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When I was very young, I participated in a several-month training in community organizing taught by the great Fred Ross, Sr., whose previous students included Cesar Chavez. As it became apparent that the demand for introverted community organizers was not great, I settled for a career in law. But much of the wisdom Fred imparted continues to guide me.

One point he made over and over was the distinction between organizing and mobilizing. Almost anyone, he said, could stir people up and get them to show up at a march or demonstration. By itself, however, that kind of mobilization rarely changes anything: Those responsible for the problem simply keep their heads down until the mobilization concludes and then keep doing precisely what they were before. Real power, Fred said, comes from organizing. And organizing takes time, developing trust, and understanding one person at a time.

Fred also emphasized the importance of always being truthful with the people one is organizing. No matter how awkward, embarrassing, or discouraging the answer may be, community members deserve an honest response when they ask an organizer a question. Without candor, trust is impossible. When an organizer would gloss over the difficult parts or make up something she or he did not know Fred was incensed.

Although the Industrial Areas Foundation, for which both Cesar and Fred worked, is alive and well, I fear that too much of todays political work follows the alluring expedients of mobilizing rather than the transformational path of organizing.

I am particularly struck by progressive activists repeated insistence that the Democrats have to deliver on this or that demand or their base will become disillusioned and stop voting. If that is true, it can only be because the activists mobilizing them to vote in the last election failed to level with them about the political situation the nation is in.

Thinking of the Democrats as a unitary body susceptible to coercion, and capable of delivering if it really wants to, is simply false. Those who voted Democratic in 2020 included progressives, liberals, moderates, and some very conservative people who could not tolerate President TrumpDonald TrumpRubio on White House records at Mar-a-Lago: 'It's not a crime, I don't believe' Overnight Health Care DC ending mask, vaccine mandates On The Money Biden's inflation boogeymen MORE and yet President BidenJoe BidenBiden's FDA pick clears key Senate hurdle Overnight Health Care DC ending mask, vaccine mandates American unity is key to a Europe whole and free MORE still carried just 51 percent of the vote. Preventing a resurgence of Trumpism requires the Democrats to maintain a very big and welcoming tent. That cannot work if the welcome evaporates immediately after the election: Progressives do not have sufficiently strong voter support for the Democrats to be viable as a narrowly ideological party.

The feel-good arguments that this country is somehow more progressive than is commonly understood do not bear close examination. Yes, Hillary ClintonHillary Diane Rodham ClintonRubio on White House records at Mar-a-Lago: 'It's not a crime, I don't believe' Anthony Weiner to make first cable news appearance since incarceration on Hannity Durham alleges cyber analysts 'exploited' access to Trump White House server MORE received almost 3 million more votes than Donald Trump, but far-right candidates won significantly more votes combined than liberal and leftist candidates did. Overall, polls consistently show self-identified conservatives substantially outnumber self-identified liberals. And although polls often show substantial majorities supporting this or that progressive policy, a segment of those liberal voters are nonetheless wedded to the Republicans because of their strong feelings about abortion particularly as opposition to abortion becomes less tolerated within the Democratic Party.

And anyone who mobilizes voters by suggesting that coming out to vote once will bring victory on this or that issue is not being honest. They are building not power but cynicism. Only organizing people for the long struggle ahead can remedy deep injustices.

Our greatest leaders frankly acknowledged the obstacles their movements faced. As massive as the March on Washington was, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King , Jr., was under no illusions that victory was at hand:

I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow jail cells. Some of you have come from areas where your quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive.

Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to South Carolina, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed. Let us not wallow in the valley of despair.

I say to you today, my friends, so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream.

Had the massive mobilization swept him into declaring that victory was at hand, the brave men and women of the Civil Rights movement would have become disillusioned, lost trust in him, and fallen away. King knew better.

Five years later, on the day before he was killed, Dr. King again preached candidly about the need for perseverance:

Well, I don't know what will happen now. We've got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn't matter with me now. Because I've been to the mountaintop And I've looked over. And I've seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land.

Cesar Chavez, too, was candid about the obstacles the farmworkers movement faced and the hard, sustained work that would be required for success:

Our struggle is not easy. Those who oppose us are rich and powerful and have many allies in high places. We are poor. Our allies are few. But we have something the rich do not own. We have our bodies and spirits and the justice of our cause as our weapons.

We are now half a century beyond when Dr. King and Cesar Chavez spoke, and yet true victory remains elusive. It is not fair or just that people who have endured so much already are still having to endure more. But promising quick fixes that cannot be delivered will only prolong that injustice by feeding cynicism and division within the progressive movement.

Since the ballots were counted in November 2020 and, indeed, in earlier elections when Democrats lost too many winnable seats it has been clear that progressives would have no congressional majority but, at best, could scrape together enough votes with much more conservative members to form an anti-Trumpist coalition.

Anyone who has led the base to believe that victory was at hand on crucial but hotly contested causes if only they pushed Democrats hard enough was deceiving that base and sowing the seeds of future cynicism.

To build the kind of power that can genuinely rescue this country, we need organizing that levels with people about the obstacles ahead, just as Dr. King and Cesar Chavez did. Anything else the sugar high of short-term mobilizing or seeking some parliamentary magic that can deliver what the voters did not will only postpone the day when justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.

David A. Super is a professor of law at Georgetown Law. He also served for several years as the general counsel for the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Follow him on Twitter@DavidASuper1

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Liberal activists need to level with their base | TheHill - The Hill

US-POLITICS-VOTE-1YEAR-YOUTH - Credit: AFP via Getty Images

The the Super Bowl halftime show was, by most accounts, a huge success. Well, that was awesome, wrote Rolling Stones Rob Sheffield of the Los Angeles-centric medley. The Super Bowl halftime show finally opened up to hip-hop this was the first time the rappers got to bumrush center stage, instead of serving as a sideshow.

Charlier Kirk, the trollish founder of the conservative group Turning Point USA known for railing against cancel culture, was not a fan. The NFL is now the league of sexual anarchy, he tweeted. This halftime show should not be allowed on television.

Video: Hip-hop, rap, take center stage at the 2022 Super Bowl

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Its unclear what exactly triggered Kirk here. Mary J. Blige wore an outfit that exposed her bare thighs. There was some dancing, but it was pretty tame. Perhaps he got a little flustered at the sight of 50 Cents built upper body. Regardless, the show certainly didnt feature anything warranting calls of sexual anarchy, at least not any more so than previous halftime shows led by white performers. Kirk did make a similar complaint in 2020, when he tweeted that the performance from Jennifer Lopez and Shakira was a horrendous example to the millions of young women across the world because it featured pole dancing.

Kirks tweet on Sunday was so comically prude that prominent commentators of all ideologies came together, at least for this one fleeting moment, to mock him.

You tiny, tiny boy. How can we help you? tweeted Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.).

Time for bed, Grandpa, added Trump-loving conservative host Piers Morgan.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), who once bashed Morgan for mocking her career as a bartender, called Kirk a weirdo. The jab was an apparent call back to her tweet from December describing Republicans as creepy weirdos for projecting their sexual frustrations onto my boyfriends feet because they cant date me.

Story continues

I was in High School in the 1980s, tweeted former Republican Rep. Denver Riggleman. Weird Science was sexual anarchy.

Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Mary J. Blige, Eminem, and 50 Cent five of the six performers supposedly unleashing sexual anarchy into the homes of millions of Super Bowl viewers on Sunday were also in high school in the 1980s. So was Tom DeLonge, formerly of Blink-182. Sexual Anarchy is a great name of a Punk Band, he wrote.

Even Lev Parnas, the Ukrainian businessman and Rudy Giuliani ally convicted of illegally funneling money to former President Trumps 2020 campaign, got in on the action. Lets not forget Charlie Kirk bussed in insurrectionists on Jan 6th, he tweeted.

President Biden has long been looking for a way to bridge the widening divide between Democrats and Republican in Congress. He may have finally found it.

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Video courtesy of NBCUniversal. For more, check out NBC.com.

Link:
Liberals and Conservatives Unite to Dunk on Charlie Kirk for Calling Super Bowl Halftime Show Sexual Anarchy - Yahoo News

Wanda Roam

Jefferson City

Dear Editor:

I find it humorous to read the liberal LTEs citing liberal resources that are promoting the "Big Lie" Joe Biden actually got more votes than Barack Obama to become the duly elected president. It is a never-ending argument of the liberals and the Donald Trump supporters.

If there were no real questions or anomalies associated with the election, there would not be forensic audits still taking place in the swing states where vote counting was mysteriously stopped almost simultaneously when President Trump was ahead.

Days later, president-elect Biden miraculously was announced the winner of all of these states. Where were all those extra votes found after hours? Things that make you go hmmm!

Truth has a way of rising to the top. The truth about the plandemic and where it was created by gain of function and funded by pompous Anthony Fauci, Bill Gates and others will be found out. Eventually, this will be uncovered and crimes against humanity must be filed against them along with big pharma, enabling health care providers, politicians and the governors that forced COVID-19-positive elderly into the nursing homes to infect the healthy.

The goal was to create fear and a willingness to allow the government to take our rights and freedoms away from us to mandate lockdowns, masks and dangerous so-called vaccines. This allowed the liberals and some RINOS to unlawfully change the voting laws to allow the election mess that is still being disputed.

It's also humorous Hillary Clinton and Stacy Abrams never conceded their elections and the Democrats in DC blamed Hillary's loss on Russia, Russia, Russia, in a stolen election.

The truth will set us free, so let's get to the bottom of the COVID-19 virus, the 2020 election and the setup of a so-called "insurrection" with the infiltration of FBI agents and/or informants.

Isn't it convenient the Department of Justice doesn't know or won't say whether any agents were involved?

Bring Ray Epps and the other unindicted co-conspirators before congress for all the world to see and hear their testimony about their involvement. Show us all the videos Nancy Pelosi is hiding. Subpoena her devices to see why she refused to ask for additional security Jan. 6 after being requested to do so.

My how the worm has turned. Hypocrisy is on full display but how quickly the liberals forget their own words. Stop the lies!

Excerpt from:
Your Opinion: Citing liberal sources about the 'Big Lie' - Jefferson City News Tribune

I have witnessed what happens when you have zero multifamily units that are going to be built in a neighborhood that desperately needs it, she said.

The afternoon debate focused on how and whether Colorado cities should be able to limit their own growth and development. The hearing wrapped up without a vote, but Gonzales support means that the measure is poised to pass at a future meeting and potentially proceed to a full vote before the Senate.

The reality is, no matter how much money this body decides to pour into affordable housing efforts, if local governments continue to enact anti-growth initiatives and unreasonable zoning policies, we are not going to construct the additional housing units we need to make Colorado affordable again, said state Sen. Larry Liston, who co-sponsored the bill with Rep. Andres Picos. Both are Republicans from Colorado Springs.

Boulder, Golden and Lakewood are among the cities that have instituted limits on growth. Voters in those cities approved growth restrictions in 1976, 1995 and 2019, respectively. In each city, the law says that the residential housing stock can grow by only 1 percent per year.

The Republican proposal would not invalidate those existing laws. Instead, it would ban other cities from instituting any limitation on the number of zoning applications or building permits allowed each year.

The amended version of the bill garnered strong support from Republican leadership.

I agree with (Sen. Gonzales.) We have got to think outside the box. We have got to look at innovative ways to change the way we approach housing in this state, said Senate Minority Leader Chris Holbert of Douglas County, also a member of the committee.

As originally drafted, the bill would have severely limited cities ability to downzone properties. Downzoning is when a local government puts new limits on what a property owner can build. The proposal would have required cities to pay just compensation to property owners for lost value if their property is downzoned, similar to a law in Arizona.

In reaching their compromise with Gonzales, sponsors agreed to drop that section. It was also a major focus of the opposition at the hearing, who argued that the just compensation measure would have hobbled city governments and shifted power to private property owners, rather than city leaders. (Republicans like Holbert said they liked that part.)

We believe that municipalities and their elected officials need to be able to make those determinations, at that level, with public input, with developer input, with the input of all constituents, said Meghan Dollar, a lobbyist for the Colorado Municipal League.

After the meeting, Dollar said that CML would poll its members about their opinions on the amended version of the bill, which focuses only on growth limits.

I think its really important to get feedback from municipal officials on this one. I will say that generally, CML opposes anything that takes land-use regulation out of the local level, Dollar said.

More than a half-dozen liberal land-use reformers also known as YIMBYs, for Yes In My Backyard spoke on the proposal. They werent particularly interested in the state-vs-local debate over property rights. Instead, they, they echoed the Republican argument that the state needs to rev up its housing industry in order to meet demand.

Weve had decades to see exactly what these (slow-growth) policies have done to limit housing, said Dmitrii Zavorotny, treasurer of YIMBY Denver. The Boulder growth-limiting law directly blocked his parents chance to build a home there, he said. He argues the policy has led to sprawl and pollution as people are forced to move to outlying communities instead of Boulder.

Colorados modern growth debate began in large part in the 1960s and 1970s, and Boulder was at the forefront. In 1976, Boulder voters made it the first community in the Rocky Mountain West to put a limit on its growth, as the High Country News reported.

Then-councilman Paul Danish, who led the effort, argued that uncontrolled growth cant be tolerated in Boulder because it would break the urban infrastructure and destroy all the desirable qualities of the towns environment.

His opponents, including local real-estate brokers, argued that the move would turn Boulder into an exclusionary community open only to well-to-do residents.

Boulders single-family home prices today are the highest on the Front Range, with the median house going for about $785,000.

Since then, the slow- or anti-growth movement has resurfaced several times. In 1995, Boulder tightened its residential growth limit from 2 percent to 1 percent per year, and Golden passed a similar cap. In 2019, Lakewood voters approved their own slow-growth law. Advocates also tried but failed to create a growth limit across the Front Range in 2019 and 2020.

During the pandemic, housing prices in Colorado have hit new highs, and leaders of both parties have made the shortage of new developments a central message. The pro-growth bill is part of Republicans Commitment to Colorado a package of bills focused largely on the cost of living.

State lawmakers are set to spend $400 million of federal money on a groundbreaking affordable-housing package. And in recent years, Democrats led an effort to create incentives for cities that allow greater density and embrace affordable housing.

The current pro-growth measure also breaks new ground: Its text declares that housing has become a statewide concern. That kind of language could contribute to a greater argument for intervention by state lawmakers in policies that, until now, have been decided at the local level.

Among other changes, Gonzales suggested that the legislature could create a permanent committee to address housing issues another sign of their growing importance to policymakers from both parties.

Read the rest here:
Colorado could ban 'slow-growth' policies as GOP and liberals team up at the statehouse - Colorado Public Radio

With the row over hijab escalating in Karnataka, liberals are increasingly getting exposed for their moral cowardice and cringe-worthy treachery.

Moral cowardice, because they refuse to condemn something that is manifestly evilhijab. Intended to subjugate women, its biggest supporters are the most reactionary sections in the Muslim community. But our liberals dont feel any shame in getting bracketed with the misogynistic mullahs.

Liberals are also treacherous because they have turned their backs on individual liberty. For hijab and burqa (just like purdah among the Hindus) are the antithesis of liberty; they are some of the most repressive instruments devised to keep women as chattel and cattle.

The Basavaraj Bommai government, on the other hand, has shown remarkable courage against the fury of the liberals who are supporting Muslim fundamentalists and fueling the movement against hijab ban. The liberals are not just supporting the fanatical ulema but also deploying their considerable scholarship and articulation to present hijab as a matter of choice, even a symbol of protest. Congress leader Shashi Tharoor, for instance, tweeted, Let the girls in. Let them study. Let THEM decide. As if Muslim girls and women take all their decisions!

It would be instructive here to know about the horrific impact that religious dogma and age-old customs have on women of all faiths. In a paper for the Indian Journal of Social work, Cromwell Crawford, Professor at the Department of Religion, University of Hawaii, described Raja Ram Mohun Roys heroic fight for the abolition of sati.

Crawford wrote, The Rajas anti-sati campaign began in 1811-12 while stationed in Rangpur. The fiery death of his sister-in-law (1812) forged in him a determination to save all the sisters of his land from this unworthy rite. Among his early efforts he used to frequent the cremation grounds in the Calcutta area in order to dissuade women who were about to sacrifice their lives. The Asiatic Journal reports that on one occasion he got the priests to light the fire prior to the woman ascending the pile, hoping that the flames would intimidate her. He insisted that this procedure was directed by the scriptures. Contrary to his expectations, one of the wives courageously walked into the flames and was followed by the second. As she stood before the flames, she addressed the bystanders with great animation: You have just seen my husbands first wife perform the duty incumbent on her, and will now see me follow her example. Henceforward, I pray, do not attempt to prevent Hindu women from burning, otherwise our curse will be upon you.

Even in Independent India, when social reform was resisted. Hindu Code Bills, for instance, were fiercely opposed by the champions of Hindus in politics. In fact, the Hindi satirist Hari Shankar Parsai noted with astonishment that even some women were against the Bills which were intended to, and did, emancipate women!

Thankfully, Tharoor was not Roys contemporary, otherwise he would have advised the great social reformer to let women do what they wanted to do. Let THEM decide.

Contrast this with the fight the women and men in Muslim countries are putting up to get rid of the chains like dress codes imposed by Islamic fundamentalists. When the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa authorities imposed abaya, a garment that covers a womans body from head to toe, on girl students to wear in the capital Peshawar and Haripur, another city in the province, it was widely opposed in the entire Pakistan.

Senator Sherry Rehman said, This is certainly not a promise that any progressive party makes. She told a German media outfit, It reminds us of the times of the Zia regime, when veiling in public offices, schools and television was made legal and the norm, which we see has been reversed.

Many leaders of the Prime Minister Imran Khans Pakistan Tehreek e Insaaf (PTI) also publicly criticized this move. Ali Khan Tareen, a young PTI politician, while slamming the directive, asked girls to have pepper spray instead of chadors [a burqa-like garment].

This in a theocratic nation, in a country where armed jihadists slaughter at will and fundamentalists enjoy support in the armed forces. And here, in the worlds largest democracy, liberals are shamelessly trying to placate the most retrograde sections of the Muslim community.

Further, the liberals are also misleading the country and society. Tharoor says, Its been a strength of India that everyone is free to wear what they want. If the hijab is disallowed, what about the Sikh turban? The Hindus forehead mark?

Evidently, either the learned politician is not aware of the essential practices doctrine that the Supreme Court conceived and abides by or he tends to ignore this doctrine. The Sikh turban is an essential part of the faith; if a Sikh is disallowed to wear a turban, it would be an infringement of his religious rights; hence Sikh soldiers are allowed to wear them. The teeka, however, is not an essential part of Hinduism; no religious right is violated if a Hindu is stopped from having a teeka; therefore, no Hindu soldier applies teeka while on duty.

This doctrine informed the apex courts 2018 Sabarimala verdict which riled many a Hindu medievalist. Wisdom Foundation director-general Zeenat Shaukat Ali has alluded to hijab being non-essential part of Islam. She argued in The Times of India (February 10) that the Quran doesnt stipulate hijab for women: The words burqa, abaya, niqab, etc., are unfamiliar to the Quran.

Yet, liberals are trying to portray the girls donning hijab as rebels. In the liberals Orwellian universe, chains like hijab and burqa have become the symbols of liberty and submission to the medievalist mullah, rebellion. Slavery is freedom and freedom is slavery.

Views expressed above are the author's own.

END OF ARTICLE

Continued here:
Hijab is symbol of liberals Orwellian universe - The Times of India Blog