many ask, including myself….at least once a day. “What in the hell is wrong with these people?” Which can refer to the anti-vaxers, the legislators imposing suppression upon constituents, the insurrectionists still not paying for their treason, trumpists, Fox no news, White supremacists, conspiracy makers and conspiracy takers, greedy corporations, big pharma, anti-freedom SCOTUS decisions, trolls at the bridge, and on and on. Enough to send anyone to a darker side of doubt, frustration, and a cycle of our collective intelligence dissecting “what IS wrong with these people?” I went back through the posts a few minutes ago and grabbed something I posted…. “And what the Heaven are we to do about it? We are figuring out the way to respond to this type of madness. As has been done throughout history. Because it is not new”. I implore us today to not say we don’t get it about these rogue citizens. Or use space figuring out what is wrong with them. Because WE DO GET IT. “They” don’t believe in the same democracy we do. “They” are in lockstep with the former and his band. “They” agree with Mitch…opposition is the only agenda.” There is no guise around their tactics. It’s in our faces. I just think we need to stop figuring out why. And just see it and recognize it for the opposite force it is. HCR gives us historical clues and reference so we can trust that their behavior is not new. Nor intractable. Let’s use as much of what I consider this sacred space to brainstorm, report our moves, share any link that supports progress for democracy. Because I know we can do what must be done to save democracy. And move as a force as citizens have done in the past to fight for common good. Ahhhhhh, I had thought of all of this to say to you today.

AND THEN….the clock had moved past midnight to a new day. My musing about yesterday was interrupted when I saw that HCR had posted today’s letter. You know, intuition is a funny thing. MLK, John Lewis, Barack Obama, James Clyburn…and a few close friends that I consider brilliant, inspirational movers and shakers that dispel racism with a sword…. these kind of people were on my mind a lot yesterday. And I read HCR’s letter. I wept about civil rights and I reveled in the stories that set it right. John Lewis guides us from a different vantage point now. I’m just so grateful I can feel it in my heart. Where a warrior lives. I read the last paragraph and think, well, for heavens sakes. Here I have this bedtime story with a plea I want to make to my fabulous fellow subscribers and my hero John Lewis sums it up….

“Do not get lost in a sea of despair,” Lewis tweeted almost exactly a year before his death. “Do not become bitter or hostile. Be hopeful, be optimistic. Never, ever be afraid to make some noise and get in good trouble, necessary trouble. We will find a way to make a way out of no way.”

Make a way out of no way. Woooooweeee! That’s something I can get excited about. Yes? N’est ce pas?

Let’s go!

Thank you, Heather Cox Richardson.

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A good friend who leans right and I am sure voted for Trump in at least one election mentioned "isn't it terrible about all of the black on black gang violence in Chicago?"

I suspected this idea came from FOX. Every conversation I have with Republican friends or family, they bring up a statement from FOX or Facebook that isn't true or taken out of context to distract and steer Republicans away from the truth just as southern states made John Lewis out to be the problem, the trouble maker, the violent one when in truth southern state government officials were the source of trouble and violence.

When black on black gang violence is brought up on FOX, its without any social or historical context. It's meant to distract their viewers from the voting rights issue implying that blacks cannot manage their behavior so therefore it doesn't matter if they are impositioned in voting. It is meant to suggest that police killings of blacks is insignificant compared with blacks killing blacks, ignoring that police are supposed to be law enforcement protecting citizens and gang members are often criminals. It is meant to quietly cover over, dismiss and rewrite black history, American history, white supremacy history that changes its form and appearance like vapor intoxicating the white mind into thinking blacks are dangerous when in fact whites are the most dangerous in every nation where race can be used by whites as an instrument for political power.

The number of black history books being written today like "Wilmington Lies" and "Tulsa Burning" along with social justice books like "Just Mercy" and the private videos of police killing blacks are critical to advancing public knowledge about white supremacy both then and now as we work for greater justice and equality.

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How many knew and then participated in the John Lewis Voting Rights Act vigils across the country last night? They were sponsored by Indivisible, Common Cause and other local groups. My 90 year old mother keeps saying "Why are we not marching in the streets?" So last night she, my daughter, my husband and I and about 15, all Presbyterian (USA) church friends, attended one in Southlake, Texas, a highly exclusive wealthy community in DFW. I had somehow gotten the impression this one would draw a crowd of at least 1000. Nope. It was the same 150 people who continue to show up, mostly diehard Democrats in this ugly pocket of white smug privilege. We were all surprised, yes discouraged and disappointed, but undaunted. Good Trouble. As we walked with our little electric candles around the squares, my mother and I were passing a big SUV as its owners were getting in from a night out at a local restaurant. One of them said something, none of us understood, except to know it was a disparagement. My little defiant well dressed, beautifully coiffed mother, raised her candle in his direction and said defiantly "Save Democracy." He didn't hear her. But I did. And that is what matters.

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I was one of those young kids who went to Mississippi after the registrars were sent to help get folks to register, but we could go home and they were risking everything.

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I walked at the edge of the sea yesterday and found three things washed up on the beach. One was a golf ball, one was a small piece of green sea glass, one was a flat rock with some words on it. The words are: " Riot is the language of the unheard".

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To the memory of Brother John Robert Lewis.

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These words of John Lewis are framed on the wall of my office where I refer to them daily. They are a reminder that the battles for equality and justice are multi-generational and a constant struggle. We must all remember these words and not get discouraged or surrender. The fight persists and so must we.

“You must be able and prepared to give until you cannot give any more. We must use our time and our space on this little planet that we call Earth to make a lasting contribution, to leave it a little better than we found it, and now that need is greater than ever before.”

“Do not get lost in a sea of despair,” Lewis tweeted almost exactly a year before his death. “Do not become bitter or hostile. Be hopeful, be optimistic. Never, ever be afraid to make some noise and get in good trouble, necessary trouble. We will find a way to make a way out of no way.”

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I shouldn’t write my opinion today because of pervasive negativity in my view of the world. Or, perhaps I should because it is real. For a week now the Cuban-Americans have been in the streets (Literally breaking the law with impunity that was put in place by the Repugnant Party to prevent BLM from protesting). They want US to get involved to assist the massive protests in Cuba. What, another Bay of Pigs fiasco? Ironically, the majority of Cuban-Americans are in the Repugnant Party, which in Florida as in the rest of the Deep South is disfranchising those who would vote against it by making voter suppression laws against them. They want to bring free, democratic elections to Cuba while suppressing free democratic elections in Florida and the rest of the Repugnant controlled states.

I am tired of the Pervasive Evil that has existed in the shadows of America since the mid 1960s when we thot we had mandated equality. Put in chains and watched by the feds, the pervasive racist evil subsided until the chains were removed by the Supreme Court wrong decision in 2013. Just 3 years later we saw the ignorant, bigoted masses elect a clearly unqualified, mentally defective person to POTUS, and for the next 4 years he proved all our fears to be correct, as those ignorant masses became a cult following. Saner minds were spurred to removed him from office in 2020. But, like a cancer the cult followers believed his Big Lie and actually tried to thwart the democratic process on Jan. 6, 2021.

Now, without constraints of federal oversight, the Repugnant Party in all the old racist, Dixie states are free to reinstate New Jim Crow laws to suppress minority votes. And, despite us thinking we had an equally divided Senate, with a VP tie breaking vote, it is still 52 to 48 in favor of the Repugnant Party due to 2 traitorous Democrats in name only. If we cannot reinstate a new voting rights act half a century after the previous one, democracy in the U.S. may be ending as early as next year and no telling where Pervasive Evil of the Repugnant Party will take us. That is my negative mindset this morning. My best wishes for the ppl in Cuba wanting to be free of oppression, but we in America have our own problems.

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Where is our party? Where is the political party that will make it unnecessary to march on Washington? Where is the political party that will make it unnecessary to march in the streets of Birmingham?

John Lewis

Speech at the March on Washington 1963

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From Georgia Representative John Lewis, there are no better words for us to remember:

“Do not get lost in a sea of despair,”

“Do not become bitter or hostile. Be hopeful, be optimistic.

Never, ever be afraid to make some noise and get in good trouble, necessary trouble.

We will find a way to make a way out of no way.” (The Letter)

Thank you Heather for informing and inspiring us in our work toward a true Democracy for all.

'It's Time For Action':

https://www.votingrightsalliance.org/

For information and organizations addressing Climate Change:

https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/21574164/best-climate-change-charities-biden-policy

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“The mere fact that there is some disparity in impact does not necessarily mean that a system is not equally open or that it does not give everyone an equal opportunity to vote.” - Samuel Alito.

Then what does it mean?

Many thanks, HCR. Enjoy your Sunday.

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You said in your interview with Ed Luce of FT that your occupation in the basement of the Harvard Library (in the occasional company of John Updike) was reading newspaper correspondence. That triggered in me the hope that sometime you will offer some reflections on the Fox News phenomenon in the context of the history of American media—notably the Hearst model and the 19th century models of party “owned” presses. My computer news feed regularly allows me to compare headlines on the same story from, say Fox (Biden blows it again in meeting with. . .), CNN (President confronts Russian leader on. . .), and so forth. Having come to knowledge in the era of the professional media in the 50’s & 60’s, I’m regularly amazed at the altered media role that came in with the movement revolution.

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Each week I write Maine’s two US Senators and call on them to enact both the John Lewis Voting Rights Act and the For the People Act.

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For everyone who thinks Joe Biden is the best thing that's happened, you might want to read this by Ronald Brownstein:

For all the passionate words President Joe Biden delivered in defense of voting rights in his speech yesterday, it was the one word he never mentioned that provoked the strongest response from civil-rights advocates: filibuster.

Nowhere in his remarks did Biden utter what may go down as the political word of the year. The Senate procedure known as the filibuster now stands as the insuperable obstacle to the new federal voting-rights legislation that represents Democrats’ best chance to counter the restrictive voting laws proliferating in red states.

Biden’s refusal to call for changes to the filibuster—or even to promise greater personal involvement in passing voting-rights legislation—reinforced the long-standing concern of many advocates that he remains more personally engaged in passing his economic plans, particularly a bipartisan infrastructure deal, than in countering the red-state offensive against voter access.

If anything, the speech underscored why the intensely partisan, highly racialized battle over voting rights is a difficult issue for Biden politically. The struggle conflicts with the broader political positioning that he and his staff have pursued since he’s taken office. Biden has limited his personal engagement with cultural issues (such as immigration reform and LGBTQ rights) and has focused instead on kitchen-table economic concerns—checks in the pocket, shots in the arm, and more recently, shovels in the ground. As has been the case with the earlier stages of his career, he has stressed his determination to work with Republicans.

The bipartisan infrastructure bill represents the sweet spot for those two priorities: a tangible lunch-bucket initiative that allowed him to slap Republican senators on the back when they emerged from the White House together. Voting rights is almost at the opposite end of that spectrum; it starkly divides the parties and has become a symbol for the larger struggle for power between a racially diverse and urbanized Democratic coalition and a GOP coalition centered on noncollege and non-urban white voters. It’s dissonant for Biden to acknowledge that the GOP is radicalizing on voting and democracy while he’s effectively normalizing the party by seeking agreements with it so ardently. (Even in his speech, he implored “my Republican friends” to rally against the voting restrictions that virtually every GOP state legislator in the affected states has voted for.)

Read it all:

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2021/07/biden-filibuster-voting-rights/619431/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=masthead-newsletter&utm_content=20210717&silverid=%25%25RECIPIENT_ID%25%25&utm_term=Subscriber%20Only%20Weekly%20Newsletter

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Justice Samuel Alito Is suffering from an acute rectal- cranial inversion.

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