Wednesday, November 4, 2020
'Huge Victory for Texas Voters': Federal Judge Rules in Favor of 127,000 Drive-Thru Ballots
"This is what democracy looks like," said one ACLU lawyer. "Our justice system did its duty today to ensure voting rights are protected and our democracy remains intact."
by
Brett Wilkins, staff writer
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/11/02/huge-victory-texas-voters-federal-judge-rules-favor-127000-drive-thru-ballots
In a blow to one of the many Republican attempts to stop people from voting across the country, a federal judge Monday afternoon struck down a GOP attempt to invalidate 127,000 ballots cast at drive-thru voting sites in Harris County, Texas.
NPR reports U.S. District Court Judge Andrew Hanen—a George W. Bush appointee—threw out the suit challenging the legality of the ballots, which were turned in by car at 10 sites throughout the Houston area in the Lone Star State's most populous county.
"Voter suppression doesn't get much more blatant than this outrageous attempt to invalidate the votes of nearly 127,000 Texans," said Anthony Gutierrez, executive director of Common Cause Texas, in response to the decision. "We hope this ruling eliminates some of the anxiety and confusion so many Houstonians were feeling. This should allow the election to be decided by Texas voters and not by a small group of people trying to disrupt our democracy through litigation, suppression and confusion."
The decision came one day after the Texas Supreme Court denied a petition by a Republican activist and three GOP candidates in the state seeking to have the drive-thru votes tossed out for what they claimed was an illegal expansion of curbside voting—which under Texas law is only available for voters with disabilities—by Harris County Clerk Chris Hollins, a Democrat.
County officials had set up the drive-through polling places in order to make voting easier and safer during the Covid-19 pandemic. According to local news station KTRK, about 10% of all early ballots have been cast by car.
The GOP activist who filed the challenge, Steven Hotze, is no stranger to controversy. According to the Texas Tribune:
Hotze is an active GOP donor and is one of the most prolific culture warriors on the right. He's a fierce opponent of same-sex marriage and was a key figure in the unsuccessful push for the 2017 "bathroom bill" in the Texas Legislature. This year, he has filed numerous lawsuits seeking to overturn Gov. Greg Abbott's coronavirus restrictions and block Harris County's efforts to make it easier for people to vote. And he left a voicemail for Abbott's chief of staff this summer telling him to shoot and kill people protesting the in-custody death of George Floyd.
While voting rights advocates hailed the decision as a victory, Halen sounded a warning to any Harris County residents thinking of voting by car on Tuesday: "If I were to vote tomorrow, I would not vote in a drive-thru location out of concern about if it's legal or not," he said.
"I am looking at statue right here," the judge added. "On Election Day, they're supposed to vote in a building."
Nevertheless, Andre Segura, legal director of the ACLU of Texas, applauded Halen's decision.
"This is what democracy looks like," he said in a statement. "This is the third attempt by these individuals to throw out votes legally cast, and once again they've been denied. Our justice system did its duty today to ensure voting rights are protected and our democracy remains intact."
Sophia Lin Lakin, deputy director of the ACLU's Voting Rights Project, called the ruling "a huge victory for Texas voters."
"The court was right to reject this outrageous attempt to undermine a true and accurate vote count and improperly influence the outcome of the election," she added.
The failed Republican attempt is but one of many GOP voter suppression efforts around the country. Writing in the Washington Post on Sunday, Ben Ginsburg, one of the nation's most prominent conservative election lawyers, said that:
The Trump campaign and Republican entities engaged in more than 40 voting and ballot court cases around the country this year. In exactly none—zero—are they trying to make it easier for citizens to vote. In many, they are seeking to erect barriers. All of the suits include the mythical fraud claim. Many are efforts to disqualify absentee ballots, which have surged in the pandemic.
"This attempted disenfranchisement of voters cannot be justified by the unproven Republican dogma about widespread fraud," added Ginsberg. "Challenging voters at the polls or disputing the legitimacy of mail-in ballots isn't about fraud. Rather than producing conservative policies that appeal to suburban women, young voters or racial minorities, Republicans are trying to exclude their votes."
Civil Rights Group Bashes 'Highly Politicized' Trump DOJ Election Monitoring Plan
"This plan appears to be nothing but a thinly-veiled effort to deploy federal government personnel to communities in so-called 'battleground states.'"
Andrea Germanos, staff writer
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/11/02/civil-rights-group-bashes-highly-politicized-trump-doj-election-monitoring-plan
President Donald Trump's Justice Department was accused Monday of threatening "the integrity and neutrality of the electoral process" after announcing its plan to send personnel to 44 jurisdictions in 18 states—including key battleground states of Florida, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin—to monitor compliance with federal voting rights laws.
"This Justice Department has been missing in action for nearly four years as communities of color have faced voter suppression, voting discrimination, and rising levels of voter intimidation," said Kristen Clarke, president and executive director of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, in a statement.
"Under this administration," she continued, "we have seen virtually no enforcement of the Voting Rights Act and little action, if any at all, to protect and safeguard the rights of Black voters and voters of color."
The department released the plan for the monitoring Monday, noting that its Civil Rights Division is tasked with enforcing federal voting rights laws.
"The work of the Civil Rights Division around each federal general election is a continuation of its historical mission to ensure that all of our citizens can freely exercise this most fundamental American right," Eric S. Dreiband, the assistant attorney general for the division, said in a DOJ statement.
While the Justice Department regularly undertakes such monitoring, Clarke, in her statement, expressed skepticism that its plan is intend to protect voting rights. She asserted that the track record of the Trump aministration and Attorney General William Barr, as well as locations chosen, make clear the motivation for this year's monitoring effort are cause for concern.
"This plan appears to be nothing but a thinly-veiled effort to deploy federal government personnel to communities in so-called 'battleground states,'" said Clarke, urging local offiicals to "refuse to provide voluntary access inside polling places or to vote counting processing to federal officials given the politicized nature of the Justice Department's work."
"Given Attorney General Barr's recent efforts to weaponize the Justice Department during the middle of a presidential election, federal presence at the polls stands to threaten the integrity and neutrality of the electoral process," she said.
"The most striking evidence of the politicized nature of this plan," she added, "is the absence of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, South Carolina, and other states that are home to some of the largest shares of Black voters."
Legal analyst Joyce Vance agreed with Clarke's assessment, calling the plan "a dangerous sign" of the role the DOJ might play on Tuesday and in the days to follow.
The plan also appears to have ruffled the feathers of at least one state election official—the Minnesota secretary of state—and Minneapolis is named as one of the cities where DOJ monitors are being sent.
"When asked for comment," reported local WCCO-TV, "Minnesota's Secretary of State Steve Simon said the state law is very specific and Justice Department personnel won't be allowed inside polling places."
ACLU's Closing Argument: 'Everyone Should Be Able to Vote, and Everyone’s Vote Should Be Counted'
The national civil liberties group says that it "is at the ready to act swiftly and use all of the tools and resources at our disposal to protect the vote."
by
Julia Conley, staff writer
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/11/02/aclus-closing-argument-everyone-should-be-able-vote-and-everyones-vote-should-be
As the final day of voting in the 2020 election approached, the ACLU on Monday left American voters with a closing argument: "Everyone should be able to vote, and every vote should be counted."
The simple, pro-democracy message was deemed necessary by the national civil liberties organization in a year when President Donald Trump has undermined Americans' ability to vote by mail; federal and state courts have stood in the way of voters who want to cast their ballots early; and the president has repeatedly indicated that he will not accept the election results if he loses and will call for officials to stop counting votes on election night, potentially before millions of legally-cast ballots are tallied.
Last week, the ACLU released a statement detailing its plans to protect voters' right to cast ballots in person, at a drop box, or via mail.
"Just as we've been asking our supporters to make a plan to vote, we at the ACLU have been preparing for months and years for this Election Day: activating volunteers, motivating voters, and fighting for our rights across the country in courts, legislatures, and in the streets," wrote managing attorney Sarah Brannon and voting rights campaign strategist Molly McGrath.
Brannon and McGrath wrote that the organization is working closely with election protection lawyers and volunteers to ensure no voter faces disenfranchisement or intimidation at the polls.
"The ACLU is at the ready to act swiftly and use all of the tools and resources at our disposal to protect the vote," they wrote. "If you have questions about casting your ballot or difficulty voting, remember you have the right to vote and help is a phone call away at 1-866-OUR-VOTE."
The group also released a short audio guide to familiarize voters with what they may face at the polls if they vote in person on Tuesday, including long lines, poll workers who will be able to assist voters who are vulnerable to severe Covid-19 infections and don't want to wait in a large crowd, and possible voter intimidation.
"Voter intimidation is very rare, but, know how to spot it," McGrath told listeners. "No one should make you feel unsafe or interfere with your casting a ballot. Remember, you have the right to vote. No one can impersonate an election official or aggressively question you."
The guide also reminded voters that they should expect a ballot-counting process which stretches past election night this year.
"We likely will not know a winner on election night as more people have cast absentee ballots this year than ever before," McGrath said. "Remember: Some states don't even start counting these ballots until Election Day."
MAYBE IF WE PRETEND THAT SCHUMER IS REPRESENTING THE PEOPLE, HE MIGHT START ACTUALLY DOING IT?
[An interview in which Anand gets a corrupt, lying sack of shit to make some pleasing mouth noises]
Chuck Schumer wants an FDR-style first 100 days
An interview with the Senate minority leader about how Democrats need to change, what he’ll do if Trump tries to steal the election, and whether the filibuster must go
Anand Giridharadas
Nov 3
You’re doomscrolling. You’re stress-eating. You decided to cut today’s intermittent fasting period by six hours. Like me, you forgot to put the cup under the coffee maker. You wish it were 8 p.m. already. You wish you were Canadian. At The Ink, we get it.
Never in my lifetime has an Election Day augured such drastically different futures. Decay or renewal: that’s the news we await.
So first things first — if you haven’t yet voted, please do so today: http://iwillvote.com.
Now, while u wait, we thought you might enjoy a glimpse of the possible future that awaits if we can claw beyond this hellscape.
If Joe Biden indeed becomes president, and the Democrats indeed retake the Senate, Senator Chuck Schumer of New York would become the Robin to Biden’s Batman. Like Biden, Schumer is a moderate, a centrist, a prodigious fundraiser from Wall Street who in many ways symbolizes the modern, business-friendly Democratic Party establishment. Like Biden, Schumer in recent months has hinted at the need for Democrats to chart a new way, reviving the forsaken legacy of Franklin D. Roosevelt.
I interviewed him yesterday by phone, with a hope of understanding what a Trump defeat might usher in. For getting rid of the president is hopefully just the beginning.
Before we get to that, a programming note. I will be doing one of my live video chats for full subscribers today at 1 p.m. New York time, 6 p.m. London time, 10 a.m. Pacific time. The login info will land in subscribers’ inboxes about an hour beforehand.
I will add: If you like tough interviews like this one with important public figures, take a moment to support independent journalism:
“Our job is to create a Rooseveltian-type response”: a conversation with Senator Chuck Schumer
ANAND: So it's election eve, you and Joe Biden are both known as centrists, moderates, but Biden has also talked about an FDR-sized presidency given the circumstances. In the event that Biden is president and you're Senate majority leader in January, should the first 100 days look like the modern, centrist Democratic Party's, or should it look like FDR's?
CHUCK: It ought to look like FDR's.
One area is climate, with a big, strong, aggressive climate agenda that takes into account working people, takes into account racial injustice.
The second is wealth and income inequality. Obviously, raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour. Changing the tax code so it's fairer for labor rather than capital. Strengthening labor unions. One of the reasons working-class incomes have declined is the weakening of the labor movement. We have to strengthen that. We need a big, broad infrastructure bill, and it could create millions of jobs. A lot of those jobs should go to poor people, people who have had prison records. And these are good-paying jobs. Getting rid of student debt. I have a proposal with Elizabeth Warren that the first $50,000 of debt be vanquished, and we believe that Joe Biden can do that with the pen as opposed to legislation.
Then there are issues that don’t seem related to income inequality but are. Immigration reform. Criminal-justice reform is another economic issue. If you have a small conviction for a minor crime, you can never get a good job. I like the idea of paying care workers more.
The third area is democracy. We’ve got to change the structure of society. Making it much easier to vote. We can change America structurally that way.
So it’s a big, bold agenda. My job is to get as much of that passed and get the votes for it, which obviously is not something I can snap my fingers and do. I want the boldest agenda that we can get the votes to pass.
ANAND: To get a lot of those things done, do you think the filibuster needs to go?
CHUCK: We’ve first got to get the majority. Because if we don’t get the majority, all is lost.
ANAND: I know, but I'm saying if you get the majority and you want to do these things, is there any way you could get them done with the filibuster in place?
CHUCK: Everything is on the table. Everything is on the table.
ANAND: But if you have a majority, would you be willing to fight for that at this stage?
CHUCK: What I’ve said to you is you have to get the majority, and then everything is on the table. That is what I said.
ANAND: But that's different from saying this agenda is so important that, come hell or high water, I'm going to fight for that.
CHUCK: We have to get it done. We have to get it done, and I will figure it out. We have to have unity in our caucus, right? I have a leadership team that meets every Monday night. On that team are Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, and on that team are Mark Warner and Joe Manchin, and we have had great unity. Every member opposed the Trump tax bill, every member supported impeachment, every member voted to keep healthcare, every member voted against Amy Coney Barrett.
So we’ve got to create a dynamic where we can get these things done, and we're going to figure out the best way to do that.
ANAND: Are you in favor of expanding the Supreme Court at this point?
CHUCK: As I said, everything is on the table.
ANAND: But why only leave things on the table? Why not advocate for things?
CHUCK: Because you have to get the majority, Anand. I can't snap my fingers and make everybody do it, OK? You know that. And I am going to work hard for the boldest agenda we can have, the best way we can, and we’re not eliminating any way.
ANAND: Given what we're seeing from the president, in terms of his statements about lawsuits, given what we're seeing with his cheering on people committing violent acts against the Biden campaign bus, and with Marco Rubio, your colleague, today calling on Floridians to engage in similar violence on highways with cars…
CHUCK: He did? Marco Rubio did? This is despicable.
ANAND: It feels like we are now talking about open calls for political violence from the president and others. Do you believe the president is specifically attempting and making plans to sabotage and steal the election as we speak?
CHUCK: I think he will try to do whatever it takes to prevent himself from losing power. I don't know what exactly he will do. I'm not in his head. If we win by a whole lot, it will be a lot harder for him. And we’re preparing for it. I have a group of senators who are looking at all the alternatives should he try to do this — Amy Klobuchar, Bernie Sanders, Chris Murphy, Tammy Duckworth, and Martin Heinrich. And we’re looking at all eventualities. We’re looking at legal actions. We’re looking at working with governors. We’re working with intelligence agencies — everybody that we can — to prevent him from thwarting democracy, which I have no doubt he will try to do.
ANAND: Inciting violence is actually a crime, as you know. Do you believe Trump has crossed the line into specifically inciting violence?
CHUCK: He has an obligation to say, “No violence. Discourage violence.” When he applauded those people trying to run that bus off the road, it was outrageous and he was encouraging violence.
ANAND: You have been one of the two principal opposition leaders in Trump’s tenure. More than 200 judges got confirmed. A lot of his work of gutting the State Department, rolling back environmental regulations, etc., was able to get done. Is there any day on which you've looked back on your own performance in this time and thought: I should have been tougher as a source of resistance in this or that particular way?
CHUCK: Well, we fought him tooth and nail. And, as I said, on every major issue, we beat him [Editor’s note:
ANAND: Do you expect to face a progressive primary challenger in 2022?
CHUCK: Look, I have been in politics a while. I do a good job. The best job I can for the people of New York and the people of the country, and it’s always worked out.
ANAND: You haven't heard any of those murmurs of people looking to run against you?
CHUCK: The answer I gave you is the answer. You do a good job for New York, you do a good job for the country, and it works out.
ANAND: But behind that, the question is when you talk about some of the big things at the beginning of this conversation, the big, bold agenda, some of that represents, frankly, a recognition, it sounds like, that what Democrats stood for in the ’90s and 2000s was often not big and bold enough. Is that a fair statement?
CHUCK: Well, certainly in the ’90s. But the world changed, and income has flowed to the top in the last 15 years. Unions are much weaker than they used to be. Climate is much worse.
ANAND: But don’t Democrats have a lot of responsibility for letting some of those things happen?
CHUCK: No, we fought them when we could, up and down the line. In 2009 and ’10, the last time we had power, we did some good things, but we should’ve done a lot more. The world has changed in ways that make it much harder for average Americans to get ahead, and our job is to create a Rooseveltian-type response to it. I agree with that.
ANAND: But I think that the notion is, whether you read Kurt Anderson's new book, “Evil Geniuses,” or Jane Mayer's book “Dark Money,” a lot why the world changed was because of what folks did on the right. But a lot of it, also, was a Democratic Party that was very solicitous of the donor class, going along with too many things. I just wonder if you agree with that basic thesis or you disagree with it.
CHUCK: Well, you'd have to give me specifics. I mean…
ANAND: Do you think you took too much money from Wall Street?
CHUCK: Pardon?
ANAND: Do you think you've taken too much money from Wall Street, in retrospect?
CHUCK: I think we’ve opposed Wall Street. The people I've appointed to these commissions have been very pro-working people.
ANAND: There’s now a new conversation that's being had about the role of money in politics that may not have been the conversation ten years ago. When you look back on your own fundraising, it's heavily Wall Street. Do you have any regrets about that?
CHUCK: I’ve opposed the Citizens United decision the minute it came out. I don’t want soft money in politics. I’ve always been against that. I’ve always been strongly for campaign-finance reform.
ANAND: But other candidates for office, Bernie Sanders and others, have rejected Wall Street money. You have not rejected Wall Street money. Correct?
CHUCK: Well, I don’t — you know, the bottom line is, I stand by what I propose, what I stand for. The bottom line is, judge me by my actions. Yes, you should.
ANAND: So there’s no source of money that’s corrupting if it doesn’t result in a specific proposal?
CHUCK: I think we have to change campaign-finance law dramatically. Citizens United was one of the worst decisions that we had.
ANAND: Part of bold change involves a recognition in all corners about each of our role in the old normal being bad. So I will say as a media person, there are a lot of ways in which my industry works that, in retrospect, we have huge complicity. We are very complicit. And I just wonder, do you look at your Democratic Party and say, here is where we actually fell short and enabled some of the institutional and economic weakness?
CHUCK: Well, give me an example. I don't, I mean, you know, the bottom line is, I'm fighting for the right things.
ANAND: I mean a simple example is financial deregulation. What I’m saying to you is a lot of people don't necessarily trust the ability to do big, bold change by people who are not forthright about the fact that that was not happening before. And it was not happening for a specific set of reasons.
CHUCK: Well, I will certainly say the change in the last 15 or 20 years has not been big enough or bold enough.
ANAND: What should Americans do if in the next day, two days, three days, Donald Trump actually does attempt to steal the election, declare false victory, try to stop votes being counted?
CHUCK: He can declare false victory, but we’ve talked to the governors of the various states. We cannot allow him to declare victory. We have to fight back and fight him in every way we can. We’re going to have to fight it tooth and nail. I don’t underestimate what Donald Trump might start.
ANAND: Do you think we'll know who's going to be the new president by Tuesday night or not?
CHUCK: Hope so. If Biden wins Florida by a lot, wins North Carolina by a lot, there’s no telling. The goal here is to beat Trump to get something real done. I believe that passionately.
SOCIAL MOVEMENTS CAN WIN EVEN WITH A HOSTILE SUPREME COURT
By Mukund Rathi, Truthout.
November 2, 2020
https://popularresistance.org/social-movements-can-win-even-with-a-hostile-supreme-court/
With the confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett, how will the Supreme Court decide future cases? Most people will probably think of it as a “6-3 Court” and expect decisions based on the number of justices nominated by each of the two ruling parties. Shelby County v. Holder, which struck down parts of the Voting Rights Act, was a perfect 5-4 split between the justices nominated by Democrats and Republicans at the time.
The justices, of course, disagree. They admit the nominations are political but the justice is not, “once that black robe goes on.” After all, it was Trump-nominated Justice Neil Gorsuch who wrote Bostock v. Clayton County, which guaranteed the Civil Rights Act’s anti-discrimination protections to gay and transgender workers.
Politicians generally respond to the question of how the Supreme Court decides cases with a convenient mix of both answers. The opposing party’s nominees are partisan hacks, but the rest of the justices (fine print: who we nominated) are faithfully applying the “written text” and/or “true values” of the Constitution!
All of these accounts, however, miss a key factor: social movements. We know that movements won our rights — from abortion to voting to joining a union — but they are forgotten when we talk about the Supreme Court. Politicians and the justices only admit to the influence of politics in terms of partisanship, not strikes and protests by ordinary people. The result is an incomplete and unbearable national conversation around the Supreme Court, which most recently played out in Barrett’s nomination hearing.
Introducing social movements to the conversation would not just make it bearable — it would make it exciting. The stories of why the Supreme Court upheld reproductive rights, civil rights protections and workers’ rights to organize are our stories. By telling them, we can prepare ourselves to continue those fights inside and outside the courtroom today.
The Fight Leading Up To Roe V. Wade
The women who fought for the right to choose — then and now — saw legal rulings as a potential part of their liberation, but not the whole ballgame. As one organizer put it, “the objective was not to change the law per se,” but to “use the process of changing the law, which would be a good thing to do, to further the goals of the women’s movement overall.”
In Connecticut, the movement used law as an organizing tool to fight severe criminalization of abortion — a woman committed a felony by even asking for one. In 1971, the organizers of “Women versus Connecticut” recruited as many women as possible as plaintiffs in a lawsuit, and in the process, they educated people about (and organized them around) reproductive freedom. These hundreds of women sued Connecticut and filed affidavits about their experiences with illegal abortions or being forced to carry a pregnancy to term. At a plaintiffs’ meeting, one of the lawyers (all of whom were women) argued that their lawsuit had to be about “flesh and blood people,” because “after listening to more and more judges, if we present it as a matter of law, they are going to think we are daft.”
The women won, as a federal court struck down the law criminalizing abortion. The decision recognized the “extraordinary ramifications for a woman” of pregnancy and childbirth, such as pressure to “curtail or end her employment or educational opportunities.”
The feminist movement had many other victories like this on the way to Roe v. Wade in 1973, using mass legal action, protests, and other creative tactics to shift consciousness and pressure politicians. In 1967, California’s Republican Gov. Ronald Reagan signed a state law decriminalizing abortion. By the early 1970s, over 20 states had passed similar or stronger legislation. The movement’s influence was so great that of the four justices appointed by Richard Nixon to the Supreme Court, one of them wrote Roe itself, and two of them joined the majority. Nixon and these justices preceded the growth of the right-wing legal movement we know today and were not necessarily anti-choice stalwarts. Nonetheless, this victory against the odds is a benchmark for us.
Today, giving non-answers about Roe is a sport for Republican nominees, just as asking futile questions about Roe seems to be one for Democratic senators. Both sides fixate on the legal correctness of landmark cases like Roe, but we need to unpack the stories of how they actually came to be.
The Supreme Court’s Passive Record On Civil Rights
The one question that no Supreme Court nominee can duck is about Brown v. Board of Education — “super-precedent,” as Barrett took to calling it. But the conversation stops there, without going on to who did the actual work of ending Jim Crow segregation. It was not the Supreme Court, which merely told the South to implement Brown with “all deliberate speed.” Martin Luther King Jr. described the Court’s impact as “stark tokenism.” The actual work was done by the Little Rock Nine, the Freedom Riders, Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and Black protesters under siege by police and white supremacists all over the country.
The Supreme Court itself was often hostile to civil rights protesters. During the massive campaign in 1963 to desegregate Birmingham, Alabama, when cops and dogs and fire hoses were let loose, bureaucrats played their Jim Crow part by denying permits for civil rights marches. The marches went forward in defiance of an Alabama court injunction, and MLK and the other organizers were charged with jail time and fines. The Supreme Court upheld those charges. It faulted the organizers for “disobeying the injunction” and the permit process rather than “challeng[ing] it in the Alabama courts.” The Court’s advice to MLK was that “respect for judicial process is a small price to pay for the civilizing hand of law.”
Instead, the movement’s major victories were in Congress, with the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts. The Supreme Court, which upheld them as constitutional, played a more passive role. That’s not to discount the movement’s influence on the Court, which was nearly unanimous in acknowledging the need to “banish the blight of racial discrimination.”
Just as the feminist movement racked up state victories on the way to the Supreme Court, the civil rights movement went through Congress first. Even when the Supreme Court is hostile, social movements can uphold their victories through mass upheaval and by moving against the Court’s own institutional power.
That’s what happened during the Great Depression.
Workers Fight For — And SCOTUS Upholds — The Right To Organize
During Franklin D. Roosevelt’s first term (1933-1937), the Supreme Court routinely struck down his New Deal legislation for violating the freedom of contract and the Commerce Clause of the Constitution. The U.S. Congress could only tinker with “interstate commerce” — not economic activity within a single state, including large steel and auto manufacturing plants. But then, in 1937, the Court upheld the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), which protected workers’ legal right to organize. What changed?
Employers defied the NLRA after it was passed in 1935, expecting it to be struck down. Indeed, every lower court which ruled on the NLRA said it could not constitutionally protect manufacturing workers because they did not participate in “interstate commerce.” The courts defied the clear popular mandate for the New Deal, expressed in FDR’s smashing reelection victory in 1936.
Rather than rely on the courts to protect their rights, rank-and-file workers took matters into their own hands. In a wave of successful “sit-down strikes,” they fought for union recognition and halted production in manufacturing plants by occupying them with massive numbers. In 1936 and 1937, nearly half a million workers participated in a sit-down. In one of the greatest labor conflicts in U.S. history, thousands of workers at the General Motors plants in Flint, Michigan, staged a sit-down strike beginning in December 1936. It ended in victory two months later.
Their primary demand was that GM obey the NLRA and recognize their union. GM at first refused to negotiate, condemning the workers for “striking at the very heart of the right of possession of private property” by occupying the plants.
The workers argued that the sit-down was necessary to defend their right to organize under the NLRA, refused to follow court injunctions that ignored this reality, and battled police who tried to evict them.
While FDR was publicly silent on the sit-down strategy, he lobbed his own controversial attack against the Supreme Court. He threatened to “pack the Court” through legislation allowing him to appoint more liberal justices who would uphold his policies.
Sit-down strike wave, popular mandate, court-packing threat — this was the context of April 1937, when the Supreme Court ruled on the NLRA. First, it upheld the NLRA as applied to interstate transportation and communication businesses — this was squarely within the Commerce Clause.
But second, it also upheld the NLRA as applied to manufacturing plants, even those within a single state. The Court was clear about how the strike wave factored into its decision:
“When industries organize themselves on a national scale, making their relation to interstate commerce the dominant factor in their activities, how can it be maintained that their industrial labor relations constitute a forbidden field into which Congress may not enter when it is necessary to protect interstate commerce from the paralyzing consequences of industrial war?”
Our Movements Can Win In Court
Our predecessors won these rights through social movements, and we need to adapt their approaches to the courts to our situation today. Shelby County and Bostock, which respectively weakened and strengthened the Voting Rights and Civil Rights Acts, echo our failures and successes in living up to the civil rights movement’s accomplishments. In other words, it’s not enough to grill Republican nominees about what they will do about Roe and abortion rights — we have to ask ourselves that same question.
Our movements generally have the right instincts when it comes to “legal” issues. When grand juries and courts are considering cases of police violence, we take to the streets. We dress up as handmaids to protest anti-choice judicial nominations. We stall the expansion of oil pipelines through civil disobedience as environmental lawsuits crawl through the courts. But as our movements grow and aim higher, these good instincts run up against conventional wisdom about the courts and their supposed impartiality. Rebutting that lie and staying on the course of mass action will require a deeper discussion — in the streets and our workplaces (and, of course, our homes) — about how our social movements can win in court today.
How can we defend Roe and win greater reproductive freedom? Do we follow the feminist movement and shift consciousness through state victories, and perhaps clinic defenses? How do we pressure the Supreme Court to abolish qualified immunity, which protects police from liability for civil rights violations? Do we go directly to the Court or through Congress first? In either case, mass upheaval and initiatives to reform or pack — if not abolish — the Supreme Court will be necessary.
TRUMP’S ZEALOTS: WHITE SUPREMACISTS AND EVANGELICALS
By Gilbert Mercier, Telesur English.
November 2, 2020
https://popularresistance.org/trumps-zealots-white-supremacists-and-evangelicals/
Gearing Up For A New Civil War?
What the gun-toting, Trump 2020 and Confederate-flag waving Trump have been organized and likely paid to do, is to make sure the U.S. goes back to work as soon as possible.
Let us not be naive. If President Trump recently called on his adoring followers to “liberate” states like Michigan, Virginia, Maryland*, and Minnesota, which all happen to have Democrat governors, this is not about freeing people from the supposed tyranny of lockdown and social distancing measures. What the gun-toting, Trump 2020 and Confederate-flag waving Trump storm-troopers have been organized and likely paid to do, is to make sure the United States goes back to work as soon as possible. Naturally, this is despite the fact that the COVID-19 pandemic is still raging in all 50 states, at various levels, with no end in sight.
The rush to “open America back for business” is an imperative dictated by Wall Street corporations large and small and, last but not least, Trump’s desperate attempt to be reelected in November. For Trump, it is likely to be a futile effort to find a way out of the massive global economic crisis. This is, of course, a symptom of capitalism‘s borderline criminal logic that the survival of the economy and the financial markets should matter more than human life. Capitalism is a ruthlessly blind killer that has always favored, in times of war or peace, profit over people.
Civil War Redux: The United States Of Trumpistan?
Technically the American Civil War ended on April 9, 1865. But after 155 years, the war between the Confederate states and the North lives in the American psyche. The dark stain of the racism that embraced slavery and inherent superiority of white men has faded somewhat but is still there. The election of Donald Trump in 2016 made it okay for it to be openly shown again without any of the shame of appearing politically incorrect. Trumpistan is more or less the rebirth of the old Confederacy. It is anchored in geography but is mostly a state of mind.
Trumpistan is America’s barely told heart of darkness from another era, which pillared the gun and the Bible. It is a state of mind so schizophrenic that the sanctity of the life of the unborn does not contradict the near worship for the US military war machine. Trumpistan is where Donald Trump won the 2016 election. He is planning to do it again in November 2020 regardless of his poor handling of the COVID-19 crisis, and the economic crash. Trump is a political animal concerned only with his survival. One can expect from him and his sycophants an absolute ruthlessness in the coming months. Trump and the money and media apparatus that supports him are counting on and investing in two different segments connected to reliable voting blocks: first, the fascist “rebel flag” nostalgic heirs of the Confederacy; second the Evangelical Christians.
Fascist White Supremacists: Capitalism‘s Foot Soldiers
During the recent protests in Michigan against the lockdown and stay-home state policies, one protester’s sign read: “Social Distancing = Communism.” This is the ideological angle of Trump’s most belligerent storm-troopers. It is about galvanizing the conservatism electorate into believing that run-of-the-mill mainstream corporate Democrats are the fifth column of socialism’s radical left. The fallacy is enormous, but through history, propaganda 101’s rule of thumb has always been that the bigger the lie, the more likely gullible people will swallow it whole, no questions asked. Who exactly is behind the supposed grassroots protests by the so-called patriots? At the forefront of it — and he was omnipresent with a bullhorn in hands in Austin, Texas, on April 17 — is Trump’s underground propagandist, InfoWars’ Alex Jones. Alex Jones was more instrumental than anyone would like to admit in Trump’s 2016 election win.
While InfoWars and other more obscure far-right websites have been activated, one can only speculate about the deep pockets behind what appears to be a rather complex and concerted strategy to undermine Democrat-controlled states. Mercer’s hedge fund, the financial entity behind Breitbart has been mentioned, as well as Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, who is a billionaire, a creationist like Vice President Pence and, last but not least, the sister of Blackwater founder Erik Prince. DeVos and Mercer can only be called alleged sponsors of the “reopen America patriots,” because so far no tangible money trails have materialized, and it is likely to remain that way. Regardless of the ideological smokescreen, the action is a desperate effort to jolt a moribund economy. The pragmatics in Trump’s inner circle know that it’s the economy, stupid! and that, with 30 to 40 million people unemployed, Trump will not win his reelection bid.
Evangelical Christians
The Evangelical Christian component of Trump’s core support might not be as monolithic as the above group and like it was a few years ago. Quite a few sincere Evangelicals have seen the light shining on Trump’s hypocrisy, lies, and misdeeds. Also, regardless of religious beliefs, it has become hard to forgive the president for his questionable character and the callousness of his behavior, not to mention a vacillating competence and unstable temperament. In this period of fear, where death seems to lurk from everywhere, even believers can appreciate a steady hand guiding the ship. While they are convinced Jesus will save them, their inherent human fiber might make them want to delay their ultimate journey.
Elections In The Times Of COVID-19
Everything should be at stake in the upcoming post-COVID-19 U.S. elections in November 2020, but very little will be. Here and elsewhere democracy has been dead so long it has become the shadow of a ghost. Without real alternative visions and new societal options, it will be yet another lesser-of-two-evils scenario. The main precept will be the safekeeping of the global corporate empire enforced by NATO and the U.S. military. It will be another imperial election from which the outcome will be either our modern-day Caligula’s second term or Barack Obama‘s third term. While this mindless charade takes place, many thousands of human lives worldwide will be sacrificed on the altar of global capitalism to try to prevent its imminent collapse.
TESTIMONIES FROM THE GLORIA QUINTANILLA WOMEN’S COOPERATIVE OF NICARAGUA
By Friends of the ATC.
November 2, 2020
https://popularresistance.org/testimonies-from-the-gloria-quintanilla-womens-cooperative-of-nicaragua/
“The Land Is Our Mother”
When a group of campesinas in the community of Santa Julia, Nicaragua founded the Gloria Quintanilla Cooperative in 2008 with the Rural Workers’ Association (Asociación de Trabajadores del Campo – ATC), one of their basic rules was that men were not allowed to hurt women. With much struggle, they have rid their rural community of machismo and established a high value on women’s work. In collaboration with the ATC and the Sandinista government, the women have fought for and won land titles in their names, their own homes, access to education, improved roads, and most recently, a community water well.
In this new publication, “The Land is Our Mother,” the women of the Gloria Quintanilla Cooperative explain that they consume what is native to the land so their children and grandchildren can be healthy. They use agroecology to ensure that the land, their second mother, stays strong. They prioritize education and involvement of youth in their organization so that the next generation carries out the Gloria Quintanilla Cooperative’s vision for advancement in Santa Julia and Nicaragua.
These testimonies were collected as part of a project of the Friends of the ATC’s July 2019 “Solidarity with Nicaragua” delegation. You can read all published testimonies here.
Excerpt From “The Land Is Our Mother”:
Lola
My name is Lola del Carmen Esquivel Gonzales. I am from Nicaragua and represent the women of the countryside.
At the very young age of 11 years (during the Somoza dictatorship), I worked in the fields, the campesino life. I didn’t have land; I was an agricultural worker. It was hard because there was no education, no protection for children. There were no rights for women. There was no healthcare. My mother and I were nomads, moving through various departments looking for work, harvesting cane sugar. We didn’t have a home. I became a woman: I learned to walk with a machete, cut coffee and cotton and cane, sell fruit, and clean rooms in Corinto, Chinandega.
In 1979, at the age of 14, I met the Rural Workers Association (ATC) and I woke up. I never thought I would learn to defend my rights, to defend the rights of others. The main thing was to be in solidarity, to see ourselves not for our color but for the heart we have to serve.
Ten years later, I learned to write my first letters, to train myself, I learned what a forum is, what it was like to speak in public (a process that made me sweat and tremble). Then it allowed me to do concrete things like form a union and go to the Ministry of Labor with a worker. This also allowed me to stand up at the mayor’s office, to fight for the right to water, the right to have roads. The ATC guided me on what my rights are and how to apply them by organizing.
In 1983, we came up with the idea of forming a union under the name of Imelda Gonzales, a woman heroine of the same calibre as myself who has since died. We had the idea of forming a cooperative in 2008.
All these years, from 1979 to 2019, have been a very rich accumulation of experience that has allowed me to defend my rights with all my might. If I see a woman being abused, I get involved and defend her. If I see the government being bad-mouthed, I get involved and defend it. I was a woman who never went to school, yet today I have traveled to other countries to speak out and talk about all of the good things that we have in this country from the perspective of the peasantry.
The main achievement of the Revolution is property. It’s important that everyone has their piece of land. The second point is the struggle for water. The third point is organization: if we were not organized, we would not be able to achieve all that we have here. The fourth point is education because a country without knowledge is not prepared to struggle. Even though I didn’t go to a school and neither did EloÃsa, we are happy that Lea, Claudia, and all the young people are studying, because the community continues developing.
The other point is food production because we cannot live without food. Today the land is diversified. There is no one who doesn’t have avocados, bananas, or yucca. The change is gigantic. Twenty years ago we had to borrow rice because there was no food. Now we have food in the community. It is very important because if there is education and there is food, there are people who want to move forward.
Read Lola’s full testimony and access all seven testimonies of the publication here.
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