#Organize With Bernie

[martyrbat]

well maybe if you look at bernie wrightson's frankenstein art youll calm down!

[reasonsforhope]

BTW: the Hot Labor Summer is 100% real

[adm-starblitzsteel-4305]

Here are the notes from novelization of GxK:

Your opinions are free to express.

Link:

https://x.com/skledimon/status/1774455459568664739?s=20

[garbagequeer]

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

Moderna will keep its COVID vaccine on the market at no cost to consumers, even after the federal government stops paying for it, the company announced Wednesday.

"Everyone in the United States will have access to Moderna's COVID-19 vaccine regardless of their ability to pay," the company said in a statement.

Last month, the vaccine maker was slammed for reportedly considering a dramatic price increase for the shot, which it had developed with the help of the federal government.

The proposal was also bad timing: The Biden administration was moving toward ending its designation of a public health emergency on May 11, which meant that federal funding for vaccines would soon dry up and uninsured Americans would have to pay out of pocket for their boosters.

Among the critics of Moderna's reported consideration of a price increase -- from about $26 a shot to as much as $130 -- was Sen. Bernie Sanders, who has long advocated for government-funded health care and alleged the move would result in deaths.

"How many of these Americans will die from COVID 19 as a result of limited access to these lifesaving vaccines?" Sanders, I-Vt., wrote in a January letter to Moderna.

"While nobody can predict the exact figure, the number could well be in the thousands. In the midst of a deadly pandemic, restricting access to this much needed vaccine is unconscionable," he added.

Now, Moderna will be the sole manufacturer of COVID vaccines offering its shot for free to the uninsured. Under federal regulation, insurance companies are already required to foot the bill for COVID vaccines.

"Moderna remains committed to ensuring that people in the United States will have access to our COVID-19 vaccines regardless of ability to pay," the company wrote in its statement.

"Moderna's COVID-19 vaccines will continue to be available at no cost for insured people whether they receive them at their doctors' offices or local pharmacies. For uninsured or underinsured people, Moderna's patient assistance program will provide COVID-19 vaccines at no cost" after the public health emergency expires.

To date, the federal government paid for all COVID vaccines for Americans, whether they were insured or not using emergency money passed by Congress. But President Joe Biden says he plans to let the nationwide public health emergency expire May 11.

Once that happens, federal support ends for many of the programs put in place to help uninsured Americans, including expanded Medicaid, testing and treatments.

Last month, the World Health Organization said COVID-19 remains a public health emergency worldwide, but that the pandemic was at a "transition point."

WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the "global response remains hobbled because in too many countries, these powerful, life-saving tools are still not getting to the populations that need them most – especially older people and health workers."

[and-to-you-its-just-words]

When writing fic, I generally stay canon compliant, if not closely canon adjacent. I like to work with what the show provides unless I’m writing a complete AU. However I have to admit that Bernie Stabler’s continued quick decline into dementia is really putting a wrench in a bunch of the WIPS I have on the go.

[bsaka7]

Where would you most like to visit in the world?

What’s your favourite memory?

When did you get into f1?

1) i really would love to go to Egypt... I was going to study abroad in Jordan pre-covid but it got canceled :(. I wrote a couple papers related to Cairo in school and would love, love, love to visit some day... test my godawful Arabic... etc. But I want to go like... anywhere... everywhere...

2) honestly... maybe my last robotics competition as a student... we lost in the like...the group stage finals I guess??? and I was like sad obv but it was also like... the culmination of something that I cared about so incredibly deeply and like a team of ppl I loved. nothing else comes close. it's hard to describe how much it mattered in like the world i inhabit now... I don't regret not going into engineering but like. Idk. I'll probably never love anything in that way ever again. That's pretty special.

3) summer 2021... roomie never around... was bored... started dts... watched a race... got hooked... nothing special. Needed something to be obsessed with lol. Missed sports.

[milquetoast-on-acid]

I haven't really been watching lately but... I'm so excited for this episode. Whatever episode this is going to be! Bernie I've missed you!!!

[mcleodhandcraftgifts]

[mesetacadre]

The anti-imperialism posting experience

🚩 read-parenti

I hate the US so fucking much you wouldn't believe. The CIA killed my grandfather for trying to organize a union in the british-owned textile factory. To this day they keep my entire continent poor.

🦝 genderqueer-bernie 🔴🟠🟡🟢🔵🟣 follow

Hey OP I like this post but uhhhh

You're not the only one oppressed by neoliberalism

Middle class Americans got screwed over by Reagan

Corporate profits are at an all time high and we need solidarity more than ever

So instead of hating on Jessica from Idaho we should all work together against Power. Volunteer at a soup kitchen! Attend your local protests! Join the DSA!

#not ninjago #vote blue #progressive #social justice #sj #dsa

[dungeonrabbit]

[lunastar92]

I love Mama Stabler!

Nooo! She got out of the car!

[qqueenofhades]

Is it foolish of me to sympathize with how marginalized people on the far-left are incredibly frustrated that the Democratic establishment isn't as scared of/desperate to please them as the Republican establishment are toward the MAGA fringe? I guess from their perspective, voting feels like begging - most of the people who hear you won't even glance at you, let alone drop you a coin. But you still have to do it, or else you (or worse, your family) are *guaranteed* to starve.

Okay, a few thoughts here. Note: for you and the other people who have recently sent politics asks, I have been very deliberately NOT talking about it for the last few months. I had to break it yesterday because of the Orange Menace finally getting fucking convicted, but I do want to go back to not doing that (at least for the next few weeks/months/until whatever else stupid happens). So while I will answer this, I am generally not going to answer others and my apologies for that, but yeah. It's just so much and I have GOT to keep myself sane until November somehow. (Or God forbid, afterward, but you know.)

First off, most members of the American far left aren't actually marginalized people, or at least not marginalized enough that their personal well-being seems in any way likely to be affected by their loud and ceaseless campaign to tell other people not to vote. Actual marginalized people who have lived in America for any length of time are *well* aware of how the government and the state can be weaponized against them; witness how black community organizers will voice well-deserved criticisms of the Democratic establishment or other aspects of American party politics that are frustrating for everyone, but they will still always tell people to vote. Black people are also extremely aware that earning the right to vote was an incredibly long, difficult, and bloody battle that they were never given it for free, and the white power establishment fought them having it at every turn. They are thus far more aware than your average white online leftist that voting matters, because they had to work so hard to get it (and still to defend it as various red states launch openly racist assaults on voting rights, especially aimed at disenfranchising people of color). Witness how Bernie also got literally zero traction with African American voters, despite being the darling of the (white) online left.

Hispanic people are also (rightfully) frustrated at how both American parties can use Latino immigrants as a political football, but they're still backing Biden by 30-point margins. We hear a lot of chatter about Trump supposedly gaining ground with voters of color -- maybe he has, though I doubt it, but that's still incremental gains from the massive holes he was in before, and where he generally remains. Arab Americans are (rightfully) angry with Biden over Gaza, but even in the much-hyped Michigan primary, he got roughly the same amount of "uncommitted" voters as Obama did as an uncontested incumbent in 2012, and most of them have said they'll grit their teeth and vote for him in the general election anyway. Yes, a few of them have decided not to, but they are not the size of the Black and Latino populations in America insofar as electoral power, and many of them have grudgingly decided that as bad as Biden might be on this particular issue (though far less so than the social media groupthink would paint him) the alternative (i.e. Trump openly promising to deport everybody who's not white and crack down on pro-Palestinian protests and anything else) is much, much worse.

And yet, white leftists seem utterly incapable of making these same calculations. Frankly, I'm not sure they actually care about Gaza, let alone anything else they say, because if so, they wouldn't be slavering at the mouth to let Trump back in there to "teach a lesson" to Biden, Democrats, and everyone else who was not Smart And Clever Enough to sanctimoniously sit on their hands and let the fascists take over. I know this because they spent all their time lying about Biden and distorting his record and insisting people not vote even before October of last year, and then it only got ten thousand times worse. I'm not saying that all leftist or leftist-identified people are white, but they are disproportionately predominant in leftist spaces and in pushing the idea that there's "no difference" between the parties and somehow Trump and Biden are morally equivalent or will have the same amount of impact on what will happen after one of them is elected. That is, yes, because they are white and they have the privilege of assuming that a weaponized fascist government will not go after them for that reason (even though Trump and his surrogates are now claiming that "everyone" who opposes Trump has to be "dealt with.") As such, when you say that marginalized far-left people are frustrated with the Democrats, I'm... not entirely sure that's true. Marginalized people AND the far left are both frustrated with the Democrats, but one of those groups has generally still decided not to voluntarily disenfranchise themselves, and the other is pumping out Vladimir Putin-wet-dream anti-voting propaganda at every chance they get.

There is also the fact that America is not a left-wing country in any sense of the word, and that while it's easy for the MAGA Republicans to go ever further far-right and promise to be even more outrageously cruel and stupid and fascist than ever before, but that's not an actual policy or a plan. It is also a strategy of diminishing returns; witness the fact that for all the cruelty and stupidity Republicans have pumped into the public arena since 2016, they haven't actually been that good at winning elections, and most of their major successes have come from Trump winning in 2016 and thus being able to stack SCOTUS and the district and circuit courts with hand-picked right-wing nut jobs, who are functioning exactly as they were designed to do. (Which Hillary Clinton warned about, along with everyone else, and yet she was taken out by the exact same dirtbag leftist disinformation moral purity machine that is working overtime to handicap Biden for the exact same reasons.) Mainstream Democrats warned about this before the 2016 election and were scorned and laughed off. Indeed, the entire Online Left continues to resolutely deny that the extremist SCOTUS is responsible for anything (It's Biden's Fault) and thus are likewise identical to Trumpies. And since they also want Trump to get back in there and teach a lesson to the Democrats, they're just as anti-democratic, dangerous, stupid, and deliberately short-sighted as actual MAGATs, and can by no means be considered allies to the singular movement of keeping fascists out of power. That is our only present goal.

If Democrats bent over to everything the far left asks for (which is often a combination of tankie gobbledygook, various vague ideas about Communism utopia where capitalism magically vanishes with no consequences, half-baked revolution cosplays, and other stuff that is functionally equivalent to the wildest lunacies of MAGA) they would never win an election again, and that would be exactly what the fascists want. Witness how they struggled when they were branded "defunders of the police" and "socialists" and other effective responses to the mildest milquetoast efforts for reform or accountability. And the political climate right now is just far too dangerous to throw everything to the wind and prance out some pipe-dream perfect-utopia plan. I'm sure you've heard about Project 2025 and how the far-right Heritage Foundation is planning to systematically implement fascism at all levels of the country, the instant they have a compliant Republican president and congress. I would take all these people crying about Biden even a fraction more seriously if they weren't openly jonesing for something that is so unbelievably, incredibly worse.

For example: I currently have major beefs with literally the entire foreign policy of the Biden administration right now. I think they're being too hard on Ukraine (forbidding them to strike targets on Russian soil with American weapons, which would end the war faster) and, despite some promising signs and open displeasure, still far too easy on Israel. They looked foolish after insisting that Rafah was a red line and then essentially making up an excuse that what's going on now is not a "major operation." Secretary of State Blinken floating the idea of helping Congress censure or neuter the International Criminal Court arrest warrants issued for Netanyahu and co. was also one of the fucking stupidest things I've heard from a serious (i.e. non-Trumpist) American diplomat in a long time. So we respect the ICC when it issues warrants for tyrants we don't like (Putin), but when it issues one for tyrants we still do, apparently (Netanyahu), then bingo, it's back to the bad old habit of ignoring international law like we're special and it doesn't apply to us, and allows all the other bad actors around the world to do the same by pointing at America and correctly pointing out that we ignore it when it doesn't suit our purposes. I think this is wrong and I don't agree. So? What am I going to do?

Well, you see. I'm going to vote for Biden and I am going to give him money and I am going to remind everyone I know that they have no moral option but to do the same. I do this because I am aware that despite my disagreements, Biden is acting from a cautious anti-interventionist standpoint and does not want to throw American military might around recklessly or dangerously like good ol' George Dubya or Trump or even Obama and the drones. He is listening to sober mainstream advisors who have (however incorrect and useless) ideas about "avoiding escalation" and trying to bring conflict to a managed end. He is doing this with a realistic appraisal of the power of the office of American presidency and he's not going to capriciously end democracy and become a full-blown fascist dictator on day one, as Trump has openly and repeatedly promised to do. Yes, if there was a viable option apart from Biden, maybe I would think about voting for them, but there is not, and literally everyone who does not actively vote for him is helping Trump. I do not care about any other contrived and disingenuous online squealing. I know that Biden does not want the war in Gaza to go on for no reason and for maximum carnage; Netanyahu and Trump both do. That is just to name one thing.

So: yes. I absolutely understand being frustrated with the Democrats and wishing they would push harder and etc. But I am also aware that they can be pushed, that they are the only option right now, and the people who huff and puff and whine and groan about how it's such a moral imposition to vote for them are literally doing the fascists' work for them, and that is not acceptable. If they want a better system or a better world that isn't just useless internet fantasies about magical end-of-days Raptures fixing everything, also a la the crazy fundamentalists, they will have to get off their ass, do the work, and create that change. I will be happy to vote for that candidate when or if they arrive. In the meantime, I will continue to do my damndest to ensure that we even have a chance to get there. So yeah.

[odinsblog]

WASHINGTON, April 25 — Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) today released the following statement in response to Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s claim yesterday that criticism of the Israeli government’s policies is antisemitic:

“No, Mr. Netanyahu. It is not antisemitic or pro-Hamas to point out that in a little over six months your extremist government has killed 34,000 Palestinians and wounded more than 77,000 – seventy percent of whom are women and children.

It is not antisemitic to point out that your bombing has completely destroyed more than 221,000 housing units in Gaza, leaving more than one million people homeless – almost half the population.

It is not antisemitic to note that your government has obliterated Gaza’s civilian infrastructure – electricity, water, and sewage.

It is not antisemitic to realize that your government has annihilated Gaza’s health care system, knocking 26 hospitals out of service and killing more than 400 health care workers.

It is not antisemitic to condemn your government’s destruction of all of Gaza’s 12 universities and 56 of its schools, with hundreds more damaged, leaving 625,000 students with no education.

It is not antisemitic to agree with virtually every humanitarian organization in saying that your government, in violation of American law, has unreasonably blocked humanitarian aid coming into Gaza, creating the conditions in which hundreds of thousands of children face malnutrition and famine.

Mr. Netanyahu. Antisemitism is a vile and disgusting form of bigotry that has done unspeakable harm to many millions of people. But, please, do not insult the intelligence of the American people by attempting to distract us from the immoral and illegal war policies of your extremist and racist government. Do not use antisemitism to deflect attention from the criminal indictment you are facing in the Israeli courts. It is not antisemitic to hold you accountable for your actions.”

—Bernie Sanders

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Phillip Jackson at HuffPost:

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) introduced a bill Wednesday that would give federal and state officials more power to hold police departments accused of bad behavior to account. The Enhancing Oversight to End Discrimination in Policing Act, led by Warren and in the House by Rep. Marilyn Strickland (D-Wash.), would strengthen the power of state attorneys general to launch investigations into police departments involved in civil rights violations if the Justice Department fails to act on them. The bill would also task the Justice Department with looking beyond “traditional law enforcement mechanisms” when providing reforms to selective police departments such as mental health support, civilian oversight bodies, and community-based restorative justice programs, according to Warren’s office.

Warren had introduced a version of the bill in 2020. This newest version of the measure would also revitalize the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division, granting an increase in funding to pursue civil rights investigations into police departments and other government offices accused of discriminatory practices. It would increase funding for the civil rights division to $445 million per year over a 10-year period. (For scale, the 2023 budget for the division was $189.9 million.)

Warren first introduced her bill following the death of George Floyd in 2020. That earlier draft also called for Attorney General Merrick Garland to rescind a 2017 memorandum from his predecessor, Trump-era Attorney General Jeff Sessions, that limited the DOJ’s ability to initiate consent decrees on police departments — a key way of stopping bad behavior. (Garland rescinded that memorandum in April of 2021.)

Nine senators co-sponsored the bill: Cory Booker (D-N.J.), Ed Markey (D-Mass.), Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Peter Welch (D-Vt.), Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.), and Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii). Several civil rights organizations are backing Warren’s new bill, including the American Civil Liberties Union, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the National Urban League and others.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and 9 other co-sponsors in the Senate are supporting the Enhancing Oversight to End Discrimination in Policing Act to strengthen police accountability. Rep. Marilyn Strickland (D-WA) is pushing this in the House.

[mariacallous]

Also LMAO @the leftist response to the dnc giving room for disaffected republicans instead of pandering to their crazy (like they even let bernie speak!!). Like girl thats a message when you spend alllll your free time proudly shitting on dems you can't get mad when we look elsewhere to broaden our coalition. And there were sooooo many acknowledgements of and nods to the left as it was. Maybe think more strategically abt how you deal w organized politics if you want to be catered to on a silver platter. It turns out negotiating in good faith for real material objectives might NOT just be for winemom cringelibs after all

I mean, if you continually say you’re not going to vote, not willing to listen or act in good faith, and expect everything to be catered to you, yeah, people will just go to where there’s a more receptive audience even and especially if it doesn’t mean they’re in full agreement as long as some core commonalities can be agreed upon.