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For students at the University of Vermont, knowledge knows no bounds. Near or far from campus, they study everything from the most complex micro-ecosystems on the planet to the biggest threats to democracy today; they're engaged year-round, day and night, all in pursuit of knowledge. As this academic year enters its final stretch, we take a look at some of the most exciting research projects UVM students have worked on this year.

Want more? Hundreds of student research projects from every discipline are ready to discover at the Virtual Student Research Conference. Engage with student researchers online from Thursday, April 16, to Thursday, April 23.

According to animal science student Jamie Burke 20, pictured above, the inside of a cows stomach contains one of the most complex micro-ecosystems in the world. She would know, as shes helped create and sustain six artificial cow rumens in Professor Sabrina Greenwoods lab in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.

To better understand how introducing amino acid supplements into a cows diet might ultimately improve health and nutrition properties in dairy products, Burkewith guidance from professor Jana Kraftfed and maintained fermenters that mimicked the activity that takes place inside a cow's stomach.She and the research team in Krafts lab specifically analyzed the branched-chain fatty acids (BCFA) in protozoal cell membranes in the artificial rumen ferment.

But they had one hiccup: in a real rumen, most protozoa like to attach to the rumen wall; in an artificial rumen, that hospitable surface doesnt exist. So, Burke 3D printed a filter for the ferment. This 3D-printed support can serve as a model for all continuous culture fermenter systems to promote protozoa retention, maintain fluid flow, and allow for better comparisons of protozoa numbers in different systems, she says.

Preparing for a weekend ahead, Danielle Allen makes sure the cells she's growing in the Thali lab for her HIV research will stay "happy and healthy" until Monday when she returns. (Video: Rachel Leslie)

Viruses are absolutely fascinating, says molecular genetics senior Danielle Allen, who is conducting research on the spread of HIV at the cellular level in Professor Markus Thalis lab at the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. Allens research is focused on one of the relevant host proteins, EWI-2, active in cell fusion, which can occur when a viral protein in an HIV-infected cell binds to a surface protein on an uninfected cell. EWI-2 is also an active component in other biological functions, including cancer metastasis, sperm-egg fusion and muscle regeneration. But while it is a known fusion inhibitor, the proteins mechanism of fusion inhibition is not well understood.

Thats where Allen set her sights. Using fluorescence microscopy, she determined optimal transfection conditions for EWI-2 mutant plasmids to obtain equal surface expression of each EWI-2. Allen also designed a new fusion assay system that could be used for future fusion assays to further characterize EWI-2s mechanism of fusion inhibition.

By understanding these proteins involved in HIV transmission, we might be able to develop better treatments for HIV, which is really important since the current treatments are intense and there isnt a cure, says Allen. Ive learned a lot of different techniques that I didnt know beforeeverything from growing DNA in E. coli to isolating the DNA, transfecting HeLa cells, a lot of stuff with florescence microscopy and staining cells with antibodiesa lot of stuff you just dont really have time to learn in lectures in undergraduate teaching labs.

Political science and history double major Jason Goldfarb. (Photo: Sally McCay)

Jason Goldfarb 20 grew up hearing about the ways social media connected the world, exposing truths in the Arab Spring and elevating causes like the Black Lives Matter movement. But headlines of Russian propagandists and Cambridge Analytica following the 2016 U.S. election prompted Goldfarb to wonder: is social media helping or harming us? In the seniors thesis project for the College of Arts and Sciences, Scrolling Alone: The Impact of Social Media on American Democracy, he outlines a disturbing finding: Although there is potential for social media to live up to its promise of connecting the world, the present platforms harm civic discourse, Goldfarb says.

A double major in political science and history, his research considers technology through both lenses, drawing parallels between Facebook and other revolutionary technologies throughout time. Think of the automobile, notes Goldfarb. It democratized transportation, revolutionized warfare, and changed the way in which cities are designed. Social media, he argues, has similarly transformed much of todays world, stoking polarization, encouraging distraction, and eroding privacy. The paper was published in the Undergraduate Journal of Politics, Policy and Society in late 2019. Under the guidance of Dr. Amani Whitfield and Professor Bob Pepperman Taylor, its my proudest accomplishment at UVM.

Anthropology major Rose Lillpopp. (Photo: Sally McCay)

From University Row to upscale private events, it seems like food trucks can be found everywhere these days. Though lauded as an entrepreneurial feat for the past decade, College of Arts and Sciences anthropology student Rose Lillpopp 20 says that food trucks have historical roots and repercussions in the street food vending industry that run deep. Her research digs into the positive and negative influences food trucks have on our foodways and social relationships, and grapples with topics like immigration, identity, race, class and public policy.

In addition to sampling the menus of dozens of food trucks, Lillpopp developed relationships with vendors and customers she interviewed about how a vendors authenticity or legitimacy is earned, how their brands are perceived and what customers convey about themselves when they order in public spaces.

For example, Customers patronizing a vegan truck versus a wagyu beef truck are claiming different identities that come with various moral or economic prestige, she explains. Because food trucks have been under-researched and taken for granted, this conflicted history is erased by the fallacy that the gourmet food truck is unattached to these less privileged forms of vending.

Business student Mateo Florez. (Photo: Sally McCay)

While much about the use and effects of e-cigarettes remain unknown, entrepreneurship and marketing student Mateo Florez 20 is searching for answers about why these vaping products are so popular among college students.

For his Grossman School of Business research, he collected data from 750 undergraduate students about their basic demographics, substance use and preferences to run a statistical analysis technique, called a conjoint analysis. Ultimately, the analysis will provide insight on the relative value each respondent places on certain attributes of vapingincluding social context while vaping, substance effect from vaping and health risksand will be able to establish a possible correlation between demographics and e-cigarette use.

E-cigarettes have exploded in popularity during the past couple years, and understanding more about the driving forces behind e-cigarette consumption can provide both policymakers and consumers better insight into the root causes of this trend, he says.

Hannah Sheehy (center) teaches fellow student research assistants about a new rubric she developed to measure the quality of the childrens storytelling. (Video: Janet Franz)

Not all research endeavors result in storybook endings, but for the families that Hannah Sheehy and Provost Patty Prelock collaborated with for a study about Theory of Mind (ToM)the ability to attribute mental states to oneself and others, one of the primary challenges of autism spectrum disorder (ASD)its been just that.

As a research team coordinator for Prelocks study, Sheehy,a communication sciences and disorders senior in the College of Nursing and Health Sciences, assisted three families with ASD children throughout a six-week reading intervention program designed to help bolster their students ToM. The intervention program incorporated parent-led stories and picture books with ToM elements such as visual perspective-taking and emotion recognition, and included scripts to help parents further facilitate discussion with their child about the stories. Sheehy collected and analyzed the data from the program and found that each child improved not only their ToM score, but their own language complexity and story coherence abilities as well.

Pointing out a characters facial expression or asking the child how they think a character is feeling helped the children understand peoples emotions and become stronger storytellers themselves, which is an important social skill, says Sheehy. Ive loved seeing how the study empowers parents to incorporate simple book-reading strategies that scaffold their childs ToM development into their everyday lives and conversations.

Business student Michael Chan. (Photo: Sally McCay)

Recognizing the increasing demand for sustainable and socially responsible businesses and products,Michael Chanwas curious about how that trend found its way into local communities. A double major in business and environmental sciences, Chans research looked to an unexpected source for answers: marginalized small business owners. Small businesses are key change agents in their communitys transformation toward a more sustainable future, he says.

Chan conducted personal interviews with local entrepreneurs of varying genders, geographic locations, races, industries and sizes about how they started and grew their businesses. He then analyzed major trends among their experiences by applying constructivist grounded theory to their narratives. What he noticed was that, despite their identity and industry differences, major themes of family, resilience and care for others emerged, connecting identity groups.

Storytelling is a powerful tool in changing the world around us, Chan says. When it comes to building a more sustainable and socially responsible future, his findings indicate that connecting to the experiences of those deemed other in our communities will increase awareness of our individual purchasing power.

Medical Laboratory Science major Sierra Walters maintains cancer cell lines for genetic experiments. Her work contributes to a project investigating the alterations of a gene associated with lung cancer, the leading cause of worldwide cancer-related mortality. (Video: Janet Franz)

How to tell if a malignant tumor will be responsive to treatment? In her time at UVM, senior Sierra Walters has worked to help researchers better answer that question. Specifically, a team working with College of Nursing and Health Sciences professor Paula Deming and Larner College of Medicine professor David Seward is taking a closer look at a protein, STK11, thats been implicated in certain types of lung cancer and can equate to a poor prognosis. The big picture to this project is to study how different genetic variations in the STK11 gene alter the proteins function, explains Walters, with the hope of someday aiding doctors and labs profiling the tumors of lung cancer patients. Im so grateful to have gotten involved in this project so early in my college career, says Walters, a medical laboratory science major in the College of Nursing and Health Sciences. While the research is on pause during remote instruction, the team still meets weekly. And her time at UVM isnt done; after graduation, Walters will pursue her masters, and work in the microbiology department at UVM Medical Center. Having a hands-on job where Im constantly trying new things and working with other students in the lab helped prepare me for the future.

Writing for this piece contributed by Kaitie Catania, Andrea Estey, Janet Franz and Rachel Leslie. Photos by Josh Brown and Sally McCay. Videos by Janet Franz and Rachel Leslie.

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The Pursuit of Knowledge | UVM Today | The - UVM News

A scene from the music video for New Orders Singularity(via YouTube)For the quarantined sheeple, its as if rock n roll, punk, and hip-hop never happened.

History comes back to provoke us in New Orders Singularity music video, which debuted in 2016 but has found fresh popularity. Its new viral status owes to deep quarantine viewing. Confined spectators respond to the videos depiction of isolation, seclusion, and, finally, rebellion as captured in footage from West Berlin prior to the fall of the Iron Curtain.

The actions shown in Singularity provide a strong contrast to the daily 7 p.m.ritual by self-imprisoned New Yorkers who crack open their apartment windows to clap, bang pots and pans, and cheer. The ceremony, supposedly intended to encourage the citys first responders, lasts only twice as long as a New York minute shorter than Singularity itself (4:13). This timid, self-conscious group activity has inspired appreciation of Singularitys nostalgia for genuine rebellion.

The Twitterverse is aroused by envy. New Order, the distinguished British dance-pop-synth band, had commissioned the Singularity video from designer Damian Hale, an expert in live-concert visuals, who compiled clips from B-Movie: Lust & Sound in West Berlin 19791989. That film was a fact-based chronicle of British music producer Mark Reeders experiences in Europes post-punk scene; its records frenzy, tumult, and chaos. More than a celebration of youthful uprising, it specifically exhibits live-wire reaction to silence and social obedience a marked contrast to Americas orderly sequestration during the COVID-19 quarantine.

Singularitys appeal raises questions about Millennial compliance so different from punk-era rebellion during this emergency. Does it set the stage for socialist dictatorship as newly ambitious mayors and governors, along with the hotly emboldened news media, control citizens behavior through fear? Singularitys images of dissent and unrest, edited to New Orders elegant dance beats, salute fearlessness and abandon by a generation that distrusted politicians and establishment media. Mark Reeder and his punk-culture cohorts sought to express their own sense of liberty. Scenes of close-quarters dancing and sex flout the seriousness of social-distancing. Repeated shots of various, vintage, flipped fingers seem aimed at 21st-century acquiescence itself.

Punk culture disregarded the maudlin fear of danger and embraced it an outrageous, unexpected expanse of FDRs idea that theres nothing to fear but fear itself, which COVID-19 politicians dont dare repeat. So Singularity commemorates fearlessness, and in doing so, it shames that 7 p.m.pseudo-civility. Compared with New Orders scenes of disorderly conduct, the polite clapping and cheering come from people in New Yorks most liberal, Hillary-supporting districts (from my neighborhood perspective, the nervously cracked windows are in swanky brownstones) that share a pampered sense of what resistance really means. Unlike those radicals in Berlins anti-Stasi youth subculture, the Manhattan noisemakers seem at a loss about what to do with themselves; they may well be of the ADD generation, former Ritalin kids who are now cautious homeowners and urban stakeholders.

The protests in Singularity havent yet happened in the U.S., tensely considering the reopening of the economy, but the fever of fed-upness (a better term than the now discredited resistance) indicates some underlying exasperation such as is inchoately expressed by the 7 p.m.bourgeois ritual. Singularity throws images of liberation back at a nation of sheeple. Baaing people. Applauding people. They really seem to be congratulating themselves for their own helplessness, for upholding government edicts during the clampdown, keeping quiet, and waiting all day for that brief moment when they can pretend to appreciate other peoples sacrifice. The typical liberal impulse is to mistake self-congratulation for altruism. A populace that disguises its own lack of self-awareness as gratitude demonstrates the essence of conformity and surrender.

This meek, docile applauding at 7 p.m. suggests a dire transformation of the American spirit. Its as if rock n roll, punk, and hip-hop never happened.

Some skeptics have asked: Wheres that rebel spirit? Wheres Antifa now to protest the confining of the indigent and shut-in, in the interest of justice the first steps toward fascism? Where are the Black Lives Matter and the #MeToo movements when the republics freedom and liberty need to be restored, as those Cold War Berliners desired?

The popularity of New Orders Singularity offers a last hope against restrictions that are not entirely based on science but come from the fiat of leaders who claim to know whats best.The song Singularity mourns the loss of camaraderie, while the video supplies virtual, vicarious protest. Its a reminder of the punk ethic buried inside.

Originally posted here:
Rebellion, New OrderStyle: What Happened to It? - National Review

[He provided] Russians with Austrian military secrets. He also doctored or destroyed the intelligence reports which his own agents were sending in from Russia with the result that the Austrians, at the outbreak of the war, were completely misinformed as to Russias mobilization intentions.

U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy (R-WI) spoke these words in the 1950s in the midst of the second Red Scare. He would go on to assert that there were somewhere between 50 and over 200 known communists in the State Department despite offering no evidence. McCarthyism, as it would come to be known, would stifle much of the gains made by the working class since the Great Depression.

Just like the first Red Scare, which occurred three decades earlier in response to domestic labor activism and the Bolshevik Revolution abroad, McCarthy was utilizing the fear of communism, which he referred to as a well-placed fear, to combat democratic populism illustrated in the labor and civil rights movements. A half century later, the mass mobilization of individuals in Occupy, Black Lives Matter, Yellow Vests, #MeToo, Eco-Justice, Democracy Spring, and more, coupled with the populist rejection of neoliberalism expressed in the Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders campaigns, helped foster a Third Red Scare. Although the playbook is the same, this Red Scare differed in that it treated Russia, not communism itself, as the boogeyman. Trumps populist campaign, which co-opted economic anxiety for electoral victory, followed by his unexpected presidency, primed the American liberal class for a Third Red Scare.

Starting in 2016, the corporate media published false stories about how the Russians had obtained compromising content on Trump, altered the 2016 election with social media ads, made Trump into a Manchurian candidate, hacked a Vermont power-grid, and more. The Russia hysteria continued through his presidency with the press inflating the number of intelligence agencies investigating Trump from 4 to 17; The New York Times falsely reporting that Maria Butina was a Russian spy who traded sex for favorable policy; theWall Street Journalmaking the baseless claim that international intelligence serviceswere withholding intelligencefrom the U.S. because Trump had been compromised; and CNNfabricating the notion that Trump was in constant contact with Russians known to U.S. intelligence. Buzzfeed went further, printing the origin of much of these unsubstantiated stories, an opposition research dossier paid for by Republicans and the Hillary Clinton campaign, the Steele Dossier, from British Intelligence Office Christopher Steele. The speculative reporting continued with minimal retractions and suspensions. In fact, many of the discredited articles are still online. In addition to the press, the Third Red Scare was perpetuated by members of the intelligence community and Democratic Party such as United States Navy senior chief petty officer and media commentator Malcolm Nance, NSA employee John Schindler, former U.S. Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY), and House of Representatives minority leader Adam Schiff (D-CA). These crest of the speculative red scare wave broke when the Mueller Report revealed that much of the Russia hysteria was baseless. Nonetheless, the Democratic Party, assuming that the Third Red Scare was responsible for their electoral victories in 2018, shrouded their impeachment of Trump in Russian hysteria.

In 2020, Democrats have viewed Bernie Sanders and his supporters as the only thing standing in their way from electorally removing Trump and reestablishing their neoliberal hegemony. However, it would be challenging to completely discredit Sanders considering that he was the most popular candidate in 2016 and 2020, was polling best among voters of color, and captivated the coveted youth vote with a message of replacing the current system with democratic socialism. Therefore, a comprehensive, multifaceted attack was implemented by Democratic leadership and their corporate media enablers. In addition to a months-long blackout of his campaign and repeated manipulation of graphics and math regarding his support, the media and party establishment turned the Third Red Scare on Sanders and his supporters. For example, two days before Sanders landslide victory in the Nevada caucus, The New York Times ran an article titled Lawmakers are Warned That Russia is Meddling to Re-elect Trump. A day later they ran an article titled Russia is said to be Interfering to Aid Sanders in Democratic Primaries. On the same day, the Washington Post ran an article, with a headline, Bernie Sanders Briefed by U.S. officials that Russia is Trying to Help his Presidential Campaign, which obfuscated the not insignificant/crucial detail that the briefing offered no evidence. On the day of the Nevada primary, The New York Times published an op-ed titled, Same Goal, Different Playbook: Why Russia Would Support Trump and Sanders. The 24-hour news networks echoed the newspapers Russian hysteria with a guest on CNNs State of the Union claiming that the real winner in Nevada was Russian president Vladimir Putin. As it turned out, the articles content was based on anonymous sources making baseless claims.

However, despite the lack of evidence, red-baiting against Sanders persisted. In addition to newspapers such as USA Today, and The New York Times doing it, Dan Pfeiffer on NBCs Meet the Press and Rahm Emmanuel on ABCs This Week claimed that Putin was aiding Sanders in the primary to ensure a Trump victory in the general election; The Daily Beast opined that Russia was helping Sanders because Biden was the Kremlins most feared candidate; CNN Host Michael Smerconish compared Sanders candidacy to the spread of the coronavirus; now disgraced MSNBC commentator Chris Matthews likened Sanders win in Nevada to the Nazis invasion of France and suggested that if the Reds had won the Cold War, Sanders might have been found cheering on hypothetical executions in Central Park; NBC news anchor Chuck Todd cited a comparison of Sanders supporters to a digital brownshirt brigade; and not to be outdone, former adviser to the Clinton campaigns, and MSNBC contributor James Carville claimed that Sanders was a communist aided by Putin. Just as the Red Scare helped prevent the electoral success of Eugene Debs and Henry Wallace, it is safe to assume it stifled Sanders campaign.

In addition, the Third Red Scare has been instrumental in protecting Joe Bidens neoliberal candidacy from legitimate critiques. For example, in 2020, after hearing stories from other accusers, Tara Reade, a former staffer to Biden, accused the former vice-president of sexual assaulting her in the 1990s. In response, the very same Democratic Party that rightly rallied around Dr. Christine Blasey Ford had little interest in Reades story. Furthermore, not only did Times Up, the non-profit representing victims of sexual harassment after the 2018 public campaign against media mogul Harvey Weinstein, refuse to represent Reade because she was accusing Biden, it turns out that the managing director of Times Ups public relations firm is Anita Dunn, who is also the top adviser to Bidens presidential campaign. Worse, party leadership and loyalists in the media dismissed her story because they argued that, wait for it that it was a Russian conspiracy.

The Third Red Scare has served to marginalize legitimate critiques of the neoliberal establishment and hamstring the agenda of progressives. The reality is that Sanders agenda is not even radical. In fact, it is in line with Franklin Delano Roosevelts Second Bill of Rights proposal (constitutional right to employment, food, clothing, leisure, fair income, freedom from unfair competition and monopolies for farmers, housing, medical care, social security, and education). So, like FDR, Sanders is more of a New Deal Democrat, not a socialist or communist, simply as a matter of historical fact. Furthermore, the U.S. is unique in its derision for socialism. Most of the rest of the world has socialist policies and parties. Nonetheless, the seemingly endless propagation of the Russian interference and Red Scare narratives continue to inflict damage upon and hamper democratic populist politicians and movements. The time has come to discard this canard, putting it where it belongs once and for all into the dustbin of history.

Dr. Nolan Higdonis an author and lecturer of history and media studies at California State University, East Bay. Higdon sits on the boards of the Action Coalition for Media Education andNorthwest Alliance For Alternative Media And Education. His most recent publication isUnited States of Distractionwith Mickey Huff. He is co-host of the Along the Line podcast, and a longtime contributor to Project Censoreds annual book,Censored. In addition, he has been a guest commentator forThe New York Times,San Francisco Chronicle, and numerous television news outlets.

Mickey Huffis director of Project Censored, president of the Media Freedom Foundation, coeditor of the annualCensoredbook series from Seven Stories Press (since 2009), co-author ofUnited States of Distraction(City Lights, 2019), and professor of social science and history at Diablo Valley College where he co-chairs the history area, and lectures in communications at California State University, East Bay. He is also the executive producer and co-host of the weekly syndicated Pacifica Radio program, The Project Censored Show, founded in 2010.

Emil Marmol is a PhD candidate at the University of Toronto/Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE). As an interdisciplinary scholar with experience in professional film and radio production, he has published on critical media literacy, censorship, Cuban society, the impact of neoliberalism on higher education, repression of Latinx in education, standardized testing, labor struggles, and film. He is currently writing his doctoral thesis as an autoethnography/testimonio about growing up as the son of Latino immigrants in Orange County, California. His most recent publication is inCensored 2020: Though the Looking Glass, chapter 8, Fake News:The TrojanHorse for Silencing Alternative News and Reestablishing Corporate NewsDominance.

Learn more atwww.projectcensored.org

Read more from the original source:
The Third Red Scare: Neoliberal's Effective Framing of 21st Century Populist and Progressive Movement - CounterPunch

Its been six days since Bernie Sanders disbanded hiscampaignfor presidency, planning toremainon the ballot to push the Democratic Party platform further left. People are already painting broad strokes about the campaigns failures, even though it was partially done in bybad luck, including a literal pandemic.

With the rise of the novel coronavirus, reality has endorsed Sanders and his policies, as Keeanga Yahmatta-Taylorput it. Now we wait to see if the Democratic Party will accept reality during its convention this summer.

Sanderss Not Me, Us message has already taken root, both in movement spaces and electorally.

As Sanders said during hisannouncement, While this campaign is coming to an end,our movement is not. Sanders has evidently taken that message to heart, jumping right into pushing the same progressive agenda he advocated for in his presidential campaign.

On Friday, Sandersnow fully back in his role as a Vermont Senatorannouncedan emergency Medicare for All bill with Representative Pramila Jayapal, Democrat of Washington. This was within forty-eight hours of his campaign suspension.

Already, there have been countlessthink pieceson the impact of his campaign, what he should or should not have done, and where the progressive movement will go from here. Days after Sanders suspended his campaign,Jacobinpublished thepieceMass Politics, Not Movementism, Is the Future of the Left, which said Sanderss defeat has the potential to be one of the most productive defeats the left has endured in decades, if we learn the right lessons from it.

If the lesson of Sanderss dropout is that socialists need to place more stock in the presidential election as a way to broaden the left coalition, I think we have a lot more disappointment coming.

Before we get left unity under a presidential candidate, we might want to ensure everyone has access to voting, considering our countrys constantracist voter suppression, most recently seen in Wisconsin. Meanwhile, the Democratic Partys answer to Trumps win in 2016 was to turn their primary into a circus.

When the partys main response to us has been totellus were too dumb to see the truth, and themainstream mediamakes no attempts to hide their bias against Sanders, its hard to expect people to keep believing their vote matters.

There has to be a middle ground where we can acknowledge the necessity of pushing for electoral gains, while also acknowledging that people power will ultimately be more significant in the long run.

As Astra Taylor recentlywroteforIn These Times, Leftists have long talked about inside and outside strategies as though they were in opposition, but the Sanders campaign made the argument that they can and must be united, difficult though this process may be. The energy and radicalism of the streets needs to be brought to bear on electoral politics and into the halls of power. That remains the needle the left has to thread.

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Sanderss mantra Not Me, Us was a legitimate attempt to disrupt politics as usual. Before and after his late 2019 heart attack,Buzzfeed Newss Ruby Cramerfollowedthe Sanders campaign, which showed that Sanders had doubts all along about its ability to win. His real goal was for us to stop believing in candidates and start believing in ourselves.

Just think of the movements that have begun or grown since 2016: the Sunrise Movement, student debt forgiveness, the immigrant justice movement with groups like Cosecha, the push for Medicare For All, the Me Too Movement, the teacher labor movement . . . the list goes on.

It would be impossible to claim that these movements could have grown without three things: Occupy Wall Streets mass mobilization of people worldwide and mainstream introduction to many of the ideas that become cornerstones of Sanderss platform; the template of the Black Lives Matter Movement in the first half of the 2010s, showing what can be accomplished by taking to the streets and changing society; and the Sanders campaign, which was an incubator for some of the same people now working full time on these movements.

Leaving our hopes for the 2020 election with Joe Biden shows how much work there is to do to further these movements, considering Bidens platform and track record, whichincludesallegations of sexual assault and misconduct.

There is still plenty of reason to be optimistic about the ability of social movements to bring about real change, especially given the opportunities created by the disruption of the pandemic.

After Sanders suspended his campaign, some groupsincluding theU.S. Youth Climate Strikeannounced that they would not endorse Biden, but on April 13, Sanders himself announced hisendorsementof Biden. Sanders hadalready committedto endorsing the eventual nominee, but his official endorsement hasnt automatically translated to some of his followers. Briahna Joy Gray, who up until last week served as Sanderss press secretary,announcedshe would not endorse Biden until his platform movedfurther left.

Sanderss Not Me, Us message has already taken root, both in movement spaces and electorally. Hundreds of people who have historically been left out of politicspeople of color, queer and trans folks, immigrantsare nowrunningand successfully winning campaigns at local, state, and federal levels. And there is still plenty of reason to be optimistic about the ability of social movements to bring about real change, especially given the opportunities created by the disruption of the pandemic.

You know what has given me hope? On an unseasonably warm day this past January, Iwrote abouta group of youth climate organizers in New Hampshire. They invited me to have dinner with them at a raucous house that hosted some of the young activists, who had traveled from as far as California and as close as Rhode Island, to knock doors for the Sunrise Movement, and ultimately for Sanders.

They played games and invited me in. They sang songs around a table until nearly 1 a.m. It was one of the few progressive spaces Ive been in since 2016 where the dominant mood was hope, not exhaustion or fear.

Thats our future. We just have to keep fighting. Bernie Sanders certainly will.

Read the rest here:
Bernies Campaign Suspension Shows How Far We Have to Go - Common Dreams

Donald Trump and Harry Jackson in the Oval OfficePhoto: YouTube screenshot/NBC News

Donald Trump invited a virulently anti-LGBTQ pastor to deliver an Easter blessing from the White House this past Friday.

Bishop Harry Jackson has gotten national media attention since 2012 for his opposition to LGBTQ rights and extreme statements, which include saying that LGBTQ people are folks who cannot reproduce who want to recruit your kids and said that the movement for marriage equality proved that the U.S. was just like during the times of Hitler.

Related: Bishop Harry Jackson says gays want to recruit your kids

Jackson once said that marriage equality is a Satanic plot to destroy our seed and told his fellow Christians to steal back the rainbow. We cant let the gays have it.

In 2018, he said that Black Lives Matter will fail because there are lesbians in its leadership.

We cant have social justice, we need biblical justice, Jackson said. It matters that Black Lives Matter has, at the head, a few lesbians who are against the patriarchal society.

And blogger Joe Jervis found a few of Jacksons greatest hits from Twitter.

The list could go on Jackson has spent the better part of a decade speaking in mainstream media and at conservative Christian events making extreme statements about LGBTQ people.

But apparently his statements werent too extreme for the Trump administration. On Friday, he delivered the Easter Blessing from the White House, standing three feet away from Trump for social distancing. Trump introduced him as a highly respected gentleman.

Jackson thanked Trump and Pence for their efforts to protect our nation from coronavirus.

Youve included the churches in your relief efforts, Jackson told Trump, referring to the CARES Act Congress passed late last month. Many churches would have had to close down had it not been for your insightful leadership. So thank you both.

He then read from the Bible and prayed with Trump and Mike Pence. Trump called his blessing beautiful.

Read this article:
Donald Trump invited a pastor who said gays want to recruit your kids to deliver Easter blessing - LGBTQ Nation