I’ve rebranded my blog from Poetry and Other Mystical Space to Poetry and Politics. In reality, I cut the title from my website homepage to make space for the Open Notes page, but it’s still valid that I call it something.
I studied American Policy and Politics undergrad and was an activist in college. A variety of factors resulted in my turning away from news and politics, for the most part, for much of the past 35 years. I don’t regret it but am back in the mix now. I don’t know how I’ll swing it — a full time working single Mom, running two open mics, in a chorus, in a band, practicing guitar, writing, painting, and needing a world full of window-staring time. This week’s been exhausting keeping up with it all and responding to minute-to-minute changing news. But I admit, it feels good. A return to something communal, hopeful, and courageous, even in alarming times.
This piece is mainly a space for me to dump posts I’ve made to Facebook. I don’t trust Facebook or Zuckerberg. Still, I use Facebook a lot to share thoughts and uplift various poets and musicians. I plan to continue doing so, at least for a while, but many of my friends have left Facebook and I don’t feel great relying on it. I begin to move toward leaning more heavily on my websites than social media.
I think it’s important to save a chronicle of what’s happening now. So, here I lay some of my more political posts from this week, with wishes for your freedom.
February 2nd
When my head comes out of the sand...
I vote. I believe the personal is the political and do my best to live authentically, free, and to uplift others. That's been enough.
I had not been following political pages or talking much politics overtly on FB. But the times they are a-changin'.
I ask my friends that disagree to respect. I've never mocked a post of a friend who voiced a different political philosophy or opinion. Surely we can disagree and be civil. I think what we're facing now is different than politics as usual. 1) I genuinely feel that our Democracy is threatened. 2) I genuinely fear that our liberty is threatened. 3) I do not perceive that the government is heading in the direction of serving its purpose for its people. (I mean, more than usual.)
You can unfriend me for activist posts or political re-posts, but I hope you don't. My primary interest is always freedom -- yours, mine, all my wonderful quirky friends! Thanks
February 2nd
Wow, Trudeau -- watching his speech. So good!
Thinking none of this will go through, but I've been wrong before. I hope I'm right.
February 4th
This is both comforting and enlivening.
The power illegally given to Musk is horrifying.
The inhumanity (in part related) is moreso. But not to despair!
"Stop it with the doomsaying... Give... to Public Citizen, the ACLU... Show up at marches... protect people from ICE. If you're safe, do simple symbolic things… to support people who are not safe. Just like we should not obey in advance, we should not panic in advance either..."
Hello! I'm posting in response to the many sincerely anguished claims that not enough is being done to stop Trump. This is not reflected in the facts.
- Represented by Public Citizen Litigation Group and State Democracy Defenders Fund, the Alliance for Retired Americans, the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), and the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) filed suit on Monday against the Treasury Department “for sharing confidential data with the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), run by Elon Musk.” Go to Public Citizen's website to learn all about this lawsuit, which is very likely to prevail.
- On USAID, appearing with other Democratic lawmakers outside USAID offices on Monday, Representative Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) shouted, “Elon Musk, you didn't create USAID. The United States Congress did for the American people … like Elon Musk did not create USAID, he doesn't have the power to destroy it. And who's going to stop him? We are... This a constitutional crisis that we are in today.” Lawsuits have also been filed in this matter, and are also likely to prevail.
- Hakeem Jeffries has announced lawsuits have been filed regarding the firings of inspectors general.
- On Jan 21, Democracy Forward, was filed at 12:01 p.m. ET on Monday and accused Elon Musk's DOGE of being a "shadow operation led by unelected billionaires" that flouts federal transparency rules. That should win.
- National Security Counselors filed a suit arguing that DOGE meets the requirements to be a federal advisory committee and is therefore legally required to have "fairly balanced" representation, keep regular minutes of meetings and allow public access to meetings. Clearly accurate.
- Eighteen state attorneys general and a slew of immigrants' rights groups brought swift legal action against Trump after he signed his executive order seeking to ban birthright citizenship for some children born in the U.S., arguing that it violates the Fourteenth Amendment. Obviously, clearly unconstitutional.
- "Schedule F" has been challenged in court by the National Treasury Employees Union, which represents employees in 37 agencies and departments.
- Several immigrant rights groups in the United States, as well as the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), have filed a lawsuit challenging President Donald Trump’s ban on asylum claims.
- GLAD Law and the National Center For Lesbian Rights (NCLR) have sued to stop Trump's ban on trans people in the military.
And there are many more - I'll link to a great list of them in the comments.
Yes, there are Trump judges in the courts, and if Aileen Cannon types get these cases, Trump may prevail. But most judges are not like her. These actions are clearly illegal and/or unconstitutional, and they WILL be stopped.
Just like the tariffs were not meant to prevail -- Trump won that round, "forcing" Canada and Mexico to take "action" on fentanyl -- these actions are not meant to prevail. They're meant to flood the zone with shit, confuse and immobilize us. They said they'd do "Shock and Awe" and that's what they've done. Nothing here should be surprising.
Shock and Awe is up to YOU. I am not shocked, I am not in awe.
Oh, and the "mainstream media" has reported on all of these. The info above has come from Newsweek, the NY Times, and other mainstream sources. Please stop attacking journalists when we are being threatened by the FBI. Who do you think you're helping by doing that?
Stop it with the doomsaying and gloomsaying. Want to make a difference? Give thousands of dollars to Public Citizen, the ACLU, and similar groups. Show up at marches. Put your ass on the line and help protect people from ICE. If you're safe, do simple symbolic things (like changing your social media pictures) to support people who are not safe. Just like we should not obey in advance, we should not panic in advance either. This is not the end of democracy. That is just what the bad guys want you to think. Get over it and fight.
-Jay Michaelson, February 3rd
February 5th
Red lips, blue clothes, American flag patch on my sleeve... I'm ready to go, but do not see mention of a protest at the Treasury Department. ?? Yesterday I read that there would be another gathering there at 5:00 today. Does anyone know? In the list of protests today, I saw one at Department of Labor at 3:00. And then the 50/50 from earlier.
Please advise. Feel free to call or message if you're not comfortable posting.
February 5th
America
The atrocities we were built on are great. Every time I study Reconstruction my heart breaks -- the promise and possibilities that began, then were lost. We've been moving forward toward a level of truth that can't include racism, I think. Republicans and Democrats. Not a party issue. Issue of humanity. Let's not lose again
President George W. Bush's chief speechwriter, Michael Gerson, has a message for people who are excusing President Trump's racism:
"I had fully intended to ignore President Trump’s latest round of racially charged taunts against an African American elected official, and an African American activist, and an African American journalist and a whole city with a lot of African Americans in it. I had every intention of walking past Trump’s latest outrages and writing about the self-destructive squabbling of the Democratic presidential field, which has chosen to shame former vice president Joe Biden for the sin of being an electable, moderate liberal.
But I made the mistake of pulling James Cone’s 'The Cross and the Lynching Tree' off my shelf — a book designed to shatter convenient complacency. Cone recounts the case of a white mob in Valdosta, Ga., in 1918 that lynched an innocent man named Haynes Turner. Turner’s enraged wife, Mary, promised justice for the killers. The sheriff responded by arresting her and then turning her over to the mob, which included women and children. According to one source, Mary was 'stripped, hung upside down by the ankles, soaked with gasoline, and roasted to death. In the midst of this torment, a white man opened her swollen belly with a hunting knife and her infant fell to the ground and was stomped to death.'
God help us. It is hard to write the words. This evil — the evil of white supremacy, resulting in dehumanization, inhumanity and murder — is the worst stain, the greatest crime, of U.S. history. It is the thing that nearly broke the nation. It is the thing that proved generations of Christians to be vicious hypocrites. It is the thing that turned normal people into moral monsters, capable of burning a grieving widow to death and killing her child.
When the president of the United States plays with that fire or takes that beast out for a walk, it is not just another political event, not just a normal day in campaign 2020. It is a cause for shame. It is the violation of martyrs’ graves. It is obscene graffiti on the Lincoln Memorial. It is, in the eyes of history, the betrayal — the re-betrayal — of Haynes and Mary Turner and their child. And all of this is being done by an ignorant and arrogant narcissist reviving racist tropes for political gain, indifferent to the wreckage he is leaving, the wounds he is ripping open.
Like, I suspect, many others, I am finding it hard to look at resurgent racism as just one in a series of presidential offenses or another in a series of Republican errors. Racism is not just another wrong. The Antietam battlefield is not just another plot of ground. The Edmund Pettus Bridge is not just another bridge. The balcony outside Room 306 at the Lorraine Motel is not just another balcony. As U.S. history hallows some causes, it magnifies some crimes.
What does all this mean politically? It means that Trump’s divisiveness is getting worse, not better. He makes racist comments, appeals to racist sentiments and inflames racist passions. The rationalization that he is not, deep down in his heart, really a racist is meaningless. Trump’s continued offenses mean that a large portion of his political base is energized by racist tropes and the language of white grievance. And it means — whatever their intent — that those who play down, or excuse, or try to walk past these offenses are enablers.
Some political choices are not just stupid or crude. They represent the return of our country’s cruelest, most dangerous passion. Such racism indicts Trump. Treating racism as a typical or minor matter indicts us."
— Michael Gerson
copied post from Daryn Watson
February 6
The Government working!
from Occupy Democrats post:
BREAKING: MAGA billionaire Elon Musk suffers a crushing setback as a court rules that he and his DOGE minions must be blocked from further accessing crucial government databases.
This throws a major wrench into their fascist plans...
Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly of the U.S. District Court of Washington, D.C approved a temporary restraining order to protect the systems.
Norm Eisen, attorney and co-founder of the States United Democracy Center, celebrated the ruling on Blue Sky, calling it a "big win by us at the State Democracy Defender's Action and our partners, including Public Citizen."
The case alleged that Musk and his unelected DOGE henchmen gained access to sensitive personal information about government employees and others without having the appropriate security clearance and oversight from Congress.
Thanks to the ruling, Treasury Department officials "will not provide access to any payment record or payment system of records maintained within the [Treasury] Bureau of Fiscal Service."
Under the order, Musk's minion Tom Krause and former employee Marko Elez will have access to Treasury’s Fiscal Service, but they will be barred from writing/editing any changes into it and will only be able to read it.
"This Order shall remain in effect until such time as the Court rules on the Plaintiffs' forthcoming Preliminary Injunction Motion," it stated.
Please like and share!
February 6
Grateful for the Constitution and to see checks on power.
Much still to fight. Not free of reason for concern and need for vigilance, but the government's working. Not well for everyone (never in American history). But checks are working
From NPR post:
UPDATE: The second preliminary injunction, issued by Seattle U.S. District Judge John Coughenour, indefinitely blocks President Trump's efforts to end birthright citizenship. It comes a day after a Maryland federal judge issued a similar ruling.
Photo by Stephanie McCabe on Unsplash
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