Last Wednesday night I watched as Susan Sarandon tried mightily to disentangle herself from her stated fantasy of getting her revolution on through the election of a Reality TV Star.
"Some people feel that Donald Trump will bring the revolution immediately, if he gets in. Then things will really, you know, explode," Sarandon said, referring to the political "revolution" Sanders preaches about on the trail.
Chris Hayes pressed Ms. Sarandon on her dreams of the explosive revolution:
[...] “Can you look me in the eyes, both of you, and say, ‘Yes, 24 days into the Trump administration, this is about what I expected it to be’?”
Sarandon shot back, “What is the point of even saying that?”
“No shit,” I thought. Rich, entitled, privileged woman willing to play with the lives of the less fortunate so that she can fulfill her fantasy of a revolution. For make no mistake about it, it is marginalized communities who are paying the price for this indulgence in juvenile romanticism. Real people are suffering, real lives are being disrupted but those who thought that they were paving the way for the revolution by failing to vote for the only decent option will be okay...not unlike Donald Trump himself who after Obama won in 2012 called for a revolution from the safety of his gold-gilded ivory towers.
Let’s have a look at some of what’s happening on the road to the revolution.
Immigrants
Care to let us know how the revolution will help her family?
Guadalupe García de Rayos crossed the southern border when she was 14-years-old. She built a life here. She got married and had children. She was deported for the “crime” of using a fake social security number to get a life-sustaining job.
The head of the Hispanic Caucus, Rep. Michelle Lujan Grisham, describes what has been happening under this new administration this way:
“You’re just unleashing a police power without any kind of involvement from anybody else and that is not how this country operates,” she said. “The potential there is we’re creating an immigration police state.”
Jorge Ramos — one of the best journalists around — gave us an up close and personal look at how just the prospect of a Trump’s presidency was traumatizing young children.
Thanks to people who failed to look beyond their own selfish wants, the worst fears of these children and others are being realized even as you read this. They are the ones caught in the living nightmare.
Women’s Health
Donald Trump’s presidency brings death to women and girls in developing countries, and no, that’s not hyperbole.
President Donald Trump reinstated — andmassively expanded— an executive order Monday barring US foreign aid from going to any nongovernmental organization (NGO) that either provides abortion services, or evendiscussesabortion with its patients as an option for family planning.
[...]
“Trump’s Global Gag Rule is cruel and unusual in that it massively expands an already harmful policy,” said a statement from PAI. “This grotesque expansion targets the most effective health organizations in 60 low and middle income countries.”
[...]
The funding cuts will go far beyond abortion, and even beyond contraception. They will likely prevent many global health organizations from offering HIV prevention and treatment services, maternal health care, and Zika virus prevention.
Reinstating the gag rule means that not only will women suffer and even die, but also that many will lose their jobs as healthcare providers are forced to cut services because of the lack of funding.
#NoDAPL
No representative of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe anywhere around
He spared not one thought for Native Americans and their concerns as he signed the executive order for the resumption of the Dakota Access Pipeline. There was nobody representing the views of the Water Protectors, those who live along the route of the pipeline and who will suffer the consequences of the inevitable malfunction when it occurs. The Standing Rock Sioux tribe and their children, and their children’s children will pay a heavy price for the sake of some nebulous revolution.
Over-Policing
While the privileged fantasize about revolution, the new administration has been doing its best to change the very foundational principles of law enforcement in this country. Per one of the earliest executive orders he signed, the primary job of cops is no longer to serve and protect the community, but rather to serve and protect law enforcement officers.
One executive order sets out to define new federal crimes, and increase penalties for existing ones, to further protect officers from violence.
Over 200 enlightened police chiefs — including David Brown of Dallas — went public with their disagreement with the Trump’s agenda. They were particularly concerned that there was no mention of the importance of community policing.
“We must instead consider those policies that better preserve public safety,” the agenda states. “Dangerous, violent offenders should be behind bars, but incarceration is not necessarily the best tool to put non-violent offenders back on the road to productive, law-abiding lives.”
But we all know that there are those law enforcement officers who are only too happy to have a Trump in the White House and a Sessions heading the DoJ. Police killed 167 people (http://www.killedbypolice.net/) between January 1 and February 16 and chances are zero to none that Jeff Sessions will be ordering any investigation of any police department any time soon.
Some delusional egghead’s need for a revolution means that we lose even the little that we had before. I dare anyone to contradict me when I say that the worst Attorney General that Hillary would have nominated would be orders of magnitude better for at-risk communities than Jeff Sessions on his best day.
So Ms. Sarandon — and others of like mind — please do excuse me if I can conjure up no enthusiasm for your revolution. The price is just too damn high.
(Wordcloud composed of Support the Dream Defenders, Michael Brown Over-Policed Rights Act, Expand Medicaid, Freedom of Information Act Project, Combat Racism, Demand Equality.)
Members of the Daily Kos group Support the Dream Defenders launched four ongoing projects:
1. We came together to support the Dream Defenders in Florida and their mission, our first project and the origin of our name. The Dream Defendersdefend the Dream of Martin Luther King Jr. by "develop[ing] the next generation of radical leaders to realize and exercise our independent collective power; building alternative systems and organizing to disrupt the structures that oppress our communities." Please donate here.
2. Our Michael Brown Over-Policed Rights Act, crowd-sourced at Daily Kos in the fall of 2014 after the death of Michael Brown. Our bill quickly earned endorsements from the NAACP and the ACLU. The NAACP forwarded our bill to members of Congress, and we distributed it to members of the Congressional Black Caucus and other progressive members of Congress. President Obama signed into a law a small piece of our bill in December 2014. The Department of Justice included parts of our law in their reports on Ferguson, Missouri, in 2015. Our state version of the MBOPRA is currently in committee in the Kansas legislature.
3. Our Freedom of Information Act project. Nineteen Republican governors chose to kill poor people by not expanding Medicaid. Ebola has killed about 9000 people in total; Republican governors kill 23,000 people PER YEAR by refusing federal support for Medicaid, a story ignored by traditional media. Our project forces those governors to out themselves, clapping them in a Catch 22. With the support of readers, we publicize our results through letters to the editor, press releases, and petitions.
You can receive all future diaries of Support the Dream Defenders in your Daily Kos Stream by clicking here. Then click "Follow," which will make all STDD diaries appear in "My Stream" of your Daily Kos page.
This is a community diary. Please Join us.
You are also welcome to join us on The Porch over at the Black Kos Community group on Friday afternoons at 4 p.m. ET."
