Zohran Mamdani’s Electrifying Upset in NYC:#RankTheSlate – “Don’t Rank Cuomo”
By Nan Faessler
So much ink (literal and virtual) has been spilled on the electrifying upset in the NYC mayoral primary race. Zohran Mamdani wins and Andrew Cuomo, the former disgraced NY governor, had to concede on election night. Every media outlet has weighed in from NY Times, to every substack, and every celebrity who supported Mamdani.
This is not an analysis of Zohran’s mighty win but just a few observations from a New York City resident and more precisely someone living in Central Harlem.
As a volunteer member of the NY Working Families Party (NY WFP) I fully supported the brilliantly executed strategy of “Rank the Slate”. Ana Maria Archila and Jasmine Gripper, the co-directors of the NY WFP, analyzed the failing of the progressives in the 2021 NYC mayoral race that allowed NYC mayor Eric Adams to win by just over 7,000 votes. Given that Ranked-Choice Voting would be used again during this Democratic primary, they presented a program to build a true coalition of progressives who would support each other with the ultimate goal of denying Andrew Cuomo the win in the primary. And it worked.
Ranked-Choice Voting (RCV), for those not familiar, is a system used during the primaries in NY State to allow a primary voter to choose up to five candidates on their ballot in descending rankings. If a candidate receives 50% plus 1 of the 1st-choice votes, they are the winner. If no candidate earns more than 50% of the 1st-choice votes, then counting continues in rounds. At the end of each round, the candidate with the fewest votes will be eliminated. This process will continue until there are only two candidates left and the candidate with the most votes wins. (Zohran Mamdani on election night had over 43% of the first choice votes, the final tally will be announced by the NYC Board of Elections on Tuesday July 1st and Zohran’s final numbers will be higher.)
The beauty of RCV is that more diverse candidates win elections. Cities that have implemented ranked choice voting have elected more women and more people of color, making their elected officials more representative of their communities.
Earlier in the year, NY WFP leadership held mass calls with members and supporters to talk about the strategy and pulling together progressives who would unite around a strategy that supported the full slate – a slate where any of the candidates who were endorsed by the NY WFP would be fighters for working people of NYC and most importantly a slate that would not split the vote of our base.
Many mayoral candidates came forward asking for the endorsement of NY WFP. Our process included an all day meeting at the Make the Road headquarters in Queens. While each of us had our own favorites, each candidate had a sit down with NY WFP leadership – where candidates had to agree to support the other NY WFP endorsed candidates in a spirit of unity. If they did not agree to this principle then we would not include them on the NY WFP Slate.
At the end of the endorsement process the NY WFP ended up with four great candidates who agreed to be presented as a slate – a slate with no rankings (#1, #2 etc.) until the end of May: Adrienne Adams (no connection to Mayor Adams); Brad Lander; Zohran Mamdani and Zellnor Myrie. These candidates represented a diverse mosaic of NYC, all with a vision to make NYC safe and affordable, and all with the courage to stand up to Donald Trump.
#RankTheSlate was our rallying cry during canvasses and phone banks, along with our adjacent Don’t Rank Cuomo. When I talked to voters I talked about the full slate, encouraging voters to list all four candidates on their ballots, ranking them by voter’s preference. My candidate was The Slate. Encouraging voters to rank the full slate and not to rank Cuomo meant we had a shot at defeating our corrupt former governor and his billionaire funders who had dropped over $25 million into his “Fix the City” SuperPac.
Of course each individual candidate had their own campaign and their own canvassers who were out on the streets, at green markets, door knocking, at local events, and when NY WFP members and volunteers ended up in the same spaces we embraced and hugged – we knew we were on the same team.
Two months before Election Day, June 24th, NY WFP had members and volunteers in the field canvassing, and full poll site visibility during early voting.
Along with the incredible turnout of 50,000 volunteers who embraced the Mamdani campaign, the NY WFP, in two months prior to Election Day achieved the following:
Knocked 7,750 doors; made 126K phone calls; organized 300 early voting poll site visibility shifts; and over 200 election day poll site visibility shifts
At the end of May, NY WFP ranked the slate as follows: #1 Zohran Mamdani, #2 Brad Lander, #3 Adrienne Adams, #4 Zellnor Myrie.
Combatting the manosphere toxicity was the absolute bromance between our number 1 and 2 picks. Zohran Mamdani and Brad Lander cross endorsed. It was electric – they appeared together at events, made sure that their own supporters knew who to rank second, they even showed up on “Late Night with Steven Colbert”. It made my heart sing. It showed that the strategy laid out by Jasmine Gripper and Ana Maria Archila would work and even before the final vote, I and many others knew we could beat our disgraced former Governor.
Later Zohran and Michael Blake, another Dem candidate on the ballot cross endorsed, proving that Zohran had the capacity to broaden his coalition. Michael Blake had been an NY State Assemblyman from the Bronx and worked in the Obama White House. Blake became my number five.
I put in lots of leg work – in the best of two ways – the hard work of canvasses making sure folks knew about 1) Ranked-Choice Voting 2) Our #RankTheSlate ballot, and 3) How we could defeat Andrew Cuomo (and eventually the morally corrupt Mayor Eric Adams in the general in November) our legs got a workout knocking doors, climbing stairs, running around green markets, and any event where we could be in front of the public.
I am not your typical canvasser – why? Because I love it. (Not a fan of phone banking, but will do it when asked.) Getting to talk to voters, even non-voters, excites me. It gets one out from the bubble of one’s own like-minded friends. And I am over the top when I am able to hear someone’s concerns and persuade them to vote for the Slate. Though I would add that here in NYC it was not all that difficult. Free buses, free childcare, affordable housing is top of mind for all but the cruel 1% and their allies.
During our early voting, and on Election Day itself, while doing poll site visibility, I would shout to folks on their way in to vote, “#RankTheSlate and No Cuomo”. Inevitably the rejoinder from the voter to me was so sweet as they would yell as they turned around to face me, “Don’t Rank Cuomo”. This meme/slogan broke through. Everyone (well 99% of everyone) said “Don’t Rank Cuomo”.
Central Harlem is where I live. Harlem, while gentrifying is still an African American neighborhood, and Black politicians hold sway – but that is changing. If you look at the data of who voted for Zohran Mamdani vs. Andrew Cuomo, Cuomo held much of the Black vote in the Bronx, parts of Harlem and Brooklyn, but but but, my experience on the streets, knocking doors, poll site visibility – African Americans under 60 were clearly in the Don’t Rank Cuomo camp, with an attitude of “why would you even think I would vote for that sleaze”.
June 24th, Election Day, I ran into Keith Wright, the Manhattan Democratic County Party leader, whom I have known, and worked with a bit over the past 9-10 years. Keith is one of the old establishment Black leaders in Harlem/Manhattan. He shocked me as I was doing my “Zohran is going to win” happy dance at the corner of Malcolm X Blvd and 134th, the PS 175 poll site. Keith says to me “Zohran is going to win and I voted for him”. Like Popeye I could have said back “Blow me down”. I was stunned. I did not expect this from him. A couple days later on the streets near our Harlem Trader Joe’s, I ran into Keith’s son, Jordan Wright, who is a recently elected NY State Assemblyman from Harlem. Giving Jordan a bit of a hard time for supporting Cuomo, Jordan could not wait to pull out his phone and show me a photo of Zohran and himself. Glad to see Jordan and electeds in NYC realizing that they need to be on the right side of history – even if it is late. (Other electeds need to stop their vile attacks on Mamdani – but that is another article and being addressed by the Mamdani campaign.)
Please see below the statement about Mamdani’s historic win by the two co-directors of the NY WFP, Jasmine Gripper and Ana Maria Archila:
“Tonight, we showed that organized people can defeat the billionaires and corrupt politicians of the past—and together, we can win a more affordable future for New York. New York City showed the country it’s time to usher in a new era of leadership — one that puts working families at the center of their vision. NYWFP—alongside Zohran Mamdani, Brad Lander, Adrienne Adams, and Zellnor Myrie—built a true coalition that represented all New Yorkers. When we run on the dignity and the power of working people, we win.”
“Zohran built a multi-racial movement of working families, powerful and energized enough to defeat the billionaire class and their hand-picked candidate, Andrew Cuomo. The Working Families Party is ready to roll up our sleeves and support Zohran all the way to City Hall.”
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Who Counts, Not Who Casts,Determines Who Gets the Vote
By Mike Miller
Poll counters like the usually reliable Norman Podhoretz see gains for the Democrats in the forthcoming 2026 House election. Here’s a consensus count on their current thinking about those races:
Democrats 205
Republicans 208
Further, among the remaining “too close to call” races the numbers lean toward the Democrats.
I’ve seen little commentary about what is omitted from the surveys: legal and illegal theft of votes. There are three major sources for potential robbery:
1) Trump committed Secretaries of State.
A March, 2024 CBS TV report by John J. Martin, University of Virginia research assistant professor of law says:
“They may be the most important government officials you can’t name. Their decisions have the potential to alter election results. Scholars have referred to them as the ‘guardians of the democratic process‘.
“Who are these unknown, but essential, officials? “State secretaries of state [who] serve their individual states, overseeing numerous crucial state functions.”
Experience in 2024 suggests that holders of this office are pretty principled people, and their staffs are even more-so. They tend not to be cheaters. But two additional observations are required:
First, strict enforcement of the law can lead to rejection of a legitimately cast ballot. If I’m registered as “Michael James Miller”, but sign in at a polling place as “Michael J. Miller”, my ballot can be legally rejected. And if I moved since I registered without re-registering, my ballot can be rejected as well.
Second, it only takes a few cheaters among the 50 AGs to change the national outcome of what looks like another tight race.
Further, the actual counting of votes takes place locally, beginning in a precinct. Things aren’t as bad as they once were: Means of Ascent, Robert Caro’s second volume on LBJ, makes it irrefutably clear that Johnson stole his first Senate race. Things have been cleaned up since those days, but clever cheaters find ways to subvert honest policy makers.
2) What About Voter Registration?
The process of registering voters is even more complex. Numerous requirements can prevent a citizen from voting. A National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) report characterizes the U.S. as:
“a highly decentralized election administration system. County or municipal officials typically do the rubber-meets-the-road functions of running an election, but the state and federal government each have roles, too.”
The details are dizzying. If you want to check them out, go to the website.
NCSL’s report continues:
“The result is that no two states administer elections in exactly the same way, and quite a bit of variation exists in election administration even within states. Each state’s election administration structure and procedures grew organically over many decades as times changed and administering an election became an increasingly complex task.
“The diversity of election administration structures between and within states can be seen as a positive or a negative quality, depending on who is looking, and when. Critics say the level of local control can lead to mismanagement and inconsistent application of the law. This often comes into focus in large federal elections, especially when the media and the public focus on how different the voting experience can be depending on where a voter lives.
“Even so, the structure of election administration in the states today is still largely decentralized and contains a great deal of variation, although far less so than a century ago.”
We’ve come a long way since the Chicago Daley Machine and its Democratic and Republican counterparts in other major American cities…and we have a long way to go. As hackers daily remind us, computers make the whole thing more complicated.
3) Don’t Forget Voter Intimidation!
In the recent past, there have been local versions of right wing thugs changing the outcome of Federal elections. Al Gore was defeated by them in Florida. A Wikipedia report offers a skeleton account of what happened:
“The Florida vote was ultimately settled in Bush’s favor by a margin of 537 votes out of 5,825,043 cast when the U.S. Supreme Court, in Bush v. Gore, stopped a recount that had been initiated upon a ruling by the Florida Supreme Court. Bush’s win in Florida gave him a majority of votes in the Electoral College and victory in the presidential election.”
The Supreme Court’s role in undermining democracy is a long-standing one.
I watched on television Republican intimidators hovering around a Dade County polling place and successfully stopping a hand count of the ballots there.
This is from a New York Times account of the episode: “Counting the Vote: Miami-Dade County –Protest Influenced Miami-Dade’s Decision to Stop Recount.” By Dexter Filkins and Dana Canedy. November 24, 2000:
“The Miami-Dade County Canvassing Board’s decision on Wednesday to shut down its hand recount of presidential election ballots followed a rapid campaign of public pressure that at least one of the board’s three members says helped persuade him to vote to stop the counting.
“Republican telephone banks had urged Republican voters in Miami to go to the Stephen P. Clark Government Center downtown to protest the recount, which began there on Monday and which Democrats hoped would help swing Florida’s 25 electoral votes to Vice President Al Gore.
“The city’s most influential Spanish-language radio station, Radio Mambi, called on staunchly Republican Cuban-Americans to head downtown to demonstrate. Republican volunteers shouted into megaphones urging protest. A lawyer for the Republican Party helped stir ethnic passions by contending that the recount was biased against Hispanic voters.
“The subsequent demonstrations turned violent on Wednesday after the canvassers had decided to close the recount to the public. Joe Geller, chairman of the Miami-Dade Democratic Party, was escorted to safety by the police after a crowd chased him down and accused him of stealing a ballot. Upstairs in the Clark center, several people were trampled, punched or kicked when protesters tried to rush the doors outside the office of the Miami-Dade supervisor of elections. Sheriff’s deputies restored order.
“When the ruckus was over, the protesters had what they had wanted: a unanimous vote by the board to call off the hand counting.”
Across the country there are Trump-supporting militias that we should have every reason to believe are available for this kind of intimidation—both of people intending to vote who are driven away from polling places by thugs, and of voting officials.
Is There An Adequate Response?
It is clear that the majority Republican, and in some cases Trump-appointed, Supreme Court will not intervene to stop Republican fraud—legal or illegal—with, perhaps, the exception of the most egregious cases.
I wish I had something to propose here to counter this legal theft. I don’t. I hope you do.
On its illegal companion, there are things that can be done. Preparation needs to begin. NOW!
- Citizen guardian teams for honest elections should be formed, in particular in precincts with a high propensity to vote Democratic. Recruiting can take place in religious congregations, labor union locals, community organizations, athletic teams and other places. While they shouldn’t carry arms, they should be prepared for violence.
- News media should be approached now to get them geared up to cover polling place intimidation. Where they can’t be persuaded to assign reporters, people with smartphones should gather at these polling places to record what happens there. Actually, they should gather there in either case. Think about the difference their filming made in the George Floyd police-murder case.
Where We Are As A Country
If you had told me in 1964 when I was a field secretary for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (“Snick”) that I would be writing these words 60 years later, I would have said something like, “you’re living on other planet.”
We are in a bleak place. Elections are one arena for the fight back. But they are a place where our side is most on the defense. The inspiring results from the New York City Mayor’s race shouldn’t distract us from this fact.
Others need to be widely discussed, and the discussion should begin now. Among them: boycotts (Tesla’s is exemplary); general strike, or workplace sick-outs, slow-downs, work-to-rule, sit-downs; shop-ins at stores (CORE tied a Berkeley Lucky Store in knots with one) and other nonviolent tactics.
Don’t underestimate the President. Opposition to him should not blind us to his cleverness and will to power. As Tom Paine wrote in The Crisis on December 23, 1776, 250 years ago:
“THESE are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated.”
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This dumpster fire of a Reichstag fire
By Fred Glass
At this moment you might be forgiven for asking, “So where are we at now with the fascism thing?” You will probably not be surprised by my answer: “Well on the way.”
Think of the moment after World War II, with fascism crushed, and the allies—Capitalist Democracy and Soviet Communism—standing briefly side by side over its inert body, each believing with differing forms of relief that this thing had been put away for good. Then imagine the big screen slo-mo in reverse of something broken in pieces, at first slowly and then with a rush coming back together, whole again.
That’s what the past few months have felt like to me here in MAGA America. Let’s summarize: the president freeing convicted violent right wing insurrectionists; a furious scapegoating of immigrants, in a formerly proud nation of immigrants, to draw attention away from the looting of the public sector and destruction of government services by billionaires; armed masked men seizing people off the street, from homes, in workplaces, shopping centers and courtrooms, and taking them away in unmarked vehicles to privately operated detention centers, or to their countries of origin where they face harm, or to countries they hadn’t come from—more than fifty thousand people newly behind borders, bars and fences; a judge arrested; a union leader arrested; a mayor from the opposition party arrested; a U.S. Senator from the opposition party arrested—each while peaceably defending immigrants against state-sanctioned kidnapping; and a massive ongoing chorus of right wing media spewing a toxic smokescreen of lies to reshape reality into a public narrative greasing the skids to fascism.
And now, the murder of elected leaders of the opposition party. No, I’m not fantasizing this act resulted from a direct order from Trump; it didn’t need to be. It’s the logical outcome of his continuous encouragement of violence within his MAGA movement base and amplification in the conservative media ecosphere.
Note: I wrote this article a week ago. So the “now” of the last paragraph has been quickly shoved into the rear view mirror, because “now” the United States has gone to war, and this new step pretty much completes the fascism checklist. (Is there such a thing? Yes and no. No, because a list doesn’t capture the dynamism of historical development. Yes, because while fascism is notoriously difficult to define, it does seem that the graphic accompanying this article provides a pretty good snapshot of what shows up in fascist regimes. It only took five months to get to the last item on the list.)
Throughout, some of us have kept thinking, “There’s a path out of this nightmare. We have four tests. If the courts don’t hold, there’s the 2026 elections. If the elections don’t hold, there’s mass action in the streets. And finally, if the streets fail us, the American military won’t let their old enemy—fascism—prevail…will they?”
The question of the military
The question of the military, however, is a fraught one. Although legally and (mostly) historically neutral on American soil, it is the foundation of American imperialism abroad and has never been constrained in that role by the democratic pieties to which it proclaims allegiance here. Since the end of World War II and about-face on former ally Soviet Union, during which Communism was essentially refashioned as the replacement ideological “ism” for vanquished fascism, every international military adventure by the United States has been draped in the robes of Democracy against Communism, or some other form of authoritarianism—even when all too obviously it was democratically elected forces that the US itself was overturning.
So that’s a key question: what does democracy mean to US military forces inside the country today? Despite local (city and state) government objections, including a star turn by Gavin Newsom on prime-time national TV, muted oppositional muttering within the National Guard, and a temporary restraining order by a judge (on hold at the moment), we have yet to see the reversal of Guard deployment to L.A.. Trump’s dispatch of a contingent of Marines—as if Los Angeles were Iwo Jima—has pushed the boundaries of acceptable military usage on American soil (along with our willing suspension of disbelief) out to the vanishing point. Juxtaposed with that you have the president encouraging soldiers on duty to jeer his hallucinatory perceived enemies (including a former president) and cheer as if they’re at a campaign rally—which, due to the presence of a vendor selling MAGA paraphernalia to the soldiers—it was.
All of this is real, in real time.
Dumpster fire of a Reichstag fire
The fascist president of the United States and his followers have been working overtime to set up a plausible illusion of lawless chaos and rebellion—a right-wing media-fueled dumpster fire of a Reichstag fire—in order to justify bringing the iron fist of the state repressive apparatus onto downtown Los Angeles. But what Trump is trying to do is much bigger than that singular local action.
In a political democracy that sits on top of a coercive economic foundation—capitalism, which does not require political democracy to reproduce itself—the fragile edifice of control by the people over the plutocrats has always faced deep challenges and in fact can never be fully realized. People power versus money power, especially after Citizens United, has become a race against time, and with Trump in the White House and MAGA control over the other branches of federal government, we—the people, the climate, the future, the immigrants who built and continue to build America—are at this moment losing that race.
Well on the way to fascism
Trump and MAGA are testing how far they can push the membrane of political democracy before it breaks. Ultimately, he can ignore the courts, and he may be able to shut down the 2026 elections. But if they are large enough, he cannot ignore the demonstrations in the streets, at which point he needs to know the military’s inclinations. He is probing now, with his illegal military deployments and his immoral political speeches to the troops, and sickening encouragement of MAGA violence, whether that key portion of the membrane is his or democracy’s.
This is no longer an early stage of the process. We are well on the way to fascist America. History says that it’s not inexorable. The direct action of thousands of ordinary people—as we saw on April 5, May 1, and June 14, on “No Kings Day”—establishes a bump in the road that, with continued organizing, can enlarge itself to millions of people and thus a powerful barricade to the dismantling of our incomplete but essential political democracy. It takes me and you; there’s no one else, and now is the time. It will continue to be time until the job is done.
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How can reproductive rights help save the planet?
By Mariana Mcdonald
Introduction
Flames filled the Los Angeles sky as the apocalyptic fire storm raged, ravaging neighborhoods with stunning celerity. People, animals, and homes were lost in what seemed only minutes. Tens of thousands suddenly joined the ranks of Los Angeles’ homeless, while firefighters from around the country and volunteers from California prisons and Mexico battled the flames and fought to contain them. Just months before, the power of hurricane Helene shattered long-held assumptions that people in the mountains were safe from extreme weather, as the storm’s flooding tore whole towns to shreds and destroyed the lives of thousands in Western North Carolina.
In light of these horrors, you might think the climate crisis spotlight should be exclusively focused on urgent immediate needs of mitigation and adaptation, to halt the accelerating climate crisis while helping communities prepare for the worst. It might seem ridiculous, even irresponsible, to pose the question: How can reproductive rights help save the planet? You might scratch your head and wonder, what do reproductive rights have to do with confronting the climate crisis?
The answer is simple: everything.
And the world changed: the Dobbs Decision
On June 24, 2022, the US Supreme Court (SCOTUS), in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, ruled that the US Constitution does not confer a right to abortion, overturning Roe v. Wade and ending nearly 50 years of the right to abortion. The decision immediately angered and frightened millions of women in the United States and threatened abortion rights around the world.
The Dobbs decision was the result of an increasingly political US Supreme Court, growing rightwing movements, and Christian Nationalist political influence. The decision is part of a broader effort to turn back the clock and reverse women’s rights, including access to birth control and protection from domestic violence. The overturning of Roe v. Wade targets not only women; it is also an attack on democracy. The vast majority of US people believe that abortion should be legal and available. Therefore SCOTUS’ action goes against the will of the people and imposes the will of a minority.
Women, Climate Change, and Gender Inequality
The impact of climate change on women has become part of the climate crisis dialogue, often focusing on women’s role in disaster response and in the forced migration process that accompanies climate change. The direct impacts on women’s health, and reproductive health in particular, are often overlooked. A welcome exception is Grist Magazine’s recent series looking at reproductive issues women currently face in the climate crisis.
Attention to women and climate change is linked to the growing international focus on global inequalities. The assessment of global gender inequality has highlighted inequalities faced by women in many aspects of social, economic, and family life, including access to education, role in agriculture, marriage and divorce practices, and legal rights, including land ownership and inheritance. These issues are all important. Some of the most insightful and well-informed efforts addressing global gender inequality place bodily autonomy at the heart of the work for women’s equality.
Bodily Autonomy
Bodily autonomy is the fundamental right of an individual to have control over and make decisions about their own body without external interference or coercion. Bodily autonomy is a foundational principle of human rights and a core principle in bioethics.
Bodily autonomy is protected by international law. In 1969 the United Nations Fund for Population Activities (UNFPA) was formed to ensure sexual and reproductive rights and choices for all. UNFPA explains, “Not only is bodily autonomy a human right, it is the foundation upon which other human rights are built. It is included, implicitly or explicitly, in many international rights agreements, such as the Programme of Action of the International Conference on Population and Development, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women and the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.”
Bodily autonomy includes a range of issues related to an individual’s self-determination. Key elements of bodily autonomy are choice and consent regarding sexual activity, freedom from violence and other bodily harm, personal identity, informed consent in healthcare, and reproductive rights.
Reproductive rights are at the heart of bodily autonomy for women, ensuring women’s decision-making about contraception, pregnancy, childbirth, and abortion. They emphasize women’s right to make choices about their reproductive health without external interference. Bodily autonomy requires women’s unconditional self-determination regarding control of their reproductive capacity, deciding about each and every pregnancy they may experience. Yet sadly, over half the world’s women do not enjoy bodily autonomy.
Abortion Rights: Why are they important?
Abortion rights are essential to bodily autonomy and central to reproductive rights.
To understand why, it’s helpful to examine the potential for pregnancy during women’s time of reproductive capacity,* often referred to as “childbearing years,” a problematic term we’ll examine shortly. It’s important to note upfront that worldwide, half of all pregnancies are not planned. This happens for a range of reasons, including birth control failure, birth control sabotage (e.g., man removes condom), birth control is unavailable, and the prevalence of sexual assault, rape, and incest. Additionally, society does not make men responsible for their sperm, and does not seriously entertain policies or practices that limit male fertility.
Spontaneous abortion, commonly known as miscarriage, happens within nature. Miscarriage is not planned or wanted or done by choice; it’s a spontaneous result of the interaction between the developing pregnancy, the person’s body, and environmental factors.
Abortion, on the other hand, is intentional, purposeful, planned, and chosen.
A look at “childbearing years” terminology reveals a lot about the reproductive responsibility women take on. A woman enters the “childbearing years” or “reproductive age” at puberty. Depending on what source is used, the childbearing or reproductive years are defined as 15 to 44 years of age, 15 to 49 years, 18 to 44 years, or 18 to 49 years. These vastly different definitions are troubling, since it means it is difficult to compare data collected using different parameters.
Even more troubling is that none of these ranges is appropriate for 2025. The lower age should be no higher than 12 years, the US national average age for menarche, and 44 years is too low for current childbearing realities, with women having children in their 40s. (The author understands that not all women have a uterus or are able to conceive, and not all people who can get pregnant are women. Trans men may retain the ability to get pregnant. In this essay I refer to women and pregnancy with this understanding in mind.) Even 12 may not be an early enough age to consider. The global trend of early puberty has been noted with alarm; some children are experiencing puberty as early as age 7 and menstruation by age 8.
I am exploring this seeming tangent about childbearing years and ages and standards as a way of underlining the challenge of knowing how many people in the United States have been directly and quite possibly immediately affected by the overturning of Roe v. Wade, and the subsequent criminalization of abortion.
We can examine some numbers at our disposal regarding women of childbearing age in the United States. “March of Dimes” reports data stating there were 65,974,992 women between the ages of 15 and 44 in 2023. So we can say, conservatively, that currently there are at least 65 million women of childbearing age in the United States.
What does pregnancy mean for them? Looking at the reproductive potential of women of childbearing age, and doing the math using the 15-44 years range, we discover that the “childbearing years” of a woman in the United States are at least 29 years. Most women’s cycles are every 4 weeks, though it varies considerably. That makes for approximately 13 cycles per year, for a total of 377 cycles in the childbearing years, or hundreds of potential chances to become pregnant, to have one’s life changed irrevocably if the pregnancy is unplanned, unwanted, and/or unsustainable.
I have wracked my brains to come up with something that could have an impact in any way comparable to an unwanted pregnancy in the lives of most persons who do not get pregnant, i.e., men. What I came up with was job loss, divorce, forced dropping out of school, loss of housing, imprisonment, disabling injury, or serious illness. I quickly realized that even if a person who does not get pregnant experiences a number of these events, it is unlikely they would experience such life-changing events repeatedly.
The second unsettling realization is that a pregnant person could experience any of those same events, in any single pregnancy. Indeed, a pregnant person with an unplanned and/or unwanted pregnancy could lose their job, be forced to quit school, lose their home, have a serious injury, or suffer a life-threatening pregnancy-related illness, as is the case for many Black women. They could also lose their life as a result of an unsafe abortion, or become imprisoned for having a miscarriage, stillbirth, neonatal death, or an incomplete miscarriage requiring medical attention.
Globally, at least 68,000 women die from unsafe abortions annually, making it one of the leading causes of maternal mortality. In the United States, punitive abortion laws increasingly are leading to deaths of ailing pregnant women who are refused care by intimidated health care providers and institutions frightened to intervene.
A woman may in their lifetime experience many times when they face an unwanted pregnancy that could seriously and potentially negatively impact their life and liberty.
That is why abortion rights are central to reproductive rights. Abortion is needed as an essential part of health care for women, consistently and over a period of decades. It is not a trifling, rare, or dismissible need. Abortion must be an ever-present and realizable option for women for half their lives. It is the keystone of reproductive rights and women’s health, and a foundational right among women’s rights.
The indisputable biological reality is clear: as long as there is pregnancy, there will be abortion. Whether abortion is safe, accessible and legal is a matter of social and political reality.
Of course women also need a wide range of other reproductive rights, because women’s lives are directly and profoundly affected by practices and policies that impact the body. Other reproductive rights women need include: access to quality health care; safe, effective, and accessible contraception; safe and carefully monitored pregnancy; safe birth with options chosen by the birthing person; postpartum mental health care; access to reproductive technologies to treat infertility; access to reproductive technologies to enable LGBTQ parenthood; affordable infant and child care; culturally competent parent education and support; and freedom from child removal, forced adoption, and forced sterilization.
Medication Abortion
One of the ways women have responded to the Dobbs decision is through efforts to expand access to medication abortion. This growing movement educates women about how to use abortion pills for a self-managed abortion, and how to obtains pills through options that include telemedicine and shipment of pills from Europe, Mexico, and other countries.
Medication abortion has been available worldwide for over two decades. It’s on the approved medicine list of the World Health Organization, which views abortion as an essential aspect of health care. It has been used in the United States since 2000, and as of June 2022, it made up 54% of all abortions in the United States. Medication abortion is a safe and accessible method of ending a pregnancy, and can be used up to 12 weeks. Abortion pills are helping women who live in states where abortion has been banned or restricted.
Abortion, Sterilization, and Population Control
It is not possible to talk about abortion without talking about sterilization. The same forces and laws that limit abortion have historically been quick to promote sterilization for low-income women of color who, since the passage of the Hyde Amendment in 1976 outlawing the use of federal funds for abortion, have been denied access to abortion. The horror stories of Puerto Rican, Black, Chicana, and indigenous women who were sterilized without their knowledge or consent are an echo of the Tuskegee experiment and other US practices here and abroad that have violated the bodily autonomy of individuals and the sovereignty of peoples.
Population control has been touted as an effective response to numerous global problems, including climate change. Shifting the responsibility for our damaged atmosphere from the fossil fuel industry and global corporations to women and their families is a cynical and doomed approach. Making family planning education and methods available to people who have not had access to them can be a welcome contribution to individuals, communities, and nations, but only when such programs are voluntary and without economic or social coercion.
Reproductive rights, abortion, and the climate crisis
The climate crisis is the human race’s existential challenge now and for the foreseeable future. It requires the attention and participation of all who live on Earth.
The overturning of Roe v. Wade stymies that participation, both by its direct harmful impact on millions of women, and by tainting the image and influence of the United States. The end of Roe has caused alarm around the world. The political direction represented by the US Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade has given fuel to rightward trends in Europe, India, and Latin America, and threatens reproductive rights globally. This trend is entrenched in climate denial and the refusal to respond to the climate crisis, as was made painfully clear with the inauguration day executive order declaring the US exit from the Paris Agreement.
The climate crisis requires women’s full participation on the community, national, and world levels. But women are disadvantaged in this regard. We know that women are more likely to be negatively impacted by natural disasters, given multiple family roles and scant resources. Women are forced to migrate due to climate change’s impact on crops, food supplies, and habitability of regions scorched by heat and drought. A serious problem migrant women experience is violence and sexual assault. The challenge of managing a family in the midst of such violence, in the turmoil of climate change, underscores the need for reproductive health care that has abortion at its core.
The benefits of abortion access accrue beyond the individual. For communities, abortion access means less strain on health systems, less poverty, fewer maternal deaths, and more opportunities for children. For countries, abortion access means less strain on public resources, lower rates of teen pregnancy and marriage, and more people working, with subsequent prosperity and a reduction in crime.
Women’s leadership in the climate crisis
Bodily autonomy, with abortion access at its core, can help create the conditions for the flourishing of women’s leadership in the battle to address climate change.
We have an impressive history that demonstrates women’s leadership in defending Earth and confronting global warming. From Rachel Carson to Nobel laureate Wangari Maathai, women have led the way to greater awareness and action defending the environment. Greta Thunberg’s defiant leadership helped launch the global movement of youth demanding changes to address climate change. Brave indigenous land defenders like Berta Cáceres have defied corporate threats and paid with their lives. Today Nemonte Nenquimo of the Waorani people leads efforts to save the rainforest in Ecuador from corporate destruction that would devastate her people and damage the lungs of the planet. By supporting and defending abortion rights for women, we help clear a path for the Wangaris, Gretas, and Nemontes of the future.
Conclusion
All humans need to come to terms with the realities of climate change and consider what they will do about it in their own lives. Supporting the ability of women to participate fully in fighting the climate crisis, and offer indispensable leadership to it, is critical. If you are up against a formidable opponent and half your team is handicapped, you are not going to win.
Abortion rights are not a “women’s issue” that can be dismissed. They are not “simply” a health issue. Abortion rights are a requirement for women. Just as the fight to address the climate crisis is an existential battle, so is the fight for women’s freedom to engage in that battle. When we defend abortion rights it is everyone’s future we are defending.
What, then, do reproductive rights have to do with confronting the climate crisis?
Everything!
.
References
Cineas, Fabiola. “Reproductive rights have never been secure. Ask Black women. If you’re wondering how we got here, look to Black women’s long fight for reproductive justice.” Vox. July 13, 2022.
Davis, Angela. “Racism, Birth Control and Reproductive Rights.” Women Race and Class. New York: Vintage, 1983.
Fava, Daniela et al. “Precocious Puberty Diagnoses Spike, COVID-19 Pandemic, and Body Mass Index: Findings From a 4-year Study.” Journal of the Endocrine Society, Volume 7, Issue 9, September 2023, bvad094.
Goldberg, Michelle. “Introduction: The Global Battle for Reproductive Rights. “ The Means of Reproduction. Sex, Power and the Future of the World. New York: Penguin Books, 2009.
Hadad, Lisa B and Nour, Nawal M. “Unsafe Abortion: Unnecessary Maternal Mortality.” Reviews in Obstetrics and Gynecology. 2009 Spring; 2(2):122–126. PMID
Hawken, Paul, ed. Drawdown. The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global Warming. Project Drawdown. New York: Penguin Books, 2017.
Ipas. Toward a Sustainable Abortion Ecosystem: A framework for program design, action and evaluation. Chapel Hill, NC: Ipas.
Kavanaugh, Megan. “Is Birth Control Under Attack? Moves to Limit Contraception—From IUDs to the Pill—Are Following the Anti-Abortion Playbook.” Zócolo Public Square. September 9, 2024.
KFF. Abortion in the United States Dashboard.12/20/2024.
KFF. The Availability and Use of Medication Abortion. March 20, 2024. Updated January 6, 2025.
Maathai, Wangari. Unbowed. A Memoir. New York: Anchor Books, 2007.
Nagel, Joane. Gender and Climate Change. Impacts, Science, Policy. New York: Routledge, 2016.
Nenquimo, Nemonte. We Will Be Jaguars: A Memoir of My People. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2024. 12
Osman-Elasha, Balgis. “Women In The Shadow of Climate Change.” United Nations Chronicle. Nos. 3 & 4, Vol. XLVI. Special Climate Change Issue. August 1, 2009.
Raj A, Rao N, Patel P, Kearl H, Skolnick C. #MeToo 2024: A National Study of Sexual Harassment and Assault in the United States. Newcomb Institute. Tulane University. September
2024.
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“Updated methodology to estimate overall and unintended pregnancy rates in the
United States.” National Center for Health Statistics. Vital Health Stat 2(201). 2023. DOI
Sedgh, Gilda et al. “Undoing of Roe v. Wade Leaves US as Global Outlier on Abortion.” Guttmacher Institute. August 16, 2022.
Singh, Susheela. “Global implications of overturning Roe v Wade.” The BMJ. August 18, 2022.
Surana, Kavitha. “Abortion Bans Have Delayed Emergency Medical Care. In Georgia, Experts Say This Mother’s Death Was Preventable.” ProPublica. September 16, 2024.
Teirstein, Zoya et al. “Expecting worse: Giving birth on a planet in crisis. A new series explores how climate change transforms our reproductive lives, from menstruation to fertility to pregnancy.” Grist Magazine. May 2024.
United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA). “Bodily autonomy: Busting 7 myths that undermine individual rights and freedoms.” UNFPA. April 2021.
United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA). State of World Population. “my body is my own.” UNFPA. April 2021.
United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA). State of World Population. “Seeing the Unseen: The case for action in the neglected crisis of unintended pregnancies” March 2022. https://www.unfpa.org/swp2022
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A Path Forward
By Max Elbaum
Only a new governing coalition capable of expanding political democracy and beginning a process of structural change can push MAGA back to the margins. Lessons from the 2020 election and the Biden years help show a path toward that goal.
We have a treacherous road to travel before we can push MAGA out of political power. But even as we prioritize resistance to the administration’s daily barrage we need an eyes-on-the-prize vision of a post-MAGA government. What kind of governing bloc is both possible to achieve and capable of providing more than temporary respite from fascism’s forward march?
For determining what is essential in such a government and charting a path to reach that goal, there is a lot to learn from the dynamics of the 2020 election and what did and did not happen during the Biden administration.
There is no going back
The Biden years and the 2024 election made it clear that an administration unable or unwilling to push through major political and economic changes cannot beat back authoritarianism. The pre-2016 status quo (neoliberalism anchored by U.S. global hegemony) was and is unsustainable. An exit from that order either in the direction of autocracy/fascism or robust democracy and people-over-profit economics has been on the agenda since the 2008 financial crisis.
The strategists and power-brokers who laid the groundwork for Trump 2.0 have understood this for at least a decade. That’s why the MAGA bloc, having captured all three branches of the federal government, has been able to move so quickly toward the goal of consolidating authoritarian rule.
The narcissistic obsessions of their demagogue-in-chief (tariffs, vendettas against Bruce Springsteen and Taylor Swift, etc.) are weak points in their blitzkrieg. There-emergence of the anti-MAGA majority and increasingly large protest actions are major obstacles in their path. With a further uptick in resistance—including non-compliance and other actions aimed at the “key pillars” of U.S. authoritarianism—along with heightened popular disapproval, it may be possible to preserve significant democratic space, including enough space for competitive elections and the basic right to protest.
If our resistance efforts achieve that goal, breaking MAGA’s grip on power at the federal level and weakening its strength at the state level is the next urgent step. But even that is not enough. If today’s Project 2025 regime is not replaced by a governing coalition that moves aggressively on a program of political democratization that prioritizes racial and gender justice, pro-working class economic reform, and an end to U.S. forever wars, MAGA will again brand itself as the change agent the country needs and come roaring back.
Elected officials and an energized mass base
The governing coalition we need must have clout both inside and outside the political system.
On the inside, its partisans need to be in elected office at every level. Wielding the power of the presidency and holding majorities in both Houses of Congress is essential, not least to break the power of the current MAGA majority on the Supreme Court. And given the extensive powers reserved for state governments in the U.S. federal system, eliminating some of the 23 GOP state trifectas and winning our own trifectas in 15-20 states by 2028 is a necessary target as well.
The capacity to exercise power outside the formal political system is equally important. No progressive program will make it from policy to law to tangible change on the ground (and no new coalition will come to power in the first place) without constant pressure and active participation by an energized grassroots base. And that energy can only be sustained by a cluster of combative, mass-based organizations implementing a common strategy which their members shape and “own.”
Only this combination of elements can sustain the kind of “co-governance” dynamic necessary for a durable and accountable governing coalition.
A short-lived glimpse in 2020
For getting to that kind of multi-leveled governing bloc, there are important lessons from the 2020 election. That contest put President Biden in the White House, flipped the Senate to Democratic control (with Vice President Harris able to break the 50-50 Senate tie) and expanded the Squad to six as Democrats retained control of the House.
Going into that election, mass protest was at a fever pitch. The day after Donald Trump’s first inauguration saw the massive Women’s March, at the time the largest single-day protest in U.S. history. Militant protests at airports across the country in response to Trump’s “Muslim ban” were the next high-water mark in the stream of anti-Trump protests. The George Floyd uprising at the height of the pandemic then surpassed the Women’s March and still stands as “very likely the largest collective action ever on U.S. soil.”
Much of the energy unleashed by all this grassroots ferment flowed into the electoral arena, the lion’s share fueling Bernie Sanders’s second presidential campaign. Most organized radical groups in the country backed Bernie’s insurgent effort, either participating directly in the campaign structure or using their own distinct structures for electoral work. The result was a leap in the sophistication with which existing and new formations approached electoral work and in the connection and cooperation among different groups.
Though Bernie did not win the nomination, the scale of his support (and to a lesser degree, Elizabeth Warren’s) moved the party leftwards and forced most primary candidates to support Medicare for All. It put Bernie in position to represent U.S. progressives in negotiations with the winning Biden team over the character of the general election campaign and at least some components of administration policy. This took the form of joint task forces which produced a detailed policy statement that included recommendations for funding universal pre-kindergarten, expanding Social Security, raising the national minimum wage, and eliminating cash bail, among many other long-sought progressive programs.
A second factor that produced what amounted to a Biden-Bernie alliance was recognition by at least some sectors of Democratic Party establishment that a shift away from neoliberalism was in their own class and political interest. The Hewlett Foundation’s 2020“ Economy and Society Initiative to support growing movement to replace neoliberalism” was the clearest expression of that sector’s viewpoint.
The result of these two factors was a general election campaign that did not rely exclusively on an anti-MAGA message. The prospect of winning changes that would benefit the majority of workers, poor people, and constituencies facing special oppression was also present. As a result, almost all the organizations that had backed Bernie (or Warren) threw down against MAGA in the general election and provided a big part of the margin of victory in battleground states.
And after the election victory, the Biden administration’s initial legislative priority—the Build Back Better plan—included numerous provisions long advocated by progressives, drawing from, among other efforts, the extensive grassroots organizing for a Green New Deal.
Falling short leads to falling back
The political trajectory after that, however, was downhill. Any brief summary is over-simplified. But the central dynamic is clear enough.
Quick to recover from the wave of disapproval that followed January 6, MAGA practiced all obstruction, all the time. The Biden administration, still trapped in the fantasy that the “traditional norms” of U.S. politics were operative, tried to reason with GOP so-called “moderates” and the reactionary Manchin-Sinema duo within the Democratic ranks. The narrowness of the Democratic majorities in the House and Senate was a real problem; conciliating the obstructors didn’t work and the Inflation Reduction Act and other measures that finally passed were a shadow of the original “Build Back Better” proposal.
The Biden team proved inept even at promoting what they did achieve. And then, starting two years in, Biden made a whole series of right turns. Administration messaging on rebuilding the economy shifted from benefitting the majority to competing with China. Biden and other mainstream Democrats capitulated to MAGA’s anti-immigrant crusade. The President bear-hugged Netanyahu and became the main enabler of Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
Though increasingly unpopular and frail, Biden refused to withdraw until it was too late for a competitive presidential primary, thereby preventing the launch of a campaign that might have energized increasingly alienated progressives as Bernie did in 2016 and 2020. By the time of the 2024 general election, Harris and mainstream Democratic candidates for the House and Senate had little to run on besides anti-MAGA sentiment and abortion rights.
The political situation today is worse than 2016. A cadre of loyal MAGA operatives is running the federal government and implementing a well-prepared plan. Mainstream Democrats, with a few individual exceptions, are in near-total disarray, unable to formulate much less agree upon or carry out a serious opposition strategy. The broad Left has grown in both size and sophistication compared to 2016, and important sections of it are working together and utilizing the “Block and Build” strategic framework. But we are still playing catch-up and only since the Hands-Off demonstrations in April that we are able to draw strength from an outpouring of bottom-up protest. Yet intensifying climate change and the rapid deployment of AI are speeding up the things-must-change calendar.
Stay grounded and go beyond 2020
Digging ourselves out of this hole requires a process that accurately assesses the difficult balance of forces, learns from what worked to drive politics forward in 2020, and goes a lot further.
Turning public disapproval into enough actions and votes to stop MAGA’s advance is the immediate priority…we are in a tougher spot than we were in 2020, so we need to reach for the additional types of protest in our arsenal, such as strikes and other workplace actions, civil disobedience, disruptive protests, and organized noncompliance.
MAGA’s drive for unlimited power is moving fast. But one of the reasons for MAGA’s haste is that its program is unpopular and grows more so by the week. Turning public disapproval into enough actions and votes to stop MAGA’s advance is the immediate priority. Every rapid response to an ICE raid, every town hall calling out those who vote to cut Medicaid, every lawsuit/picket line combination to defend federal workers, every protest against sending arms to Israel makes a difference by energizing those already opposed to MAGA, exploiting the fissures among Trump voters, or both. But we are in a tougher spot than we were in 2020, so we need to reach for the additional types of protest in our arsenal, such as strikes and other workplace actions, civil disobedience, disruptive protests, and organized noncompliance.
If the next 18 months of resistance efforts succeed in protecting the electoral process, big gains are possible in 2026 and then 2028 with an all-out “margin of effort.” For a new governing coalition to be more than a holding action, winning the presidency and larger Democratic majorities in the House and Senate than were won in 2020 are necessary—but not sufficient. The strength of progressives relative to the corporate and centrist factions in the Democratic Party must be significantly greater than in 2020. Protecting every incumbent who will be targeted by AIPAC and the Crypto lobby, and replacing several incumbents with Squad-like progressives, are realistic goals.
It will take longer than four years to build an organizing and media infrastructure and financial base strong enough to make progressives a majority of non-MAGA Representatives and Senators. But we can and should aim to punch above our weight in numbers seated in Washington. Key planks in our program for structural change (Medicare for All, expansion of voting rights and an end to the Citizens United role of money in politics, overhaul of the tax system to tax the rich, PRO-Act and related expansions of trade union rights) command majority support.
As struggles against authoritarianism intensify, participants and their supporters move toward more combativeness and more openness to radical ideas. And though it is dormant, the willingness among mainstream Democrats to explore a shift away from neoliberalism has not completely disappeared.
Toward synergy: a presidential run, Left unity, and grassroots organizing
These factors could give us leverage in contending with the corporate and centrist forces for influence in the anti-MAGA front. A key tactic will be finding a progressive to make a serious bid for the presidential nomination.
Win or lose, an insurgent campaign promoting an anti-oligarchy, pro-working class program will be essential for gaining more influence on the 2028 Democratic election campaign and incoming administration than progressives had in 2020. It will allow us to define the election as a chance to both repudiate MAGA and make the shift away from neoliberalism that was glimpsed but not accomplished in 2020-2021. An insurgent campaign is also needed to increase our influence on U.S. foreign policy, immigration, racial justice, and other issues which are crucial for putting any new governing coalition on a durable foundation.
Maximum Left unity behind the candidate running in the “progressive lane” of the 2028 Democratic primary will be critical. This is another lesson from 2020 (and from Bernie’s 2016 campaign and Jesse Jackson’s 1984 and 1988 Rainbow efforts) that is applicable in 2028 and beyond. Given the undemocratic structure of the U.S. electoral system, a presidential campaign is one of the very few ways to galvanize united action by different sectors of the broad Left and project a distinct vision and program before the country.
Thus, it is no surprise that informal discussions are already underway in progressive circles about potential candidates, with many speculating that AOC is positioning herself to fill that spot.
An equally important lesson from Bernie and Jesse’s runs is that grassroots-based organizations with a clear political strategy operating at scale are needed to consolidate the energy unleashed by any insurgent campaign. It is therefore urgent to seize the opportunities that now exist to make leaps forward on that front. The new stirrings of labor militancy and the shift among major unions toward embracing a broader progressive agenda—including opposition to U.S. backing for Israeli genocide—is especially promising. The UAW-led initiative to align contract expiration dates and conduct united labor actions on Mayday 2028 is a potential focal point for activity that starts today. It also holds out the prospect of synergy with a progressive presidential campaign in spring 2028.
There is also potential for accelerating the motion toward strategic alignment and organizational cooperation in the broad Left, especially between groups that already have adopted a power-building strategy that meshes electoral and non-electoral work.
Everything we have will be needed to protect the results of elections if they are competitive and if anti-MAGA wins. Trump did not accept defeat in 2020 and there is no reason to expect today’s GOP to accept defeat in 2026 or 2028.
Putting the pieces together
The challenges we face are daunting. Progressives alone do not have the strength to prevent MAGA from consolidating authoritarian rule. Even the much broader gathering of all anti-MAGA sectors needs to become more combative and united to accomplish that task. And if we succeed in ousting MAGA, the coalition that comes to power will need to have enough strength inside and outside government to kick-start significant changes that are felt on the ground. It is unrealistic to expect that every part of our agenda can be won quickly. But we must win enough to spark the enthusiasm in the majority of the multi-racial and gender-diverse U.S. working class and broader population while at least neutralizing a sizable number of 2024 Trump voters.
All we can say with confidence today is that the strands that could produce such an outcome exist. The anti-MAGA majority is re-emerging. There is motion toward revitalizing the labor movement at both the leadership and rank-and-file levels. Strategic ideas drawn from the experience of fighting authoritarianism in other countries are taking hold within the anti-MAGA opposition. Power-building progressive organizations have grown in sophistication and are united on most elements of a program that could kick-start a cycle of political and economic change. Important voices within the progressive world are locating that program within the deep patterns of U.S. history, promoting the framework of a Third Reconstruction which highlights the synergy between democratic and working-class struggles and the special role of the Black Freedom Movement.
If all these strands mature, we can achieve what today’s circumstances allow and make 2028 a turning point in the long march toward a different world.
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All photos: Robert Gumpert
This piece originally ran on Convergence, a site well worth checking out
A “No Kings” Snapshot
By The Editors
Kurt Stand from Greenbelt, Maryland
We gathered by Greenbelt’s community center, walked along the town’s streets, past a community garden, past our Honk band – with a tuba, tambourines, and other instruments welcoming all as we arrived – then reaching an overpass where we were chanting, waving signs, cheering on as motorists below greeted us with honking horns.
It would be a fool’s errand to pretend to count numbers – people were constantly coming and going, but hundreds took part, a significant number when you consider that similar rallies at overpasses and in communities throughout Prince George’s and Montgomery County.
Significant too was that it was diverse in age, diverse in background and – though far from fully representative of the City of Greenbelt – more racially diverse than other recent local anti-MAGA events.
Those handmade posters were diverse as well reflecting the range of concerns that brought people out – immigrant rights, trans right, support for Medicare, for peace, defense of federal workers and defense of science with a tone that was alternately mocking: No Kings, No Clowns and angry ICE = SS.
At the core of “No Kings Day,” however, was opposition to illegitimate authority and that was reflected in a sign quoting Book of Samuel 8:18, which, for those not so well-versed in the Bible, proclaims:
When that day comes, you will cry out for relief from the king you have chosen, but the Lord will not answer you in that day.
Another, reminding us that megalomania in power is nothing new, recalled Louis XIV’s L’etat c’est Moi (I am the state), by providing the appropriate rejoinder:
Tu n’est pas l’etat (“You are not the state”).
Key to the rally and critically important to this moment and the future, was reclaiming our nation’s conflicted heritage. Opposition to illegitimate authority runs like a thread through U.S. history from the time of the American Revolution and the Battle of Lexington and Concord on June 14, 1775, up to the present. It has defined every struggle in recent memory for social, racial and economic justice and is a heritage we ought to acknowledge and defend even as we seek to expand its meaning.
That was in plain view in Greenbelt on June 14, 2025, as lots of U.S. flags were carried along with signs that declared:
Yes to the Magna Carta
We did it 249 years ago — we can do it again
The Constitution Separates Powers for a Reason
I’m old enough to remember “Liberty and Justice for All” was a thing
Perhaps the most important words were on a signs directed at all attending this and other rallies, words to remember in these dangerous times:
Don’t Trust Authority
Trust Each Other.
And, last but not least:
You are the “Solid” in Solidarity.
Molly Martin from Jackson, WY
Longtime community activists in Jackson, Wyoming told me that the “No Kings” protest on June 14 was the largest demonstration the town has ever seen. On a warm, sunny day, hundreds of people filled the sidewalks around the town square.
My friend and I, tourists on our way from the San Francisco Bay Area to Yellowstone National Park, were glad to join the rally. We found a welcoming crowd gathered beneath Jackson’s iconic antler arches.
A speaker addressed the crowd with somber news of lawmakers assassinated in Minnesota. He warned that the Trump regime had made violence a tool of its agenda, and urged everyone present to remain peaceful and safe.
Jackson, a gateway to Grand Teton and Yellowstone National Parks, depends heavily on tourism. Locals are deeply concerned about cuts to the National Park Service. NPS workers told me about layoffs and unfilled positions. With summer just beginning, the park system is already stretched thin.
A couple of police cars were parked nearby, but officers only intervened to remind demonstrators to stay on the sidewalks. At one corner, two older women sat calmly on horseback, representing the Jackson police as volunteers. They said the horses were their own, serving no role that day except to receive a steady stream of affectionate pats from passersby.
Douglas Marshall from Bell and Montebello, California
I called this event. Few people showed up, some for fear and some because my rule about no foreign flags “did not align with my values.”
Our mayor, a leader of our large Muslim community, and our Chief of Police, son of immigrants, both expressed their support but did not attend. The Mayor is a Bernie guy.
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The Italian Labor and Citizenship Referenda of June 8-9
By Salvo Leonardi and Lepoldo Tartaglia
A note from Peter Olney, co-editor of the Stansbury Forum
On Sunday June 8 and Monday June 9 Italians went to the polls nationally to vote on 5 Referendum propositions placed on the ballot by the largest Italian labor federation, the Confederazione Generale Italiana dei Lavoratori (CGIL) and immigrant and citizenship advocacy groups. Four of the referenda concerned labor employment rights and the fifth was an important initiative to speed up the timeline for obtaining Italian citizenship. Two Italian labor leaders, Salvatore Leonardi and Leopoldo Tartaglia have written a very comprehensive summation of the referenda and the disappointing election result for The Stansbury Forum.
June 10th 2025
A resounding, bitter defeat
It’s not easy to explain what happened in Italy on June 8–9, when Italians went to the polls to vote on five referendums, four of which were promoted by the largest trade union confederation, the Confederazione Generale Italiana dei Lavoratori (CGIL). Three would have abrogated previous statutes that were conceived to relax the rules for firing and hiring in favor of the employers. One dealt with subcontracting and social responsibility in the case of accidents at work. The fifth would have reduced from ten to five, the years for resident and regular migrants to obtain full political citizenship.
Italian law sets a 50%+ threshold (quorum) of eligible voters to consider a consultation valid. The proponents and supporters knew that this would be an uphill battle. Recent precedents were not at all encouraging. We live in times when the average turnout at elections has almost everywhere been getting lower, year after year. Aware of that, all the right-wing Italian parties, which have since 2022 ruled the country, called their voters and sympathizers to boycott the consultation. And the support from centre-left parties was not enough to overcome the combination of natural and overt political abstention. At the end of the day, on June 9th, only 30% of those having the right to vote had gone to the urns (around 14 million voters, out of a total number of 46 million eligible electors), with the result that the whole campaign failed.
Despite the CGIL’s mobilizations and organizational effort, witnessed by a massive and generous return to militant action all over the country, from members and activists, the target at the end was largely missed. No quorum, no victory!! It was clearly a lost battle. The substantial silence from the mainstream broadcast and media, during the campaign, had for certain contributed to such a demoralizing result, but it alone cannot serve as a satisfactory explanation. There is in fact a wider problem with the general functioning of our democracy, like other democracies too, with worrying widespread forms of apathy and mass disaffection for whatever concerns are in the political sphere. This occurs even when key social rights are questioned or, as in this case, potentially reestablished to the benefit of wide sectors of the society, who have been long penalized by years of neoliberal and anti-working class policies.
It’s small consolation, but it should be remembered anyway, that the 14 million voters is a much larger number than the membership of 5 million in the CGIL. And it is more votes than what the Meloni right-wing coalition obtained in the last political elections (12,5 million) It was more than what all the centre-left parties, lined up in support of the five referendums, got one year ago, at the European elections (11 million). But one should not make too much of comparisons and draw incorrect conclusions. [1]
The path to the referendums and their substance
In order to qualify a referendum, Italian law can only be abrogative – partial or total – of norms –existing legislation. Promoters have to collect at least 500.000 officially certified signatures, now facilitated by the possibility of electronic signing. CGIL went far beyond that threshold, getting something like 1.3 million signatures for each of the four questions and requests, whereas the promoters of the citizenship’s referendum – a coalition of civil society organizations – were able to quickly collect 630.000 signatures, thanks to the very new opportunities enabled by electronic democracy.
Once delivered, the abrogative claims must be validated by the Italian Supreme Court, which is required to check whether the questions are sufficiently coherent and legally compatible in their formulation. Originally, the consultation should have also included the request to abrogate the so-called “regional differentiated autonomy”, a law that gave to the Regions many powers and responsibilities previously under the purview of the central State. For technical reasons, which would take too long to describe, this additional request was rejected by the Constitutional Court. This was a big detriment to all the other five questions, since this last issue is extremely sensitive in large parts of the Country, and especially where it is considered detrimental, as in the less economically developed regions of the South. Cut off from it, the remaining five issues had lost the main potential draw, in terms of number of voters.
What were these five referenda about, exactly? With regard to the four concerning firing and hiring at work, the intention of the promoters (CGIL) was to drastically reduce precarity, making dismissals more costly than they’ve become after the reforms of 10 years ago, with the return to some old limitations in the use and abuse of the fixed term contracts, as they are not now required to be somehow justified, for the first year, by some technical or organizational need from employers. Furthermore, in order to strengthen the social responsibility and due diligence of all companies, when outsourcing and subcontracting parts of their production cycle, they’d be called on to support extra costs when a worker suffers from an accident at work, in addition to what mandatory coverage exists from the National Institute of Insurance against the Accidents at Work (INAIL).
Surprisingly enough, most of these existing measures, aimed at relaxing the old labor protections and at increasing the work flexibility, were introduced by centre-left Governments, in times when they were inspired by a neoliberal ideology and leadership of the pivotal Democratic Party (PD). Matteo Renzi, Premier at the time (2014-15), and his encompassing labor reform (known as the “Jobs Act”), were the main target of the referendum campaign. Importantly, with the solid support of the new leadership of the PD, after its leftward turn, under the new secretary, Elly Schlein.
More in Detail
1. The first referendum aimed to abolish the legislative decree derived from the Jobs Act (2015), where it replaced the workers’ right to be reintegrated in his job and workplace, in a case where a judge rules that the worker’s dismissal is not based on performance or economic downturn and reorganization This right was guaranteed by the old, famous Article 18 of the Workers’ Statute of 1970, amended in 2012 and then completely abrogated in 2015. Thereafter, for all the employees hired since then, the protection will only consist in getting a monetary compensation, between a minimum of 6 and a maximum of 36 months salary[2], considering seniority, with the only exclusion of discriminatory dismissals, for de facto gender, racial, religious, political, etc. reasons, where the right to be reintegrated remains in force. Voting “yes” aimed to reinsert the right to rehire, as the normal remedy in case of unfair dismissal, with the monetary compensation as the exception.
2. The second question was about the unfair dismissals in small enterprises with less than 16 employees, where the law – considering the close personal implications in the work relationships and the minor financial capacities of the entrepreneurs – has never provided for the reintegration but only for some monetary compensation, between 2 and 6 monthly salaries. Voting “yes” aimed to give the judge the possibility to mandate compensation in excess of 6 months, in consideration of various circumstances, such as the worker’s family composition or the firm’s ability to pay. In the past, the small size of the firm was assumed as an undeniable feature of the limited financial capacity of the business. This is not always the case any longer, as in an era of digital and smart start-ups of a new generation, it’s perfectly possible to formally hire a small number of employees, outsource a lot of freelancers and to produce stratospheric turnover. See the story of the Silicon Valley economy, as an example in this regard.
3. The third referendum aimed to limit the proliferation of the fixed-term contracts, abolishing the laws that, from 2014 onwards, allowed the employer to use this contract for the first 12 months, without giving any technical or organizational justification. For the CGIL, fix-term contracts are today a true plague of the labor market and employment relationships. Most of them have an extremely short duration, especially in the tertiary, service and low pay sectors, with the result of depriving the workers of any possibility to manage their life and making them too vulnerable to get organized or ask for the respect of their rights. Voting “yes” aimed to reintroduce a cause, technical or organizational, since the beginning, when hiring with a fix-term contract. In other words, the objective was to make open-ended, stable contracts, the normal and predominant form of employment.
4. The fourth question asked to eliminate the norms that leave out the culpability by the buyer and contractor for a labor accident occurring in subcontractor facilities. Italy is a country with a very large number of accidents at work, with a tragic daily national average of three fatal accidents. The majority of these fatal accidents occur in small enterprises, usually part of a chain of subcontractors.
5. Not less important was the fifth referendum, aiming to give migrants the right to attain Italian citizenship after five, years as in most of the comparable European countries, instead of the ten years required today. This is a very sensitive issue, affecting something like 2.5 million foreigners regularly living in Italy with their children, attending school, sport activities and everything but excluded from being considered “Italians”.
In the first four questions the number of “yes” was massively prevailing over the “no”, with majorities ranging between 87 and 89 per cent. Of course, don’t forget that most of those against opted for boycotting the consultation, by not going to vote. Remarkably, this was not the case for the fifth question, about migrants and citizenship, where the “No” reached 34.5%.This is a very disappointing result, which leads to some critical and preoccupying reflection about the incidence of xenophobia, also within wide segments of the working class, including the unionized blue collar and centre-left electorate. It’s a worldwide and well-know trend; certainly in the US, in times of mounting Trumpism, but not only there.
Exultation vs. dejection
It’s too early to fully understand and evaluate the consequences of this heavy defeat. Obviously, the right wing Government, parties and media have been exulting, pretending to deduce that “the Italians” approve their politics, against the “ideological” CGIL positions, ignored or rejected by a large majority of the electorate. They flaunt some good employment data, ignoring the true quality of many jobs, terribly affected by precarity and very low wages. Some “reformist” commentators, from neoliberal positions and inspirers or makers of the under scrutiny reforms of 10-15 years ago, such as the former Premier Renzi in person, contested the contents of the referenda, accused it of being outdated and anachronistic, since the true problem today are very low wages, and not job stability. Concern for which, of course, is of great importance to the CGIL too, which is engaged on that topic in collective bargaining. But the CGIL is also aware that workers precarity and worker blackmail are some of the main reasons for such a long-lasting wage stagnation.
Even the referendum instrument itself as it is conceived today is now under question, in the days following the vote Utilized more than in other comparable country in Europe, Italian referenda have always failed to reach the quorum since 1999 – with just one single exception in 2011 (on the water as a public good) – with a very low average participation (below 30%) of those having the right to vote. The threshold of 500.000 signatures, set in a time when the population was of 30 million, seems to be too low and easily reachable, especially now that electronic signatures are allowed, and disproportionate to the millions of votes required to be valid. One of the discussed solutions could be to double the number of signatures and to lower the quorum (40%+1) for the result to be valid.
The mood in the world of the promoters, the day after, is understandably of delusion and dejection. The effort of the big organizational machine had been huge and thus the high hopes, at the eve of the vote. Nevertheless, the willingness to keep on fighting is for certain not dead and buried, as the referenda issues can be considered as a step, though missed, in the everyday struggle to achieving better jobs and workers’ rights. The outcome of this battle has been undoubtedly negative, but its objectives are not deleted from our agenda. We can and must in fact capitalize on some of the good things we achieved with this campaign. The reputation, for instance, of the CGIL and its reliability in representing and advocating the weaker and most vulnerable sectors of our society has been enhanced. To bring the workers’ rights and dignity back again to the top of the list in the public discourse, in a time saddened by wars and epochal challenges, can be also considered a positive. The energy and the enthusiasm was profuse from a new generation of militants and activists who campaigned, street-by-street, house-by-house. The practice of a new model of social movement unionism, open and in alliance or in coalition with other associations of civil society, students and NGOs, as for instance in the intersectional battle for justice on the side of the migrants or young precarious worker women. It was no small feat to have stimulated and pushed the centre-left parties to gather and share a common political campaign – with finally the workers’ rights and conditions as a key identitarian issue – can be listed on the column of the partial success of this story.
Lost is the immediate battle for changing bad laws, what remains is to use the traditional tools and battlefields in the field of industrial relations. With collective bargaining at all levels, as the key arena for union action and the members’ militancy. We don’t give up. La lotta continua
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[1] The 14 million voters refers to the total turnout for the vote, not the number of voters that supported the abrogative referenda which of course will be less because within that total turnout are voters who voted “no” on some or all of the questions.
[2] The original formula of the 2015 reform was a minimum of 4 and a maximum of 24,but a new Centre-left government increased the formula to its present status in 2018.
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The Power of Showing Up
By Evie Frankl, Steve Early and Suzanne Gordon
“A lot of the people I served with are 100 percent disabled. What if they lose their care? What if they served the country but can now no longer make ends meet?” Reed Radcliffe, 68, who spent two decades in the Navy, told the Washington Post on June 6th, 2025
I’m Evie Frankl
I took the pics at the “Unite All Vets” demo on the National Mall in DC today, the 6th of June 2025.
It was great to be in such a politically, demographically and multigenerational crowd. People were eager to have their photos sent so I texted or email each one.
Drop Kick Murphy played lots of raucous rock versions of old favorites including Which Side are you On and We Shall Overcome.
We heard Cecil Robert’s (UMW).
Big crowd, great weather, lots of flags, angry Republicans
What could be better?
Defending VA Veterans Health Care on D-Day – Thousands of veterans mobilize to oppose the gutting of direct care and the move toward privatization.
By: Suzanne Gordon and Steve Early
The D-Day anniversary on June 6 is a pretty irresistible date for scheduling a protest related to veteran benefits. Eighty-one years ago, American soldiers and their allies stormed ashore in Normandy, establishing a critical beachhead in the military campaign to defeat Adolph Hitler and Nazism.
In World War II’s aftermath, hundreds of thousands of injured veterans were treated back home in a nationwide network of hospitals run by the federal government. Since then, the VA health care system has greatly expanded, and now through the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) provides high-quality care to nine million veterans. The majority of those veterans want to see the VHA improved and even expanded.
However, during the first Trump administration, the White House and a bipartisan coalition in Congress decided that veterans’ health care delivery needed to shift to the private sector. After passage of the VA MISSION Act of 2018, Trump’s second VA Secretary, Robert Wilkie—a right-wing southern Republican—claimed that partial VHA privatization would produce “more patient satisfaction and predictability, more efficiency for our clinicians, and better value for taxpayers.”
Using D-Day as a protest peg six years ago, a few veterans and their caregivers challenged this view. Members of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), National Nurses United (NNU), and Veterans for Peace (VFP) staged a “National Day to Save The VA” from privatization. That resulted in modest rallies, press conferences, or informational picketing in only a dozen locations, because the grassroots effort drew little or no support from major veterans’ organizations, the national AFL-CIO, or big-name politicians.
A Renewed Assault
President Trump’s second-term assault on all services provided by federal workers—along with their jobs and bargaining rights—has finally woken up more unions and veterans’ advocates to threats that have faced the VA for more than a decade.
On June 6, 5,000 protestors gathered on the Mall in Washington, D.C., under the banner of Unite for Veterans /Unite for America. The event was sponsored by the Union Veterans Council of the national AFL-CIO and the Chamberlain Network, a non-profit group that hopes the rally will “encourage the administration to make the right decisions for veterans.”
Former service members, including some who belong to AFGE, NNU, National Federation of Federal Employees, and other unions, heard speeches from past or present vets in Congress like Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) and former Republican House member Adam Kinzinger (R-IL), who became a major Trump critic during his first term.
Thousands of people also participated in actions at 225 other locations around the country, including in vet-heavy red states like Alaska, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, Idaho, Kansas, and Kentucky. Some “watch parties,” organized for real-time viewing of the D.C. event, were held in local union halls to highlight the labor-vet overlap. The grassroots political organization Indivisible was a local partner as well.
The livestream from D.C. was greatly enlivened by the Dropkick Murphys, a group of Celtic punk rockers from Boston who Union Vets Council leader William Attig regularly listened to as an 18-year-old Marine in Iraq.
This pro-labor band got wild applause after performing a new release well suited to the occasion. Its chorus, as belted out by lead singer Ken Casey, asked: “Who’ll stand with us? / Don’t tell us everything is fine / Who’ll stand with us? / Because this treatment is a crime.”
Everything is Fine?
In the run-up to this D-Day, President Donald Trump’s current VA Secretary Doug Collins—like Robert Wilkie before him—has been telling nine million VHA patients that everything is fine, not a crime, despite his planned elimination of more than 80,000 VA jobs later this year.
According to Collins, a former Republican House member from Georgia, Trump “is making it even easier for veterans to get their health care when and where it’s most convenient for them” by letting them choose between in-house doctors and faster referrals to a nationwide network of 1.7 million private-sector providers. Collins’s proposed budget for fiscal year 2026 clearly favors the latter; it calls for a 50 percent increase in VHA spending on outside care (which already totals $30 billion a year) and an unprecedented 17 percent reduction in direct-care funding.
Since this budgetary math would force cuts to VHA staff, services, and facilities, one purpose of the D-Day rally in D.C. was to sound the alarm about Trump’s renewed privatization push. A speaker who did that very movingly was 43-year-old Matt Stevenson, a primary care physician at the VA Medical Center in Palo Alto.
Making it clear he was speaking in a personal capacity, Stevenson lauded his employer as “a mission-driven, patient-centered, cost-effective, integrated American health care system … which delivers higher-quality care at lower cost than any other system in the country.”
According to Stevenson, under a DOGE-led assault since January, his coworkers around the country have “been disparaged and demoralized … bullied and intimidated” amid “worrisome signs of an attempt to dismantle and privatize the VA.” He argued that “those who would take this public treasure—built over generations, by many hands, working long nights in dark hospitals—and sell it off in the name of choice or modernization or efficiency or political gain” can be stopped if VA defenders “come together around a shared vision.”
Caregivers Quitting
One of the things that inspired some veterans to attend events was learning that their doctors, nurses, or therapists were quitting due to deteriorating workplace conditions under Collins.
David Magnus, a Navy veteran from Pittsburgh, told The Guardian that he traveled to D.C. because his trusted provider revealed her decision to leave the VHA during a recent mental health appointment. Outside a Veterans Memorial Building in San Rafael in northern California, Katie Weber-Linhar, an Army veteran with disabilities, lamented the recent resignation of a popular therapist who treated many vets at an outpatient clinic in Ukiah, in rural Mendocino County.
Weber-Linhar now helps a retired VHA physician hold a weekly protest, attended by patients, family members, and local union members, at a VA outpatient clinic in Santa Rosa, in Sonoma County. She and other VA defenders definitely did not get the memo from D.C. rally planners, which stressed that “Unite for Veterans” was not intended to be “an anti-Trump event or a partisan protest.”
Handmade placards in Santa Rosa included one dissing DOGE as a bunch of “Douchebag Oligarchs Grabbing Everything” and others identifying the sign-holder as a “Veteran Against Trump” and critic of “Trump’s America” because of its “Cages for Kids, Cuts for Vets.” Ernie Bergman, a cancer survivor and 77-year-old leader of Vietnam Veterans of America (VVA) in Marin County, criticized “this current government” for trying to take money away from medical research and innovative treatment “that saved my life.”
VSOs Were MIA
Iraq combat veteran Kristofer Goldsmith, a former staffer for the Vietnam Veterans of America turned podcaster and founder of Task Force Butler, said he was thrilled that “people at the protest in Washington were not the usual suspects. I had people come up to me who had flown in from every part of the country who had never been at a protest before but who wanted to be part of something historic.”
Goldsmith noted, however, that some groups were notable for their official absence—representatives of the “big six” veteran service organizations. Just a few months ago, Goldsmith was much encouraged when the national commander of one of these VSOs—the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW)—urged his 1.4 million members to “march forth” and “stop the bleeding” at the VA. As a life member of the VFW but past critic of overly cautious and conservative VSO behavior, Goldsmith viewed this development as “nothing short of extraordinary.”
On D-Day, however, the VFW, American Legion, and other major vet groups were MIA. According to Goldsmith, there were VSO members at the D.C. rally “in a personal capacity,” but there was no official staff or representation of the “big six.” In Goldsmith’s view, if the big VSOs “were making enough noise and standing up to the cuts in a way that reflects the urgency of the moment, they would have been on the stage with us.”
William Attig, the Union Vets Council leader and a key rally organizer who served in both Iraq and Afghanistan before joining a plumbers and pipefitters local in Illinois, said that organizers were working with the VSOs “behind the scenes.” Hopefully these efforts will convince major VSOs to end, what one concerned representative described to the Prospect as their deafening silence on Trump/DOGE/Collins assault on veterans, their dedicated caregivers, and their hard-earned benefits.
The Next Step
The question is what’s next. Attig, among other organizers and attendees, emphasized that this event will be only one of many. It was a “very exciting event that shows what can happen when veterans come together around their issues.”
James Jones, a Gulf War veteran from Boone, North Carolina, who is also a federal employee with the National Park Service, a member of AFGE and of the newly formed Federal Unionists Network, could not agree more. In a post D-Day protest interview with the Prospect, Jones said he traveled from North Carolina to the event because he wants legislators to understand how important the VA has been to veterans like himself.
“I lost friends during the Gulf War, and I’ve dealt with health issues because of exposure to… you name it,” Jones said. “Airborne toxins, oil well fire smoke, burn pits, depleted uranium residue. I’ve been a VA patient since 1993 and the VA has been beneficial to me because they understand PTSD, military trauma, and everything else.”
Jones said he hopes that veterans will keep up the pressure. “We have to call our elected representatives, keep going to rallies, and join these groups that are fighting for veterans. Secretary Collins is trying to convince people that the VA is a bloated agency. It’s not—they’re thousands of positions short. The government needs to keep the promise it made to veterans. We served our country and now they’re breaking their promise to take care of us. We can’t accept that.”
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The piece by Steve Early and Suzanne Gordon originally ran in The American Prospect
On June 14th, this Saturday, it’ll be time for all of us to show up around the country. Check out sites here
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Condemning ICE Raids and the Arrest of David Huerta
By Devra Weber and David Bacon
Dear friends and family,
As DT sends in the National Guard and is threatening to send in the Marines, I wanted to send a note.
I was at a rally called by the unions today, in which congresspeople, members of the City Council and UFW cofounder Dolores Huerta all spoke. There were no police and it was peaceful.
I understand that ICE will be in LA 30 days.. They are going to homes, work places and shopping areas, stopping people who ‘look’ like migrants, ie Latinos. Its chaotic and terrifying people .The Governor and Mayor have asked that the National Guard be taken out.
The photos which news tend to show are photos of violence and burned cars. But….the overwhelming majority of protestors an d protests have been peaceful. ICE is an invasion.
SAN FRANCISCO LABOR CONDEMNS ICE RAIDS AND THE ARREST OF DAVID HUERTA
SAN FRANCISCO, CA – 9JUNE25 – Unions and immigrant rights activists protest immigration raids and the arrest in Los Angeles of David Huerta, head of United Service Workers West during a raid. Labor leaders included Olga Miranda, SEIU Local 87, Kieth Brown, Alameda Labor Council, Lizzy Tapia, UniteHere Local 2, Robert Sandoval, IBT 350, Steve Pitts, UCB Labor Center emeritus, and others.
Action Network: The Labor Force
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Los Angeles: Rally to Demand Justice for David Huerta
By The Editors
It’s Sunday June 8th – Trump has sent the National Guard into LA to put down ICE protestors. Tomorrow, Monday the 9th of June there will be a rally for David Huerta in Los Angeles.
Next Saturday the would be King and Dictator celebrating his birthday with a military parade and lavish spending on his ego.
We stand opposed and hundreds of thousands of us will march and demonstrate in thousands of site, urban and rural, around the country on Saturday, June 14th.
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