Progressives (Liberals)

Aren't all humans equal, hu?

House Progressive leader Pramila Jayapal will join a "caravan" of migrants seeking asylum as they try to enter the United States from Tijuana on Saturday afternoon — an attempt to spotlight what Democrats view as the inhumane effects of President Donald Trump’s border crackdown.

The Washington Democrat, a rising star in the House Democratic Caucus, flew to the border Friday and is gathering information on the treatment of migrants from Central America by both Mexican and U.S. authorities. In the afternoon she will follow a group of migrants trying to claim asylum to ensure they’re getting a fair shake, she said.

“The president is lying about this caravan, he’s fear mongering,” Jayapal said in a Friday interview before her trip. “He’s trying to use people who are seeking asylum and literally running from death just for his own political benefit and that’s a disgrace.”

The newly elected House Progressive Caucus co-chair added: “He created a crisis at the border.”

Jayapal’s visit comes amid a tense standoff at the border. The president railed about the dangers of “the caravan” on the campaign trail in the final days of the midterm elections. The president has tried to limit asylum claims, including by executive order, but has been rebuffed in part by the courts.

Earlier this week, migrants were sprayed with tear gas as they tried to cross the U.S.-Mexico border — one of the key reasons Jayapal decided to make the visit.

“When I read the report about a week ago that kids and moms were being tear gassed, I just couldn’t sleep,” Jayapal said. “I want to go see for myself what is happening, what happens to asylum seekers as they get to the border, how are they turned back, what’s happening to them in between, where the conditions in which they’re living.”

Jayapal has made several trips to the southern border in recent months. She was the first lawmaker to visit federal prisons housing migrant children who were taken from their parents during Trump’s family separation initiative.

Hill Republicans, while expressing outrage about Trump’s family separation policy, have done little to counter his immigration crackdowns in recent years.

This particular trip, however, comes as power is shifting in the House. Investigators on the House Oversight and Judiciary panels are gearing up to probe Trump’s immigration policies, including family separation and his use of troops at the border. And Jayapal said she would bring back her findings to her colleagues in the House.

Indeed, Jayapal, whose goal Saturday is telling the stories of migrants fleeing from persecution, said she would present her finding to Democratic investigators. The Judiciary panel, of which she is a member, is already spinning up to probe “who gave these orders and how it violates our Constitution,” she said.

“We’re going to dive into all of that because this is a central role of the Judiciary Committee, to have oversight on these issues, to make sure we’re in line with our Constitution and our internal human rights obligations,” she said. “We’re in violation of that on a number of fronts as far as immigrants go.”

Jayapal’s trip is mostly focused on the Mexico side of the border. She crossed into Tijuana on Saturday morning and is meeting with both advocates on the ground and Mexican officials. She’s visiting women and children in migrant shelters as well as LGTBQ migrants who have been separated from the rest of the marchers and are being kept in “horrific” conditions, she said.

Jayapal blames Trump for those conditions, arguing that large groups like the caravan have showed up at the border before without these sorts of issues. But Trump, she said, is “forcing Mexico to create these conditions for people who are seeking asylum.”

“There is international and domestic law that governs that process that we are violating, so I put 95 percent of the blame on this president,” she said.

After the crossing attempt, she’ll meet with advocates and international law experts in the U.S.

Palestinian people were in palistian long before the europian Jews and should be the ones to return to Europe.

More than a hundred years ago, French troops fired the first tear gas grenades at the German enemy. Designed to force people out from cover, tear gas causes tearing and gagging, burning the eyes and skin. Its use has ended in miscarriages, permanent injuries, and death. While all but a few countries have agreed that it is illegal to manufacture, stockpile, or use chemical weapons of war, tear gas continues to proliferate in civilian settings. Today, it is a best-selling form of “less lethal” police force. From Ferguson to the Occupied Territories of Palestine, images of protesters assaulted with “made in the USA” tear gas canisters have been seen around the world. The United States is the largest manufacturer, and Brazil and South Korea are rapidly growing markets, while Britain has found an international audience for its riot control expertise.

Here in a nutshell is what I am looking for in a 2020 candidate.

- College for all
- Medicare for all
- Taxing Wall Street
- Legalizing cannabis
- Abolishing for-profit prisons
- $15/hr (or greater) minimum wage
- Reducing the military budget
- Overturning Citizens United
- Reinstating Glass Steagall

ICYMI: ‘Women’ Is Now Spelled… ‘Womxn’

University students are refusing to use the words ‘woman’ and ‘women’ because they have been deemed ‘offensive’ and include the word ‘man’.

Instead, members of the female sex are being referred to as ‘womxn’ by students at both Goldsmiths, University of London and Kings College London.

At Goldsmiths, the Students Union has ceased to use the words women and woman in its publications, since ‘womxn’ has been deemed more ‘inclusive’ of all students, including those who identify as transgender….

Rejection of the word ‘woman’ dates back to the Seventies when the word ‘womyn’ was adopted by feminists to delete the word ‘man’….

However, ‘womyn’ was controversial because it was seen as being associated with white, cisgender (a person whose gender identity matches their sex at birth) feminism.

In recent years, the term ‘womxn’ has been used instead.
The word ‘womxn’ caused controversy earlier this year when a feminist organisation sponsored by fashion brand H&M used the word 15 times in an email.

Some black and trans women said they were furious people decided they needed a new word to include them – because they are women….

Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), the incoming chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, is interested in calling Gov.-elect Brian Kemp (R-Ga.) in to testify about allegations that he aided his own campaign by engaging in voter suppression.

“I want to be able to bring people in, like the new governor-to-be of Georgia, to explain, you know, explain to us why is it fair for wanting to be secretary of state and be running [for governor],” Cummings told HuffPost.

Kemp won a narrow victory over Democratic candidate Stacey Abrams on Nov. 6 amid allegations that he used his position as secretary of state to purge voters from the rolls and reduce polling locations in African-American communities. She is suing the state, alleging a wide range of abuses by Kemp’s office aimed at reducing voting by African-Americans in the state.

“It was not a free and fair election,” Abrams said after conceding the election to Kemp on Nov. 20.

Possible hearings on voter suppression in 2018 would not be limited to Georgia. Cummings is also focused on allegations of voter suppression in Kansas and North Carolina.

Aside from Kemp, Cummings suggested bringing Debbie Cox, the county clerk for Ford County, Kansas, to testify. She became the focus of controversy when she moved the only polling location in Dodge City outside the city limits over unexplained concerns about safety. Dodge City is over 50 percent Latino. The ACLU sued in response to the move and Cox’s having provided only one polling location for a town of 13,000 people.

Cummings is also interested in calling officials from North Carolina in to testify about the closure of 20 percent of the state’s early-voting polling sites this year. These early voting sites were closed because of a law passed by the Republican-controlled legislature over the veto of Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper in June.

Hearings on voter suppression in the 2018 midterms wouldn’t just serve the purpose of exposing these practices on a national stage but would also show why it’s necessary for Congress to pass reforms to prevent such abuses.

House Democrats will push a package of reforms targeting campaign finance, ethics and voting rights laws as their first order of business in January.

This legislation will include a fix to the Voting Rights Act that would reinstate the federal preclearance oversight for changes to voting laws in some jurisdictions that was gutted by the Supreme Court in 2013. The bill would also make it harder for states to engage in mass voter purges as Kemp did. Holding hearings on what happened in Georgia would help Democrats build an evidentiary case in support of their legislative agenda, according to Cummings.

“One of the things about my committee, you know, it’s called Oversight and Government Reform,” he said. “Oversight, you know, you gotta research and find out what the hell is going on and then, if it is appropriate, to do those things to reform the system.”