From Jerrold Nadler (D-NY)

We find ourselves at a deeply challenging and demoralizing moment for our great country.  Millions of Americans are walking around in a state of disbelief, of grief, anger, and frustration, as a campaign capitalizing on our nation’s worst impulses won the day. We recognize that we are facing an unprecedented threat to the progressive values that so many of us hold dear—equality, pluralism, mutual respect, and decency—and that even our democracy is on the line.

We must, of course, respect the outcome of the elections, but we must also refuse to surrender our values; refuse to give up fighting for what is right, refuse to abandon the project of making this country a more just and fair place for all Americans.

Hillary Clinton’s historic campaign gave us the hope of shattered glass ceilings and dreams of boundless opportunities for future generations, no matter an individual’s gender, race, religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or ability.  Looking forward, we must demand that the President-elect and GOP Majority in Congress take a very different path in governance than was seen during the campaign.  Simultaneously, we must leverage every tool in our system of checks and balances in order to curb the excesses of the new administration. As a senior Member of the House Judiciary Committee, I will do everything in my power to hold the Administration accountable and uphold the Constitu- tional rights of all Americans. We have successfully resisted regressive forces in the past, and I am hopeful that we will prevail going forward as we face these challenges together.  I am personally inspired by the millions of Americans who I know will join me and the other leaders in Congress to resist the kinds of bigotry, hatred, and isolation which have been used to exploit the very real economic insecurities in our country. While President-elect Donald Trump has won a majority in the Electoral College, Hillary Clinton has won the popular vote and millions of Americans have loudly rejected the corrosive and hate-fueled politics that have been on display.                                                                                                   Z

From the Feminist Frequency Team

Y esterday, today, and tomorrow: the fight continues. For many of us, it’s hard to fully grasp the reality of what happened during the U.S. presidential election. The entire world was watching, because the political and cultural effects of this election—perhaps more than any other election in recent history—would send shock-waves across the globe.

And as the world was watching, we lost. The results of the election were a stark reminder that we still live in a white supremacist, patriarchal nation. Progressivism, economic equality, and human rights took a beating. Racism, misogyny, and Islamophobia won, as Americans affirmed white supremacy and patriarchy and hate—hate for Muslims, refugees, people of color, the poor, the queer community—sadly, the list seems endless. Waking to a new day after a long and sleepless night, many of us are still in shock and in a state of mourning. And we must give ourselves permission to grieve. But once we grieve, then we must fight. We must be organized and strategic. We cannot let hate win because this isn’t just about us; this is about the world.

And to the world, we say: we refuse to surrender to the forces which seek to silence women. We will not stand idly by and allow the continued intimidation of people of color, non- Christians, LGBTQ+ folks, and all those who exist at the intersection of multiple identities. We can and will participate in the mobilization of our communities. We will resist the hate. And in the end, we will win.                                           Z

From the Friends of the Earth, U.S.

President-elect Donald Trump threatens our environment and we vow to fight him every step of the way. Like Senator. Bernie Sanders, Trump tapped into a deep resentment about the governing establishment of both the Democratic and Republican Parties. But he spoke using fear, suspicion, racism, and hate to people who felt the government had left them behind. The political establishment has ignored the fight for justice and the environment. But we reject the politics of fear utilized by Trump while recognizing that we must address the fundamental issues of equality, race and class that divide this country.

Some things have not changed: we are a nation divided and half of this country is determined to continue the progressive fights it started. The People’s Revolution, the Standing Rock Sioux, the Movement for Black Lives and Keep it in the Ground activists will not go gentle into the night. We will fight to protect our land, air, water and the people who depend on them for survival.

The next four years will not be easy, but we have fought hostile administrations before. Under President George W. Bush, the environmental community took the battle to the courts and Congress and watchdogged political appointees; we blocked attacks on the environment; we galvanized the public to take action. After the more recent fights to kill the Keystone XL pipeline, ban fracking and shut down coal plants, the environmental movement is stronger than we have ever been.

We will have to harness our new energy, join together, and use every strategy possible to fight against hate and greed and environmental destruction. While I wish we had a different fight before us, we must fight the one presented to us. The future of our country and planet depends on it.                                                                                                                                                                                                                          Z

From the National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights

T he election to the presidency of the U.S. of a person who launched a run for that office by demonizing immigrants is not just hugely disappointing, but it could mark yet another frightening stage in U.S. immigration policy. A stage that greatly expands the already-repressive “deterrence” framework and reaches new lows in the criminal- ization of immigrant and refugee populations. The political alignment of Congress, the White House and, potentially, the Supreme Court, is a real threat to human rights and justice on many fronts. But we believe that the immigrant rights movement and our social and economic justice partners and allies must, and will, fight back.

Ours is a movement for which there have been no easy victories—in fact, very few at all. Rampant discrimination and scapegoating, workplace raids, detention and deportations, family separations, denial of basic services, hate violence, migrant deaths…the list goes on. Our path has had many twists and turns, barriers, and setbacks over the years—but we are resilient, and there is no arguing that our movement has grown and has become stronger.

We have held fast to our values—to respect for human rights, and dignity. A commitment to grassroots organizing and community empowerment. Fighting racism and xenophobia, nativism and nationalism. Building alliances with our partners for social and economic justice. Linking with our friends and collaborators around the world to lift up migrants’ rights and address the “root causes” of forced migrations.

President-elect Trump’s first 100- day plan includes many dangerous proposals impacting the economy, our environment, access to healthcare and more. Several proposals are immigration-focused. In addition to promising more deportations, Trump has repeatedly said he would cancel Obama’s executive actions, including DACA, putting at risk more than 700,000 young DACA recipients. We must fight back against this with a broad and strong coalition, and we don’t have the luxury of time.

At this critical time, the Board of Directors of the National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights has renewed its commitment to our mission to defend and expand the rights of all immigrants and refugees, regardless of immigration status. We will not allow racism, nophobia, misogyny, anti-Muslim, hate and all the other ugly politics of division to bring us down. Join us.

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An Open Letter to Our Nation from 100 Women of Color Leaders

One hundred women of color leaders pledge to continue to take action to bring forward solutions: We know the politics of hate will not get us to the solutions we need. As women of color, as leaders, we will build and lead us on a path forward.

We come together to declare our resolve. Many of us are holding our babies, families, and loved ones close. We know that there is tremendous suffering and anger in this country, yet we stand here today, determined. After an election with the politics of division and hate, today we open a new chapter in our country’s long, difficult journey towards the promise of liberty and justice for all.

Join us, over the next hours, at community events across the country as we come together to affirm our unity, and together recommit to continue our work towards this promise.

Our work did not start, and has not ended, with this election. Women built on longstanding community and family networks to lead community-based voter programs. We’ve known that women of color represent 74 percent of the growth in eligible women voters since 2000. In more than 100 cities, across all 50 states, women came together to mobilize and inspire turnout, creating an unprecedented gender and racial gap at the polls. Women did this work, not to get one woman a new job, but because we understood the stakes in this election. Black lives, women’s lives, immigrant’s lives, the lives of LGBTQ folks, of people with disabilities, of working people of every race, region and ethnicity, including those at Standing Rock and others protecting our land. We know that the future and well-being of this country depends on the health and well-being of all women.

Today, we feel how far we are from the promise of a nation that ensures liberty and justice for all. But our work, built on the hopes of our grandmothers, mothers, sisters, and daughters, is testament to the power of our shared belief in that promise. It is we who must build the path forward on our journey.

As we look at our polarized country standing at this crossroads, we are filled with love for the many people of this nation. Despite disappointment and heartbreak, our resolve grounds us in hope for our future. Too often in the shadows, women’s hands have always been the strongest grip bending the arc of history towards justice.

Today, we recommit to take hold of that arc of history. As women, we stand united in our pledge to continue to take action to bring forward solutions.

We know the politics of hate will not get us to the solutions we need. As women of color, as leaders, we will build and lead us on a path forward. We must work together to hold civic, administrative and corporate decision makers accountable. To reach our full potential as people, and as a nation, this democracy must be owned by all of us, for all of us. We pledge our unity and determination to be ready, determined and united behind a vision and plan of action to become a nation where we can all live with dignity, care for our loved ones and the land, and thrive in freedom from all forms of inequality. We can only get there, together. We invite you to journey with us.

Signatories include:

• Ai-jen Poo, National Domestic Workers Alliance / Caring Across Generations
• Alicia Garza, Black Lives Matter, co-founder
• Charlene Carruthers, Black Youth Project 100 (BYP100)
• Eveline Shen, Forward Together
• Jodeen Olguín-Tayler, Demos / Movement Strategy Center / Mijente
• Judith LeBlanc, Native Organizers Alliance
• Linda Sarsour, MyMuslimVote / MPower Change
• Opal Tometi, Black Alliance for Just Immigration
• Paulina Hernandez, Southeners on New Ground
• Stacy Long Simmons, National Gay and Lesbian Task Force 

From the NAACP

T his beautiful fall morning represents the end of a long night filled with many moments of uncertainty, voter intimidation and suppression, campaigns founded on bigotry, and divisiveness as an electoral strategy. And yet, despite the moments of ugliness, this election season has reminded us of the beauty and strength of both the nation and the NAACP. This was the first presidential election in more than 50 years where voters did not have the full protection of the Voting Rights Act. We confronted all manners of ugly, unconstitutional voter suppressions, including voter purging, long lines, intimidation, and misinformation. When white nationalists bragged about dispensing malt liquor and marijuana in African-American communities to suppress the vote, we were neither distracted nor dissuaded. When campaign operatives and candidates alike openly called for voter suppression in broad daylight and on camera, we neither flinched nor flagged in our efforts.

The NAACP prevailed in the federal courts against voter suppression no less than nine times in recent months. In Texas, our state conference saved 608,470 votes with a victorious decision from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. In North Carolina, our state conference saved nearly five percent of the electorate when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit ruled that the state legislature had enacted discriminatory voting laws that intentionally targeted and disenfranchised black voters. And we saved nearly 4,500 voters from being purged from the North Carolina rolls.

The last five days of the campaign, after many months in planning, we formally launched our Selma Initiative, to protect the right to vote. We targeted 6,022 precincts in 17 states, dispatching both lawyers and laypeople alike to guard the ballot box and safeguard the rights of voters standing in long lines through our national command center. Altogether, we mobilized our two million digital activists, nearly half a million card-carrying members, 2,200 local units, and more than 100 partner organizations to both protect and get out the vote through the Selma Initiative.  History will judge not only the courage of our volunteers, but also the cowardice of those who chose again and again to suppress the vote, rather than listen to the voice of democracy this year.  History may take note of the Selma Initiative, but let us all now remember Shena Goode, a 79-year-old NAACP volunteer who not only organized a virtual phone bank in her apartment complex, but also made more than 200 calls in a single day to get out the vote. When civil rights are threatened, we are as persistent as we are determined.

Now that the election is over, the first priority for a new Congress and a new president must be restoring the badly-broken Voting Rights Act. We cannot afford to send untold teams of lawyers to court and spend incalculable sums of money to defend our right to vote in the courts and in the streets again and again and again. Any effort to suppress the vote, whether at the hands of lawmakers, judges, or everyday people, is and must continue to be considered unjust, un-American, and unacceptable. The NAACP will not rest until full and equal voting rights are restored for each and every American citizen.

Founded in 1909, the NAACP is the nation’s oldest and largest nonpartisan civil rights organization. Its members throughout the United States and the world are the premier advocates for civil rights in their communities. We will continue the fight for rights and justice.

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A “Middle- Aged Woman” from Boston

I grew up in the liberal bastion of Brookline, Massachusetts, the daughter of a radical feminist and a quiet leftist, so of course I reacted with horror to my country electing to its highest office a confessed rapist (for the purpose of this article I’m equating all forms of sexual assault as “rape”), liar, racist, misogynist, vindictive bully, misanthrope, con man, grifter, extortionist, catastrophic business failure, treasonous reprobate, serial philanderer, mobster, abusive parent of sociopaths, dog hater, charlatan, egomaniacal bombast, and unrepentant criminal.

This isn’t the first time U.S. voters sent me into an abyss of emotional devastation. In 1980 I went to high school the day after my country elected Reagan for president. My English teacher dedicated the class session to an impromptu group therapy session, as we all (including the teacher) shared our fears and trepidation about what was to come. We all know today that Repugnicans worship Saint Reagan as the greatest thing to have happened to the country since Christianity, but my memories of that era are of the increasing homelessness his policies caused (especially mental health policies); of the AIDS epidemic he let explode unchecked; of the constant state of fear he kept us in with his willingness to hate and bomb others; and, finally, of the crushing economic devastation he left behind.   In 2004, when my country elected—for a second time— George W. Bush, I again had to live through the consequences of the terrible choice most of my country had made—increased  terrorism, illegal wars and war crimes, setbacks to women’s rights, gay rights, and human rights, the rise of the “Christian” right, and, ultimately, to even greater economic devastation than that we’d inherited from Reagan. Really, really terrible economic devastation, the kind where people jumped out of buildings in despair, where no one could get a job, businesses failed en masse, homeowners had to walk away from their houses, where the only growth industries were the ones helping individuals declare personal bankruptcy and, of course, yacht manufacturing.

After the economic crash of 2008, when people voted for Obama (signaling, to me, an acceptance of human rights and compassion for others), I wept with joy that regardless of what Obama actually did, it was the good intentions of the voters that mattered. They wanted hope and change, women’s and gay rights, no more wars. It was a beautiful time to be alive in the United States. So now, 2016, How do I go on knowing that hate won? That racists outnumber non-racists, that my fellow white people seem to hate black folks Hispanics, Muslims, and women so much that they’d vote for a fascist  over a qualified female candidate who was going to continue the—not perfect, but so much better than his predecessor’s—policies of our country’s first black president?

On November 9, in a bleary daze, barely able to function, the people I heard from were my friends who have young daughters, and that’s when I realized that mothers of young daughters are perhaps the ones suffering most from the awful, horrific choice made on November 8. How do they explain to their daughters that women are so hated by this country that we elected a rapist rather than have a woman as president.

From the Institute for Public Accuracy

Is Trump: anti-establishment or a tool of insiders? While Trump campaigned as a political outsider, his transition team is filled with corporate lobbyists. His agriculture advisors are agribusiness insiders. He has called climate change a hoax, and his energy advisor is a lobbyist for the Koch Brothers. His reported top pick for energy secretary is Harold Hamm, a modern-day oil tycoon.

Unsurprisingly, the Trump administration will likely be filled with people who will benefit financially from more fracking, more industrial agriculture, factory farms, and expanded deregulation masquerading as trade policy. The people he has indicated will be in his cabinet are the same people who have advocated policies that are destroying our climate and creating a society marked by stratification and racial prejudice. We expect to see more deregulation of industry that will damage our communities, our environment, and our democracy.

From James A. Haught: Peace Voice

These are strange days. What is happening to America?  The Trump-Pence jolt throws a weird uncertainty over the future. Donald Trump vowed to appoint Supreme Court justices who will revoke women’s right to choose, making it a crime again for desperate teen girls and women to end pregnancies.  Few modern democracies have such a prohibition. Can he return America to the ugly era of illegal back-alley butchers?  Or is he so erratic and unpredictable that he will forget this threat? Trump vows to halt the Affordable Care Act that gives health insurance to 20 million Americans.  He says he will replace it with something “terrific,” but nobody can guess what it might be. Trump vowed to block Muslims from entering America, making this the only democracy with a religious test for entry.  Can he undo freedom of religion? Despite evidence from thousands of top scientists, he says global warming is a hoax (perpetrated by China).

He wants to break UN treaties and halt U.S. support for international programs to prevent climate disaster. Trump vowed to capture and deport 11 million undocumented Hispanics, and build a giant wall across the southern border at Mexico’s expense.

Can he make America a stockade? Trump promises a colossal tax giveaway to the wealthy.  Can he do it without wiping out billions in revenue that provide the public safety net sustaining millions of U.S. families? In a couple of months, when Republicans take complete control of Washington, will they inflict all these drastic changes on Americans?  Or will public resistance derail part of the conservative agenda? What’s coming in 2017? The future seems bewildering. Great numbers of Americans never dreamed that a Trump-Pence victory was possible.  We failed to grasp the depth of frustration and ethnic resentment among so many white male voters.  Was tacit racism a significant factor?  Now reality looms. As the Washington Post said, progressive Americans “awoke Wednesday morning to wonder if they were welcome in their own land.” Most of us haven’t quite absorbed the complete trauma. Trump’s campaign lacked a well-thought-out agenda of political goals.  Instead, he seemed to blurt ideas impulsively, shot from the hip. Everything revolved around his riveting, bombastic, dominating personality. And his personality is the most vulgar and nasty I’ve ever seen in American politics. He has a petty quality. It’s almost possible to envision him trying to start a war over an insult. The New York Times observed: “It’s a strange, distressing situation for citizens to be in—to acknowledge the danger of having a reckless, unqualified leader, while maintaining respect for the office he holds.” Democrat Hillary Clinton narrowly won the popular vote.  But the state- by-state electoral tally can’t be undone. Americans must live with the new reality imposed on us. These are strange days.                                                                                                                                                                                                                   Z

Swanson’s Top 10 Election Problems

We got 1,001 things wrong in the latest U.S. election. Here are the top 10. 1. Expecting an election to solve injustices that require a massive movement, as have all the deep injustices of the past. This can be fixed through education and activism.

2. Rigging the Democratic National Committee (DNC) primary to deny Bernie Sanders a nomination. This could have been fixed by Sanders running as an independent. It can now be fixed by all (DNC donors abandoning it and putting their funds into activism. Of course the DNC should dump Brazile and all Clintonites, but installing Howard Dean or Keith Ellison hardly solves anything. Dis-empowering parties through some of the proposals below would work.
3. Rigging the RNC primary by giving Donald Trump endless free media coverage. This can be fixed by busting up the media cartel, requiring free and equal air time for candidates, limiting the election season, banning legalized bribery, and publicly funding elections.
4. Voter suppression that Greg Palast says stripped 1.1 million voters from the rolls in swing states, but which Democrats seem not to give a damn about. Perhaps because Putin didn’t do it. This can be fixed by creating a right to vote, making voter registration automatic, debunking the myth of voter fraud, undoing the anti-voter restrictions of recent years, providing adequate polling stations, and making election day a holiday.
5. Unverifiable election machines, including optical scanners, that have left us in an awkward situation. Exit polls, which the U.S. Department of State uses to judge the credibility of elections in other countries, show that Clinton won in North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Florida, Minnesota, Michigan, and Wisconsin. But we are supposed to just take it on blind faith that in fact she didn’t. This can be fixed by publicly hand counting paper ballots in every polling place. Of course the acceptable position is to believe on faith that the vote counts are accurate, but since when is taking it on faith the progressive position, when taking it on empirical evidence is a perfectly possible alternative?
6. The winner-take-all system in most states, which concentrates the election on a handful of states and leads to the winner of the popular vote losing the election. This can be fixed by states choosing to distribute their electoral college “votes” in proportion to their actual human votes.
7. The gerrymandered districts that make it impossible to unelect rotten incumbents. This can be fixed through non-partisan redistricting.
8. The winner-take-all system in each election that fuels lesser evilism. This can be fixed through ranked choice voting, as just done in Maine and in Benton County, Oregon.
9. The Presidential Debate Commission which limits debates to moderators and participants who —even when they are fed the questions beforehand—are an utter embarrassment. This can be fixed by allowing any independent organization to host the debates. 10. The United States Senate, which gives the 40 million people of California no greater representation than the 0.6 million people of Wyoming. This can be fixed by abolishing the United States Senate.

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