Between TF and my other fandoms like BG3 and TES, I keep finding myself making OCs that have some element of "battle hardened hero who is actually good and righteous, but so traumatized by the toll of war that even after the war ends they feel empty/wrecked and can't enjoy the fruits of victory" and I'm not sure if it's bc I gravitate to a certain type of media where such OCs fit in best, or bc I have a specific character archetype I like and gravitate towards media that contains those things.

Alexander Hamilton is often credited with being the most far-sighted of the founders, since he, more than anyone else, saw America’s potential to become a manufacturing and commercial powerhouse among the nations.

Not even a man of Hamilton’s vision, however, could have foreseen that he would one day be the subject of a hit stage musical—let alone one set to hip-hop music. Two centuries after his meteoric rise from poverty and obscurity to the highest levels of the founding generation’s leadership class, Hamilton is a star again—this time on Broadway.

What are conservatives to make of Hamilton’s newfound fame? Some—following Thomas Jefferson, who regarded Hamilton as a subverter of limited government—might be tempted to regret it.

In his own day, Hamilton was not so much known as a proponent of limited government as he was considered a proponent of energetic government. And Hamilton argued for a broad interpretation of the national government’s powers precisely with a view to enabling the energetic government he thought necessary to the infant republic’s security and flourishing.

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Hamilton argued for a broad reading of the Necessary and Proper Clause in order to justify the constitutionality of the first national bank, which he thought a crucial support for the government’s ability to borrow money. He argued for a broad reading of the General Welfare Clause in order to justify the constitutionality of bounties (or subsidies) paid to manufacturers, which he thought essential to building an American manufacturing sector.

In all these efforts to get Congress to exercise its powers energetically, he was opposed vehemently by limited-government men like Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. It would be understandable, then, if contemporary conservatives were to ask: “Why can’t we have a musical about Jefferson or Madison?”

Hamilton’s Conservatism

Conservatives who are tempted to think this way should take a closer look at Hamilton’s career.

As I argue at greater length in a new essay entitled “Alexander Hamilton and American Progressivism,” Hamilton was not a proto-progressive. Nor was he the progenitor, wittingly or unwittingly, of the kind of expansive central state that modern liberals support in their quest to achieve social justice.

He was instead a pragmatic conservative statesman, seeking to build a government and economy that would make America an independent, prosperous, and powerful nation.

Hamilton’s conservatism is evident, in the first place, in the way he argued for institutions like the national bank and bounties for America’s infant manufacturing sector.

Unlike a contemporary progressive, he favored these things not because they were new or innovative. On the contrary, he advocated them precisely on the conservative ground that they had been tried, and their usefulness proven, in other countries.

Successful commercial and manufacturing nations, he observed, had national banks and had taken some steps to encourage the development of their nascent domestic manufactures.

Hamilton and Modern Liberals

Hamilton’s conservatism is also evident in the ends he had in view in advocating such policies.

The primary driver of contemporary liberalism’s demand for expansive government authority is contemporary liberalism’s egalitarianism. This can be seen in the debate over the Affordable Care Act. Even though America in 2009 could boast a health care system among the best in the history of the entire world, it was not good enough for American liberals.

And why not? Because of inequality. Most Americans had adequate health insurance, but some didn’t.

This is not the kind of thinking that informed Alexander Hamilton’s statesmanship. Indeed, Hamilton was accused by his political enemies of being an aristocrat. Those charges were unjust, but they certainly could not have been made if he had dedicated his public efforts, like a contemporary liberal, to the pursuit of an ever greater equality of conditions.

The end Hamilton had in mind in advocating his policies was instead the prosperity, power and prestige of the nation—within which enterprising individuals and families could work effectively to better their condition.

A Government Can Be Both Limited and Energetic

Nor should contemporary conservatives reject Hamilton because of his call for an energetic national government. This call was consistent with the purposes of the American founding and not a betrayal of them. The Constitution was written and ratified, after all, because the government of the United States was too weak, unable to pay its bills and defend the country.

The aim of the Constitution, then, is to create a government that is both energetic and limited. And Hamilton’s career reminds us that this is what we should want: a government that energetically executes its proper functions but does not go beyond them.

It is true that Hamilton was accused by Jefferson and Madison of pushing the powers of the national government beyond their proper limits. His response to such charges showed a proper respect for the Constitution that is often lacking among contemporary progressives.

Hamilton replied to these accusations by arguing that his policies were in fact justified by a correct interpretation of the Constitution. He certainly did not respond by suggesting, as contemporary liberals sometimes do, that the Constitution could be ignored because it is supposedly inadequate to the needs of a dynamic and changing nation.

In sum, the debate between Hamilton and his opponents was a debate over how to understand the limits on government imposed by the Constitution, not a debate about whether those limits should be respected.

Hamilton and the Other Founders

Similarly, Hamilton stood with the rest of the founding generation in supporting separation of powers and federalism as principles that limited and moderated the exercise of the national power. He agreed with James Madison that separation of powers is essential to preventing the tyrannical exercise of government power.

And while he sought to shore up the national power because he thought this was what the infant republic needed to achieve stability, he admitted that the states were an essential part of America’s constitutional scheme and that they would serve as a salutary check on the power of the federal government.

The state legislatures, Hamilton argued in Federalist No. 26, would act as “not only vigilant but suspicious and jealous guardians of the rights of the citizens against encroachments from the federal government.”

Above all, Hamilton accepted and unswervingly defended the natural rights doctrine that informed the founding, a doctrine that contemporary conservatives are called upon to defend as well.

For Hamilton, as much as for Jefferson and Madison, governments were instituted to protect the rights of individuals, including their right to acquire property—even unequal amounts of property.

As the statesman charged with finding a way for America to pay its war debts, Hamilton made the right of private property one of the guiding principles of his plan to restore the public credit. He never suggested that the government could escape its debts by repudiating them, thus violating the property rights of the debt holders.

On the contrary, he insisted that “the established rules of morality and justice are applicable to nations as well as to individuals” and “that the former as well as the latter are bound to keep their promises, to fulfill their engagements,” and “to respect the rights of property.”

Hamilton’s Life

Broadway’s “Hamilton” is, of course, less about Hamilton’s political thought than it is about his remarkable life. Here, again, conservatives should rejoice at his new prominence in the public mind. Hamilton’s life is an amazing testimony to what can be accomplished by talent and hard work in a free and open society.

If anyone was born disadvantaged, it was young Alexander Hamilton. His childhood was marked by his illegitimacy, his father’s abandonment of the family, and his mother’s untimely death.

Hamilton responded to these setbacks not with despair or fatalism, but with a determination to make something of himself, to advance his position in the world. He certainly succeeded, becoming General Washington’s most trusted aide and organizer and the lead writer of The Federalist Papers, as well as the nation’s first and most consequential Secretary of the Treasury.

Hamilton, moreover, advanced himself not by the low arts of popularity, but instead by his willingness to master the details of the work that had to be done on behalf of the public.

Young Alexander Hamilton, while serving in the Continental Army, carried with him a copy of Malachy Postlewayte’s “Universal Dictionary of Trade and Commerce.” While serving his country, he used his spare time to prepare himself to serve it even better by mastering what he would need to know to manage its financial affairs.

Contemporary conservatives need not agree with everything Hamilton said or did. They can and should, however, admire his virtues and be grateful for his contribution to the creation of the America we have inherited. They can therefore rejoice to find his name in lights.

The Legacy of Paul Volcker

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Remembering Paul Volcker, the Fed chair “willing to be unpopular”

Paul A. Volcker, who died Sunday in New York at the age of 92, was remembered for helping shape American economic policy for more than six decades, particularly as the Fed chair who tamed inflation in the 1970s and ‘80s. Mr. Volcker arrived in Washington as America’s postwar economic dominance was beginning to crumble and devoted his professional life to wrestling with the consequences, write the NYT’s Binyamin Appelbaum and Robert D. Hershey Jr. As a Treasury Department official under Democratic and Republican presidents, Mr. Volcker waged a long, losing struggle to preserve the post-World War II international monetary system. In his last official position, as chairman of President Barack Obama’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board, he persuaded lawmakers to impose new restrictions on big banks — a controversial measure known as the Volcker Rule. His defining achievement, however, was his success in ending an extended period of high inflation after President Jimmy Carter chose him to be the Fed chair in 1979. He delivered shock therapy, pushing interest rates as high as 20 percent, the WSJ writes, driving the economy into a deep recession but making him one of the most successful central bankers in history. “Volcker’s mantra, one he told me again and again through 2008-9, was that in a crisis the only asset you have is your credibility,” Austan Goolsbee, an economist at the University of Chicago’s Booth School and a former chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, tweeted. That quality is one of the best reasons to mourn the loss of Mr. Volcker, writes the WaPo Opinion section: “Unlike so many other public officials, he was unusually — perhaps uniquely — willing to be unpopular.” Mr. Volcker was not sanguine about the future when he talked to Andrew last year. “I’m not good,” he said as Andrew walked into his Manhattan apartment, and he wasn’t referring only to his health. “We’re in a hell of a mess in every direction,” he said. “Respect for government, respect for the Supreme Court, respect for the president, it’s all gone.”

Boeing whistle-blower says production was riddled with problems

Ahead of his testimony before a congressional committee tomorrow, a former senior manager at Boeing is speaking about the concerns he had with the production of the 737 Max airplane. Four months before the first of two deadly crashes of a 737 Max, the manager, Ed Pierson, approached an executive at the company, saying he was worried that the plane was riddled with production problems and potentially unsafe, David Gelles of the NYT reports. The Max has been grounded since March, shortly after the second crash. Employees at the Renton, Wash., factory where the 737 Max is produced were overworked, exhausted and making mistakes, Mr. Pierson told Mr. Gelles. Damaged parts, missing tools and incomplete instructions were preventing planes from being built on time. Executives were pressuring workers to complete planes despite staff shortages and a chaotic factory floor. “Frankly right now all my internal warning bells are going off,” Mr. Pierson said in an email to the head of the 737 program last year that was reviewed by The NYT. “And for the first time in my life, I’m sorry to say that I’m hesitant about putting my family on a Boeing airplane.” Mr. Pierson called on Boeing to shut down the Max production line last year. But the company kept producing planes and did not make major changes in response to his complaints. During the time when Mr. Pierson said the Renton facility was in disarray, it built the two planes that crashed and killed 346 people. “The suggestion by Mr. Pierson of a link between his concerns and the recent Max accidents is completely unfounded,” a Boeing spokesman, Gordon Johndroe, said in a statement.

Amazon accuses Trump of “improper pressure” in cloud contract

Amazon has gone to court to accuse President Trump of using “improper pressure” on the Pentagon to harm Amazon’s chief executive, Jeff Bezos — whom it calls the president’s “perceived political enemy,” writes the NYT’s Kate Conger. That pressure was intended to divert a multibillion-dollar cloud computing contract to its rival, Microsoft, Amazon said in a legal complaint unsealed yesterday in U.S. Court of Federal Claims in Washington. Amazon, which has the country’s largest cloud computing provider, Amazon Web Services, had been considered the front-runner for the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure project, known as JEDI. But the Defense Department reviewed outdated submissions from the company and overlooked key technical capabilities, Amazon claimed. Those errors tipped the scales in favor of Microsoft, which won the contract in October, Amazon said. In its complaint, Amazon said the president “launched repeated public and behind-the-scenes attacks” on the contract and the company, the WSJ reports. It would be improper for a president to intervene in the awarding of a contract, according to experts on federal contracting.

Demand grows for educated factory workers

As American factories shift toward automation, jobs are requiring more advanced skills, and workers can no longer get by without higher education, writes the WSJ’s Austen Hufford. Manufacturers are on track to employ more college graduates in the next three years than workers with less education, according to an analysis of federal data. “U.S. manufacturers have added more than a million jobs since the recession, with the growth going to men and women with degrees,” Mr. Hufford writes. “Over the same time, manufacturers employed fewer people with at most a high-school diploma.” • Manufacturing jobs that require the most complex problem-solving skills grew 10 percent between 2012 and 2018. But jobs requiring the least declined 3 percent in that same period. “Investments in automation will continue to expand factory production with relatively fewer employees,” Mr. Hufford writes. “Jobs that remain are expected to be increasingly filled by workers from colleges and technical schools, leaving high-school graduates and dropouts with fewer opportunities.”

The argument for why capitalism’s revival depends on taxation

Capitalism is in a state of crisis, thanks to a lack of revenue, and it can be resolved only by a substantial increase in taxation, Joseph Stiglitz, Todd Tucker, and Gabriel Zucman write in Foreign Affairs. “No successful market can survive without the underpinnings of a strong, functioning state,” they write. Total tax revenue in the U.S. shrank over the last two decades, to approximately 28 percent of national income today from about 32 percent in 1999. This has led to “crumbling infrastructure, a slowing pace of innovation, a diminishing rate of growth, booming inequality, shorter life expectancy, and a sense of despair among large parts of the population.“ Opponents of tax increases claim that corporate investment is the engine of growth, the authors write. “In the real world, however, there is no observable correlation between capital taxation and capital accumulation.” The authors propose “a bold new regime of domestic and international taxes”: • “Only a far more progressive tax code will provide the necessary level of revenue.” • “Eliminate special provisions that exempt dividends, capital gains, carried interest, real estate, and other forms of wealth from taxation.” • “A wealth tax, such as the one recently proposed by Elizabeth Warren, the Democratic U.S. senator from Massachusetts who is currently running for president.” • “To curb the evasion of income and wealth taxes, countries will have to cooperate much more with one another.” • “A global minimum tax should be instituted to set a floor on how low would-be tax havens could drop their rates.”

Former DealBook reporter raises $8 million for start-up

Yumi, a baby-food delivery start-up, announced today that it has raised $8 million in a fund-raising round. Investors in the round include the founders of Allbirds, Casper, Harry’s, SoulCycle, Sweetgreen, Uber and Warby Parker, and the C.E.O. of Blue Bottle Coffee. Yumi delivers meals that are high in nutrients and low on fructose and are tailored to a child’s age and developmental stage. The company will use the capital to expand nationwide and develop proprietary software, which would allow the company to create personalized meal plans and educational content. The round brings the company’s total funding to $12.1 million, Yumi said; other investors include August Capital, Brand Foundry and Day One Ventures. • Yumi was founded in 2017 by Angela Sutherland and Evelyn Rusli, a former New York Times and DealBook reporter, with a focus on the importance of what children eat in their first 1,000 days.

Revolving door

As part of a major overhaul at HSBC, Samir Assaf, the global banking and markets chief, will become the bank’s chairman of corporate and institutional banking. Georges Elhedery and Greg Guyett will take over as co-heads of the unit. Morgan Stanley is cutting around 1,500 jobs worldwide. Away, an online luggage seller, said its C.E.O., Steph Korey, was stepping down. Fox News said Bill Hemmer, one of the network’s longest-serving news anchors, would replace Shepard Smith as host of its afternoon news hour.

The speed read

Deals • NortonLifeLock, the $16 billion consumer-software company, has attracted deal interest from a handful of companies including a rival, McAfee. (WSJ) • Tiger Global Management, one of Juul’s earliest boosters, slashed its valuation of the e-cigarette start-up to $19 billion, another sign investors are re-evaluating one-time Silicon Valley darlings. (WSJ) • SoftBank’s Vision Fund has agreed to sell its stake in Wag Labs back to the struggling dog-walking start-up. (NYT) • Goldman Sachs is arranging a $1.75 billion line of credit for WeWork, the first step in SoftBank’s plan to bail out the office-sharing company. (Bloomberg) • Merck and Sanofi, two of the world’s biggest drugmakers, struck multibillion-dollar deals aimed at bolstering their lineups in the fiercely competitive cancer drug market. (WSJ) • A federal judge told lawyers fighting over T-Mobile’s bid to acquire Sprint to skip their customary opening arguments so they could start questioning witnesses, a sign he is seeking a speedy trial. (WSJ) • Pentagon officials have stepped up talks with Japan to choose a U.S. fighter jet over one from BAE Systems, a British rival. (FT) Politics and policy • Records from hundreds of interviews with people who were directly involved in the war in Afghanistan reveal they could not shake their doubts about the strategy and mission. (WaPo) • A long-awaited report by the Justice Department’s inspector general criticized aspects of the early stages of the F.B.I.’s Russia investigation but essentially exonerated former bureau leaders of President Trump’s accusations that they engaged in a politicized conspiracy to sabotage him. (NYT) • Mayor Pete Buttigieg will disclose his management consulting clients, open his fund-raisers to reporters and reveal the names of people raising money for his presidential campaign. (NYT) Impeachment • House Democrats are said to have narrowed the articles of impeachment against President Trump, which are expected to be unveiled today, to abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. (NYT) Trade • Congress is taking aim at China in a defense-policy bill at the same time that the Trump administration is seeking to negotiate a trade pact with Beijing. (WSJ) • The agriculture secretary, Sonny Perdue, said that the U.S. was unlikely to impose new tariffs on Chinese goods on Dec. 15. (Bloomberg) • Democratic lawmakers are close to an agreement with the White House on revisions to the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement; an announcement could come today. (NYT) Tech • New York is becoming more of a global technology hub, as industry giants tap into the work force of a region long known as a banking and media stronghold. And Democrats who torpedoed Amazon’s plans to set up a second headquarters in the city are finding their stance could come back to bite them. (Bloomberg, Politico) • Comcast plans to spend $2 billion on its Peacock streaming service in the platform’s first two years. (Bloomberg) • The E.U. has approved a 3.2 billion euro ($3.55 billion) fund to promote the research and development of batteries. (FT) • Major nonprofits and other organizations critical of Big Tech are pledging millions to groups that are taking on corporate giants. (NYT) Best of the rest • Blackstone’s Jon Gray and his wife are giving $10 million to the University of Pennsylvania to support 10 low-income students from New York City annually. (Bloomberg) • A look at Citigroup’s sweeping renovation of its Manhattan headquarters. (Bloomberg) • Big brands and online start-ups are finding that consumers generally prefer buying household staples in a single shopping trip over enrolling in subscription services. (WSJ) • The first mission to remove space junk from Earth’s orbit is expected to launch in 2025 as part of an initiative to clean up more than 3,000 defunct satellites. (Bloomberg) Thanks for reading! We’ll see you tomorrow. We’d love your feedback. Please email thoughts and suggestions to [email protected]. Source link Read the full article

So, when you talk about your "long-winded and disjointed list of problems" with season 2...I'm curious to ask, what's on that list?

It’s been a few months since I’ve re-watched Season 2, so feel free to correct me if I’ve misremembered something. 

My biggest problems with season 2:

The Timeline: 

Everything has to take place in the span of a few weeks? If it worked out logically, Matt wouldn’t have self-destructed the way he did. He catches the Punisher in a few days, the trial happens a week later (riiight...) and then lasts a few days. Then the Punisher gets out in less time than the length of the trial. And all of this is happening during very time-sensitive Hand discoveries? Kevin McCallister voice: I don’t think so. 

Nelson and Murdock

How in the hell do two men with expensive law degrees afford to live in New York when they are (maybe) paying the rent for their space and nothing else? You can’t ignore that fact for an entire second season. Maybe Matt could survive off of whatever money his father left him, but that seems unlikely. And I haven’t gotten the vibe that Foggy is rich like in the comics. Plus, the Punisher certainly isn’t paying them, so the best case scenario would be that hopefully their careers aren’t ruined and more (criminal) clients to show up on their doorstep after everything is done?

I know DD is a dark show, but one of the best elements of the show is the relationships. Foggy and Karen balance Matt out - they are his ties to his humanity. But the second half of the show he is off screwing them over and they barely interact with him for the last four episodes - a good 1/4th of the season. I don’t think he even speaks with Foggy in those last episodes. Foggy basically disappears from the show - and the fact that Matt doesn’t see him while he’s standing on the roof of the same hospital is so incredibly aggravating. He’s been Daredevil for a year? A year and a half? So he was a decent friend before all that and then became an asshole? Does his alter-ego have that big a hold on him? He really needed to have more conversations with Father Lantom, that’s for damn sure.

They didn’t use Foggy enough after the trial. He’s so much better than the role of sanctimonious best friend. In the beginning of season 2 he is more accepting of Matt’s nightly activities and I think that’s because he knows that Matt isn’t going to stop. But no, we need to rehash the conversation they had in Murdock v. Nelson (which is my favorite episode of S.1, btw) because Matt just doesn’t learn. Foggy is justifiably upset with his partner, but it comes off as annoying. 

Whenever Matt is an asshole, Foggy ends up being an asshole to Karen too, which is garbage. He’s like, “I’m out,” but he is her employer. She’s losing everything after all her sacrifices for their firm. I know she’s always trying to keep things together when he just wants distance from Matt, but both of their lives are crumbling and his mentality is basically, “I can’t deal with you right now, Karen. Even though you helped me get through all of this.”

The fact that Matt thinks he can promise Karen that he’ll protect her when he dodges her calls, lies to her, and ignores her is flat out asinine. And for the majority of the show, she’s just nods her head when he says he’ll protect her. If she doesn’t know that he’s Daredevil, the only frame of reference she has is him letting her stay at his apartment (which wasn’t attacked, so I guess that counts), and him telling her she needs to be more careful. But seriously, how does he even think he’s protecting her? He was ok with her going with Grotto, who was being hunted (not his fault, but a good example of failing to protect her), then her apartment is shot up. He straight up failed at what he promised (with the exception of the DA’s office) and those are only season 2 examples. I know he’s human, and he can’t be everywhere, but quit acting like you BELIEVE you’ll protect her, Matt!

He was finally willing to go off with her into protective custody - to which I was like, “YES,” even though I feel like it was uncharacteristic of him. How long would he have stuck around if she’d let him? He could have been doing this the entire time. Thank God she told him that he wasn’t hers to protect in the end. He needed that rude awakening.  

The Trial

Why would N&M let Frank wear the orange jumpsuit during the majority of the trial when they knew he needed to be humanized? They never would have done that in a real courtroom. Also, there was no way Castle was going to be a good boy and give a good testimony when he thought he was justified and LIKED killing everyone. That was a bad call, Karen. He can’t use his sex glare on the whole courtroom.

Frank was annoyed about the PTSD argument, but they should have explained that his PTSD didn’t stem from the war. He saw his family butchered in front of him, was shot in the head, and was almost murdered after surviving all of that. You don’t think you have PTSD? You think going on a murderous rampage and enjoying it is normal? There’s clearly something wrong with you, bro. And if you don’t see that, there’s the proof.

I want Matt to be a decent lawyer with ever fiber of my being. But instead, he goes off on this tangent that should have been his opening remarks (if he hadn’t slept through it.) He was testifying for Frank, not “questioning the witness.” How did Samantha Reyes let that slide?

I cringe every time they say they could “win this.” Like, how? He still killed dozens of people. Do they mean that Castle would be put in a mental institution? Is that winning?

The Villains - I feel like they made the same mistake a lot of superhero movies (and Luke Cage) make, and that is including WAY too many villains. The show felt incredibly disjointed. We have The Hand, the Punisher, The Blacksmith, Elektra and Stick for a hot minute, and Fisk. It’s ridiculous.

This is my biggest issue with Season 2. It felt like they decided to tell an incomplete story in order to set up The Punisher, Iron Fist, and the Defenders.

The Hand 

had been around since season 1 and I STILL don’t feel like I have a decent grasp of what they are/why they’re doing what they’re doing. They should have just been thrown in during the last episode, because that’s how much information I felt like I got after 9 episodes.

Even with Iron Fist, I feel like the Hand was barely explained. Now it’s also some cult that good people get swept up into (but when they try to leave, the people who cared about them are instantly willing to drain their bodies of blood and fight them… sure...) I feel like Matt whenever Stick talks about the Chaste. Annoyed and in disbelief that it even exists.

Somehow the enormous hole situation is enough to pull Matt back in? He’s like, “I’m not helping you anymore, Elektra. Oh wait, there are giant holes in Manhattan. Ok, I’m in.”

Why are centuries old trained ninjas such terrible fighters? They don’t even seem like real bad guys. They’re expendable and they suck.  

I feel like the real reason the writers had the Hand kidnap all of the people that DD had saved was to give Karen a reason to be potentially thankful when Matt reveals his alter ego. Also, why in the hell was Turk kidnapped when DD beats him up regularly? He is not one of the victims of the criminal element of Hell’s Kitchen, he IS a criminal.

The Punisher

His introduction - which, honestly, I still loved because it gave me chills, but it doesn’t make much sense. If he has this code, why would he shoot up a hospital? If he is such a marksman, why didn’t he just wait until he caught up to him and shoot him? But no, he has to use a shotgun in a hospital to chase a dude who is being protected by an innocent woman so that he looks scary. That’s the only reason.

How in the hell did the Punisher have the resources to find Grotto when he was given an alias and the police didn’t even know?

I feel like the conversations between the Punisher and Matt were some of the best acting on the show, but the Punisher won most of the arguments. Also, Matt tries to get on his level by acting like he understands the struggle of a war vet, which really pissed me off. And if DD told me that the men who killed my children IN FRONT OF ME deserved justice… Let’s just say the Punisher seemed pretty damn patient in that moment.

Also, Matt. You literally throw billy clubs at brains. Those men are brain dead. You have no higher ground to stand on.

The relationship between Karen and Frank. She doesn’t trust him, then she does, then she doesn’t, then he saves her and she trusts him again. Then this conversation happens:

Karen: The Blacksmith already tried to get me once, I really don’t want to give him a second chance.Frank: He’s not going to get it.Frank (under his breath?): Except I’m going to use you as bait a few minutes later, and technically his people will be shooting at you, but you know, you’re safe, or whatever.

Also, if she were in protective custody, why wouldn’t the police go into the elevator? Does “we’ll be right outside” mean they’ll be “right outside” the hotel?

The Blacksmith

Felt like an afterthought. Frank Castle’s family dying at a drug bust for the Blacksmith was so ridiculously coincidental. And why in the hell would the Blacksmith help him at his trial if he’s coming after everyone involved in the deaths of his family? He was the only positive element of Frank’s trial, but he could have easily said no, and his problem would disappear. He acts like he owes a debt to Frank, and then tries to kill him.

The Punisher and the Blacksmith should have been combined into one season and everything else into another. But since season 3 is happening two years after season 2, I guess this is the crazy way they decided to do it.

Elektra and Stick

Maybe you don’t think that they were villains here, but they were certainly problems that took up multiple episodes. Stick turns on on Elektra… Why? Because she chose Matt instead of him? And then Matt just jumps on his side when she justifiably attacks him. Hey dude, your douchebag sensei:

Abandoned you as a child.

Sent Elektra to ruin your life in college. 

Has a completely different code than you, and never keeps his promises. You literally can’t trust him. 

Tried to kill her because she wasn’t a good soldier - just like you. And you don’t ask questions?

I need to end this by saying that I still like season 2, it was just super flawed. I like Elektra and the Punisher. I like that Karen steps away to become her own person. I like Foggy showing he doesn’t need Matt - even though it breaks my heart and if I had a choice I would pick Matt being a decent person instead. And I loved the Karen/Matt storyline until they just gave up on it.

Our Foreign Policy Nightmare: Vice President Susan Rice

Susan Rice, former national security advisor to President Obama, is reportedly under consideration for the vice presidential slot in presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden’s administration. Biden is currently considering four black women to be his vice president, among them Sen. Kamala Harris of California, Rep. Val Demings of Florida, Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, Rep. Karen Bass of California, and Rice. 

Biden said he will make his final decision in early August ahead of the Democratic National Convention which will take place in Milwaukee from Aug. 17 to 20.

All the women Biden is considering have had “some exposure to foreign policy and national defense issues,” Biden has said, and he wants someone who can serve as president at a “moment’s notice” and with whom he is “simpatico.”

Rice, whose office was next door to Biden’s during Obama’s second term, checks all those boxes.

“The most important attribute that I have is almost two decades of experience in senior ranks of the executive branch,” Rice told the Washington Post.

While VP contender Sen. Kamala Harris (D., Calif.) has been accused of planting negative stories about potential rivals in the media, Rice has been keeping her name in the news by writing regular op-eds in the New York Times and appearing on a spate of TV shows.

In The New York Times, Rice wrote that Trump “is utterly derelict in his duties, presiding over a dangerously dysfunctional national security process that is putting our country and those who wear its uniform at great risk. At worst, the White House is being run by liars and wimps catering to a tyrannical president who is actively advancing our arch adversary’s nefarious interests.”

On NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Rice accused Trump of “doing nothing” about Russian bounties on U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan. On the “Daily Show with Trevor Noah,” she trashed Trump’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic.

The Obama administration gave the Trump administration a playbook for a possible pandemic, Rice said, and she personally participated in a tabletop exercise with the incoming Trump cabinet where they discussed the possibility of “a novel SARS-like virus emerging from China,” said Rice.

All that preparation, she said, “seemed to be for naught, because a couple of years into office, President Trump dismantled the office that I set up on global health security; they trashed that playbook or stuck it in some drawer, some shelf and never pulled it out. For two months, January, February and part of March, [Trump] really denied the reality of this virus, equated it to the seasonal flu … and by that time, it was already well-embedded in our country.”

Whether it’s due to her strengths as a potential VP candidate or her criticism, Rice’s reappearance on the national stage earned the Trump administration’s ire, and senior Trump officials have returned fire. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo slammed Rice on Fox News for what he called her “history of going on Sunday shows and lying;” this week, White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany said Rice had issued a “stand down” order on Russian cyber attacks and did nothing to combat Russian election meddling.

Rice may be about to reprise her role as “the right’s favorite chew toy,” as one commentator dubbed her back in 2012.

Following the Sept. 11, 2012 attack on the U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, Rice appeared on the Sunday morning talk shows and recited CIA talking points. Those points, which were based on intelligence assessments at the time, turned out to be incomplete and misleading, and Rice was accused of being “incompetent,” “untrustworthy,” and soft-pedaling terrorism. She has also been criticized for her decision to unmask the identities of senior Trump officials, which President Trump called a crime.

Rice, who was Obama’s national security advisor at the time, told House investigators that she asked for the unmasking in order to understand why the crown prince of the United Arab Emirates was in New York late in 2016. Her explanation satisfied influential Republicans on the House committee that investigated.

“I didn’t hear anything to believe that she did anything illegal,” Florida Republican Rep. Tom Rooney told CNN of Rice’s testimony, which is classified.

Although it was Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, not Rice, who played the lead role in the decisions that led to the Benghazi attacks, Rice has been widely panned in conservative media as responsible for the embassy attack. A Biden selection would give Republicans an opportunity to resurrect Rice as their bogey-woman. But with Democrat voters, there’s a possibility those attacks could backfire, and the left could spin them as Fox News baselessly attacking a blameless black woman.

Whether Rice is chosen as Biden’s vice presidential pick or not, she will likely have a great deal of influence within a Biden administration, particularly on foreign policy. She had a seat at the table during some of the Obama administration’s most momentous decisions. She was Obama’s ambassador to the UN during his first term; during his second, she served as national security adviser. What, if any, lessons did she learn?

What would U.S. foreign policy look like with Biden and Rice working in the West Wing again?

“Even if she is not chosen as Biden’s VP, Rice would be in line for Secretary of State, or another position of that elevated nature. I’m aghast at the thought of her becoming president, because she’s such a hawk,” said historian and investigative journalist Gareth Porter, in an interview with The American Conservative. Porter pointed to Rice’s influence on the Obama administration decision to bomb Libya and Syria, as well as her push for escalation in Afghanistan and her support of aid to the Syrian rebels. “In each case I would argue she was coming out either against Obama’s clear-cut instincts or preferences in White House meetings or in a situation where he was hesitant,” and that she was part of the pressure he received from “a coalition of hawks” in the administration.

Obama ultimately overruled Rice on Syria, a decision that she says was the right call.

Here’s how she describes it:

“Ultimately, we would fail to garner the necessary support for a congressional authorization to use force. Republicans and Democrats had acted precisely as I predicted. Ironically, it turns out, I was right about the politics; but President Obama was right about the policy. Without the use of force, we ultimately achieved a better outcome than I had imagined.”

It is difficult to imagine a situation worse than Syria, where nearly half a million have died in a civil war that has been ongoing since 2011.

This incident is illustrative; has Rice learned from her mistakes?

Her nearly 500 page memoir Tough Love: My Story of the Things Worth Fighting For, published in 2019, meticulously documents a great deal. Rice is careful to thank nearly everyone she ever worked with, including the White House chef!

Unfortunately, she studiously avoids drawing overarching policy conclusions. Rice, a Stanford graduate and Rhodes scholar with a Ph.D. in international relations, is simply too smart to jeopardize her future Washington career ambitions by offending or criticizing anyone she might have to work with again. Her book is, therefore, a typical one by someone hoping for a position in a future president’s administration.

“Susan Rice is right in the middle of the road, when you think about foreign policy hands in DC,” said John Glaser, director of foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute, in an interview with The American Conservative. “She has a lot of high level experience in foreign policy, but I’ve never been able to detect a way she stands out as a unique thinker, in that she had something to say about the way she’d prefer the U.S. to go. She says things that are plastic, packaged to be right in the center of the foreign policy consensus in D.C. That’s how I see her: run of the mill, not an extraordinary pick … If she were VP, our foreign policy would not be different than what we’ve seen the past 30 years.”

Given that Biden is campaigning on a “return to normalcy,” the foreign policy of the last 30 years isn’t necessarily something that Biden views negatively.

A Biden-Rice presidency would seek a return to the Paris climate accords, the JCPOA Iran deal negotiated during Obama’s second term, and would expand and strengthen NATO. They would likely avoid engaging in any new ground wars like Libya or Syria. Biden and Rice would be more hawkish on Russia, and if Rice’s latest op-eds are any measure, they would likely be more assertive with China as well.

“But, I worry that at the end of a Biden administration, we will still be arguing about getting out of Afghanistan, and (about) stopping the bombing of places like Iraq,” Glaser said.

The post Our Foreign Policy Nightmare: Vice President Susan Rice appeared first on The American Conservative.

Trump Relies on Populist Language, but He Mostly Sides With Corporate Interests

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/23/us/politics/trump-working-class.html

By Jonathan Martin and Maggie Haberman | Published July 23, 2019 | New York Times | Posted July 23, 2019 |

WASHINGTON — History will record last week as a moment when President Trump turned to raw racial appeals to attack a group of nonwhite lawmakers, but his attacks also underscored a remarkable fact of his first term: His rhetorical appeals to white working-class voters have not been matched by legislative accomplishments aimed at their economic interests.

As Mr. Trump was lashing out at Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib and Ayanna S. Pressley, House Democrats were passing a minimum wage bill with scant Republican support and little expectation of Senate passage. On the same day, the president issued a perfunctory announcement naming Eugene Scalia, a corporate lawyer and the son of Antonin Scalia, the former Supreme Court justice, as his new secretary of labor on the recommendation of Senator Tom Cotton, a hard-line Arkansas conservative.

The events offered a reminder not only of what Mr. Trump was interested in — racially driven grabs of media attention — but also of what he was not: governing the way he campaigned in 2016 and co-opting elements of the Democrats’ populist agenda to drive a wedge through their coalition.

Since he became president, Mr. Trump has largely operated as a conventional Republican, signing taxes that benefit high-end earners and companies, rolling back regulations on corporations and appointing administration officials and judges with deep roots in the conservative movement. His approach has delighted much of the political right.

It has also relieved Democrats.

“Just imagine if Trump married his brand of cultural populism to economic populism,” said Representative Brendan F. Boyle, a Democrat who represents a working-class district in Philadelphia. “He would be doing much better in the polls and be stronger heading into the general election.”

It is a question many Democrats still fret over: What would Mr. Trump’s prospects for re-election look like if he pressured Senator Mitch McConnell, the majority leader, into passing bipartisan measures to spend billions of dollars on infrastructure, lower the cost of prescription drugs and increase the minimum wage?

Some officials in organized labor say those actions would appeal broadly to their rank-and-file and, in some cases, prompt individual unions to stay on the sidelines of the presidential race.

“If he were to pick and choose some of the House Democrats’ bills and embrace them, it would cross-pressure voters and make it a tougher sell for us that this guy is anti-worker,” said Steve Rosenthal, a longtime strategist in the labor movement.

There is still some hope on Capitol Hill that the president will eventually sign a bipartisan measure being drafted in the Senate that could offer consumers a rebate on prescription drugs that rise above the cost of inflation. A Democratic bill, passed almost unanimously last week, would repeal a tax on high-cost health insurance plans that was to help pay for the Affordable Care Act. If it passes the Senate, Mr. Trump could promote it as a middle-class tax cut, the way Democrats and unions are.

And he will almost certainly take credit for legislation passed on Tuesday that would pay the health care costs of emergency workers who rushed to ground zero on Sept. 11, 2001, for the rest of their lives.

Within the White House, a small group of staff has begun talking about the need to come up with an agenda for 2021 that could be useful for the re-election; Mr. Trump, who has seen the criticism on television that he has no forward-looking message, is also mindful of it, people close to the discussion said.

A White House deputy press secretary, Hogan Gidley, noted that Democrats were not exactly looking for deals either.

“When the speaker and Senator Schumer refuse to even negotiate, it destroys any chance of repairing our infrastructure, reducing health care costs, or making lasting reforms to our failed immigration laws,” he said in a statement, referring to Senator Chuck Schumer of New York. He insisted that Democratic leadership is “so beholden to radical ideologies, they would rather fail to deliver for the American people than allow the president to add more accomplishments to his record.”

Democrats, however, have suggested that Mr. Gidley’s criticism rings hollow, pointing out that Mr. Trump walked out of a meeting with Mr. Schumer and Speaker Nancy Pelosi that was focused on infrastructure, and that the president has said he would not work with Democrats while he was being investigated by Congress.

Mr. Trump faces internal impediments, as well. His impulses are often shaped by news coverage, particularly on Fox News, and the views of the far-right House Freedom Caucus, whose members have no desire to find common cause with Democrats.

The president is also largely detached from the legislative process and has rarely been heard discussing what a second-term agenda could look like or how to tie it to his re-election bid. His few bipartisan accomplishments scarcely get mentioned. Mr. Trump, for example, rarely discusses the criminal justice overhaul that he signed into law after his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, made it a personal mission and argued to the president that it could help him with African-American voters.

This is all to say Mr. Trump has shown no sign of aggressively pursuing the sort of working-class-oriented measures that his onetime adviser Stephen K. Bannon predicted would build an enduring Republican majority.

To be sure, the unemployment rate has continued to fall under Mr. Trump, reaching a 50-year low. Wage growth has accelerated modestly, and is strongest for the lowest-paid workers in the country. Voters give Mr. Trump higher approval on the economy than on his overall performance in office. But most workers are still gaining less under Mr. Trump than they did during previous times of low unemployment, such as the late 1990s, and fewer than two in five respondents to a SurveyMonkey poll for The New York Times this month said their family was better off financially today than a year ago.

With Mr. Bannon long gone, Mr. Trump is surrounded by conservatives in the White House, such as his acting chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, a former Tea Party congressman who has no appetite for raising the gas tax to pay for an infrastructure bill or to make businesses swallow a minimum-wage increase. In fact, the prospect of a major public works bill has become a running joke among West Wing aides. When midlevel staff members were working on a plan several months ago, Mr. Mulvaney was across the country mocking it during an appearance at the Milken Institute’s Global Conference in California in April.

A deal struck Monday by Ms. Pelosi and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin to set higher spending levels for the next two fiscal years will take still more pressure off the White House to embrace large legislative initiatives — because Mr. Trump will have no more major fiscal deadlines this term to press for the kinds of concessions such legislation always takes.

And the moderates in the building who do have Mr. Trump’s ear, such as Mr. Kushner, are more interested in measures like overhauling the criminal justice system or trying to strike a bipartisan immigration deal than they are eager to notch populist victories that the president could trumpet in the industrial Midwest.

The president’s allies say that his talent is in scorching the opposition, and he is unlikely to deviate much from that task.

“I think he doesn’t mind if it happens, but it’s not his primary focus,” Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker, said of racking up policy accomplishments. “His primary focus is to so thoroughly define Democrats as the party of the radical left. I think that matters much more to him than any particular bill.”

Even Republicans who would be open to a blue-collar agenda say any chance for Mr. Trump to cut deals with Democrats has vanished.

“I don’t see the president at this point doing anything with those guys, not as long as they’re coming after him with impeachment,” said former Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania. “He’s at war.”

It is a notably different environment from Mr. Gingrich’s day when, in the heat of the 1996 campaign, sizable majorities in both chambers of Congress passed an increase in the minimum wage bill.

Two Republican senators speaking separately, and on the condition of anonymity to be candid about their political assessment, said they had doubts that such legislation would appreciably move many voters in an era of diamond-hard polarization. Even if Mr. McConnell did move legislation, it may only redound to the benefit of the freshman House Democrats facing re-election in swing districts, one senator said.

For the Democrats most eager to see Mr. Trump defeated, such inaction is not exactly bad news. They are happy to see him engage in whatever rhetorical food fight piques his interest on a given day.

“This is a testimony to both the strength of McConnell’s convictions and to the weakness of Trump’s convictions,” said Geoff Garin, a Democratic pollster. “And it also speaks to the power of Mick Mulvaney, who may be the real deep state when all is said and done.”

Jim Tankersley contributed reporting.

President Donald Trump got up onstage at a Tuesday night rally and berated a survivor of sexual assault.

There is no other honest way to describe the president’s performance. He performed a mocking interpretation of Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony before the Senate, highlighting gaps in her memory and misrepresenting her testimony to try to discredit her story. In contrast to other Republicans, who had gone to great lengths to say they believed something had happened to Ford, the president dismissed her — casting the man she’s accused of assaulting her, Brett Kavanaugh, as the real victim, a target of a Democratic plot that Ford is presumably in on.

“A man’s life is in tatters. A man’s life is shattered,” Trump said. “They destroy people.”

His decision to go into full-on attack mode against Ford, which Senate Republicans had previously been so afraid to do that they refused to even ask her questions directly, shows exactly what we’re fighting over when we fight over Ford’s allegation: the role of sexual assault in American culture itself.

Feminist philosophers have long argued that sexual violence serves an insidious social purpose. The omnipresence of the threat — the intimate nature of it, the fact that any man could in theory be capable of such acts — serves as a form of intimidation. Behaviors as simple as going out alone at night or staying late at the office become laden with risk. The mere threat of rape, in the background, forces women into certain socially prescribed roles. It serves, in effect, to uphold male dominance.

“One of the most important aspects of rape as it occurs in our society is the way in which it is a moral injury to all women, not [only] to the woman who experiences it,” moral philosopher Jean Elizabeth Hampton wrote in an essay on sexual violence. “Rape confirms that women are ‘for’ men: to be used, dominated, treated as objects.”

This philosophical understanding of sexual violence, as a fundamentally social crime, has become more vital than ever in the days since the Kavanaugh and Ford testimonies. The hearings gripped the country; everywhere from nursing homes to the New York Stock Exchange, people stopped what they were doing to watch these two people speak.

The way Ford’s allegations are handled, then, will help define our national understanding of sexual assault for years to come. Do men enjoy superior standing, a presumption of truth-telling denied to female accusers? Just how seriously does our political system take accusations of sexual assault and violence? Are credible allegations disqualifying for the most significant legal body in the country?

Tuesday night, Trump presented one answer to this question: Women who come forward against powerful men can be mocked and disregarded. Their pain is not important in the face of a powerful man’s ambition. This is what will happen when they tell their stories.

If Trump gets away with this kind of rhetoric — if this is the argument that carries the day, that gets Kavanaugh a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court — then the consequences for American society could be profound.

The Kavanaugh case could inaugurate a widespread cultural backlash to the #MeToo movement — of people, from the elected level down to the grassroots, making a show of public resistance to the emerging norm of believing sexual assault accusers.

Even if Trump’s rhetoric is discredited and denounced, the foulness of the process surrounding Ford’s accusation will not go away. The past few weeks, which re-traumatized a lot of assault survivors, will not be erased from memory. But the backlash will be shown to be weaker than it might seem — giving at least some heart to the women struggling to change America’s culture of sexual violence.

The argument that sexual violence is a form of social intimidation has a long history in feminist writing. In 1971, the radical critic Susan Griffin described rape as “a form of mass terrorism”; in 1975, journalist Susan Brownmiller’s groundbreaking book Against Our Will argues that rape is “a conscious process of intimidation by which all men keep all women in a state of fear.”

This work, revolutionary at the time, laid the foundations for the now-familiar claim that rape is about power rather than sex. Men who assault women aren’t seeking sexual gratification, at least not primarily; they are attempting to assert their own dominance over their victim.

In her 2006 book Analyzing Oppression, Boston University philosopher Ann Cudd takes an even broader social lens on these arguments. Cudd is interested in the way that violence in general sustains oppressive social structures, like patriarchy and white supremacy. Violence, Cudd argues, is one of several ways in which dominate groups to keep subordinate groups down. “Systematic violence,” meaning violence directed against members of a marginalized group by a dominant, works to traumatize and terrify.

Rape and sexual assault might seem like individual crimes. But Cudd points out that it’s the effect, not the intent that matters. If the pervasiveness of sexual violence serves to intimidate women as a whole, then the effect of each individual attack is to reinforce women’s marginalized status.

The best way to understand sexual violence, in Cudd’s view, is as a quiet-but-constant campaign of systemic violence to preserve male privilege.

“Violence against women is covert, neither recognized as a systematic war against women by the victims nor by those who would be sympathetic,” she writes. “[Yet] all women act under the shadow of a social threat situation which is, statistically, credible yet tacit. It changes our behavior; it makes acquiesce to limitations on our liberty that men do not have, it alters our sense of what is possible.”

This creates a kind of tyranny of expectations, where women feel the need to tailor their actions very specifically to minimize the threat of sexual violence. A 1983 essay by Marilyn Frye, a professor at Michigan State, describes in vivid detail how this threat constrains a woman’s behavior down to the tiniest little details of behavior like what facial expressions she makes.

“all women act under the shadow of a social threat”

“Anything but the sunniest countenance exposes us to being perceived as mean, bitter, angry or dangerous,” she writes. “This means, at the least, that we may be found ‘difficult’ or unpleasant to work with, which is enough to cost one one’s livelihood; at worst, being seen as mean, bitter, angry or dangerous has been known to result in rape, arrest, beating, and murder.”

Sexual violence, these women argued, is not a purely intimate act between a victim and an assailant. It is a social phenomenon with much broader effects: it shapes how all women think and act. The greater the sense of fear, the more likely women are to to avoid taking risks. By contrast, if powerful institutions can assuage women’s fear — if they believe they are safe, or that, at the very least, their assaulters would be punished — then the psychological effects of sexual violence can be minimized.

For this reason, Cudd points to the way the legal system handles assault as playing an important role in the systemic effects of sexual violence. Rape, as feminists often point out, is not handled like robbery. Robbery victims don’t immediately encounter reflexive doubt that they were robbed at all. But rape victims often face a presumption that a crime may not have actually happened. Many women are reluctant to report their assaults for that reason — one factor in why they often go unpunished.

This is part of why so much attention has been paid to things like the Bill Cosby trial sentencing: They seem to suggest that they the Me Too movement is making some headway in changing the criminal justice system’s approach to sexual assault. But the Kavanaugh nomination, and the way it’s being treated by American political leaders, have the potential to turn this

The allegations against Brett Kavanaugh, like those against Harvey Weinstein, Donald Trump, and Bill Cosby, have ushered in another stage of America’s long overdue reckoning with sexual violence.

My colleague Ezra Klein called Kavanaugh’s fiery response to Ford’s allegations, and the white male Republican senators lining up to praise him afterwards, “the moment the #MeToo backlash truly took shape” — a sign that a certain segment of American society was fed up with what the movement had accomplished, and wanted to reassert male innocence and privilege.

In a Senate Judiciary debate last Friday, Sen. Lindsey Graham argued essentially just that. “I’m a single white male from South Carolina, and I’m told I should just shut up, but I will not shut up,” Graham said.

Trump’s mocking of Ford on Tuesday night further showed that white men in power are not going anywhere — that they will not listen, will not budge, and will not give ground to #MeToo.

At the same time, though, the Kavanaugh debate have yet again galvanized victims of sexual violence and their supporters.

A protest against Kavanaugh’s nomination is New York City on October 1. Drew Angerer/Getty Images

After President Trump blasted Ford for not doing so when the attack happened, thousands of women came forward to explain why that was so difficult under the hashtag #WhyIDidntReport. Sen. Jeff Flake, the key swing vote on the Judiciary Committee, changed his mind on immediately confirming Kavanaugh last week based on women coming forward about their experiences. Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), a swing vote in the broader Senate, says she’s receiving an unprecedented number of constituent calls about Kavanaugh — even more than she got during the health care debate, when she eventually opposed overturning Obamacare.

For a few months last fall, it seemed like the Weinstein story had ushered in a new era in which women were more willing to come forward about sexual harassment and assault, and the public would be more willing to believe them. The men they accused would, in some cases, face consequences — even if those consequences were professional and social rather than legal.

Even before Kavanaugh’s nomination, many of the men were making a comeback (Louis CK, for example). Now the controversy surrounding the Supreme Court nominee has brought the contest between the #MeToo movement and the backlash into relief. When should accusations be disqualifying? Under what conditions should accusers be believed? What kind of man can and should be held accountable for sexual assault?

That makes the nomination itself, and the way it’s handled, a defining moment for the way Americans see sexual assault writ large. Everyone is paying attention to this, and the implicit messages that America’s political leaders are sending about sexual violence.

“This has resonance,” Tim Malloy, assistant director of polling at Quinnipiac University, told my colleague Ella Nilsen. “This was dinner table conversation. People are going to talk about this today, people are going to talk about this tomorrow, it’s going to be in every political commercial.”

The up-or-down vote on Kavanaugh will matter the most in this perception. But so too will all of the things surrounding it: The seriousness of the FBI investigation. Whether or not Republicans condemn Trump’s attack on Ford. Whether stories like sexual assault survivors changing Flake’s mind become defining moments.

Nothing can reverse the damage that’s been done by comments like Trump’s, or the way Republicans lined up to defend Kavanaugh absolutely during the Ford hearing. The National Sexual Assault Hotline reported a 147% increase in calls over the average during the Ford and Kavanaugh hearings; since Ford first came forward, the average per-day increase has been around 46 percent.

The vicious debate is retraumatizing victims, sending a message to women that they will still struggle and face harsh resistance to coming forward. If this is what happens to a woman like Ford, a white college professor with means, what’s the lesson for less privileged women?

But if Kavanaugh is defeated, or Trump’s mocking of Ford prominently and roundly condemned, perhaps a little bit of this harm can be rolled back. Some women might even encouraged to come forward, getting a sense that their words really do have power.

How powerful an effect this could be is very hard to say. The kind of subtle psychological oppression we’re talking about here is tough to quantify, and there haven’t been a lot of similar situations as high profile as this one in the past.

But even a small impact is an important one. To understand why, I’d return to Frye, the Michigan State professor, who has particularly poignant way of describing the way that gender oppression works:

Consider a birdcage. If you look very closely at just one wire in the cage, you cannot see the other wires. If your conception of what is before you is determined by this myopic focus, you could look at that one wire, up and down the length of it, and be unable to see why a bird would not just fly around the wire any time it wanted to go somewhere. Furthermore, even if, one day at a time, you myopically inspected each wire, you still could not see why a bird would gave trouble going past the wires to get anywhere. There is no physical property of any one wire, nothing that the closest scrutiny could discover, that will reveal how a bird could be inhibited or harmed by it except in the most accidental way.

It is only when you step back, stop looking at the wires one by one, microscopically, and take a macroscopic view of the whole cage, that you can see why the bird does not go anywhere; and then you will see it in a moment. It will require no great subtlety of mental powers. It is perfectly obvious that the bird is surrounded by a network of systematically related barriers, no one of which would be the least hindrance to its flight, but which, by their relations to each other, are as confining as the solid walls of a dungeon.

America’s leaders and activists have the opportunity to bend one of these bars. Even if they does so very slightly a little, the bird inside is that much closer to making an escape.

Original Source -> Brett Kavanaugh, Donald Trump, and the chilling power of sexual violence

via The Conservative Brief

The Ultimate Inside Job, Part I: The Lies of 9/11, Victims File Petition to Reopen Investigation - YOUR NEWS

New Post has been published on https://citizentruth.org/the-ultimate-inside-job-part-i-the-lies-of-9-11-victims-file-petition-to-reopen-investigation/

The Ultimate Inside Job, Part I: The Lies of 9/11, Victims File Petition to Reopen Investigation

(All Your News articles are submitted by readers of Citizen Truth and do not reflect the views of Citizen Truth. CT believes in the power of regular people sharing their stories and experiences with each other and working together to find the truth. We are proud to share your stories, share yours here.)

The U.S. war in Afghanistan is now the longest in American history and has been a complete failure, abandoned by our lawmakers. The 2003 invasion of Iraq and the subsequent rise of ISIS was based on lies. NSA spying on American citizens is as bad as ever today with over 530 million U.S. phone records collected last year. The creation of the now third-largest U.S. government agency, the Department of Homeland Security, with its 240,000 federal employees and its $47.5 million budget has bloated the size and scope of the federal government to an alarming level.  

None of this would have been possible without the catastrophic and catalyzing events of September 11, 2001, the ultimate inside job.

Petition Filed by Lawyers’ Committee for 9/11 Inquiry

On April 10th, the Lawyers’ Committee for 9/11 Inquiry, a group representing the families of victims, filed a petition with the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York to demand a thorough and transparent investigation into the crimes committed on September 11th. The committee claims to have “conclusive” evidence that explosives were planted and detonated at the World Trade Center which led to the free fall collapse of both twin towers and WTC 7.

The 52-page petition is accompanied by 57 exhibits and a federal statute requires the U.S. Department of Justice to review the evidence with a special grand jury. The petition states: “The Lawyers’ Committee has reviewed the relevant available evidence . . . and has reached a consensus that there is not just substantial or persuasive evidence of yet-to-be-prosecuted crimes related to the use of pre-planted explosives and/or incendiaries . . . on 9/11, but there is actually conclusive evidence that such federal crimes were committed.”

Add your name as a supporter of their petition here.

Below is a video of the press conference announcing the petition.

The evidence laid out includes the following:

Independent scientific laboratory analysis of WTC dust samples showing the presence of high-tech explosives and/or incendiaries in the form of thermite or thermate.

Expert analysis of seismic evidence that explosions occurred at the WTC towers on 9/11 prior to the airplane impacts on the WTC Towers, and prior to the building collapses.

Technical analysis of video evidence of the WTC building collapses.

Firefighter reports of explosions, and of seeing “molten iron like in a foundry.” The petition states that the presence of molten iron would require temperatures higher than jet fuel and building contents could create when burned, but consistent with the use of the high tech explosive and incendiary thermite or thermate.

The presence of previously molten iron microspheres, which have been established by electron microscope analysis of WTC dust samples, by both government and independent scientists, is another phenomenon that would be scientifically impossible based on the burning of jet fuel and office contents alone.

Video and eyewitness testimony of the ejection during the collapse of WTC 1 and 2 of heavy steel elements laterally from the buildings which would not be possible from a gravity collapse.

Scientific analysis, eyewitness testimony, and government reports confirming sulfidation and high-temperature corrosion of the steel found in the rubble after the collapse of the WTC towers and WTC 7, a phenomenon not expected in a jet fuel fire and gravity collapse but consistent with the use of thermate and high explosives.

Conveniently, none of this evidence was discussed in the 9/11 commission that was initially appointed to investigate the collapse of the WTC. The commission has since been exposed as a fraud and members of the commission believe they were being lied to and were not given an adequate timeline to completely discover the truth around the events of that day.

Time to Wake Up to The Lies Being Fed to Us

A 2006 report from the Washington Post revealed that most of the people who oversaw the commission believed they were being lied to and talked about referring the matter to the Department of Justice.

The report stated:

“Suspicion of wrongdoing ran so deep that the 10-member commission, in a secret meeting at the end of its tenure in summer 2004, debated referring the matter to the Justice Department for criminal investigation, according to several commission sources. Staff members and some commissioners thought that e-mails and other evidence provided enough probable cause to believe that military and aviation officials violated the law by making false statements to Congress and to the commission, hoping to hide the bungled response to the hijackings, these sources said.”

John Farmer was one who expressed these doubts and he later wrote a book called “The Ground Truth,” digging into how evidence was intentionally left out of the report and how intelligence agencies lied about the incident. A coalition of agents from the NSA, FBI, and other intelligence agencies blew the whistle about the commission and said there was evidence that was intentionally ignored and left out of the report.

Needless to say, almost 17 years later, a new investigation is long overdue.

It is time to wake up. The truth is staring us in the face and we cannot accept the government’s story that led to the endless war on terror, loss of liberty, privacy, and warrantless spying on American citizens, and costly wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and now Syria and possibly Iran. Convenient how Saudi Arabia is absent from this list.  

Mysterious truck vans were seen on site at the WTC in weeks leading up to 9/11 entering the parking garage of the office buildings at 3AM outside of regular business hours and after the janitors left. More and more curious and devout patriots and truth-seekers are speaking up and bringing the truth to the surface. One of the most confounding aspects of the 9/11 attacks was the fact that WTC 7 collapsed hours after the twin towers fell despite not being hit by any airplane. Most do not even know that this almost 50-story tower fell crumbling to the ground that evening. Finally, engines found on the ground in Manhattan did not match those of the plane claimed to have crashed into the WTC and there were many instances of explosions being heard throughout the towers as white smoke billowed up from the lobby.  

The WTC 7 tower has become a key focus for 9/11 truthers. The building is about 100 yards away from the twin towers but was apparently brought down by fires resulting from debris after the collapse of the other two towers. Explosions were heard at WTC 7 by paramedics and firefighters on the ground as well as people who were trying to get out of the building. The lobby of the tower was shattered by some kind of explosion.

A 2008 report by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) found that WTC 7 collapsed in free fall after fires on multiple floors “caused a critical support column to fail, initiating a fire-induced progressive collapse that brought the building down.” But this could not be the case. The fires could not have been hot enough to bring the building down and there are many errors in the NIST report. AE911 Truth board member Roland Angle confirms that there are plenty of discrepancies in the report and further claims that there his organization has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars to fund additional research at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. The conclusions of that study will be published later this year.

Loose Change 9/11, a documentary written and directed by Dylan Avery is an illuminating film on what really happened that day. He mentions the Project for a New American Century, founded by neoconservative war hawks Bill Kristol, Dick Cheney, and Robert Kagan, which put out a report in September 2000 that concluded a multi-front war could not commence outside the occurrence of a catastrophic and catalyzing event like Pearl Harbor.

WATCH LOOSE CHANGE 9/11 here.

An Unprecedented and Impossible Event Almost 17 Years Ago

So, exactly one year later, Dick Cheney was in the White House with President George W. Bush and that catastrophic event timely occurred, shaping Bush’s foreign and domestic policies for the next seven years in office.  

No steel or concrete building has collapsed due to fire like the three WTC buildings have in American history. Explosions were heard similar to how charges sound during a controlled demolition of a building. Evidence at ground zero was promptly removed. Many eyewitness accounts claim that the airplanes that hit the towers looked like a black or gray military plane without any markings of a commercial airliner and YouTube videos show something ominous like an explosive device on the bottom of the plane.

Explosive residue studied by physicists obtained from a NYC resident next door revealed that the highly explosive thermite was found from the debris after the towers collapsed. This would explain why the fires were so hot and burned on ground zero for four whole months after 9/11. Further perplexing is the fact that no plane debris was found at the Pentagon, no videos released show a plane hitting the building, and no plane remnants or engines or passengers were found in that field in Pennsylvania, something that has never happened in the history of plane crashes.

Edward Curtin reviewed David Griffin’s book, Bush and Cheney: How They Ruined America and the World which was released last August. The 15 miracles listed below are what Griffin identified as impossibilities and unexplained phenomena surrounding 9/11.

The Twin Towers and WTC 7 were the only steel-framed high-rise buildings ever to come down without explosives or incendiaries.

The Twin Towers, each of which had 287 steel columns, were brought down solely by a combination of airplane strikes and jet-fuel fires.

WTC 7 was not even hit by a plane, so it was the first steel-framed high-rise to be brought down solely by ordinary building fires.

These World Trade Center buildings also came down in free fall – the Twin Towers in virtual free fall, WTC 7 in absolute free fall – for over two seconds.

Although the collapses of the of the WTC buildings were not aided by explosives, the collapses imitated the kinds of implosions that can be induced only by demolition companies.

In the case of WTC 7, the structure came down symmetrically (straight down, with an almost perfectly horizontal roofline), which meant that all 82 of the steel support columns had to fall simultaneously, although the building’s fires had a very asymmetrical pattern.

The South Tower’s upper 30-floor block changed its angular momentum in midair.

This 30-floor block then disintegrated in mid-air.

With regard to the North Tower, some of its steel columns were ejected out horizontally for at least 500 feet.

The fires in the debris from the WTC buildings could not be extinguished for many months.

Although the WTC fires, based on ordinary building fires, could not have produced temperatures above 1,800℉, the fires inexplicably melted metals with much higher melting points, such as iron (2,800℉) and even molybdenum (4,753℉).

Some of the steel in the debris had been sulfidized, resulting in Swiss-cheese-appearing steel, even though ordinary building fires could not have resulted in the sulfidation.

As a passenger on AA Flight 77, Barbara Olson called her husband, telling him about hijackers on her plane, even though this plane had no onboard phones and its altitude was too high for a cell phone call to get through.

Hijacker pilot Hani Hanjour could not possibly have flown the trajectory of AA 77 to strike Wedge 1 of the Pentagon, and yet he did.

Besides going through an unbelievable personal transformation, ringleader Mohamed Atta also underwent an impossible physical transformation.

Still unconvinced that 9/11 was an inside job? There are so many questions and unexplained realities of that day that there seems to be no other explanation. This is a dangerous day for America, but we are waking up: 54.3 percent of Americans believe the government is concealing what they know about 9/11, according to the National Survey of Fears.

Stay tuned for Part II of my series, The Ultimate Inside Job, that delves into how 9/11 was predicted and how 9/11 truthers are finally starting to gain traction as the truth continues to bubble toward the surface in today’s YouTube/social media era.

Follow me @BobShanahanMan

Trump Pulls Out of Iran Deal, Israel Bombs Iranian Convoy in Syria Citing ‘Irregular Activity’

Jeff Sessions only became the U.S. us attorney general. Here’s what to do next.

On Feb. 8, 2017, Sen. Jeff Sessions was corroborated as our nation’s next united states attorney general in a final vote of 52-47. The Republican from Alabama abstained from voting for himself, and one Democrat voted for him.

Despite resistance and pushback from many organizations including an open letter from 1,424 law professors from 180 universities in 49 regimes asking to reject Sessions on the grounds that “it is unacceptable for someone with Senator Sessions record to lead the Department of Justice, ” testimony from civil right icon Rep. John Lewis( D-Georgia ), a different hearing 30 years ago when a bipartisan group of eight Democrats and two Republican voted to spurn his appointment to the federal terrace due in part to a black lawyer witnessing that Sessions announced him “boy, “ evidence of his ongoing relationship with problematic organisations (* cough* white supremacists* cough *)~ ATAGEND Sessions was voted into office.

Presumably, for the next four years, he will be President Donald Trump’s manager law enforcement officer, supervising how the laws are read around in-migration, polls, the War on Drugs, you reputation it.

It intends the next few years “couldve been” challenging, to say the least.

Here are 19 real things you can do right now to make sure our judicial systems is working for everyone .

1. First of all: Dont freak out. Dont panic. Dont dispense with hope.

We’ve lived through a lot in our short time on this planet. The world didnt point when Bush was in charge. Obama didnt ignite civil rights to the soil either or take out everyone’s handguns. Youre still there. And “theres” ways to push back. Heck, some judges are already helping with that.

2. Perhaps youve already donated to the ACLU. But there are other organizations that need your support too .

The ACLU has already developed six times what they ordinarily do online in a year. Which is awesome.

Thanks to devastating backing, we violated online chronicles https :// t.co/ 0AxVLgXlzP https :// t.co/ Ma0dxRwA26

ACLU National (@ ACLU) January 31, 2017

But there are so many other organizations doing important work too, and they aren’t get the same scrutiny the ACLU has garnered in recent weeks. So, if you can swing it, help out organisations like the Center for Constitutional Rights, the National Lawyers Guild, and ProPublica the hell is likewise doing important work and could use the money too .

3. Support groups led by people of color who are fighting for justice and equality on the sand .

Organizations like Black Youth Project 100 are making the next generation of black captains. There are a lot of brilliant and talented people of color out there doing super-smart things to help form home countries more equitable with particular attention paid to ethnic justice. But fighting for equality and right isnt something that tends to be a huge moneymaker, so many beings do it with little or no compensation.

Fortunately, The Safety Pin Box recently came onto the background. It’s an amazing business with two important goals: 1. to make-up white allyship into meaningful action toward ethnic justice and 2. even more importantly, to fund pitch-black women who are doing hard work to change things for the better. The majority of proceeds from their monthly subscriptions are gifted to pitch-black female organizers who are doing responded run. Their cultivate will be keywith Sessions in charge. Like their Facebook page if you want to learn more. And then subscribe.( If you need to know why you should agree, read this .)

4. Be ready for the midterm elections in 2018.

Take a few minutes right now to prepare a calendar remember to poll so you can make the candidates who did( or didn’t) be voting in favour of Sessions and who are up for re-election in 2018 is how you feel about that. Were still dealing with election wearines from a tumultuous 2016, but midterms certainly are just around the corner. Stay acquainted and get involved. And make sure you vote.

Remember, Sessions has a record of engaging people who assistance others vote, as Evelyn Turner suffered firsthand.

Which creates us to

5. Support the organisations that help protect peoples voting rights.

Sessions has a biography of being a little vigorous about resisting voter claims. In 2013, he called the gutting of the Voting Rights Act “good news for the South.” The GOP has already started to take steps to eliminate the election commission that helps territories shield the voting rights.

So check out organizations that report about and protect the vote, like Let America Vote, Color of Change, and the Voting Rights Institute.

6. Do you know what Black Lives Matter REALLY represents? Maybe it’s is necessary to refresh your remembering .

One of the reviews often lobbied at any activist move but especially at the Black Lives Matter movement, unjustifiably is that there is no clear initiate of points. That all changed when Patrisse Cullors, Opal Tometi, Alicia Garza who founded Black Lives Matter and their friends reeled out their guiding principles record, a comprehensive template to fighting for racial justice in America. Their website has policy agendas, acts you can take, and ways to get involved on a national and local level.

Another organization, Campaign Zero, also has a platform specifically addressing how to reform police departments, offering solutions that will construct life better for all involved. If you are a white person looking to get involved, you might also want to check out Showing Up for Racial Justice, which has neighbourhood chapters across the country.

7. Support organizations that are acting as guardians of the Justice Department.

Speaking of policing and felony, Conference has a biography of has become a hardliner who opts coarse convicts for even nonviolent crimes. The Brennan Center for Justice has been keeping track of his long account of filling prisons instead of rehabilitating culprits. Periods has been very shy to let the federal government assistance reconstruct metropolitan and state police districts. Hes blocked common-sense sentencing improves that even Republicans wanted to implement. And hes a fan of private prisons.

We wouldnt know that without checking out arrangements like the Brennan Center. So Like them on Facebook, and, if you can, donate to help protect tribes.

8. Take some time to learn about the Innocence Project and the Equal Justice Initiative.

About 1 in 25 people sentenced to extinction in the United States ultimately would be absolved for a untrue conviction( if hour on demise row were unlimited ). The Innocence Project is on the front lines of death penalty reconstruct, is contributing to get innocent people who are wrongly imprisoned off of death row.

Then, for those who actually did commit crimes in a organisation that is fundamentally transgressed, the Equal Justice Initiative is there to call out bonkers thoughts like the fact that taxpayers waste $182 billion a year on mass captivity or that there are 10, 000 babes stuck in adult prisons as we speak.

Learn more about them the easy-going route. Like the Innocence Project and Equal Justice Initiative on Facebook.

9. Memorize about abhor radicals, since Trump no longer is interested in what they do .

A recent survey of enforcement agencies discovered that law enforcement is far more worried about right-wing bigotry and terrorism hurting Americans than the threat of Islamic terrorism.

Since the Trump administration decided not to track terrorism by right-wing or lily-white radical radicals, make sure youre following the Southern Poverty Law Center. They keep track of loathe groups in America.

10. Consider operating for office locally . Yes, you. You can do it.

As they say, all politics is neighbourhood. In numerous methods, whats happening on Main Streets across America is just as consequential as whats happening in Washington. Start attending your neighbourhood city council gathers, and better yet run for office on the promise to uphold civil rights and social right in every room you know how.

GOOD NEWS! Since Nov 8, more than 4,000 ladies have contacted @emilyslist bc they want to run for part someday. https :// t.co/ hCUJKdkZJY

ann friedman (@ annfriedman) February 8, 2017

11. Support radicals that fight for immigrant claims.

A lot of migration radicals will be under onrush in the Trump White House. We know this because Trump has already picked a fight with the entire judicial limb of government over his poorly thought-out Muslim ban.

Check out Informed Immigrant for resources. The National Immigration Law Center is on the front lines of the Muslim ban in assisting immigrants with legal advice. The Black Alliance for Just Immigration is helping fight for the rights of pitch-black immigrants. Mijente is on the soil, confronting immigrant defamation by government at the source.

12. National groups get a lot of courtesy, but did you know many of them have local limbs that need help too ?

There are lots of smaller groups doing great work safeguarding and ensuring progress on social justice at the nation and local levels( the ACLU has local affiliates, for starters ). Ask around. Do some digging.

Also check out Movement 2017, where you can find lots of local organizations that need fiscal and voluntary corroborate, and see if there are access for you to get involved and support these efforts in your own backyard.

13. Share this video of Sen. Elizabeth Warren reading the 1986 note writes to Coretta Scott King opposing Discussions for a position as a federal adjudicator . Ya know, the one most GOP senators dont crave you to hear . King pencilled a strong segment in 1986 specifying why Sessions controversial preserve hushing the interests of black voters in Alabama should disqualify him from a federal judgeship. Warren tried to read the letter aloud before the Senate but was stillness by the GOP-controlled assembly.

Do her a favor watch and share the video below:

During the debate on whether to stimulate Jeff Sessions the next Us attorney general, I tried to read a note from Coretta Scott King on the flooring of the Senate. The letter, from 30 years ago, insisted the Senate to reject the nomination of Jeff Sessions to a federal judgeship. The Republican took away my right to read this letter on the floor – so I’m right outside, reading it now.

Posted by U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren on Tuesday, February 7, 2017

14. Learn about gerrymandering with this super-fun video from “Adam Ruins Everything” so you know what’s at stake in 2018 … and 2020.

Show this video about gerrymandering to anyone who remarks gerrywhatnow? when you bring up the space voting districts can be redrawn to create party majorities. Sessions is very likely to be doing everything he can to protect this process.

By the time her movie purposes, Ms. DuVernay has given a budging pamphlet on the prison industrial complex through a nexus of intolerance, capitalism, policies and politics. It chimes tired, but its electrifying. Manohla Dargis’ review of “1 3th” in The New York Times

16. Make sure your bank isn’t investing in private prisons, and divest from it if you can .

Several large U.S. banks namely Bank of America, Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase, BNP Paribas, SunTrust, and U.S. Bancorp help finance debt by CoreCivic and The GEO, two main private-prison business. In other statements, your bank may be helping maintain highly unethical private prisons which rely on an increasing furnish of prisoners to make their coin flourishing. Divest from the banks that they are consistent with these best practices, and spread the word.

17. Support survivors of sex offense and domestic violence .

Sessions isnt exactly known for has become a champ for women and survivors of sexual violence. In 1994, he voted against the Violence Against Women Act a fact that wasnt lost on Sen. Patrick Leahy, who pressed Discussions on his “no” vote earlier this month.

There are a lot of ways to support neighbourhood women’s shelters doing vital work in protecting and advocating for survivors, whether it be volunteering your time with them or donating to shelters in your domain. Likewise, take the time to to know orgs pushing to compose better policies on college campuses, like Know Your IX and SurvJustice .

We are. We’re not “re going away”. https :// t.co/ KDpCudptCw

End Rape on Campus (@ endrapeoncampus) February 7, 2017

18. Help pay off the often steep legal costs for those searching for right .

Funded Justice, an online crowdsourcing platform, allows people to raise money from friends, pedigree, and strangers to facilitate pay their legal costs. Regrettably, while justice is daze, our justice system isnt; if you have the money to pay for best available advocates and law assets, youre more likely to get the results you miss. This means low-income defendants arent given a fair shake.( For more on this, check out the documentary “Gideon’s Army.”) Money Justice helps level the playing field.

19. Follow scribes who are speaking out about our ruined organizations.

Read Ijeoma Oluos open letter to white people who want to help. Read Rewires list of grassroots law all-stars fighting for right. Expand your thinker and check out our list of 23 stunning black females activists. Attempt out brand-new novelists every single day.

We’ve got a long superhighway ahead of us. It’s important to bide sane, stay healthy, and stay informed.

There’s maybe going to be a lot of depressing word being thrown at you for the foreseeable future. Don’t block it all out; that’s how they prevail. They require you to feel overwhelmed. Don’t give them the comfort.

You wont know what these organizations are doing if they arent in your feed, your email inbox, or your mailbox. Take the time to go back through this article and Like the Facebook pages of the orgs that resonate with you. It’ll only take five minutes out of your daytime . It’ll help you keep up to date with what we’re up against.

And merely to say it: If you do feel overwhelmed, take a break from Facebook when there is a requirement. We’re all gonna needed here occasionally. That’s normal.

When that divulge is over, get back to assistance make sure we all live in a more equitable macrocosm someday in the future. And make sure to continue their efforts to share important information with their own communities. Share, donate, volunteer, and reinforce folks who are doing the hard work on the soil.

Read more: www.upworthy.com

The post Jeff Sessions only became the U.S. us attorney general. Here’s what to do next. appeared first on caredogstips.com.

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Jeff Sessions just became the U.S. attorney general. Here’s what to do next.

On Feb. 8, 2017, Sen. Jeff Sessions was confirmed as our nation’s next attorney general in a final vote of 52-47. The Republican from Alabama abstained from voting for himself, and one Democrat voted for him.

Despite resistance and pushback from many organizations including an open letter from 1,424 law professors from 180 universities in 49 states asking to reject Sessions on the grounds that “it is unacceptable for someone with Senator Sessions record to lead the Department of Justice,” testimony from civil rights icon Rep. John Lewis (D-Georgia), a different hearing 30 years ago when a bipartisan group of eight Democrats and two Republicans voted to reject his appointment to the federal bench due in part to a black lawyer testifying that Sessions called him “boy,” evidence of his ongoing relationship with problematic organizations (*cough* white supremacists *cough*) Sessions was voted into office.

Presumably, for the next four years, he will be President Donald Trump’s chief law enforcement officer, overseeing how the laws are interpreted around immigration, elections, the War on Drugs, you name it.

It means the next few years could be challenging, to say the least.

Here are 19 real things you can do right now to make sure our justice system is working for everyone.

1. First of all: Dont freak out. Dont panic. Dont give up hope.

We’ve lived through a lot in our short time on this planet. The world didnt end when Bush was in charge. Obama didnt burn civil rights to the ground either or take away everyone’s guns. Youre still here. And there are ways to push back. Heck, some judges are already helping with that.

2. Maybe youve already donated to the ACLU. But there are other organizations that need your support too.

The ACLU has already raised six times what they normally do online in a year. Which is awesome.

Thanks to overwhelming support, we broke online records http://bit.ly/2oClpEl http://bit.ly/2oJ6hSs

ACLU National (@ACLU) January 31, 2017

But there are so many other organizations doing important work too, and they aren’t getting the same attention the ACLU has garnered in recent weeks. So, if you can swing it, help out organizations like the Center for Constitutional Rights, the National Lawyers Guild, and ProPublica that are also doing important work and could use the money too.

3. Support organizations led by people of color who are fighting for justice and equality on the ground.

Organizations like Black Youth Project 100 are creating the next generation of black leaders. There are a lot of brilliant and talented people of color out there doing super-smart things to help make our country more equitable with a focus on racial justice. But fighting for equality and justice isnt something that tends to be a huge moneymaker, so many people do it with little or no compensation.

Fortunately, The Safety Pin Box recently came onto the scene. It’s an amazing business with two important goals: 1. to turn white allyship into meaningful action toward racial justice and 2. more importantly, to fund black women who are doing hard work to change things for the better. The majority of proceeds from their monthly subscriptions are gifted to black female organizers who are doing said work. Their work will be key with Sessions in charge. Like their Facebook page if you want to learn more. And then subscribe. (If you need to know why you should subscribe, read this.)

4. Be ready for the midterm elections in 2018.

Take a few minutes right now to set a calendar reminder to vote so you can let the candidates who did (or didn’t) vote for Sessions and who are up for re-election in 2018 know exactly how you feel about that. Were still dealing with election fatigue from a tumultuous 2016, but midterms really are just around the corner. Stay informed and get involved. And make sure you vote.

Remember, Sessions has a history of prosecuting people who help others vote, as Evelyn Turner experienced firsthand.

Which brings us to

5. Support organizations that help protect peoples voting rights.

Sessions has a history of being a little aggressive about opposing voter rights. In 2013, he called the gutting of the Voting Rights Act “good news for the South.” The GOP has already started to take steps to eliminate the election commission that helps states protect the vote.

So check out organizations that report about and protect the vote, like Let America Vote, Color of Change, and the Voting Rights Institute.

6. Do you know what Black Lives Matter REALLY represents? Maybe it’s time to refresh your memory.

One of the criticisms often lobbied at any activist movement but especially at the Black Lives Matter movement, unjustifiably is that there is no clear set of goals. That all changed when Patrisse Cullors, Opal Tometi, Alicia Garza who founded Black Lives Matter and their allies rolled out their guiding principles document, a comprehensive guide to fighting for racial justice in America. Their website has policy agendas, actions you can take, and ways to get involved on a national and local level.

Another organization, Campaign Zero, also has a platform specifically addressing how to reform police departments, offering solutions that will make life better for all involved. If you are a white person looking to get involved, you might also want to check out Showing Up for Racial Justice, which has local chapters across the country.

7. Support organizations that are acting as watchdogs of the Justice Department.

Speaking of policing and crime, Sessions has a history of being a hardliner who prefers harsh sentences for even nonviolent crimes. The Brennan Center for Justice has been keeping track of his long record of filling prisons instead of rehabilitating offenders. Sessions has been very hesitant to let the federal government help reform city and state police departments. Hes blocked common-sense sentencing reforms that even Republicans wanted to implement. And hes a fan of private prisons.

We wouldnt know that without checking out organizations like the Brennan Center. So Like them on Facebook, and, if you can, donate to help protect folks.

8. Take some time to learn about the Innocence Project and the Equal Justice Initiative.

About 1 in 25 people sentenced to death in the United States ultimately would be exonerated for a false conviction (if time on death row were unlimited). The Innocence Project is on the front lines of death penalty reform, helping to get innocent people who are wrongly convicted off of death row.

Then, for those who actually did commit crimes in a system that is fundamentally broken, the Equal Justice Initiative is there to call out bonkers things like the fact that taxpayers spend $182 billion a year on mass incarceration or that there are 10,000 children stuck in adult prisons as we speak.

Learn more about them the easy way. Like the Innocence Project and Equal Justice Initiative on Facebook.

9. Learn about hate groups, since Trump no longer is interested in what they do.

A recent survey of law enforcement agencies discovered that law enforcement is far more worried about right-wing extremism and terrorism hurting Americans than the threat of Islamic terrorism.

Since the Trump administration decided not to track terrorism by right-wing or white extremist groups, make sure youre following the Southern Poverty Law Center. They keep track of hate groups in America.

10. Consider running for office locally. Yes, you. You can do it.

As they say, all politics is local. In many ways, whats happening on Main Streets across America is just as consequential as whats happening in Washington. Start attending your local city council meetings, and better yet run for office on the promise to uphold civil rights and social justice in every way you know how.

GOOD NEWS! Since Nov 8, more than 4,000 women have contacted @emilyslist bc they want to run for office someday. http://bit.ly/2oJ96my

ann friedman (@annfriedman) February 8, 2017

11. Support groups that fight for immigrant rights.

A lot of immigration groups will be under attack in the Trump White House. We know this because Trump has already picked a fight with the entire judicial branch of government over his poorly thought-out Muslim ban.

Check out Informed Immigrant for resources. The National Immigration Law Center is on the front lines of the Muslim ban in assisting immigrants with legal advice. The Black Alliance for Just Immigration is helping fight for the rights of black immigrants. Mijente is on the ground, confronting immigrant abuse by government at the source.

12. National organizations get a lot of attention, but did you know many of them have local branches that need help too?

There are lots of smaller groups doing great work protecting and ensuring progress on social justice at the state and local levels (the ACLU has local affiliates, for starters). Ask around. Do some digging.

Also check out Movement 2017, where you can find lots of local organizations that need financial and volunteer support, and see if there are ways for you to get involved and support these efforts in your own backyard.

13. Share this video of Sen. Elizabeth Warren reading the 1986 letter written by Coretta Scott King opposing Sessions for a position as a federal judge.

Ya know, the one most GOP senators dont want you to hear. King penned a powerful piece in 1986 specifying why Sessions controversial record suppressing the rights of black voters in Alabama should disqualify him from a federal judgeship. Warren tried to read the letter aloud before the Senate but was silenced by the GOP-controlled chamber.

Do her a favor watch and share the video below:

During the debate on whether to make Jeff Sessions the next Attorney General, I tried to read a letter from Coretta Scott King on the floor of the Senate. The letter, from 30 years ago, urged the Senate to reject the nomination of Jeff Sessions to a federal judgeship. The Republicans took away my right to read this letter on the floor – so I’m right outside, reading it now.

Posted by U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren on Tuesday, February 7, 2017

14. Learn about gerrymandering with this super-fun video from “Adam Ruins Everything” so you know what’s at stake in 2018 … and 2020.

Show this video about gerrymandering to anyone who says gerrywhatnow? when you bring up the way voting districts can be redrawn to create party majorities. Sessions will probably be doing everything he can to protect this process.

By the time her movie ends, Ms. DuVernay has delivered a stirring treatise on the prison industrial complex through a nexus of racism, capitalism, policies and politics. It sounds exhausting, but its electrifying. Manohla Dargis’ review of “13th” in The New York Times

16. Make sure your bank isn’t investing in private prisons, and divest from it if you can.

Several large U.S. banks namely Bank of America, Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase, BNP Paribas, SunTrust, and U.S. Bancorp help finance debt by CoreCivic and The GEO, two major private-prison companies. In other words, your bank may be helping keep highly unethical private prisons which rely on an increasing supply of inmates to make their money thriving. Divest from the banks that support this practice, and spread the word.

17. Support survivors of sexual assault and domestic violence.

Sessions isnt exactly known for being a champion for women and survivors of sexual violence. In 1994, he voted against the Violence Against Women Act a fact that wasnt lost on Sen. Patrick Leahy, who pressed Sessions on his “no” vote earlier this month.

There are a lot of ways to support local women’s shelters doing vital work in protecting and advocating for survivors, whether it be volunteering your time with them or donating to shelters in your area. Also, take the time to get to know orgs fighting to create better policies on college campuses, like Know Your IX and SurvJustice.

We are. We’re not going anywhere. http://bit.ly/2oCnY99

End Rape on Campus (@endrapeoncampus) February 7, 2017

18. Help pay off the often steep legal fees for those searching for justice.

Funded Justice, an online crowdsourcing platform, allows people to raise money from friends, family, and strangers to help pay their legal fees. Unfortunately, while justice is blind, our justice system isnt; if you have the money to pay for the best lawyers and legal resources, youre more likely to get the results you want. This means low-income defendants arent given a fair shake. (For more on this, check out the documentary “Gideon’s Army.”) Funded Justice helps level the playing field.

19. Follow writers who are speaking out about our broken systems.

Read Ijeoma Oluos open letter to white people who want to help. Read Rewires list of grassroots legal all-stars fighting for justice. Expand your mind and check out our list of 23 incredible black women activists. Seek out new writers every single day.

We’ve got a long road ahead of us. It’s important to stay sane, stay healthy, and stay informed.

There’s probably going to be a lot of depressing news being thrown at you for the foreseeable future. Don’t block it all out; that’s how they win. They want you to feel overwhelmed. Don’t give them the satisfaction.

You wont know what these organizations are doing if they arent in your feed, your email inbox, or your mailbox. Take the time to go back through this article and Like the Facebook pages of the orgs that resonate with you. It’ll only take five minutes out of your day. It’ll help you keep up to date with what we’re up against.

And just to say it: If you do feel overwhelmed, take a break from Facebook when you need to. We’re all gonna need one occasionally. That’s normal.

When that break is over, get back to helping make sure we all live in a more equitable world someday in the future. And make sure to continue to share important information with your community. Share, donate, volunteer, and support folks who are doing the hard work on the ground.

Read more: http://u.pw/2oCcTFk

from Jeff Sessions just became the U.S. attorney general. Here’s what to do next.

Jeff Sessions just became the U.S. attorney general. Here's what to do next.

Do something with the emotions you are feeling right now.

<br>

On Feb. 8, 2017, Sen. Jeff Sessions was confirmed as our nation's next attorney general in a final vote of 52-47. The Republican from Alabama abstained from voting for himself, and one Democrat voted for him.

Despite resistance and pushback from many organizations — including an open letter from 1,424 law professors from 180 universities in 49 states asking to reject Sessions on the grounds that "it is unacceptable for someone with Senator Sessions’ record to lead the Department of Justice," testimony from civil rights icon Rep. John Lewis (D-Georgia), a different hearing 30 years ago when a bipartisan group of eight Democrats and two Republicans voted to reject his appointment to the federal bench due in part to a black lawyer testifying that Sessions called him "boy," evidence of his ongoing relationship with problematic organizations (*cough* white supremacists *cough*) — Sessions was voted into office.

Presumably, for the next four years, he will be President Donald Trump's chief law enforcement officer, overseeing how the laws are interpreted around immigration, elections, the War on Drugs, you name it.

It means the next few years could be challenging, to say the least.

Here are 19 real things you can do right now to make sure our justice system is working for everyone.

1. First of all: Don’t freak out. Don’t panic. Don’t give up hope.

We've lived through a lot in our short time on this planet. The world didn’t end when Bush was in charge. Obama didn’t burn civil rights to the ground either or take away everyone's guns. You’re still here. And there are ways to push back. Heck, some judges are already helping with that.

2. Maybe you’ve already donated to the ACLU. But there are other organizations that need your support too.

The ACLU has already raised six times what they normally do online in a year. Which is awesome.

Thanks to overwhelming support, we broke online records https://t.co/0AxVLgXlzP https://t.co/Ma0dxRwA26

— ACLU National (@ACLU) January 31, 2017

But there are so many other organizations doing important work too, and they aren't getting the same attention the ACLU has garnered in recent weeks. So, if you can swing it, help out organizations like the Center for Constitutional Rights, the National Lawyers Guild, and ProPublica that are also doing important work and could use the money too.

3. Support organizations led by people of color who are fighting for justice and equality on the ground.

Organizations like Black Youth Project 100 are creating the next generation of black leaders. There are a lot of brilliant and talented people of color out there doing super-smart things to help make our country more equitable with a focus on racial justice. But fighting for equality and justice isn’t something that tends to be a huge moneymaker, so many people do it with little or no compensation.

Fortunately, The Safety Pin Box recently came onto the scene. It's an amazing business with two important goals: 1. to turn white allyship into meaningful action toward racial justice and 2. more importantly, to fund black women who are doing hard work to change things for the better. The majority of proceeds from their monthly subscriptions are gifted to black female organizers who are doing said work. Their work will be key with Sessions in charge. Like their Facebook page if you want to learn more. And then subscribe. (If you need to know why you should subscribe, read this.)

4. Be ready for the midterm elections in 2018.

Take a few minutes right now to set a calendar reminder to vote so you can let the candidates who did (or didn't) vote for Sessions and who are up for re-election in 2018 know exactly how you feel about that. We’re still dealing with election fatigue from a tumultuous 2016, but midterms really are just around the corner. Stay informed and get involved. And make sure you vote.

Remember, Sessions has a history of prosecuting people who help others vote, as Evelyn Turner experienced firsthand.

Which brings us to…

5. Support organizations that help protect people’s voting rights.

Sessions has a history of being a little aggressive about opposing voter rights. In 2013, he called the gutting of the Voting Rights Act "good news … for the South." The GOP has already started to take steps to eliminate the election commission that helps states protect the vote.

So check out organizations that report about and protect the vote, like Let America Vote, Color of Change, and the Voting Rights Institute.

6. Do you know what Black Lives Matter REALLY represents? Maybe it's time to refresh your memory.

One of the criticisms often lobbied at any activist movement — but especially at the Black Lives Matter movement, unjustifiably — is that there is no clear set of goals. That all changed when Patrisse Cullors, Opal Tometi, Alicia Garza — who founded Black Lives Matter — and their allies rolled out their guiding principles document, a comprehensive guide to fighting for racial justice in America. Their website has policy agendas, actions you can take, and ways to get involved on a national and local level.

Another organization, Campaign Zero, also has a platform specifically addressing how to reform police departments, offering solutions that will make life better for all involved. If you are a white person looking to get involved, you might also want to check out Showing Up for Racial Justice, which has local chapters across the country.

7. Support organizations that are acting as watchdogs of the Justice Department.

Speaking of policing and crime, Sessions has a history of being a hardliner who prefers harsh sentences for even nonviolent crimes. The Brennan Center for Justice has been keeping track of his long record of filling prisons instead of rehabilitating offenders. Sessions has been very hesitant to let the federal government help reform city and state police departments. He’s blocked common-sense sentencing reforms that even Republicans wanted to implement. And he’s a fan of private prisons.

We wouldn’t know that without checking out organizations like the Brennan Center. So Like them on Facebook, and, if you can, donate to help protect folks.

8. Take some time to learn about the Innocence Project and the Equal Justice Initiative.

About 1 in 25 people sentenced to death in the United States ultimately would be exonerated for a false conviction (if time on death row were unlimited). The Innocence Project is on the front lines of death penalty reform, helping to get innocent people who are wrongly convicted off of death row.

Then, for those who actually did commit crimes in a system that is fundamentally broken, the Equal Justice Initiative is there to call out bonkers things like the fact that taxpayers spend $182 billion a year on mass incarceration or that there are 10,000 children stuck in adult prisons as we speak.

Learn more about them the easy way. Like the Innocence Project and Equal Justice Initiative on Facebook.

9. Learn about hate groups, since Trump no longer is interested in what they do.

A recent survey of law enforcement agencies discovered that law enforcement is far more worried about right-wing extremism and terrorism hurting Americans than the threat of Islamic terrorism.

Since the Trump administration decided not to track terrorism by right-wing or white extremist groups, make sure you’re following the Southern Poverty Law Center. They keep track of hate groups in America.

10. Consider running for office locally. Yes, you. You can do it.

As they say, all politics is local. In many ways, what’s happening on Main Streets across America is just as consequential as what’s happening in Washington. Start attending your local city council meetings, and — better yet — run for office on the promise to uphold civil rights and social justice in every way you know how.

🚨 GOOD NEWS! 🚨 Since Nov 8, more than 4,000 women have contacted @emilyslist bc they want to run for office someday. https://t.co/hCUJKdkZJY

— ann friedman (@annfriedman) February 8, 2017

11. Support groups that fight for immigrant rights.

A lot of immigration groups will be under attack in the Trump White House. We know this because Trump has already picked a fight with the entire judicial branch of government over his poorly thought-out Muslim ban.

Check out Informed Immigrant for resources. The National Immigration Law Center is on the front lines of the Muslim ban in assisting immigrants with legal advice. The Black Alliance for Just Immigration is helping fight for the rights of black immigrants. Mijente is on the ground, confronting immigrant abuse by government at the source.

12. National organizations get a lot of attention, but did you know many of them have local branches that need help too?

There are lots of smaller groups doing great work protecting and ensuring progress on social justice at the state and local levels (the ACLU has local affiliates, for starters). Ask around. Do some digging.

Also check out Movement 2017, where you can find lots of local organizations that need financial and volunteer support, and see if there are ways for you to get involved and support these efforts in your own backyard.

13. Share this video of Sen. Elizabeth Warren reading the 1986 letter written by Coretta Scott King opposing Sessions for a position as a federal judge.

Ya know, the one most GOP senators don’t want you to hear. King penned a powerful piece in 1986 specifying why Sessions’ controversial record suppressing the rights of black voters in Alabama should disqualify him from a federal judgeship. Warren tried to read the letter aloud before the Senate but was silenced by the GOP-controlled chamber.

Do her a favor — watch and share the video below:

During the debate on whether to make Jeff Sessions the next Attorney General, I tried to read a letter from Coretta Scott King on the floor of the Senate. The letter, from 30 years ago, urged the Senate to reject the nomination of Jeff Sessions to a federal judgeship. The Republicans took away my right to read this letter on the floor - so I'm right outside, reading it now.

Posted by U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren on Tuesday, February 7, 2017

14. Learn about gerrymandering with this super-fun video from "Adam Ruins Everything" so you know what's at stake in 2018 ... and 2020.

Show this video about gerrymandering to anyone who says “gerrywhatnow?” when you bring up the way voting districts can be redrawn to create party majorities. Sessions will probably be doing everything he can to protect this process.

15. Watch the documentary "13th" on Netflix (or read "The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness," the book that inspired the film).

This Oscar-nominated documentary was directed by Ava DuVernay ("Selma") and currently boasts a 97% fresh score on Rotten Tomatoes. Its title comes from the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, which states: "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States."

If you want to better understand the way America’s modern system of mass incarceration is rooted in slavery and racism, "13th" is an eye-opening trip through history.

“By the time her movie ends, Ms. DuVernay has delivered a stirring treatise on the prison industrial complex through a nexus of racism, capitalism, policies and politics. It sounds exhausting, but it’s electrifying.” — Manohla Dargis' review of "13th" in The New York Times

16. Make sure your bank isn't investing in private prisons, and divest from it if you can.

Several large U.S. banks — namely Bank of America, Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase, BNP Paribas, SunTrust, and U.S. Bancorp — help finance debt by CoreCivic and The GEO, two major private-prison companies. In other words, your bank may be helping keep highly unethical private prisons — which rely on an increasing supply of inmates to make their money — thriving. Divest from the banks that support this practice, and spread the word.

17. Support survivors of sexual assault and domestic violence.

Sessions isn’t exactly known for being a champion for women and survivors of sexual violence. In 1994, he voted against the Violence Against Women Act — a fact that wasn’t lost on Sen. Patrick Leahy, who pressed Sessions on his "no" vote earlier this month.

There are a lot of ways to support local women's shelters doing vital work in protecting and advocating for survivors, whether it be volunteering your time with them or donating to shelters in your area. Also, take the time to get to know orgs fighting to create better policies on college campuses, like Know Your IX and SurvJustice.

We are. We're not going anywhere. https://t.co/KDpCudptCw

— End Rape on Campus (@endrapeoncampus) February 7, 2017

18. Help pay off the often steep legal fees for those searching for justice.

Funded Justice, an online crowdsourcing platform, allows people to raise money from friends, family, and strangers to help pay their legal fees. Unfortunately, while justice is blind, our justice system isn’t; if you have the money to pay for the best lawyers and legal resources, you’re more likely to get the results you want. This means low-income defendants aren’t given a fair shake. (For more on this, check out the documentary "Gideon's Army.") Funded Justice helps level the playing field.

19. Follow writers who are speaking out about our broken systems.

Read Ijeoma Oluo’s open letter to white people who want to help. Read Rewire’s list of grassroots legal all-stars fighting for justice. Expand your mind and check out our list of 23 incredible black women activists. Seek out new writers every single day.

We've got a long road ahead of us. It's important to stay sane, stay healthy, and stay informed.

There's probably going to be a lot of depressing news being thrown at you for the foreseeable future. Don't block it all out; that's how they win. They want you to feel overwhelmed. Don't give them the satisfaction.

You won’t know what these organizations are doing if they aren’t in your feed, your email inbox, or your mailbox. Take the time to go back through this article and Like the Facebook pages of the orgs that resonate with you. It'll only take five minutes out of your day. It'll help you keep up to date with what we're up against.

And just to say it: If you do feel overwhelmed, take a break from Facebook when you need to. We're all gonna need one occasionally. That's normal.

When that break is over, get back to helping make sure we all live in a more equitable world someday in the future. And make sure to continue to share important information with your community. Share, donate, volunteer, and support folks who are doing the hard work on the ground.

<br>

Jeff Sessions just became the U.S. attorney general. Here's what to do next.

Do something with the emotions you are feeling right now.

<br>

On Feb. 8, 2017, Sen. Jeff Sessions was confirmed as our nation's next attorney general in a final vote of 52-47. The Republican from Alabama abstained from voting for himself, and one Democrat voted for him.

Despite resistance and pushback from many organizations — including an open letter from 1,424 law professors from 180 universities in 49 states asking to reject Sessions on the grounds that "it is unacceptable for someone with Senator Sessions’ record to lead the Department of Justice," testimony from civil rights icon Rep. John Lewis (D-Georgia), a different hearing 30 years ago when a bipartisan group of eight Democrats and two Republicans voted to reject his appointment to the federal bench due in part to a black lawyer testifying that Sessions called him "boy," evidence of his ongoing relationship with problematic organizations (*cough* white supremacists *cough*) — Sessions was voted into office.

Presumably, for the next four years, he will be President Donald Trump's chief law enforcement officer, overseeing how the laws are interpreted around immigration, elections, the War on Drugs, you name it.

It means the next few years could be challenging, to say the least.

Here are 19 real things you can do right now to make sure our justice system is working for everyone.

1. First of all: Don’t freak out. Don’t panic. Don’t give up hope.

We've lived through a lot in our short time on this planet. The world didn’t end when Bush was in charge. Obama didn’t burn civil rights to the ground either or take away everyone's guns. You’re still here. And there are ways to push back. Heck, some judges are already helping with that.

2. Maybe you’ve already donated to the ACLU. But there are other organizations that need your support too.

The ACLU has already raised six times what they normally do online in a year. Which is awesome.

Thanks to overwhelming support, we broke online records https://t.co/0AxVLgXlzP https://t.co/Ma0dxRwA26

— ACLU National (@ACLU) January 31, 2017

But there are so many other organizations doing important work too, and they aren't getting the same attention the ACLU has garnered in recent weeks. So, if you can swing it, help out organizations like the Center for Constitutional Rights, the National Lawyers Guild, and ProPublica that are also doing important work and could use the money too.

3. Support organizations led by people of color who are fighting for justice and equality on the ground.

Organizations like Black Youth Project 100 are creating the next generation of black leaders. There are a lot of brilliant and talented people of color out there doing super-smart things to help make our country more equitable with a focus on racial justice. But fighting for equality and justice isn’t something that tends to be a huge moneymaker, so many people do it with little or no compensation.

Fortunately, The Safety Pin Box recently came onto the scene. It's an amazing business with two important goals: 1. to turn white allyship into meaningful action toward racial justice and 2. more importantly, to fund black women who are doing hard work to change things for the better. The majority of proceeds from their monthly subscriptions are gifted to black female organizers who are doing said work. Their work will be key with Sessions in charge. Like their Facebook page if you want to learn more. And then subscribe. (If you need to know why you should subscribe, read this.)

4. Be ready for the midterm elections in 2018.

Take a few minutes right now to set a calendar reminder to vote so you can let the candidates who did (or didn't) vote for Sessions and who are up for re-election in 2018 know exactly how you feel about that. We’re still dealing with election fatigue from a tumultuous 2016, but midterms really are just around the corner. Stay informed and get involved. And make sure you vote.

Remember, Sessions has a history of prosecuting people who help others vote, as Evelyn Turner experienced firsthand.

Which brings us to…

5. Support organizations that help protect people’s voting rights.

Sessions has a history of being a little aggressive about opposing voter rights. In 2013, he called the gutting of the Voting Rights Act "good news … for the South." The GOP has already started to take steps to eliminate the election commission that helps states protect the vote.

So check out organizations that report about and protect the vote, like Let America Vote, Color of Change, and the Voting Rights Institute.

6. Do you know what Black Lives Matter REALLY represents? Maybe it's time to refresh your memory.

One of the criticisms often lobbied at any activist movement — but especially at the Black Lives Matter movement, unjustifiably — is that there is no clear set of goals. That all changed when Patrisse Cullors, Opal Tometi, Alicia Garza — who founded Black Lives Matter — and their allies rolled out their guiding principles document, a comprehensive guide to fighting for racial justice in America. Their website has policy agendas, actions you can take, and ways to get involved on a national and local level.

Another organization, Campaign Zero, also has a platform specifically addressing how to reform police departments, offering solutions that will make life better for all involved. If you are a white person looking to get involved, you might also want to check out Showing Up for Racial Justice, which has local chapters across the country.

7. Support organizations that are acting as watchdogs of the Justice Department.

Speaking of policing and crime, Sessions has a history of being a hardliner who prefers harsh sentences for even nonviolent crimes. The Brennan Center for Justice has been keeping track of his long record of filling prisons instead of rehabilitating offenders. Sessions has been very hesitant to let the federal government help reform city and state police departments. He’s blocked common-sense sentencing reforms that even Republicans wanted to implement. And he’s a fan of private prisons.

We wouldn’t know that without checking out organizations like the Brennan Center. So Like them on Facebook, and, if you can, donate to help protect folks.

8. Take some time to learn about the Innocence Project and the Equal Justice Initiative.

About 1 in 25 people sentenced to death in the United States ultimately would be exonerated for a false conviction (if time on death row were unlimited). The Innocence Project is on the front lines of death penalty reform, helping to get innocent people who are wrongly convicted off of death row.

Then, for those who actually did commit crimes in a system that is fundamentally broken, the Equal Justice Initiative is there to call out bonkers things like the fact that taxpayers spend $182 billion a year on mass incarceration or that there are 10,000 children stuck in adult prisons as we speak.

Learn more about them the easy way. Like the Innocence Project and Equal Justice Initiative on Facebook.

9. Learn about hate groups, since Trump no longer is interested in what they do.

A recent survey of law enforcement agencies discovered that law enforcement is far more worried about right-wing extremism and terrorism hurting Americans than the threat of Islamic terrorism.

Since the Trump administration decided not to track terrorism by right-wing or white extremist groups, make sure you’re following the Southern Poverty Law Center. They keep track of hate groups in America.

10. Consider running for office locally. Yes, you. You can do it.

As they say, all politics is local. In many ways, what’s happening on Main Streets across America is just as consequential as what’s happening in Washington. Start attending your local city council meetings, and — better yet — run for office on the promise to uphold civil rights and social justice in every way you know how.

🚨 GOOD NEWS! 🚨 Since Nov 8, more than 4,000 women have contacted @emilyslist bc they want to run for office someday. https://t.co/hCUJKdkZJY

— ann friedman (@annfriedman) February 8, 2017

11. Support groups that fight for immigrant rights.

A lot of immigration groups will be under attack in the Trump White House. We know this because Trump has already picked a fight with the entire judicial branch of government over his poorly thought-out Muslim ban.

Check out Informed Immigrant for resources. The National Immigration Law Center is on the front lines of the Muslim ban in assisting immigrants with legal advice. The Black Alliance for Just Immigration is helping fight for the rights of black immigrants. Mijente is on the ground, confronting immigrant abuse by government at the source.

12. National organizations get a lot of attention, but did you know many of them have local branches that need help too?

There are lots of smaller groups doing great work protecting and ensuring progress on social justice at the state and local levels (the ACLU has local affiliates, for starters). Ask around. Do some digging.

Also check out Movement 2017, where you can find lots of local organizations that need financial and volunteer support, and see if there are ways for you to get involved and support these efforts in your own backyard.

13. Share this video of Sen. Elizabeth Warren reading the 1986 letter written by Coretta Scott King opposing Sessions for a position as a federal judge.

Ya know, the one most GOP senators don’t want you to hear. King penned a powerful piece in 1986 specifying why Sessions’ controversial record suppressing the rights of black voters in Alabama should disqualify him from a federal judgeship. Warren tried to read the letter aloud before the Senate but was silenced by the GOP-controlled chamber.

Do her a favor — watch and share the video below:

During the debate on whether to make Jeff Sessions the next Attorney General, I tried to read a letter from Coretta Scott King on the floor of the Senate. The letter, from 30 years ago, urged the Senate to reject the nomination of Jeff Sessions to a federal judgeship. The Republicans took away my right to read this letter on the floor - so I'm right outside, reading it now.

Posted by U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren on Tuesday, February 7, 2017

14. Learn about gerrymandering with this super-fun video from "Adam Ruins Everything" so you know what's at stake in 2018 ... and 2020.

Show this video about gerrymandering to anyone who says “gerrywhatnow?” when you bring up the way voting districts can be redrawn to create party majorities. Sessions will probably be doing everything he can to protect this process.

15. Watch the documentary "13th" on Netflix (or read "The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness," the book that inspired the film).

This Oscar-nominated documentary was directed by Ava DuVernay ("Selma") and currently boasts a 97% fresh score on Rotten Tomatoes. Its title comes from the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, which states: "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States."

If you want to better understand the way America’s modern system of mass incarceration is rooted in slavery and racism, "13th" is an eye-opening trip through history.

“By the time her movie ends, Ms. DuVernay has delivered a stirring treatise on the prison industrial complex through a nexus of racism, capitalism, policies and politics. It sounds exhausting, but it’s electrifying.” — Manohla Dargis' review of "13th" in The New York Times

16. Make sure your bank isn't investing in private prisons, and divest from it if you can.

Several large U.S. banks — namely Bank of America, Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase, BNP Paribas, SunTrust, and U.S. Bancorp — help finance debt by CoreCivic and The GEO, two major private-prison companies. In other words, your bank may be helping keep highly unethical private prisons — which rely on an increasing supply of inmates to make their money — thriving. Divest from the banks that support this practice, and spread the word.

17. Support survivors of sexual assault and domestic violence.

Sessions isn’t exactly known for being a champion for women and survivors of sexual violence. In 1994, he voted against the Violence Against Women Act — a fact that wasn’t lost on Sen. Patrick Leahy, who pressed Sessions on his "no" vote earlier this month.

There are a lot of ways to support local women's shelters doing vital work in protecting and advocating for survivors, whether it be volunteering your time with them or donating to shelters in your area. Also, take the time to get to know orgs fighting to create better policies on college campuses, like Know Your IX and SurvJustice.

We are. We're not going anywhere. https://t.co/KDpCudptCw

— End Rape on Campus (@endrapeoncampus) February 7, 2017

18. Help pay off the often steep legal fees for those searching for justice.

Funded Justice, an online crowdsourcing platform, allows people to raise money from friends, family, and strangers to help pay their legal fees. Unfortunately, while justice is blind, our justice system isn’t; if you have the money to pay for the best lawyers and legal resources, you’re more likely to get the results you want. This means low-income defendants aren’t given a fair shake. (For more on this, check out the documentary "Gideon's Army.") Funded Justice helps level the playing field.

19. Follow writers who are speaking out about our broken systems.

Read Ijeoma Oluo’s open letter to white people who want to help. Read Rewire’s list of grassroots legal all-stars fighting for justice. Expand your mind and check out our list of 23 incredible black women activists. Seek out new writers every single day.

We've got a long road ahead of us. It's important to stay sane, stay healthy, and stay informed.

There's probably going to be a lot of depressing news being thrown at you for the foreseeable future. Don't block it all out; that's how they win. They want you to feel overwhelmed. Don't give them the satisfaction.

You won’t know what these organizations are doing if they aren’t in your feed, your email inbox, or your mailbox. Take the time to go back through this article and Like the Facebook pages of the orgs that resonate with you. It'll only take five minutes out of your day. It'll help you keep up to date with what we're up against.

And just to say it: If you do feel overwhelmed, take a break from Facebook when you need to. We're all gonna need one occasionally. That's normal.

When that break is over, get back to helping make sure we all live in a more equitable world someday in the future. And make sure to continue to share important information with your community. Share, donate, volunteer, and support folks who are doing the hard work on the ground.

<br> from Upworthy http://ift.tt/2ltdvYa via cheap web hosting