Opinion

Shouts and honking horns . . . and a country being born?

Hey, hey, ho, ho . . . I don’t know. it’s been four days ago, as I write, that the second No Kings rally was held across the country – across the world. I can still hear the blaring horns; they sounded like music. Something fused and bubbled in the blare, a sense of connection and shared values, that isn’t going away. That was the uniqueness of this rally, or so I hope and feel at some deep place in my heart.

I attended the rally, with my sister and two friends, in Appleton, Wisconsin, where I now live – one of about 2,700 such rallies across the country. The several thousand people packing the streets of downtown Appleton were part of the 7 million people throughout the country who felt called upon to – shall we say? – join the future. This is my takeaway. This is why I’m writing about the rally today. Yeah, it’s over. But it’s not “done.”

No faux king way!

As our we open GREEP #243, our Poet Laureate MIMI GERMAN celebrates the ability of America’s Air Traffic Controllers’ ability to shut the nation down.

Activist-advocate JAY PONTI introduces us to STOPTHECAMPS.COM to fight the Alligator Alcatraz/Auschwitz nightmare while arguing that the MAGA movement is not a monolith.

In the wake of NoKings 2.0, MARISOL BIELMAN reminds us that Albert Speer used Jewish slave warriors to build Hitler’s war machine.

After discussing Donald Trump’s AI insane images showing dropping feces on a reporter, the great PAUL NEWMAN calls the alarm on ES&S voting machines.

From Arizona, the great JOHN BRAKEY highlights his 3-year defiance in pursuing citizen demands for critical public voting records.

Our engineer STEVE CARUSO warns us that election theft cuts both ways as Hillary & Kamela both walked away from electoral integrity.

Co-Convenor MIKE HERSH introduces MAGA escapees ANDRA WATKINS and JENNIE GAGE who discuss their astounding backgrounds in Christian nationalism.

In case you have never heard the name "Valetina Gomez" before, she is a 26 y/o Columbian immigrant and a right-wing extremist Republican candidate for Secretary of State in Missouri who faced a resounding defeat in the primary election last year. One day after her brother's support for her campaign, he was fired from the office of New Jersey mayor.

She came to public attention when she burnt a copy of the Qur'an during her election campaign to attract media attention and generate votes. But the self-confessed “biggest bitch in America” uses the verbal equivalent of "shock and awe" against Muslims, Blacks, immigrants, and gay people to make a name for himself. 

Here are some samples of her recent obnoxious remarks:

* She recently burned a copy of the Qur'an.

* Muslims should never be able to hold public office in the US.

* Muslims want to kill every Jew, Christian, and Hindu.

* She cheers the slaughter of innocent children in Gaza. 

* She is banned on Instagram, Facebook, and Wikipedia due to her incendiary remarks and call for violence.

The human condition includes a vast array of unavoidable misfortunes. But what about the preventable ones? Shouldn’t the United States provide for the basic needs of its people?

Such questions get distinctly short shrift in the dominant political narratives. When someone can’t make ends meet and suffers dire consequences, the mainstream default is to see a failing individual rather than a failing system. Even when elected leaders decry inequity, they typically do more to mystify than clarify what has caused it.

While “income inequality” is now a familiar phrase, media coverage and political rhetoric routinely disconnect victims from their victimizers. Human-interest stories and speechifying might lament or deplore common predicaments, but their storylines rarely connect the destructive effects of economic insecurity with how corporate power plunders social resources and fleeces the working class. Yet the results are extremely far-reaching.

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Amid this epic battle against fascism and in the wake of Oct. 18, the largest protest in US history, I wanted to take a moment to remember and celebrate the life of a friend and comrade who died recently - Bruce Bostick.

My deepest condolences go out to Bruce's family. Others have written about him, and I'm sure his family, friends, and comrades will continue to share memories.

I got to know Bruce right out of college when I joined the CPUSA and was a community organizer in Cleveland, Ohio. Bruce, a Midwesterner through and through, was radicalized by his involvement in the anti-Vietnam War movement. In the early 1970s, he was already a young, experienced trade union activist at US Steel in Lorain, OH, and one of the leaders of the growing rank and file movement that was trying to transform the United Steelworkers of America into a fighting union. That movement played an important role in changing the USWA and the AFL-CIO.

Remember Phase 1 of Zone In when the Columbus Mayor and City Council screamed that THE SKY IS FALLING? They spent 2.7 MILLION DOLLARS of taxpayer money just on a marketing campaign to tell us that we had to pass the largest change to the zoning code in the history of the city, one that benefits real estate investors and developers. Remember the City ignoring the questions and concerns of the citizens about parking and not having any master plan? Yeah, that happened.

Remember those manufactured talking points that if we didn’t pass the Zone In proposal the city would also be DESTROYED BY GODZILLA? (Okay, that wasn’t a part of their message, but it would have at least been more entertaining).

Anyway, the entire process was TARGETED PROPAGANDA to create fear while flooding the media with the messages they wanted us to believe. It was a beautiful example of MANIPULATING PUBLIC OPINION and it worked perfectly...for real estate investors and developers.

For our City leadership, EVERYTHING IS AN EMERGENCY because there is no planning or strategy—other than finding new ways to spend money–our money.

The massively successful NoKings2.0 has again underlined Donald Trump’s four failing MAGA fascist roots: male dominance; global white dominance; US financial dominance; and the end of fossil/nuclear fuels.

They’re all linked to the impending collapse of the petro-dollar, the century-old pillar of American prosperity, about to disappear.

Autocratic hucksters like Adolph Hitler and Donald Trump have forever feasted on the human inability to cope with a perceived loss of status.

Hitler’s Nazi putsch was rooted in Germany’s inability to accept losing World War I.

Deutschland’s “Christian” misogynists had ultimate faith in their assumed superiority. Their “incomprehensible” 1918 defeat was made unbearable by the 1929 crash.

So Hitler’s Mein Kampf promised to make Germany “great again.”

Under the thumb of Adolph’s white male Master Race, women were defined by the KKK: Kirche (church) Kitchen (cooking) & Kinder (kids). Gays were untermenchen. Jews, gypsies, slavs, trans, Jehovah Witnesses, immigrants…all were “vermin,” fit only for extermination.

Human Rights First’s Innovation Lab announced the launch of ReadyNow!, a free and secure mobile app designed to help immigrants prepare for possible detention and act quickly in moments of crisis. The app empowers users to create an emergency plan to notify pre-selected contacts; arrange emergency plans for childcare, medical needs, legal support, and more.

“No one should disappear into detention without a trace,” said Perris Richter, Senior Director of the Innovation Lab at Human Rights First. ICE arrests are often sudden and disorienting, leaving people unable to notify loved ones, arrange child or pet care, or access legal help. ReadyNow! empowers users to create a personalized emergency plan and instantly notify trusted contacts with one click if they face imminent arrest. “This is not about politics. This is about safety and human dignity.”

Key features of the app include: