U.S. National

You may find this shocking, but a little over a decade ago I spent a weekend learning how to shoot a handgun — under the auspices of the NRA. I wound up earning myself an NRA “personal protection in the home” certificate.

For years I have pondered writing about this weekend, but never found quite the right context for doing so. But the recent decision of the Supreme Court in the New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen — declaring that the possession of pistols in public is a constitutional right — has pulled that weekend up from my memory (as well as from the pages of the journal entry I made afterwards, on May 2, 2011).

The ruling, as Karrie Jacobs has written, intensifies the danger we all face simply by being out in public, noting that in its wake “our sense of security in crowded places may be more permanently damaged than it was by the pandemic.

She adds: “It advances a perception of the United States as a dystopian nation where day-to-day survival depends on being armed.”

We hear from BRIAN STEINBERG about Michigan’s amazing statewide referenda to win a Constitutional Amendment guaranteeing a woman’s right to control her body, and to make it easier for ordinary citizens to exercise their democratic rights. 

 An astonishing 750,000+ signatures have been gathered, guaranteeing a sea change in Michigan politics that should be matched throughout the country if the progressive movement was actually awake.

JOEL SEGAL, WILLIE FLEMING, RAY MCCLENDON and ROBERT WILSON then fill us in on the all-important grassroots/relational organizing in North Carolina and Georgia, two states that would swing the entire nation.

Florida’s JIM LANGFORD joins Oregon’s LAWRENCE TAYLOR & SHERRY HEALY to update the Progressive Democrats of America’s work to democratize the Democratic Party.

TATANKA BRICCA then updates us on California’s campaign for a Green New Deal and the desperate attempt to get the horrendous Diablo Canyon shut before it unleashes an apocalyptic cloud killing millions of people and permanently destroying the American ecology and economy.

As he begins to campaign for the White House, Gov. Gavin Newsom is toying with extending operations at two of the world’s most dangerous atomic reactors, sited at the aptly named Diablo Canyon, nine miles west of San Luis Obispo.

The coastal nukes are surrounded by a dozen earthquake faults, just 45 miles from the San Andreas, whose eruption could send an apocalyptic radioactive cloud into Los Angeles County, just 180 miles downwind. Potential human casualties could far exceed ten millon. The economic and ecological devastation would be incalculable.

Newsom’s emergence as a potential atomic triggerman has been tortured and tragic. Long marketed as an environmentalist, Newsom has fiercely criticized the state’s largest utility, for good reason.

Since 2000, Pacific Gas & Electric has twice fled to bankruptcy.

In 2010, PG&E’S under maintained gas lines caused a San Bruno explosion that killed eight people while burning 19 homes. Its grid mismanagement ignited huge fires that devastated northern California forests while killing more than 80 people, incinerating the entire town of Paradise (which Trump famously mis-labelled “Pleasure”).

WASHINGTON -
Declaring that “President Biden has been neither bold nor inspiring” and “his prospects for winning re-election appear to be bleak,” the national activist organization RootsAction announced today that it will launch a campaign to prevent his renomination.

With an email list of 1.2 million current supporters in the United States, RootsAction issued a statement saying it is committed to nationwide organizing to prevent Biden from being the Democratic Party’s 2024 nominee for president. This is the first time that a large national organization has announced such plans.

“In 2024 the United States will face the dual imperatives of preventing a Republican takeover of the White House and advancing a truly progressive agenda,” RootsAction said in a statement. With so much at stake, renominating Biden “would be a tragic mistake.” The statement concluded: “A president is not his party’s king, and he has no automatic right to renomination. Joe Biden should not seek it. If he does, he will have a fight on his hands.”

The full RootsAction statement announcing the #DontRunJoe campaign is posted at DontRunJoe.org.

In our second hour, we are joined by ALAN MINSKY, JAN GOODMAN and MYLA RESON for a deep dive into the anti-democracy crisis now threatening the future of the PACIFICA RADIO NETWORK. That full hour of detailed discussion can be found at https://youtu.be/keAkQycl7Bg?t=3865

Video starts at the beginning of the segment. If it does not, move your cursor to 1:05:08 for the Pacifica start point.

Ready, aim, fire:

“I believe in Jesus, guns and babies.”

So declares Kandiss Taylor, GOP candidate for governor of Georgia, in a campaign ad.

Or how about: “I’m Eric Greitens, Navy SEAL, and today, we’re going RINO-hunting.” This is not about killing rhinoceroses. “RINO” stands for Republican in Name Only – you know, anti-Trumpers. Greitens, former governor of Missouri, who resigned in the wake of a sexual abuse allegation, is now running for the Senate – running fully armed and dangerous as hell, at least according to his little TV ad, which features him and a bunch of guys dressed up in camouflage outfits, fully armed, kicking someone’s door open, tossing in a smoke bomb.

Part 1
https://youtu.be/1QB1iDqq8_w 
Part 2
https://youtu.be/k8HKAyH0B5c 

Our 98th GREE-GREE (Green Grassroots Emergency Election Protection Coalition) Zoom starts with a critical new progressive alliance and culminates at the January 6 Hearings.

We begin with TATANKA BRICCA who introduces us to DREW GLOVER, the charismatic new Executive Director of the National Progressive Action Coalition.

Drew explains to us in riveting in-depth detail how the NPAC will at last draw the left out of its silos and into the kind of unified political campaigning our country so desperately needs.

We then hear from ROGER HALLAM in England about the Extinction Rebellion and the huge demonstrations they’ve led in Great Britain.

In our second hour we’re joined by the legendary TV / documentary producer DAVID SALTMAN who gives us the insider’s overview of the first night of the January 6 hearings.

David is joined by our legendary co-convenor JOEL SEGAL and by DENNIS BERNSTEIN, nationally syndicated host of KPFA’s FLASHPOINTS.

Video Link: https://youtu.be/P-2EwLXsmNk

Danny Sheehan & Brynn Tannehill Sound The Warnings

Our latest masterful Green Grassroots Emergency Election Protection (GREE-GREE) gathering is powered by two great observer/activists in the devastating miasma that has become the American political scene.  

BRYNN TANNEHILL takes us through the dire straits we face in the electoral process as laid out in her book AMERICAN FASCISM.  It takes root especially with gerrymandering scams completely gutting our democracy.  The GOP advantage in the US Senate skews 7% toward the Republican Party, which is now an overt fascist juggernaut.  And that’s just a small part of the internal authoritarian cancer that’s sending our nation toward dictatorship.

The blood-soaked lie about the Second Amendment is simple.

Gun-lovers who hide behind it to justify “the right to keep and bear arms” criminally ignore the demand with which the Amendment’s author, James Madison, began: “A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state.”

The bar is clear: if you are a member of an armed unit that is being “well-regulated” by the community, and if your gun ownership can be proven to serve “the security of a free state,” then under the rubric of the Second Amendment, you have a right to own a gun.

But if you cannot meet those two qualifications, you do NOT.

Madison and his contemporary white Founders—-who some on the Supreme Court have elevated to Divine status—-would be horrified to see how this Amendment has been perverted to support a never-ending slaughter of civilians—-especially children—-while doing everything to undermine our nation’s security.

The Amendment was written, in part, to justify the arming of militias often used to capture runaway slaves and slaughter the Indigenous. Those two horrifying realities most (not all) Americans would today reject.

Dear Hon. Senators Rios, Quezada, and Alston:                                                                    Monday, May 30, 2022

HB2780 is coming before the Rules Committee at 1 pm on Tuesday, May 31.