The Progressive Voters Platform

08/28/2024

When I was in Chicago for the DNC, I was surprised by the lack of MAGA pushback on the streets. Apart from a very loud Christian evangelical presence near the east pedestrian entrance to the United Center for evening festivities, I never saw any red hats.

You know, the ones that should come with this preamble: "After Trump, it Will Take a Decade to..." At least that's what a meme of mine says. Frankly, I think Kamala can do that in a year, not 10, with a blue Congress.

Most of the activism I saw was from Palestinians asserting that Dems need to push for an embargo on shipping bombs to Israel while Netanyahu is in charge. I agree with their position, and so does Move to Amend.

Here's a shot of their peaceful yet vibrant protest march on Wednesday of convention week.

08/24/2024

It was an inspiring time in Chicago working with the Move To Amend folks trying to push HJR 54, legislation to overturn Citizens United and affirm that corporations are not people, and money is not speech.

I created over a dozen signs to display directly before the eyes of delegates, often political leaders in their states. Nearly a dozen of us went to the main pedestrian entrance and caught hundreds of their eyes and ears as they went from the Uber arrival lot to the United Center's convention floor.

Many had heard of our efforts and supported them. Others were too much in "the zone" to engage. Perhaps they thought, without reading our signs, that we were linked to the astoundingly loud evangelical group just behind us spouting predictable distortions and baseless accusations of impending hellfire for trying to do nice things for people.

I learned a lot, hung with three-dimensional friends who were previously 2D on zoom, and learned how the Democratic Party can improve through cutting the last tendrils of corporate influence.

It's not corporations and their simplistic goals of profit over all that will save humanity. It will be the kind yet diligent among us who will deploy and course-correct our nation towards a sustainable future.

While a blue Congress and a Harris/Walz duo in the White House will point us properly, it will be the insistence of progressives to put people over profits in every form of legislature that will prepare us best for resource scarcity and mass migration worldwide due to war, climate, and sea level rise.

These hurdles will require seeing each other not as tribes or ethnicities, but as humans on a common path to mitigate the effects of damage we've already done. We must all see each other as equals, no matter our social or economic strata, who we are or where we come from, whom we love, and our physical challenges.

I see that in the young folks I transport throughout Marin on my buses. This generation coming of age now is up to the task of taking the next steps. Let's give them that chance, shall we?

08/20/2024

Staying with a bunch of the Move to Amend folks up on the 38th floor in an AirB&B in downtown Chicago. We have two 2-bedroom suites. From our place you can see the front of one of the hotels that allegedly Harris and Walz are staying. Well over a dozen local police, Secret Service, and armored units.

08/20/2024

Day one of my Chicago odyssey ended up being a lot better than day zero. Today I saw Bernie Sanders speak truths close up that he couldn’t venture into as a presidential candidate.

As the keynote speaker for the two-day Progressive Central 2024 event less than a mile from where Biden would speak at the DNC convention floor, we got a taste of what subtle changes to Democratic strategy lie ahead if this flirtation with is to be erased from our future.

Progressive Democrats of America hosted the event and expressed what I’d like to call . We’ll need more of that as climate change priorities have to be considered.

08/15/2024

Those that have followed my exploits through the decades may know that I created something called miniprotesting about 20 years ago. I won an American Dream Scholarship to the Take Back the American Dream Conference in DC for it in 2011.

I'm going to the Democratic Convention in Chicago to deploy its new incarnation as Sequential Curbside Activism, and you can read all about SCA here: https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=pfbid02q2p2UoiyscuCPPH17CKPuqDDGSCS245uHeGYyJaQ77L7atenVcxijiuCmCT2mzCpl&id=61563906150890

The good folks of Move To Amend have asked me to spread their message to encourage Democratic delegates to put their We the People Amendment into the Democratic Platform. We intend to catch their eyeballs as delegates are being transported by bus to the evening DNC Convention activities at the United Center.

We'll line up on the first three street corners off of Int 290 with messaging that calls out the absurdity of the Citizens United SCOTUS decision that declared that corporations are people and money is speech. Scroll down on the link to see our whole MAIN SIGN INSCRIPTION SET and supporting signs. My favorite one asks, "If corporations are people, which bathroom do they use?"

07/18/2024

I just put this up on Daily Kos. I love Joe, but I want to win even more. What if this is the best way to do that?

[after reading please participate in the poll below, with many possible scenarios to consider] Yes, I would vote for Biden’s second term in a heartbeat. And perhaps 60 million other Americans would too. But whether it was because of Biden’s sad...

07/17/2024

Friends, Novatoans, countrymen, lend me your clicks! For my Substack page is but a tiny seed only now beginning to sprout. Please hydrate it with your likes, nourish it with your comments, and assist in shedding light on our dark political universe.

Hazzah!

Thanks to Project 2025 and recent SCOTUS decisions on and presidential immunity, it looks like the Republican platform is essentially a huge slab balanced vertically. And once given the chance, the GOP will push it over to squash the American Dream. And all this shredding of democracy is so...

06/27/2024

Just published this on Daily Kos. Have any thoughts? Clever or delusional?

[after reading, please voice your opinion on how this all could happen in my poll at the bottom] If ever there is a time for a Republican House member to stand up against Trump and all that he has wrought over the GOP during his twisted reign, it is...

06/26/2024

Sometimes when you wake up too early and find yourself checking Facebook before dawn, you’re drawn to a life-affirming moment.

This poem shared on the FB page of Les Bernstein from 6/26/24 did just that.
_____________

Good morning dear friends,
Here’s today’s poem.
Sending love,
Les

Love After Love
Derek Walcott

"The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other's welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life."
_____________

For those of us who spend as little time looking in a mirror as possible for fear of not feeling this way, here’s a big thank you to Les Bernstein.

I’m presently a large man, although I still feel at heart like a spindly teenager. I need to see that guy, and internalize that wry smile that came so easily in the ‘70s. I welcome the notion, however alien it might feel, to accept and love the me that I see despite my regrets across the decades.

There’s still that good me in there, and he need not flail around, fighting off pointless doubts. He just needs to be still and accepting. Blowing air kisses just because.

Because I need to remember that any other me I see is likely to be bound by the needless folly of guilt, shame, and disappointment. That me needs to bow out and take two steps back, acknowledged but with no need to be influential.

The core me, the one referenced in the poem above, has every right to shine brighter than the rest unencumbered, because the forces of love in our world would want it that way. The kinship of kindness has no agenda dictated by past, present, or future. We all deserve to thrive without reservation, and see that in our own eyes as a constant. Without constraint. Held without analysis.

Breathe into it. Have it warm you, eyes closed. Be that. Be grateful for the opportunity to re-meet that self like an old friend, valued and unforgettable.

05/24/2024

Randy Rainbow is back and bigger than ever (at least in cleavage)! His latest takedown of #45 uses Randy’s parody version of Dolly Parton’s 9 to 5 to extensive comedic effect. Watch now and giggle in your cubicle...
https://fb.watch/sf-jGuwgWh/

01/05/2024

Was just on an Our Revolution zoom call with progressive titans Rashida Tlaib and CA Senate Candidate Barbara Lee. Barbara was the ONLY member of Congress to NOT authorize war in the wake of 9/11. She saw that blank-check funding with no safeguards for misuse of funds would allow a war for profit that would serve to pillage middle-eastern countries, steal the profits from their oil for US corporations.
She was the only one to see with clarity how Bush and Cheney could lead us down a horrific rabbit hole. It turned out even worse with horrible tactical decisions like not securing the Iraqi army’s arsenals after the May 1, 2003 photo op where Bush declared that, “Combat operations are over,” and the war was “won.”
ALERT: Lee needs to be in the top two in the CA primary March 5 to be on the ballot next November. Contact your county registrar if you’re unaffiliated and ask for a Dem ballot for the primary or you won’t get to vote for her or anyone else with a chance at being our next Senator.

01/05/2024

Was just on an Our Revolution zoom call with progressive titans Rashida Tlaib and CA Senate Candidate Barbara Lee. Barbara was the ONLY member of Congress to NOT authorize war in the wake of 9/11. She saw that blank-check funding with no safeguards for misuse of funds would allow a war for profit that would serve to pillage middle-eastern countries, steal the profits from their oil for US corporations.

She was the only one to see with clarity how Bush and Cheney could lead us down a horrific rabbit hole. It turned out even worse with horrible tactical decisions like not securing the Iraqi army’s arsenals after the May 1, 2003 photo op where Bush declared that, “Combat operations are over,” and the war was “won.”

ALERT: Lee needs to be in the top two in the CA primary March 5 to be on the ballot next November. Contact your county registrar if you’re unaffiliated and ask for a Dem ballot for the primary or you won’t get to vote for her or anyone else with a chance at being our next Senator.