As if we hadn't been through enough -- the climate crisis season of 2020 is fully upon us now.

We are now seeing record breaking fire activity across the west -- with rare lightning storms, coupled with a heat wave and 20 year mega-drought, leading to over 1.3 million acres destroyed, at least 7 deaths, evacuations ,and extremely unhealthy air quality (at times the worst air quality in the world). Add to that the new normal of rolling blackouts imposed by Pacific Gas & Electric during fire season, as a result of decades of grid neglect. And the new twist: COVID-19 has so severely devastated our incarcerated population that the prison labor these states previously relied upon to fight these fires is now too sick to help, making it much more difficult to contain the fires.

The Trump administration is opening up retirement funds to private equity — at workers’ expense

August is coming to an end but things are not getting any better -- 

The Nation literary burns as fires in California have forced more than 119,000 people from their homes 

Firefighters are struggling to get a handle on the 560 wildfires burning throughout the state, scorching more than 900,000 acres, including a treasured redwood forest

In terms of covid… even though it is clearly human nature to try to move on -- and the powers that be are really trying to convince us everything is fine -- we are still very much in the middle of the pandemic…

The U.S. has 5.79M confirmed cases and 178k deaths (as of Aug 25)

The States with the most COVID-19 cases are:

• California 2. Florida 3. Texas 4. New York and 5. Georgia 

The States with the most COVID-19 related deaths are:

• New York - 32,887 deaths, 2. New Jersey - 15,946 deaths, 3. California - 12,235 deaths, 4. Texas - 11,749 deaths, 5. Florida - 10,397 deaths

And these numbers are before Trump pushed to resume classes -- wait until people start testing positive by the thousands! Assuming the statistics get reported correctly as some schools are keeping quiet about coronavirus infections. 

• • But they won’t be able to keep the secret for so long -- especially after more U.S. colleges were grappling with high numbers of students testing positive for the coronavirus just days into the start of the fall semester after some universities rolled back their campus reopening plans in recent weeks.On the first day of school in Camden County, Ga., local Facebook groups were already buzzing with rumors that a teacher had tested positive for the coronavirus. The next day, a warning went out to school administrators: Keep teachers quiet.
  • In the weeks since, parents, students and teachers in the coastal community on the Florida border have heard by word of mouth of more positive cases linked to district schools. 
  • But even as fears of an outbreak have grown, the district has refused to publicly confirm a single case, either to the local community or The New York Times, who covered this note.

It is absurd that many educational institutions are endangering their students’ health, mainly for the tuition money -- greed as always is at the root of it all. 

Don’t believe me? Just read what the CDC has on their website: “Reopening schools creates opportunity to invest in the education, well-being, and future of one of America's greatest assets—our children….”

It is sickening how in the midst of all this full-blown apocalypse, profits can still be a motive...

In the United States, corporations enjoy many of the same rights as people — things like freedom of speech, the right to enter into contracts, and the ability to waste their money on Gary Johnson’s 2016 presidential campaign. Given how much they benefit from personhood, is it really so much to ask that the government treat them like its other citizens and start bombarding them with drone strikes?

I know what you’re thinking, “drone strikes are supposed to be reserved for terrorists in other countries, right?” Well, most of these corporations have already moved their headquarters abroad, and if charging $600 for designer jeans isn’t terrorism, then that word has lost all meaning. When you think about it, McDonald’s has killed more people than Al-Qaeda, anyway.

These radicalized corporations threaten our very way of life, and they must be stopped.

Prior to COVID-19, 44 million Americans were already uninsured, with millions more underinsured, and many more with marketplace plans that had high premiums, co-pays, deductibles and out of pocket expenses -- a deterrent to actually seeking needed care.

Fast forward to today. After hearing the praises of the "choice" of employer based healthcare throughout the primary debates, we are now watching in real time as the economic downturn is creating mass unemployment, with millions having their "choice" employer-based healthcare taken away from them, through no fault of their own. During a grossly mismanaged pandemic. It makes all of the healthcare debates from 6 months ago look...absurd.

So it makes sense that support for (single payer) Medicare for All has skyrocketed in popularity.

On this 100th Anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment, we take time to celebrate and look back on the Women's Suffrage Movement in America. The 19th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote, took 80 years to accomplish. It took a movement of millions demanding change, beginning with a few outraged women meeting in their homes to forming minority political groups, and growing into national organizations committing dramatic acts of civil disobedience. Throughout, they maintained a fierce determination to never surrender. Now, as we engage in the long and messy process of movement building to Move to Amend our constitution a 28th time, it is important to learn from the experiences our brave historical sisters.

Aug. 5, 2020

208 ORGANIZATIONS OPPOSE CORPORATE IMMUNITY PROPOSAL: On Tuesday, the National Employment Law Project sent a letter to the congressional leadership signed by 208 organizations – from 44 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico – opposing the corporate immunity bill introduced last week by U.S. Senate Republicans. “If the Senate Republican proposal is enacted, there will be a race to the bottom in workplace health and safety, as even law-abiding employers will be disincentivized from implementing proper health and safety protections – endangering working people, their families, and their communities,” the letter reads. “The Senate Republican corporate immunity bill would also let employers off the hook for ‘pandemic related’ violations of minimum wage and overtime laws, discrimination laws, paid leave laws, and more. But a global pandemic is no excuse for employers to flout long-standing workplace protections.”

[please take 3 actions suggested below] 

If you guessed that these adjectives (among others) describe Donald Trump’s responses to the raging nation wide coronavirus -- you guessed right.

They are equally appropriate words describing the thinking of too many federal elected officials about the current related economic crisis -- one that was coming to light before COVID-19 and has deepened and widened to harm tens of millions of people since its outbreak. 

Among the many incidents over the past few weeks of uprisings on our nation’s streets against racism and police brutality, sparked by the murder of George Floyd, have been unprovoked assaults by the police against peaceful protestors, journalists and even individuals on their own property. 

A major factor for these attacks is “qualified immunity” -- a doctrine that shields police officers from lawsuits, even if officers violate the civil rights of those they brutalize. Such immunity both fuels abuses of power and chills victims from filing suits against violent officers -- knowing the chances of righting wrongs to people and communities are slim.

What is true of police officers is equally true of corporations. 

It’s day who knows! and many corporations in America seem antsy to reopen and go back to business as usual, but this pandemic isn’t over!