Issue 2: Paid Family Leave the Louisiana Congressional Race
Greetings Runners (guess I’m sticking with that for now),
If you’re new here (welcome!) and missed last week’s letter and would like to read it, go to town. This is a long one so let’s get to it…
Topic 1: Local Advocacy and DC Paid Family Leave
Today I would like to make a plea not to let your local government’s representatives, policy initiatives, and practices off the hook during this election. With national level reps, you are part of a sea of voices. When you call, you speak to an intern, and they check a box with your general viewpoint, and then report that 500 people called to express that viewpoint. These numbers absolutely matter, and please don’t stop doing that, but when you call a local office, you can speak directly to your rep and they will remember you. There is legislation happening right now that you can either help pass or help oppose, I guarantee it.
Local progressive causes are under siege right now, with the right being emboldened by sweeping GOP wins nationwide. This article includes examples of anti-choice legislation introduced at the state level in both Pennsylvania and Indiana, as well as an anti-Muslim bill in Georgia and anti-protestor laws in Washington state in the wake of Donald’s win. (The one in Georgia was actually withdrawn later due to the vehemence of the protest against it, proof that you can make a difference!)
Here in my own backyard in DC, my housemates and I recently learned that one of our local government officials is an anti-gay rights Trump supporter. She ran unopposed for what is called the Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner (ANC) of our neighborhood and is not up for re-election for another two years. Who is your local representative? Who are your city councilmembers and attorneys general? Find out. If you live in DC, here is a map of the Wards and the website to find your ANCs. Go to the local meetings. Vote hateful people out of office. Learn right now when people are up for re-election and make a plan. Run against them if you can! ANCs are very low level positions, anyone living in the neighborhood can run with only 25 signatures and do it part time. We need to do better. If you’re not in DC, google is your friend. Find your reps, call them and ask what their positions on the issues are.
I’m going to use most of the rest of this section to talk about a specific-to-DC issue that my DC readers can help with. I apologize that this isn’t relevant to some of you, but please read it any way if you’d like a glimpse into the process. If not, skip to Topic 2.
DC is on the cusp of passing a Paid Family Leave program for most DC workers (thanks to Amy for getting me involved in this!). It is being sent to the floor of the DC Council for markup on December 6, less than two weeks after you will receive this letter. While the bill is likely to pass in some form or other, there are several things that myself and the Paid Family Leave coalition are concerned will not make it into the final version of the bill. DC residents: you can help with this!! Right now! Today! You want to make a progressive difference? Make sure your Councilmember supports this bill, and supports specifically the following things in it:
-That Paid Family Leave is paid for by employer side contributions to a DC-wide pool through a payroll tax. A lobbying group of businesses is trying to change the bill so that employers will have to bear the entire cost of paid family leave for their employees on their own. The pool system means that employers only have to contribute a maximum of 1% of their employees’ salaries and then the DC-wide fund pays the rest. This is better for small businesses, as explained by this DC small business owner in her own words. The business lobby also wants to exclude part time workers completely, which are a large part of DC’s most vulnerable workforce.
-That the definition of “family” in the bill is broad. We want parental and sibling care included, NOT just spouses and children, as a new version has proposed. Elderly parent care is going to be something almost all of us will have to do.
-That we get at least 12 weeks of paid family leave in the bill. The CFO has expressed concerns that there are not funds to pay for 12, but we should fight hard to keep it as high as we can.
Here is the email I sent to Kenyan McDuffie, the Ward 5 Councilmember. Ward 5 peeps: personalize it and send it to him at kmcduffie@dccouncil.usand copy his legislative director at bmitchell@dccouncil.us. Councilmember McDuffie is supportive of this bill, but has not made firm commitments to many of the particulars I listed above. As for other Wards, I know specifically that Councilmember Todd in Ward 4 is opposed to Paid Family Leave altogether. If you know anyone in Ward 4, tell them to write or call him. Find your Councilmember and call them. Ask for their positions on Paid Family Leave and give them yours.
If you have questions about why the above provisions are good, please check out the DC Paid Family Leave Coalition’s resource page. It is extensive and very helpful. Take a look at this table of things that might be changed from the original bill and why some of them are harmful. If you are available to sit in on the bill markup itself on December 6, I will be there and you can sign up at this link. Come wear red and sit with me.
We in DC may be especially vulnerable to Donald’s machinations in the next few years. As District residents, Congress has unusual power to shape our city’s laws. This may be one of the last progressive measures we are able to pass. Please write a letter. Please, please, please. Tell your friends to write one too.
Topic 2: Louisiana Congressional Races
(Non-DC residents that skipped ahead: Welcome back! I do hope you might consider reading what I wrote above when you have more time. Maybe you know someone in DC you can urge to write a letter. Maybe it will give you ideas for how to participate in your own locality.)
Guess what everyone: several Louisiana Congressional races are still going on right now. That’s right: There is one Senate seat and one House of Representatives seat still up for grabs for Democrats. That means Democrats have a chance to narrow the Senate majority to 51–49, a very slim one indeed for the Republicans, as well as to embarrass Paul Ryan a tiny bit in the House. The Senate seat will make the possibility of flipping the Senate in two years WAY more likely. The runoff elections are on December 10th, that’s two and a half weeks away. What are the odds that we can take these seats in Louisiana, a state that went to Trump by 20 points? Bloomberg news explains:
“Democrat John Bel Edwards easily won Louisiana’s gubernatorial election just last year [despite strong Republican sentiment in the state]. Runoff elections are typically very-low-turnout affairs, where strong passions on one side can produce unusual outcomes — and it’s certainly possible that a reaction for or against Trump’s election could produce an unexpected one-sided turnout surge.”
And the piece goes on to say that even a close race will be somewhat of an embarrassment to the Republicans, who should be winning Louisiana easily. Democrats have very little to lose here in supporting Foster Campbell’s campaign, but right now it is looking bleak. He needs our help.
Donate to his campaign here. Sign up to make calls on behalf of the campaign here. You make the calls from home, so there is no cost to you whatsoever except time. Tell other people to donate and make calls too. Know people in Louisiana? Network with them right now. Tell them to go vote and bring others with them to do the same. Because I want this to be a full disclosure newsletter, I am going to tell you that it appears that Foster Campbell is pretty anti-choice. There is a LOT that makes this man better than his Republlican counterpart, from his belief in climate change to his support of equal pay and paid family leave and his championing for disability rights, but I thought you should know. Campaign for him anyway. This is the best we’re gonna get in Louisiana.
The House seat that’s still up for grabs is Louisiana’s 4th District. Though an independent poll shows Republican Mike Johnson with a narrow lead, blue dog Democrat Marshall Jones actually won more votes in the primary…in Louisiana!! Donate to Marshall Jones here and volunteer to make remote calls for him here.
That’s basically all I have to say about that, but don’t let the brevity of the topic detract from its importance.
Goodnight and Good Luck
This is my weekly news roundup column, and oh boy has there been a lot of it this week. It took me an especially long time to write this, because I was trying to develop some kind of thesis statement with regard to the entire media outpouring as a whole, which I eventually abandoned under the avalanche. I do still have this to say, borrowed from the following Tweet:
I think this is the only sentiment that I’ve really been able to apply to everything that’s been going on, because I *am* exhausted with it all. And the only answer I can give is that we must simply refuse to become exhausted. Knowing what’s happening isn’t really enough, but it’s a start. And I promised I would tell you what’s happening so here goes nothing.
-This week Donald settled the lawsuit against Trump University for $25 million rather than going to trial. There are a lot of think pieces going around about how he tried to bury this news and other more substantive stories through his Twitter antics, such as his reaction to Mike Pence’s treatment at Hamilton, but he actually Tweeted about this too:
Donald’s reaction to bad news isn’t to distract us from it, it’s to spin it. He puts everything out in the open. He responds to everything so that it’s ALL newsworthy. Exhaustion is a tool.
-There has also been disturbing news that foreign diplomats are staying in Trump hotels in order to curry favor with Donald. They are pretty much explicitly saying that. This is a violation of the Constitution’s Emoluments Clause and breaking it is an impeachable offense unless Donald divests from his hotel before his inauguration. Impeachment is not in any way guaranteed, and there is little precedent for dealing with the Emoluments Clause, because no one has ever really violated it or even had the opportunity to violate it in the way Donald does, but it’s pretty horrifying.
-I assume you’ve already heard about Jeff Sessions, Donald’s super racist, like really really ridiculously racist, like a Republican Senate deemed him too racist to confirm when Reagan tried to appoint him **in the ‘80s** pick for Attorney General. Do you know how racist you have to be for ’80s Republicans to find you too racist? Really fuckin’ racist. Go back and reread everything I said to do about Bannon in the first newsletter and apply it to Sessions. I hope you’ve memorized your Senators’ local office numbers by now and are prepared to keep calling. All the links and scripts and all that are in the first issue. There are also more petitions. Lots of them. For my DC residents, my friend who works in the correspondence office of a Senator says they usually ask for a zip code and have no way of verifying it. He recommended calling your home state and using your parents’ zip code.
-Last Thursday night Donald tweeted the following:
And it was picked up by quite a few major news outlets that ran the headline as if it were fact:
Stories from NPR, the Washington Post, and others were quick to point out that, according to statements from Ford, they had never planned to move this plant in the first place, but the story had already spread pretty far.
Ford produces two models of cars at the Louisville factory: the Escape and the Lincoln MKC. The Lincoln production specifically was slated to move to Mexico and now it isn’t. That move likely would not have lost any jobs, as the factory would have switched full production capacity to the Escape. Additionally, it’s not clear that the decision to keep Lincoln production here was actually because of Donald. And if it was, that is disturbing in and of itself, because Donald could be using the Federal government and his office as a way to coerce companies to comply with his agenda, mafia-style.
-I would also like to talk about this statement, released by Donald’s campaign last Thursday:
“President-elect Trump has never advocated for any registry or system that tracks individuals based on their religion, and to imply otherwise is completely false.”
Technically, Donald’s advisers are only advocating for a registry of people *from certain countries*, and not of *Muslims*, per se. (I realize this is little comfort to people who will be affected by the policy, I’m just repeating what his advisers have said.) However, even given that measly distinction, Donald himself has left the door repeatedly open for a Muslim registry specifically. The Washington Post did a great piece tracking all of his statements on the matter, and it’s crazy. He’s basically like:
He’s not very forthcoming on any particular stances. Ask him a question it glances off, he obfuscates, he dances. The phrasing of “to imply otherwise is completely false” particularly gets me. This is the same kind of rhetoric we heard during the campaign about how Donald’s sexual assault accusers were liars, etc.
-On Sunday night, protesters at Standing Rock were sprayed with water cannons when the outside temperature was in the 20s Fahrenheit. They were also shot with rubber bullets and tear gassed. The local sheriff’s department denied that water cannons were used on protesters, even as Facebook live videos showed it happening in real time. So far over 300 people have been reported injured. You can donate to the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and sign their petition to President Obama on their webpage. You can also call the White House at 202–456–1111 and ask President Obama to intervene and stop the National Guard from using militarized tactics against peaceful protesters. I will probably write more on this in the coming weeks.
-On Tuesday Morning, Donald met with the New York Times after cancelling and then reinstating the meeting via Twitter. He wanted to cancel the on the record portion of the meeting and Times refused to meet without that. Donald accused the Times of having a “nasty tone”…sound familiar? Read the live tweets of the Times journalists that were in the room with him and marvel at the arrogance and narcissism on display. He also met with several TV journalists the night before in an off the record session, the leaked details of which pretty much just revealed him berating them for their coverage of him during the election. Many people are concerned from these interactions that the essential relationship between the President and the press — often adversarial even in good times — is under serious jeopardy under Donald.
An additional tidbit: Donald said to the Times reporters in regards to questions on his business conflicts:
“The law’s totally on my side, the president can’t have a conflict of interest.”
…….I’m just going to remind you of Richard Nixon’s infamous quote in his interview with David Frost and let you connect the dots: “Well, when the president does it, that means it is not illegal.”
-You guys should see me working on this in real time, especially on Tuesday. Every time I think I’m done something else insane happens, like I literally just heard of this as I was wrapping up. An independent group managed to get a copy of the Donald J. Trump Foundation’s IRS tax filings for 2015. On the forms, which the Post has been unable to confirm were actually submitted to the IRS as they were filled out, the Foundation admitted to violating the prohibition on charitable foundations for doing “self-dealing”. The prohibition on self-dealing prohibits non-profit leaders from using the non-pofit’s funds to help themselves, their businesses, or their families. The Foundation checked the box that “yes” it had had transferred “income or assets to a disqualified person.”
As I’ve written and re-written all of this shit, taking news out to add new, more pressing news in, and just been completely beaten down with how much corruption there is to read about, I do have one kinda sorta thesis statement to make: Donald is pushing the limits of our democracy here. Maybe he’s not going to start internment camps or a genocide, but his antics, if we accept them, will become accepted permanently; they will become part of the canon of American democracy forever. It is now known, forever, for all of time, that a presidential candidate can win the nomination without releasing their tax records. Will it also be known and accepted that the President of the United States does not have to speak to the press? Does not have to honor little known clauses of the Constitution just because they can’t be enforced that easily? Is allowed to solicit bribes from foreign dignitaries? How about for them to coerce companies to concede to their agenda by threatening to regulate them into oblivion? I guess it might be….
And that’s it for this week’s news…That was rough; have a sloth hug.
As a reminder, I have a Pinterest board for this newsletter, which is just a data dump of all the links and articles I have used or am considering using. I have also created a Google form if you’d like to leave feedback or pitch me a topic to cover. This form is anonymous, so you are welcome to criticize without making it personal. I really would welcome it if you have suggestions of any kind, positive or negative. If you found this post helpful, funny, or interesting, please subscribe to the newsletter version at http://tinyletter.com/theforerunner . Every time you get someone to subscribe the tiny hands of an egomaniac grow three sizes that day.
Thanks for reading and don’t give up. For those of you spending time with family this week, especially family that voted for Donald, this piece has been my favorite on the topic of how to deal with ti.
In solidarity,
JM
In closing here is my dog Maple being #socasual, as is her want.
This week’s event link round-up (local to DC unless otherwise noted)*:
November 27: DC Coalition for Theater and Social Justice Organizing Meeting(facebook link)
November 27: March and Rally for Standing Rock with Last Real Indians (facebook link)
November 28: Organizing for Non-Organizers in the Face of Trump hosted by Good Guys DC (facebook link)
November 29: Stand Up for Racial Justice (SURJ) DC meeting in conjunction with the Stop Police Terror Project to discuss strategies for stopping policing of POCs in the DC area (must be logged into Google to view link)
November 29: What Just Happened? What Happens Next? Webinar hosted by ReproAction
*These events are vetted in a sense by me. I will try to tell you if they’re full, and I only post them if I think they’re legitimate or worth going to.
