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MORNING MESSAGE
George Goehl
There’s no getting around it. Organizing is hard. But the context you are organizing in right now? It’s a whole different thing. You feel the weight of a country coming apart at the seams. You have to build a base, develop community leaders, engage in local fights AND you feel called to spring into action as soon as another Black person is killed by police, even if a thousand miles away - when children are separated from their parents at the border, a Supreme Court seat opens, and a pandemic strikes. You pull off what they say could not be done. You feel proud. Hopeful, even. Finally - after four years of Trump - maybe you can be more at ease, if just for a bit. But before you catch your breath, when you should be celebrating, armed white supremacists storm the U.S. Capitol. The celebration and rest will have to wait. Another of the most important moments in American history is unfolding on your watch. All of this because you are no spectator. You hold the beauty and the responsibility of being an organizer. You know good and well you can make a difference.
Read more of George's Letter to a Young Organizer
It’s invigorating to see some of our leaders finally reckon with the most abiding problem of American climate politics: that green does not always mean equitable. Congresswoman Cori Bush and Senator Ed Markey have introduced landmark Environmental Justice legislation, and President Biden has announced his “Justice40'' initiative, along with an ambitious suite of executive orders geared towards climate jobs and justice. This marks a rebirth of the hope organizers have so desperately needed to breathe new life into our communities, and keep building the cross-class, multiracial coalition that we need to win. Still, our optimism is set against the backdrop of experience. We’ve learned through countless political bouts that the success of these policies will depend on the specifics of their implementation. Especially when federal policy meets frontline communities, the devil is in the details.
Kaniela Ing is the national Climate Justice Campaign Director for People’s Action Institute
The union bond is so powerful that corporate interests and their allies across the country desperately want to smash it. Twenty-seven states already have falsely named right-to-work (RTW) laws on the books, and advocates of these union-busting measures now hope to enact them in New Hampshire and Montana. In addition, corporations and their allies want to make another effort to ram the legislation through in Missouri, even though angry voters there rejected it by a landslide just a few years ago. And Republican lawmakers in Tennessee want to enshrine their anti-worker law in the state constitution, just to make it more difficult for wiser heads to repeal the legislation one day. Working people only win fair wages, decent benefits and safe working conditions when they stand together. Corporations want to rig the scales in their favor. They push RTW laws so they can divide workers—tear at the union bond—and exploit them more easily. And just as corporations want, that erodes union activism and starves locals of the resources they need to bargain with strength, enforce contracts, build solidarity and survive labor disputes.
Tom Conway is president of the United Steelworkers
President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris have both struggled to answer for their histories of promoting “tough-on-crime” policies which have harmed Black and brown communities across the country. Who they appoint as our next Attorney General will set a national precedent on what justice means in this country over the next four years. This appointment is an opportunity to reimagine what our justice system can look like in a moment of nationwide racial reckoning. It will define how boldly our next President and Vice President will - or won’t - deal with social challenges in our criminal-legal system, and its legacy of harm. We need an Attorney General who will lead in a way that shows that Black Lives Matter to our nation. We need someone who understands the racialized history of our criminal-legal system and is serious about changing its course. We need an Attorney General who understands the importance of these demands, and their role in bringing change. We need an Attorney General who will boldly set a course toward justice.
D.C. Circuit Judge Merrick Garland goes before the Senate Judiciary Committee for confirmation as our next U.S. Attorney General on Feb. 22 and 3.
Jodi Risper is Movement Politics Director of Citizen Action New York
Supporters of public education and school teachers were relieved to see Betsy DeVos leave her job as head of the Department of Education, but her efforts to privatize public schools are being rolled out in state legislatures across the country. In Washington, Arizona, Georgia, Virginia, and New Hampshire, state legislators are introducing bills to increase the number of charter schools and create new school voucher programs or greatly expand current ones. There are at least 14 states actively considering legislation to pour greater sums of taxpayer dollars intended for public education into privately operated schools. Many of the bills have been introduced since the November 2020 elections, which ousted Trump and DeVos but resulted in big gains for Republicans down-ticket. School choice proponents also see the crisis caused by the pandemic as an opportunity to advance their cause. In communities with high rates of viral spread, which is most of America, state and local governments have generally not invested in the personnel and resources that are essential to safely reopen schools for in-person learning. Politicians and school choice advocates, many of whom are also complicit in the lack of investment in local schools, see this systemic failure as their chance to vastly expand taxpayer funding for privately operated schools.
Jeff Bryant is director of the Education Opportunity Network
In 2021, we can take back our country for the values we all share - solidarity, justice, and a fair economy - state by state, seat by seat, and vote by vote. But we can only do this with your help.
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