Mediaboss Marketing

WASHINGTON Rep. Tom Reedcan expectto face some strong resistance at his four town hall meetings in the Southern Tier this weekend.

But it sure won't be spontaneous.

In fact, a group called "Indivisible of New York's 23rd District" which is connected to a national movement organized by former Democratic congressional aides has published a two-page "plan of action" for progressiveswho will be attending Reed's meetings.

The guide calls for people to ask Reed tough questions aimed at making the Republican congressman from Corning look bad.

"We want to trap Reed in appearing as if he doesn't care about his constituents," the memo said.

And that's not all. The memo calls for progressives attending Reed's event to avoid looking too vehement or too progressive, in hopes of appealing to more conservative members of the audience in Reed's right-leaning Southern Tier district.

"He will be far more concerned if we can appeal to his supporters with our informed resistance!" the memo says. "THIS is our goal."

Told of the group's plans, Reed, R-Corning the only Western New York member of Congress to routinely meet with constituents in the free-flowing town hall format was suspicious.

"It's disturbing," he said. "It sounds like a proactive, extreme attempt to cause disruption."

The Indivisible plan of action calls for peaceful resistance and warns that some right-wing groups may try to cause disruptions at the events. In that case, the memo says, members of Indivisible should work to de-escalate any conflicts.

Moreover, the Indivisible plan calls for progressives attending the rally to play down their progressiveness, particularly when it comes to President Trump who won the counties hosting Reed's town halls by more than 20 points in November's election.

"Do not mention or criticize Trump," the plan of action said. "Those who approve of Trump and love him feel threatened by us. We want to build bridges, not burn them. We want to appear concerned and respectful, not judgmental or uppity. At the same time we want to show our strength and are willing to fight for our convictions."

Making references to "the morality of Christianity" in questions could help progressives at the meeting, as could dressing decently, the memo said.

"No progressive political messages on clothing, no Cornell swag," it added.

It's possible that some of the progressives at the town hall meetings will have Cornell University, in the liberal bastion of Tompkins County, in their hearts and minds.

The website for Indivisible of New York's 23rd District Reed's district shows that four of the six members of the group's organizing team are from Tompkins County, where Cornell is located. The others are from Seneca County and Tioga County, which are nowhere near Reed's Saturday town halls.

Activists from Tompkins County are most likely to show up at Reed's town hall in Fillmore, in Allegany County, because it's closer to Ithaca than Reed's earlier town halls in Chautauqua and Cattaraugus counties, said Reanna Lavine, a member of Indivisible of New York's 23rd District organizing team.

She noted that Reed has not held a town hall in the Ithaca area, but that constituents there are anxious to talk to him about the proposed repeal of the Affordable Care Act and other issues.

Lavine acknowledged that the memo's language about "trapping" Reed is "a little harsh," but she stressed that her group's plan is more about asking the congressman tough, detailed questions.

"People haven't felt well-served by Tom Reed," she said.

Other groups, such as Planned Parenthood and Southern Tier Action Together, are also planning to attend Reed's town halls to ask him questions.

Southern Tier Action Together, an Allegany County group, offered advice to those attending on its Facebook page.

"Don't sit with members of your group during the town hall! Spread out so that you appear larger than you are," the group recommended.

But Indivisible appears to be the largest progressive group organizing people to attend Reed's town halls, which will take place at these times and places:

The Southern Tier Indivisible group is one of many around the country that sprang up in response to the "Indivisible Guide," a best-practices guide in which former Democratic congressional aides explain how to best influence Congress.

It's unclear, though, exactly how much influence the Indivisible movement has had on recent town halls held by members of Congress across the country. In some cases, those town halls have become unusually raucous, often pitting people concerned about the repeal of the Affordable Care Act against Republican lawmakers who, like Reed, want to do just that.

Indivisible wants to "build a vibrant community of angelic troublemakers," the group says on its national website.

And in putting its plans for Saturday's town halls online the group gave Reed a blessing for which he is grateful.

"Obviously I appreciate the heads-up," the congressman said.

Follow this link:
Progressives plan resistance at Tom Reed's town halls - Buffalo News

A new nominee for Secretary of Labor may appear more respectable, but don't expect a change in policies that tilt toward companies and against workers.

The two events Wednesday were in exquisite contradiction. Andrew Puzder, the deeply unqualified nominee to be Secretary of Labor was forced to withdraw, prompting triumphal tweets by progressives. Activists won! People power!, stated one.

But in the first boots-on-the-ground example of how organized labor will do in this era of total Republican control at the national level, workers overwhelmingly rejected the Machinists at Boeings North Charleston, S.C., assembly.

This is the national situation in microcosm: The left is loud but the right keeps winning elections in most places, especially where progressive policies and institutions would most help the working class. Ill just put that out there and move on.

Puzder was not really done in by allegations of hiring an illegal immigrant housekeeper or domestic abuse (the Republican Partys leader bragged about sexual assault, after all). No, however much these things might exercise liberals, they arent in control of the Senate. Whatever the cover story, Puzders support for comprehensive immigration reform in defiance of the GOP base fatally eroded his support among Republican senators.

Alexander Acosta, Donald Trumps new selection to be Labor Secretary, is a much less impeachable choice. A Harvard-trained lawyer from Miami, he served briefly on President George W. Bushs National Labor Relations Board. From there, he was elevated to Assistant Attorney General over the Justice Departments civil rights division, then became U.S. Attorney for the southern district of Florida.

Anyone who thought Puzders withdrawal would result in a fundamental course change is likely to be disappointed. As Labor Secretary, Acosta would carry out the policy tilt of Republicans only without the blunt-spoken honesty of Puzder. Two bonuses for conservatives: Acosta clerked for Samuel Alito before the latter was elevated to the Supreme Court. He is also a member of the Federalist Society, the premier conservative group dedicated to remaking the courts and legal system on a right-wing agenda.

Acosta would give the cabinet its first Hispanic member and perhaps some moderation (the needle having shifted so far to the right). But based on the George W. Bush NLRB and the general tilt of the Federalist Society, he would be anti-union, anti-worker-bargaining power, and pro-company. And apparently the working class that voted for this president is fine with it.

Todays Econ Haiku:

Yellen in the House

Whys the economy slow?

Look in a mirror

See the rest here:
Puzder's withdrawal is no victory for progressives - The Seattle Times

The Womens March in Washington. Bryan Woolston / Reuters

ID: 10538093

Progressives are planning a series of demonstrations across 60 cities on April 15, describing the protest as the first major successor to the womens marches that drew as many as 4 million people over inauguration weekend last month.

The so-called Tax March set to coincide with the annual IRS deadline aims to pressure President Donald Trump and Congress over Trumps unreleased tax returns, organizers said, citing reports this week on his teams communication with Russian officials and long-standing questions about potential foreign conflicts of interest.

A coalition of liberal groups is organizing the march, including Bernie Sanders Our Revolution, MoveOn.org, the Indivisible Project, Americans for Tax Fairness, the Center for Popular Democracy, and the American Federation of Teachers.

Also involved are leaders from the Womens March, the day of protests that turned out to be among the largest demonstrations in US history.

The Tax Day plans make April 15 a key test for Democratic leaders working to harness that expanse of activist energy into a sustainable movement that yields results in Congress and at the ballot box in next years midterm elections. (Similarly, in 2009, Tax Day was one of the first major protest days for the conservative, anti-establishment Tea Party movement.)

Fissures in the Democratic Partys self-described resistance effort have already emerged since Trumps inauguration, with progressive activists demanding that lawmakers oppose the president at every turn, while various House and Senate members maintain some openness to pieces of Trumps cabinet and agenda.

The countrys highest-ranking Democrat, Sen. Chuck Schumer, drew protests from his own partys base outside his home in Brooklyn earlier this month. Activists on the left have also confronted other Democratic lawmakers outside their congressional offices and in recent town hall meetings, demanding top-to-bottom opposition.

On Wednesday, a group of former Sanders campaign aides and activists launched a PAC, #WeWillReplaceYou, aimed at challenging Democratic elected officials in primaries, asking progressives to pledge to support primary election challengers against any Dems who wont do everything in their power to resist Trump.

A Trump protester in San Francisco. Elijah Nouvelage / Getty Images

ID: 10539477

The Tax March will be based in Washington, with satellite marches planned in cities ranging from New York and Los Angeles to Little Rock, Arkansas, and Boise, Idaho.

Organizers said the idea started with a tweet from Frank Lesser, a New York-based comedy writer who took issue with the Trump administrations claim that people didnt care about his tax returns. (Trump is the first president in 40 years to keep his tax returns private, breaking a tradition kept by candidates since Richard Nixon.)

In Washington this week, members of the Republican-led House of Representatives Ways and Means Committee voted down an amendment proposed by Democrats to have Congress ask the Treasury Department for copies of Trumps tax returns.

Tax March organizers also linked the effort to questions about Trumps ties to Russia.

On Sunday night the presidents national security adviser, Michael Flynn, resigned after the Washington Post revealed that he had discussed sanctions against Russia with the countrys US ambassador. And on Tuesday, a New York Times report cited claims from four current and former US officials that some involved with Trumps campaign had been in contact with Russian intelligence officials during the election, though officials told the Times that no evidence has yet been found that there was coordination with those Russian officials.

Until we see his taxes we dont know how much money he owes Russia, China, and other countries, said Ben Wikler, the Washington director of MoveOn.org.

See original here:
Progressives Want Tax Day To Be The Next Women's March Protest - BuzzFeed News

On February 14, former Secretary of Labor TomPerez arrogantly toldPoliticothat his campaign is within reach of obtaining enough DNC delegate support to win the DNC chair election. Perez claims to have 180 DNC delegate supporters, which is close to the 224 delegates necessary to win. The Associated Press, who notoriously called the Democratic primaries in favor of HillaryClinton on a day when no one voted, announcedthat Perez leads Rep. Keith Ellison by 66 delegates.

The DNC chair race is the Democratic Partys last opportunity to make a unifying concession to progressives, who were cheated and disenfranchised during the Democratic primaries by former DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz. Wasserman Schultzresigned in embarrassment after Wikileaks releasedemails confirming she violated Section 5 Article 4 of the DNC Charter to helpClinton. However,the Democratic Party has yet to acknowledge the damage they caused by anointing Clinton as their presidential nominee.

Perezs main opponent in the DNC chair race, Rep.Keith Ellison, supported Sen.Bernie Sandersin the primaries, and he has received endorsements from Sanders, Our Revolution and several other progressive organizations. Though many have concerns about him pandering to the establishment during his DNCchair campaign, electing Ellisonwouldat the very leastbe a gesture of good faith to progressives.

Perez backs the same failed strategies that have run theDemocraticPartyinto the ground over the last decade. An emailreleased by Wikileaks from Clintoncampaign chair John Podesta revealed that Perez advised the Clinton campaign to whitewash Sanderscampaign during the Democratic primaries in order to repel minority supporters. Perez recommendedNevada as the best opportunity to do so. Despite the fact that Clinton ultimately won Nevada,pollsnoted that moreLatinos voted for Sanders. At Perez recommendation, the mainstream media and Clintoncampaign propagated the false narrative that Sanders supporters were sexist white males, though they had little to no evidence to substantiate these claims.

During Perezs tenure as secretary of labor, he stabbed labor unions in the back bysupporting the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), despite virtually every large labor union strongly opposing it. Perez also granted special waivers to Credit Suisse by removing sanctions that were imposed on investment bankers for helping wealthy Americans evade taxes. Furthermore, hegave Renaissance Technologies, which is run by Bob Mercerone of Trumps biggest donorsand James Simons, one ofClintons biggest donors, a huge tax break.

The Democraticestablishment has rallied behind Perezs candidacy. Former Vice President Joe Biden, former Attorney General Eric Holder and several other establishment figures have formally endorsed Perez, while several others have attacked Sanders for endorsingEllison. It is very concerning that Bernie Sanders is so intent on taking over a party that hes not even a member of that hed insult the beloved vice presidentand really the presidentabout a failed status quo approach, said Texas Democratic chairman Gilberto Hinojosa in an interview. This resentment toward Sanders and his progressive supporters has lingered within the Democratic Party and its leadership since the Democratic primaries. Clintons election loss, which was a huge failure for the Democratic Party, highlighted the need for Democrats to enact meaningful reforms. Nevertheless, the party hasresisted change.

The Democratic Partys failure to reform has incited organizations on the left to emergeincluding theDraft Bernie movement and Justice Democratsin hopes of starting a new party to replace inept, office-holdingDemocratswith progressives. If the Democratic Party elects another establishment puppet to run the DNC, the number of people who are protesting the weak opposition that Democrats have exhibited toward Trump will exponentially increase. Even if Ellison wins, calls for party unity wont come easy. If the Democratic Party continues to shun progressives, these mounting slights may serve as a catalyst to the political revolution that Sanders supporters have been advocating for since the Democratic primaries.

Excerpt from:
There's No Saving the Democratic Party if Tom Perez Wins DNC Chair - Observer

This post is hosted on the Huffington Post's Contributor platform. Contributors control their own work and post freely to our site. If you need to flag this entry as abusive, send us an email.

The union movement and the progressive movement just suffered a crushing loss at the Boeing plant in South Carolina yesterday. As Julie Johnsson and Josh Eidelson detailed in this Bloomberg story, the 3000 Boeing workers faced a massive, coordinated assault by not only Boeing management but the whole political class in South Carolina.

And the almost complete progressive media and political leadership apathy to the fight at Boeing enrages me. Despite a Presidential campaign during and after which everyone said you need to pay attention to working class industrial workers, workers in a right-to-work state like South Carolina stood up to megacorp Boeing-- and were left largely on their own as not only Boeing but the whole business and political class threatened them with retaliation and destruction if they voted yes for the union.

Unsurprisingly, in the face of threats of retaliation and jobs being sent to China and a half million dollar advertising barrage treating them as economic traitors to the state, most of the workers got scared and voted no in the end.

Here you had a company using threats of moving jobs to China-- a perfect opportunity to mobilize nationally and demand Trump put up or shut up and tell Boeing to stop such threats -- and you had mostly crickets among progressive media and activists.

And I have serious rage at everyone who endlessly talked about how Obama was the candidate of business and didn't help workers. You know who cared about union workers at Boeing? Obama. When Boeing first tried to move operations to South Carolina, the Obama NLRB filed unfair labor practices against Boeing and tussled with then-governor Nikki Haley over promoting the move as an anti-union attack. (The administration would drop the charges later at the urging of the IAM union based on settling overall contract negotiations-- and in the face of worries about hostile court actions).

I give props to the twelve U.S. Senators, including Bernie Sanders, who sent a letter to Boeing condemning the anti-union campaign- see here -- but where were the legions of Bernie-supporters who endlessly lectured Clinton for her supposed silence on labor issues during the campaign?

National support for the campaign would have mattered since workers voting on the union needed to know that if they got a union, they would have national support in what would be ongoing battles not just with Boeing but with their own state government. Boeing is a federal contractor and has to worry about public opinion, so that national support matters.

But instead, they were left largely on their own, mostly in a national silence.

Having a 3000-person labor beachhead in anti-union South Carolina would have made a big difference, not just for those workers, but for workers throughout the region. As Josh notes in the linked story, other workers were looking to the Boeing vote on whether to try forming unions themselves.

And politically, it's a statistical fact that the higher the union density in the state, the higher percentage of workers, especially white workers, who end up voting Democratic at election time. That is first because local unions supply a lot of the cash to support local progressive candidates but it's also because they help frame local politics in terms of working class issues and concerns and drive the debate in ways that help progressive candidates.

You can't just love the working class when it serves rhetorical purposes, but ignore all the day-to-day fights that matter. This was indisputably one of the labor fights that mattered and most of the progressive media and progressives on social media just downplayed it or ignored it altogether.

This is just a massive political fail for the whole progressive movement.

Read the rest here:
Progressives Let Boeing Workers Down - Huffington Post