Bill Ayers

From Peter C:

Whenever I read about QAnon, I think of “Foucault’s Pendulum,” Umberto Eco’s great novel. If you know the story, you know what I mean. Three publishing-company friends decide to invent an occult philosophy, called the “Plan” and loosely based on the Knights Templar, the Cathars, Opus Dei, the Kabbalah, etc., etc. As the Plan gets more detailed and elaborate, it attracts followers (some deranged) as well as attacks (some violent) from already-established cults.

Could QAnon be the same? Some guy decides to start posting as “Q,” a pro-T, high-level, DC insider, to tell people what’s “really” going on – which is that you can understand all recent US history only as the manipulations of an elite, deep-state cabal of Satan-worshipping child molesters, led by the Clintons. If that’s how it began, IMHO, Q could not possibly have imagined how successful he’d be.

I’ve thought of joining one of the Q groups and posting some of my own theories. For instance, I’m convinced that it was an overdose of cocaine and hookers that killed Antonin Scalia in that so-called Arizona “resort.” Also, I’m pretty sure that T and his pal Alan Dershowitz conspired to have Jeremy Epstein killed, to keep him quiet about their involvement with Epstein. Dershowitz called in a favor from OJ, who used his inmate connections to carry out the hit.

Or maybe we could start a new group – “XAnon” – and create our own bats–t crazy analysis of the world today that could compete with QAnon, like the crazy competing cults in Eco’s novel.

…No government was ever overthrown by the poor, and we have nothing to fear from that source. It is the greedy and powerful that pull down the pillars of the state. Greed, corruption and pharisseeism are today sapping the foundations of government. It is the criminal rich and their hangers-on who are the real anarchists of our time. They rely on fraud and brute force. They use government as a convenience and make justice the handmaid of wrong…

https://www.lsna.net/remote-learning

Under the Tree: A Seminar on Freedom (wherever you get podcasts)

Malik Alim and Bill Ayers open with a spirited dialogue on the link between defunding the police, abolition, and a vision of a society free of prisons and armed agents of the state. We then turn to a conversation with Alec Karakatsanis, author of Usual Cruelty a powerful unmasking and reframing of the myths of “the rule of law” and “law enforcement.”

By Robert C. Koehler

“There’s something happening here/What it is ain’t exactly clear . . .”

Or is it?

Day one of the Democratic National (virtual) Convention. Bernie Sanders had just told his supporters: “Together we have moved this country in a bold new direction,” pointing out that “all of us . . .yearn for a nation based on the principles of justice, love and compassion.”

Then Michelle Obama spoke: “Empathy: that’s something I’ve been thinking a lot about lately. The ability to walk in someone else’s shoes; the recognition that someone else’s experience has value, too. . . .” But now our children “see our leaders labeling fellow citizens enemies of the state while emboldening torch-bearing white supremacists. They watch in horror as children are torn from their families and thrown into cages, and pepper spray and rubber bullets are used on peaceful protestors for a photo-op.”

And then day one concludes with a Billy Porter rendition of the Buffalo Springfield classic, “For What It’s Worth,” with Stephen Stills himself on the guitar. And instantly, as the first notes fill the air, the ’60s leap into the present moment . . . my God, that time of hope and change (at least for the boomers watching all this)! As Porter sings, background images of chaos and unrest swirl — and then a peace symbol pops up, hovers for ten seconds for all the world to see.

Huh? A peace symbol? Suddenly the orchestrated nonsense pulled me back to reality. This was the DNC, apparently “reaching out” to the former hippies (and Bernie voters), the ones who marched against the Vietnam War, acknowledging with a quick shrug, yeah, you were right then. That was a hellish disaster. But c’mon, we’re the new Democrats: progressives and centrists and independents. We embrace empathy and compassion, and we all hate Trump.

The point, so it seemed, was to reduce the peace symbol to an icon of nostalgia for the good old days — the days of weed and Woodstock and dancing naked in the streets. After five-plus decades, it’s finally safe to welcome those good old days into the party. But what was missing — from the national convention, from the halls of Congress, from the party as a whole — was any official stance against war. By which I mean, today’s wars.

“There’s a man with a gun over there/Telling me I got to beware/I think it’s time we stop, children, what’s that sound/Everybody look what’s going down . . .”

Yes, there are progressive, antiwar Democrats out there, gaining power, getting elected to office, almost winning presidential primaries — scaring the bejesus out of the Democratic establishment — but the party itself still stands firmly in the middle of nowhere, fully in favor of empathy and compassion and yet, somehow, fully supportive of the endless wars most of its own voters hate and utterly unwilling to challenge the bloated and ever-expanding defense budget.

Citing the analysis of William Hartung and Many Smithberger, the Milwaukee Independent described that budget thus: “As of 2019, the annual Pentagon base budget, plus war budget, plus nuclear weapons in the Department of Energy, plus military spending by the Department of Homeland Security, plus interest on deficit military spending, and other military spending totaled $1.25 trillion . . .”

This is untouchable money — not just to Trump and the Republicans but to most congressional Democrats.

Indeed, as Alexander Sammon points out in the American Prospect, Democratic majorities were crucial this summer to the defeat of three separate bills, introduced by progressive Democrats, to reduce military spending and/or undo the militarization of police departments. These included amendments in both the Senate and the House to the National Defense Authorization Act, diverting 10 percent of the Department of Defense budget to health care, education and jobs; as well as a Senate proposal to end the 1033 Program, which allows the Pentagon to transfer military gear to the police. The amendment’s defeat in the House was especially an outrage, Sammon notes, in that the Dems hold a majority in the House and could have passed it.

“If Democrats are going to enact anything that resembles their own agenda,” Sammon writes, “they’re going to have to aim way higher than cutting defense to near Obama-era highs. Taking military spending not to pre-Trump but to pre-9/11 levels should be a starting point. Democratic voters abhor the War on Terror; it’s what helped deliver Obama the presidency back in 2008. It’s incumbent on Joe Biden to deliver on that preference, not just to end engagements in Iraq and Afghanistan but to bring an end to the bloated defense budgets of the War on Terror era. His silence on the proposal even in the thick of a campaign against Trump sends a troubling message.”

War, militarism and the insanely bloated defense budget are never — never! — addressed with serious political pragmatism. Thus to see a peace symbol, the icon of a world beyond war, flicker meaninglessly for ten titillating seconds at the Democratic convention, was . . . well, discombobulating.

The world is slowly changing, but there’s nothing here to celebrate. Consider another piece of related news: As Common Dreams recently reported, 11 Democratic senators are demanding accountability from the Pentagon for refusing to specify what measures it’s taking to ensure the safety, from Covid-19, of the 40 men still indefinitely detained at Guantanamo Bay. The Pentagon’s refusal to give any details bolsters the case for shutting the place down, according to the senators.

All of which throws me into a frenzy of, once again, discombobulation. There was zero national debate about opening Gitmo — an American torture site for detainees with no rights whatsoever — but the national discussion about whether or not to shut it down has been going on, pathetically and absurdly, for two decades. Maybe the place is cruel and pointless, but, well, we can’t just shut it down because of logic and morality.

Why not?

If only the Democratic Party — not just a few outliers, but the party as a whole, acting with the full force of the voters it represents — were capable of asking that question. And demanding an answer.

Robert Koehler is an award-winning, Chicago-based journalist and nationally syndicated writer. His book, Courage Grows Strong at the Wound is available. Contact him or visit his website at commonwonders.com.

© 2020 TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, INC.

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/under-the-tree-a-seminar-on-freedom-with-bill-ayers/id1521512100

In difficult moments like this, we can’t let bad faith attacks set our community back. What our families need are resources and investment, not more police on the streets.

Our Chicago community has been through a lot — from Rekia Boyd to Laquan McDonald to the uprisings we’ve witnessed in recent weeks. After these difficult moments, the media and politicians point fingers and dole out blame, rather than ask the most important question: How did we get here in the first place? Why is it that the city with the most police per capita suffers from so much pain and violence?

The story we’ve been told is that police and prisons make us safer, but this has never been true — not in Chicago, not anywhere in the country. Safety looks like a roof over your head and food on your table. It looks like caring teachers, mental health counselors, and recreation centers. Yet, at every turn, city leaders have chosen to funnel more resources into the Chicago Police Department, instead of addressing what’s really hurting our communities.

Many of the people arrested during the uprisings in recent days have no criminal record or history of violence. They’ve been pushed to their limits by racialized policing and police violence, by the lack of direct federal relief, and by a deadly virus that has disproportionately affected Black and brown families.

Cynical opportunists want to leave Cook County District Attorney Kim Foxx holding the bag. But it’s because of Foxx’s policies that the situation isn’t worse. By holding police accountable, overturning wrongful convictions, and clearing tens of thousands of marijuana convictions, she’s helped to restore trust between the community and the District Attorney’s office.

It’s clear that Foxx’s policies are working. Incarceration rates fell by 19 percent between 2017 and 2018, while cases of violent harm dropped by 8 percent. In 2019, before the pandemic, Chicago recorded the lowest number of shootings since 2014. Foxx’s bond reforms have also been successful, reducing the number of people held pretrial in Cook County Jail and helping to close the race gap in pretrial decisions. In spite of these numbers, proponents of the Chicago Police Department, including Mayor Lori Lightfoot, are pushing for a return to the failed “lock-’em-up” policies of the past.

Reversing decades of bad criminal justice policy was never going to be easy, and there is admittedly still much work to do. Mass incarceration has taken a devastating toll on my constituents and their families. People have lost parents, children, and loved ones to the carceral system. They’ve seen their communities torn apart.

Those of us who serve in the State Legislature have a responsibility to right the wrongs of the past, and work to dismantle systemic racism in the justice system. One concrete step we can take to accomplish this is ending money bonds in Illinois. Money bonds create a two-tiered justice system. While wealthy people can pay their bond and go free, people without means are left to waste away behind bars, even though they are legally innocent. It has created a debtor’s prison that punishes our poorest and most vulnerable, while doing nothing to make us safer.

The danger of money bonds has been apparent throughout the COVID-19 outbreak, with 1 in 6 COVID-19 Chicago cases connecting back to Cook County Jail. The need to end mass jailing is more urgent than ever as we work to slow and contain the virus.

In difficult moments like this, we can’t let bad faith attacks set our community back. What our families need are resources and investment, not more police on the streets. As a city, we’ve been here before, but unlike the response to uprisings of the past, today we can choose a different course.

Link to article: https://theappeal.org/after-recent-unrest-chicago-leaders-are-pointing-fingers-in-all-the-wrong-places/

Sincerely,
State Senator Robert Peters

My fellow American patriots, Welcome to this historical monument and this even more historical occasion, because today your favorite President is accepting his party’s unanimous nomination to continue to lead our beloved country to even greater heights, now that we have the China virus under control.
You know, many people said that I should come to Gettysburg or Mt. Rushmore to accept the nomination. But I’ve already been to Mt. Rushmore, and I hear that someday I will be there forever, along with Abe and the other greats.

No president in history had to face what I have faced: The Russia hoax, the China virus, Fake News, Nasty Nancy and a lot of other nasty women, and now Sleepy Joe and that woman he just picked, the nasty one with the strange name that sounds a lot like ‘Camel.’

“People, Man, Woman, Camera, Television.” I’ll bet Sleepy Joe couldn’t pass that test! I dare you, Sleepy Joe!

Honest Abe made a famous speech here at Gettysburg, which my loyal aide Steven Miller read to me the other day, the one where he said “Four score and seven…” That’s how I learned that ‘score’ has another meaning than the one I’m used to.

Some people in the Democrat party or the ‘Fake News’ have criticized me for coming to what they call “Hallowed Ground” to accept your unanimous nomination, but I remind them that I am the President, and the Constitution says I can do whatever I need to do. In other words, I decide what’s hallowed and what’s not, and not some left-leaning Democrat. Get used to it, Democrats, the Commander in Chief is in charge of hallowing!

Besides, do you think that Robert E. Lee or George Washington gave a fig about fighting on “Hallowed Ground,” when they were deciding the Civil War? No, they ignored those “Please Do Not Fight on Hallowed Ground” signs and went right at it.

By the way, there were good people on both sides.

Abe spoke for just a few minutes, and I think he said the world wouldn’t remember what he said, but he was wrong because people are still talking about his Gettysburg Address. Well, this is my Gettysburg Address, your reminder that no President in history has accomplished as much as yours truly. And I promise you, that in the next four years I will remake America, so much so that you won’t even recognize it.

Onward to victory. Let’s Make America Great Again for the second time…..

John Merrow

TWO CITIES: Separate and Unequal

https://amp.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/aug/12/chicago-erupts-violence-looting-amid-pandemic-economic-policing-crises