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Fear Grows as Armed Trump Supporters Escalate Threats Against Progressives AlterNet Fear Grows as Armed Trump Supporters Escalate Threats Against Progressives. "There are a bunch of people on the Internet who are waiting for someone to tell them it's okay to start shooting at you." By Rick Perlstein / The Washington Spectator. April ... and more »

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Fear Grows as Armed Trump Supporters Escalate Threats Against Progressives - AlterNet

I read the letter comments offensive by Joanne M. Holcomp in response to Walter Crottys letter. She managed to blame Donald Trump for mocking Mexicans, a special needs person and even Jews when he told a Jewish journalist to sit down. Of course she says that Trump lies about everything including John F. Kennedys assassination.

Two things bothered me. The comment about the Jewish journalist. She is calling President Trump anti-Semitic and I am surprised that no mention of black racism or the LGBT community was mentioned until I read another letter by Laura H. Catanach Harm has been done. This letter filled in everything missing from the other letter, discrimination of blacks, Hispanics, LGBT and Middle Easterners. She even threw in scientists for good luck. She claims the usual white, heterosexual men that will benefit. Sorry, when I was 26 years old I was married six years, spent two years in the army and two years in the army reserve, I worked seven years full time and nine years part time. Growing up my clothes were mostly hand me downs from my older brother. As long as my shoes fit I used cardboard for the holes in the sole. I didnt need my parents insurance nor did I have any white male privilege. None of my friends that were mostly first- generation Americans had any male white privilege. President Obama on his mothers side had more white privilege than anyone I know.

Of course there was a letter to let everyone know about Obama saving the country. Patriotic right and duty written by Dr. Gerald Malkin. There is a better future for jobs under Trump than Obama. The only new jobs Obama created were the workers sewing Mr. pillows. The unemployment rate went down because millions of workers gave up looking for jobs that werent there. The debt and deficit are sky high. As for Obamacare, the only reason so many joined was because it was free. That was an insult to the seniors on Medicare that have to spend almost $100 a month plus pay for drug insurance. Why have Falmouth Hospital, Cape Cod Hospital, St. Elisabeth Hospital and Beth Israel Hospital expanded their emergency rooms? I thought that Obamacare would solve the problem of those without insurance that used the emergency room for care. Old habits are hard to change. I went down Industrial Drive in Mashpee to find a doctors office and passed so many health care buildings that I wondered why Medicare and Medicaid arent bankrupt.

A patriot doesnt wish the president to fail or whose goal is to make the president a failure. A failed president is a failed country.

What we need are the good old- fashioned liberals of old and not these phony progressives who use George Soros as their mentor.

Anthony Tocci, Plum Hollow Road, East Falmouth

Excerpt from:
Phony Progressives - Letter - CapeNews.net

BY MICHAEL HILL

Quick: Name an event youve attended recently where progressives and conservatives, and everyone in between, have come together to calmly and collaboratively discuss solutions for tackling a critically important global issue. Nothing comes to mind? Well, thats exactly what happened at The Collider in downtown Asheville March 25-26, when 80 people from Virginia, West Virginia, Tennessee, North Carolina and South Carolina came together for the Mid-South Regional Conference of the Citizens Climate Lobby.

The nonprofit, nonpartisan, grassroots group advocates for national policies to address climate change. The focus is on passing federal legislation to create a revenue-neutral, carbon fee-and-dividend program in which companies would pay a fee for extracting fossil fuels based on how many tons of carbon dioxide the use of those fuels would produce. After covering the modest administrative costs, all remaining revenues would be returned to American households in the form of checks from the Treasury Department. Were proposing an initial fee of $15 per ton, increasing by $10 a ton annually. Studies predict that such a program would result in the creation of 2.1 million jobs and more than a 50 percent decrease in carbon dioxide emissions over 20 years.

If the Climate Lobby can persuade Southern members of Congress to support the proposal, theres reason to believe it could become federal law. If we succeed in the South, we succeed nationally, Don Addu, the organizations Southeast regional director, told the conference.

Asheville chapter leader Steffi Rausch and her counterparts from other chapters briefly summarized their groups activities. After that, participants were treated to inspirational talks by local agricultural expert and author Laura Lengnick, who runs the consulting firm Cultivating Resilience, and Drew Jones, co-director of the Asheville-based nonprofit Climate Interactive. Addressing the assembled volunteers, Jones, a globally recognized expert on climate change modeling, said, You all are the right people working at the right angle on the right issue.

Jones illustrated several scenarios, concluding that in order to prevent catastrophic impacts, humans must start now to first cap and then reduce greenhouse gas emissions. (To get a better sense of this, check out C-ROADS, Climate Interactives free policy simulator.) To that end, noted Jones, 64 national and subnational jurisdictions have enacted carbon fees.

He also highlighted some global trends, including a slowdown in Chinas production and consumption of coal, and the plummeting costs of wind (50 percent drop since 2009) and solar energy systems (80 percent drop since 2008). But even these positive developments arent enough and thats where the carbon pricing program comes in.

The conference included several sessions training volunteers in how to lobby effectively, build relationships and engage the community. Other sessions specifically addressed such topics as reaching out to conservatives, practicing active listening, and holding a lobbying meeting with members of Congress and their staffers. Participants heard about efforts by the Charleston, W.Va., chapter to bring the idea of a carbon fee-and-dividend program to the very heart of coal country.

Ill be honest: I struggled at first with the idea of proactively engaging with members of Congress, regardless of their ideological bent and party affiliation. Sometimes I just want to scream and shout, We have to do something about climate change now! What do you mean The science is unsettled. Are you kidding?

Now, however, Im all in with that approach, because this issue is too crucial for me to hold grudges or think that I alone have the solution. Im a pragmatist. I want to see the high elevation spruce/fir forests survive in Western North Carolina, see our native brook trout thrive. Most of all, I want my children, your children and our grandchildren to grow up in a world with a stable climate.

The Citizens Climate Lobby declares itself to be relentlessly optimistic, and thats a pretty accurate description. I find these volunteers positive spirit and enthusiasm to be contagious. I hope you will, too.

To find out more about CCL or get on the mailing list, visit citizensclimatelobby.org. To keep up with the Asheville chapters activities, visit facebook.com/ashevilleccl.

Michael Hill teaches mathematics and environmental science at the Asheville School and volunteers with the Citizens Climate Lobby. You can find his blog at thehillbillyenvironmentalist.blogspot.com.

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Conservatives and progressives unite to fight climate change ... - Mountain Xpress

TUCKER, Ga. To the 50 or so people who filled up the back room of Piccadilly Cafeteria in this Atlanta suburb on Wednesday night, Democratic congressional candidate Jon Ossoff is a godsend. The 30-year-old Ossoff is threatening to snatch away the reliably Republican congressional seat recently vacated by Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price. This special election in Georgias sixth district has become a fully nationalized referendum on the Trump presidency, with outside spending groups and national party committees dumping money and resources into the contest. The people who came to Piccadilly to meet and greet Ossoff felt an urgency that borders on desperation to send him to Congress.

Ossoff is the consensus Democratic candidate running against a splintered field of Republican challengers, and hes polling in the mid-40percent range heading into the April 18 election. If he clears 50 percent of the vote, hell win outright and avoid a runoff election in June. The intensity and the momentum here is driven by the grassroots at the local level, Ossoff said in an interview at the Piccadilly. A win on April 18, he said, would be a demonstration of the potential of grassroots organizing, a renewed emphasis on field [organizing] and grassroots fundraising.

You can hardly stumble three steps in the 6th CongressionalDistrict without hearing the word grassroots, and the Piccadilly meet and greet was as grassroots as it gets. The event was co-sponsored by Indivisible Marching Buddies and Indivisible Progressive Action Group for Atlanta, two of the many Indivisible-linked activist groups that have sprouted like mushrooms since President Donald Trumps election. Everyone there filled out postcards to mail to voters reminding them to get out and cast a ballot.

Margie Lee-Syzmanski, a 64-year-old retired social worker from Chamblee and founder of Indivisible Marching Buddies, attended the Womens March on Washington in January and returnedto Georgia imbued with a feeling of activist vigor. I have not been an activist since the Vietnam War, Lee-Syzmanski told me, adding that she felt Trumps election was more than I could accept without standing up and saying something.

Indivisible Progressive Action Group for Atlanta was started by Annabeth Balance, an 80-year-old retired transit worker who owns a Native American jewelry store and has a degree in physics. (She didnt pursue a career in that field because, she said, all the jobs involved killing people.) Balance started organizing on behalf of Ossoff after civil rights icon Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., endorsed him. When he came up and said, Heres this young guy, Jon Ossoff, that Im supporting, that was it for me, she told Salon.

This local activism for Ossoff has been complemented by endorsements from online behemoths like Daily Kos, which was quick to recognize this district north of Atlanta as a potential pickup for Democrats and threw its support behind Ossoff. The resulting flood of donations help Ossoff raise a record-setting $8.3 million. David Nir, Daily Kos political director,told Salon in an email that endorsements from Lewis and Rep. Hank Johnson, both Atlanta area Democrats, showed that Ossoff had quickly consolidated considerable local support to a degree no other candidate had, so we jumped in. And from there, it all exploded.s

To see this level of grassroots enthusiasm is interesting because the assumption in Democratic politics is that the activist energy emanates primarily from the Bernie Sanders wing of the party, which powered Democratic candidate James Thompson to a near upsetearlier this week in Kansas fourth district (formerly represented by Mike Pompeo, now Trumps CIA director). Ossoff is in no way a Berniecrat; he preaches positivity and pragmatism at the expense of ideology, and his campaign style is so highly polished that youd be scared to run on it wearing socks.

I asked Ossoff if he would support a Medicare-for-all proposal of the sort that Sanders backs. He would not. I think we should be focused on incremental progress based upon the body of law on the books rather than going back to square one and proceeding from a starting point of ideological purity, he said. I think there needs to be less ideology around health care policy on the left and the right. (Ossoff demurred on whether hed back a Medicare buy-in option for Obamacare exchanges.)

For Democrats in Georgias 6th CongressionalDistrict, this is fine. I dont think hes a radical progressive, Lee-Syzmanski said. Hes not demanding free health care for everyone and la la la. Cynthia Canida, a physicians assistant from Atlanta, told me that she backed Ossoff because of his commitment to bring a progressive idea and to implement it in a way that reaches across the aisle. Complaints about hyperpartisanship were on the lips of just about everyone I talked to.

And, of course, theres the Trump factor. The president is not a popular person in this longtime Republican stronghold he won the district by just 1.5 points last year. Backlash directed atTrumps presidency is driving a good deal of the activism on which Ossoff is capitalizing. Mark Shepherd, a retired home inspector from Atlanta, shared withme that hes supportingOssoff to protect the marriage rights he and his husband now enjoy. Im 65; its time that me and my spouse, that we can kind of sit back and enjoy, he said. But I cant. Not with Trump.

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Activism in suburban Atlanta: Grassroots progressives hope to ... - Salon

And the pendulum swings

If Donald Trumps presidency and the success of the House Freedom Caucus resulted from the backlash unleashed by a certain type of conservative voter, who had long felt marginalized and ignored, then we are alreadyin just a few short monthswitnessing a strong counter-backlash.

Unlike the swing of a pendulum, which in normal circumstances will gradually lose momentum in response to the forces of friction, the political pendulum is still gaining speed and force.

Witness the rapid rocketing of Albemarle County native Tom Perriello to the top of a poll in the Virginia gubernatorial race.

Democrat Perriellos recent success comes not just in response to last years Republican victories but also is a reaction to, and rebuke against, fellow Democrats whom the progressive wing of the party view as too moderate.

Just as moderate Republicans have been tumbled from power over the past few years, now moderateor, at least, traditionalDemocrats are being challenged by a robust politically liberal movement. Republicans are being pushed further right; Democrats are being pulled further left.

The Democrats heir-apparent for Virginia governor has been Lt. Gov. Ralph Northam, who has patiently bided his time in the No. 2 slot awaiting his chance at the nomination.

For both parties, gubernatorial candidates often step up to the nomination after serving as lieutenant governor or attorney general. Thats not always true, of course; current Gov. Terry McAuliffe was an exception. But service in one of the other two statewide positions is usually seen by party leaders as a prep step to the gubernatorial nomination.

Then out of left field came Tom Perriello.

Defeated by a Republican challenger in 2011 after one term in the House of Representatives, Mr. Perriello turned toward other forms of serviceincluding as a U.S. special envoy to parts of Africa, appointed by President Obama.

He announced his candidacy in early January, an apparent reaction to Hillary Clintons loss in the presidential election. Immediately after that loss, some critics began speculating that Ms. Clinton was too traditional, too mainstream, too tied to party insiders (and too flawed in other ways) to have had a chance of wowing and wooing voters. They argued that firebrand Bernie Sanders from the left wing of the party would have had a better chance.

Now Mr. Sanders has endorsed Tom Perriello and even has campaigned with him.

The progressive strategy is paying off. With the nomination only a couple of months away, a new poll puts Mr. Perriello ahead of Dr. Northam.

By todays standards of progressivism, Mr. Perriellos record as representative was more that of a moderate. But he clearly now identifies with the progressive wing of his party.

By the way, the governors race isnt the only place where a surge of progressivism may be swamping more midstream politicians.

In Charlottesville, several liberal movements have taken hold in recent years, from Occupy Charlottesville to the recently formed Equity and Progress in Charlottesville. A number of new candidates have filed to run for City Council, some of whom cite progressive social issues in their platforms.

By itself, the creation of EPiC, whose website stresses that Status quo is not good enough, signals that many city residents are unhappy with traditional Charlottesville politics.

Both statewide and locally, well see in the next election how far the swinging pendulum might take us. Based on the messages from the current backlash, it just might be a wild ride.

The (Charlottesville) Daily Progress

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EDITORIAL: Progressives seek a stamp on politics - The Daily Progress