As we head on into 2019 and look back at 2018, there is no doubt we had lots of challenges, hardships and triumphs with lots more work to do…
2018 was a year where we saw institutions ratch up strategy of Fear and Blame… Sadly some of us got caught up in the rhetoric and added to to it…
We saw close to 2000 children snatched from their parents as families sought asylum at the border, with two of them Jakelin Caal (7) and Felipe Gómez Alonzo (8) dying while in the custody of ICE and Homeland Security..
There were huge
All of this bashing on immigrants is centered around a desire to appeal to the racist xenophobic attitudes of supporters and do serious money grab to ‘build a border wall’…We should never forget that…
While some brought into the simplistic rhetoric of insisting we close the borders and not worry about the plight of other people’s kids, many others astutely connected the dots and reminded us that the taking of children from oppressed peoples is an American past time..
From the days of African enslavement and Indian boarding schools up to today where we see parents who can’t afford water bills in Flint, Michigan or parents who have been made homeless thanks to gentrification having their
Speaking of gentrification in 2018 we saw an increase in homelessness..Many who work with the homeless estimate we have 4-5k homeless folks on the streets of Oakland alone..
It was just 5 or 6 years ago we saw tent cities sprout up all over the country during the Occupy Movement. At that time we saw folks call out income disparity with the framework of 99 vs 1%..
Fast forward to 2018 and the amount of tent cities and encampments we see have exploded, making the Occupy Movement seem miniscule. Tent cities and homeless encampments are now the norm with so many of us just a paycheck away or natural disaster away from joining the ranks.. What’s even more frustrating is seeing the brutal way in which Occupy encampments were broken up, continue with this increased homeless population. Folks are treated like crap and blamed for their dire predicaments.
It was in 2018 we saw gentrification accelerate all over the country. Here in Oakland we saw apartment buildings spring up and start charging 8k a month rent..(pictured below) We saw more and more folks forced to leave Oakland and move to far off places like Stockton, Modesto, Tracy etc and have to endure 3 hour commutes to work. These super commuters are now being hit with expensive highway tolls that via surge pricing can hit as much as 10-13 dollars a day..
In 2018 we saw all sorts of natural disaster all over the world. Here in Cali it was massive wildfires, that have resulted in scores of people dying and thousands losing their homes. All of us in the state were subjected to breathing contaminated air with no full understanding of its long term impacts..Rocking gas masks and driving for hours to places that have clean air is now the norm.
Its interesting to note, that in the middle of the horrific Campfire of Northern Cali that decimated the City of Paradise, a place that’s long been known for being conservative and racially hostile, President Trump quickly hoped on a plane and made his way out there to ‘inspect the damage’. It was a perfect photo op as we saw enthusiastic families cheering him on.. Only problem is during his remarks he got the name of the city wrong. He called it ‘Pleasure’ instead of Paradise…
Now granted many folks who dislike the president got their clown on, but many overlooked the real villains in this fiasco.. In Sacramento we had a bunch of chumps as legislators and an outgoing punk azz governor in the form of Jerry Brown who signed bills that would shield and limit PG&E’s liability from lawsuits even though in some of these key fires it was their negligence and ‘cost cutting’ measures that led to all this destruction.
Even worse we saw these bills give PG&E permission to raise rates to help pay for the billions of dollars in damages and lawsuit settlements.
in 2018 we saw the selling out of average folks as the Supreme Court ruled against unions, saying they can’t collect dues from non union members even as those non dues payers may enjoy the benefits of union benefits. That ruling happened in June and came on the heals of another death blow by the Supreme Court which basically said employers are protected from class action law suits.. That ruling happened in March…
Lastly we had this massive tax cut which completely upends everything.. One trend that we will see continue with these tax cuts will be workers no longer being employees of a company but being a contractor.. We that taking place throughout Silicon Valley.. It’s is most highlighted with the practices of ride share companies like Lyft and Uber… This means workers can’t collectively bargain, have no healthcare benefits, pensions, seniority, no workers compensation etc.. When all is said and done many find themselves holding down 2 or 3 gig jobs and make less than minimum wage..
After witnessing the circus around the Brett Kavanaugh hearings for the vacated seat Supreme Court justice Anthony Kennedy, we can expect more drama to unfold in 2019..
By now most people whether they are into politics or at are at the very least, remotely aware of the circus Election 2016 has become. The presidential race is bananas. Soap operas can’t compete with all that’s unfolded. Donald Trump and all his over the top antics are in the news every hour, every minute and damn near every second.
Powerful forces like the Koch Brothers and Karl Rove are looking into local races in key cities where they can flip school boards and further privatize education. They are looking at local city council races where they win contracts to control water, electricity and other entities and institutions that effect our day-to-day life.
If you are observing the rhetoric and subsequent hateful action inspired and empowered by Donald Trump and you are calling for him to be stopped at all costs, then there should be some tangible things you are asking people to do and realistic directions you are pointing people toward.
Yes, Donald Trump is a Klansman in a suit. Yes Trump will appoint conservative supreme court justices who make Clarence Thomas look liberal. Yes, Donald Trump will try and build a wall. Yes, Trump will push to put electronic monitoring devices on Muslims and declare anyone associated with Black Lives Matter a terrorist or a lethal enemy to police who should be curtailed.
I talked to some folks who are hard at work researching key down ballot issues and making voting guides to pass out on college campuses.. What research are you doing? What voting guides are you creating?
Still trying to process everything I took in this past week during the RNC (Republican National Convention) in Cleveland. It was the ultimate reality TV show starring Donald Trump. First thing I wanna do is clear up any misconceptions because I’m not sure how things were conveyed on TV. It should be noted the overwhelming majority of attendees to the tune of 97% of the delegates attending the RNC were white.
Second, with respect to the Trump campaign, the man is no dummy. Don’t be fooled. Donald Trump is a masterful, pop culture and media manipulator who should not be underestimated. I repeat do not underestimate him..Key word… ‘masterful’.
While many of us watched Trump give his spiel and responded by pointing out his numerous hypocrisies, scandals, offensive rhetoric and blatant wrong doings, his audience CONNECTED and continues to CONNECT with him. They don’t HEAR him. They FEEL him. Again I repeat, for his supporters it’s not about Trump being right or wrong. It’s not about him being caught in a lie or distorting the truth-Its about the way he makes his audience feel. His audience FEELS him.
That mindset is not much different from the mindset many hold today with Trump. Contradictions and political shortcomings be damned. Exaggerations and distortions of truth be damned. Many rationalized their support for Obama and rode with him, no matter what.
When listening to Donald Trump we can see clearly that he’s borrowed from President Nixon with his ‘Law and Order’ rhetoric. What’s not so clear is seeing that Trump also borrowed from President Obama.
As I watched and listened intently to his speech on the final night of the RNC, I saw it resonating with that large crowd hungry for change and in need of hope. I also knew that one of two things will happen if Trump gets into office. He will either do like Obama and quickly abandon and betray many of the poor, marginalized folks that drove his campaign. That could result in violent reaction considering he has courted and attracted lots of armed anti-government militia types who have been preparing and yearning for confrontation.
These poor whites back then were able to unite and form solidarity with the planter class elites over fear of slave uprisings. It should be noted that in many places enslaved Africans outnumbered whites as a result the oppression and brutality was harsher. It’s a mindset that would be a driving force around Black oppression for generations to come.
As my good friend Professor Tina Bell Wright pointed out in a recent conversation what we are also seeing is a racialized backlash to Obama in much the same way the rise of the KKK and Jim Crow were backlashes to the Reconstruction era.
Over the week, I saw thousands stand on the floor of the Quicken Loan Center cheer and chant in unison ‘Build a Wall’. At one point the frenzied cheering and jeering by an emboldened white crowd made it feel absolutely unsafe to be in the vicinity or outside in the adjacent courtyard.
Just as frightening as thousands chanting ‘Build a Wall’ was thousands chanting of ‘Blue Lives Matter’ and cheering wildly to the news that one another police officer connected to the killing of Freddie Gray was acquitted. The unapologetic upliftment and all out debasing of the Black Lives Matter movement was beyond disconcerting.
This was accompanied with the presence of several thousand police officers from all over the country including Florida, Massachusetts, Indiana, Montana to name a few, running and executing what amounted to be crowd control drills against demonstrators who were all forced to be confined in a park blocks away from the RNC called Public Square. 300 of those police were from California Highway Patrol.
Many Trump supporters are experiencing economic hardships coupled with deep seated fears of being outnumbered and overwhelmed by a growing Black and Brown population. That anger under a Trump presidency will be directed at our communities with the full unapologetic backing of the state. How prepared are we for this?
There’s a lot to reflect and say about last night’s election. The re-election of President Barack Obama brought enthusiastic cheers from all corners of the country. But one should be cautious and not misread those cheers. They weren’t the cheers of 2008 where there was literally dancing in the streets as history was made and folks were left hopeful.
Like it or not, Obama won last night’s election because of widespread politics of fear..not hope. Many who voted for him, did so with lots of dissatisfaction and disappointment on an array of policies the President championed or did not champion, but what they perceived was coming down the pipe was so frightening folks quickly got in line and pulled the lever for the President..
Only time will tell if what we experienced was some grand exercise of Good Cop Bad Cop with the end game of getting everyone to reinvest into a system that has constantly failed people. But for now many are happy that they pushed back on something they felt would be irreversibly catastrophic. By voting and re-electing Barack Obama many who are part of a growing demographic of folks who feel they’re constantly marginalized felt like they were standing up and pushing back on the type of attitude expressed in the O’reilly video..
