Over Here, Over Here! There’s Something Happening!
The Fight Oligarchy Tour Is On Fire
Things are getting intense, really intense, with the unfolding of the Trump agenda.
We’re on the cusp of the Justice Department telling the Supreme Court to shove it; a White House is hosting a visit by the dictator we’re paying $6 million to open an offshore gulag archipelago for anybody the Trump administration deems dangerous or corrupt.
“Corrupt” in White House lexicon has nothing to do with money or morals; it’s the word used to designate and denigrate a person or entity the President deems offensive.
If you’re consuming legacy news media, the offensive and anti-democracy actions of the Trump administration are being normalized, either by “both sides” reporting or simply withholding context.
Amid all the hubris, another story is working its way into acceptance: the amazing successes of the Sen. Bernie Sanders/ Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez ‘Fight Oligarchy’ tour.
Starting February in Omaha Nebraska, the first phase of the event covered Wisconsin, Michigan, Nevada, Colorado, and Arizona, with crowds initially in the thousands growing to tens of thousands in mid-March.
Phase two kicked off on Saturday in Los Angeles, with a crowd of over 36,000, featuring state and local people active in resisting the Trump administration, along with entertainment by Neil Young, Maggie Rogers, and Joan Baez. Later in the day, Sen. Bernie Sanders snuck away for a cameo at Coachella, introducing singer-songwriter Clairo.
Sunday’s Salt Lake City appearance drew an estimated 20,000 people in the audience. Sanders opened remarks by noting that the crowd inside and outside the University of Utah’s Jon M. Huntsman Center on Sunday in “conservative Utah” was more impressive than the record-breaking rally they had Saturday in Los Angeles.
The tour will be appearing in Nampa, Idaho, Central California’s Folsom & Bakersfield, and Missoula, Montana, wrapping up on April 22 before Congress returns.
Coverage of the events in legacy media has mostly been bemused. One outlet referred to the atmosphere as a “revival” for progressives. What generally didn’t warrant much coverage was the content (other than saying they claimed ‘oligarchs’ are bad).
Politico reports made out that the rallies didn’t achieve the (imagined by hacks) desired results because California isn’t progressive enough for Sanders, even if it’s merely the most progressive state in the country. Oh, well, I guess they had to stick in a disparaging remark to keep the billionaire bosses happy. Too bad they’re so full of shit.
The best coverage I saw was by Alex Thomas at the New Republic:
During her oration, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez connected local action—last week, an L.A. school superintendent turned away Department of Homeland Security officers attempting to enter his school—to the billionaire takeover of the government. “This moment did not come out of nowhere,” she said. “The destruction of our rights and democracy is directly tied to the growing and extreme wealth inequality that has been growing for years in America.”
This was where the nerve was most visibly touched: Attacks against the encroaching oligarchy received noticeably louder responses even than attacks against Trump. One union leader’s remark lambasting a “bone-spurred chicken-hawk commander in chief” didn’t receive quite the same boos as her line hitting the “one percent and the corrupt politicians who got richer out of the market manipulation we saw last week.”
There is a definite cohesiveness here. I got the feeling, as I did during the nascent stages of the Trump movement, that enough of these people are pissed off about the same things that they might actually do something. With enough cultivation, they might even do that radical thing where they all get together and vote. But what do they vote for?
Onstage, there was a clear passing of the torch and a message taking shape. Sanders’s argument was broad; he bashed “a corrupt campaign finance system” and Elon Musk generally. Both of those were ripe objects of criticism, but Ocasio-Cortez had a more finely tuned message. Like Sanders, she criticized the Democratic Party. While he criticized them for listening to “their billionaires,” she attacked specific practices like congressional stock trading and corporate lobbying, both of which are unpopular.
I’ve included a couple videos below, one with Sen. Sanders explaining the rationale for the tour, and the other with Rep. Ocasio-Cortez’ actual speech. Each are about 20 minutes long, if you want to come back later.
Republicans are Taking Notice of our Fighting Oligarchy Tour. Good.
Full Remarks: AOC in Los Angeles, California | Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
You’re not alone, and you’re not defenseless. The tour is having the effect of letting people know that the angst and anxiety they’re feeling about events politically and economically are being shared by lots of other people.
Those who attend these rallies are getting a progressive analysis largely absent in public discourse alongside a bold vision for the future. Promises of mobilization are being met by way of hiring and training for local organizers willing to go door-to-door to urge opposition to the odious parts of the MAGA agenda.
A short-term goal is making enough clamor to block the budget likely to be put forward by Republicans. A longer term goal is to encourage people to build community, with real live interpersonal connections. It is the ultimate corrective to the screen obsessed social order that permits us to be easily divided.
The best part of the messages being conveyed in these rallies is that it’s not enough to be anti-Trump; it’s the system of dark money from billionaires sucking the life out of America that must be opposed.
Canadian Charlie Angus is a remarkable spirit, leading by positive example in the pushback against MapleMAGA. One thing he sees in common on both sides of our border is the need for togetherness in real life.
Restoring democracy and the rule of international law will come down to you, me and the neighbour you don't yet know down the street.
And so, we need to get to know that neighbour.
The task before us isn’t just to oppose the MAGA agenda, but - as Dietrich Bonhoeffer said - to find ways to stick spokes in the wheel of the rising oppression.
Prebys Foundation invests $2 million in San Diego nonprofit news, including Times of San Diego at Times of San Diego
The Prebys Foundation announced Monday a $2 million investment in nonprofit local journalism, with two-year grants to Times of San Diego and four other organizations to ensure “access to trustworthy information” in support of civic discourse.
Grants will be awarded to the Times of San Diego, inewsource, KPBS, Voice of San Diego and CalMatters.
Each of the four San Diego-based outlets will receive $300,000 in general operating support over two years. CalMatters will receive $800,000 to serve as a shared reporting and data resource for regional media partners.
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Trump FCC Prepares To Destroy Whatever’s Left Of Media Consolidation Limits by Techgdirt at Above The Law
As we see in cable and streaming, consolidation routinely just results in higher prices, layoffs, worst product quality, and widespread public annoyance. Most of the same shitty consolidated companies that ruined cable TV are hard at work doing the same thing to streaming as they eye “growth for growth’s sake” and endless consolidation.
The death of newspapers and the consolidation of local broadcasters (often under the control of right wing local broadcast propagandists like Fox and Sinclair) has resulted in vast news deserts and a broadly uninformed (and misinformed) American populace. A recent study out of Northwestern University found that Trump won 91 percent of “news desert” counties by an average of 54 percentage points.
Since their shitty, unpopular policies can’t stand on their own two feet, Republicans want to dismantle all useful journalism and replace it with propaganda. Democrats haven’t had any answer to the threat, routinely only paying lip service to the need for quality journalism, often rubber stamping harmful consolidation, and refusing to modernize party messaging for the modern era.
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Efficiency and Abundance by Dylan Gyauch-Lewis and Revolving Door Project
There are some instances where you can eliminate regulatory burden where the risk of such tradeoffs are minimal. Upzoning, for instance. As progressives, we’ve always opposed restrictive zoning, as much of it was deliberately constructed to facilitate white flight (see: redlining). But to get back to building at the scale of the transcontinental railroad, we have to consider the externalities presented by new bargains.
Efficiency is not costless. But it is unclear to me how abundists would balance building against the wellbeing of affected people when they conflict. There is a way to do it, but not without recognizing and owning that this is a live and urgent question, and perhaps not without necessarily narrowing “abundance” from a cardinal principle to one of a set of priorities, something some of its champions are actively opposed to.
If “abundance” is meant as an overriding principle, then that means reckoning with who will bear the costs of building that are being re-externalized.
