Category Archives: Donald Trump

Choose Democracy, Donald Trump, Resist!

We have a message for Donald Trump

BENINDY: We will continue to live in hope and in righteous anger, with courage, with long- and short-range planning and with a persistence faithful to the constitution, to those we love and to our moral convictions…

The Benicia Independent joins the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in this hopeful message

The New York Times, 8 Nov 2024

Dear President-elect Trump:

In case you had any doubt, we are the American Civil Liberties Union. And we’re not moving to Canada.

So, rest assured that when you target immigrants, dissidents, and your political opponents – we will challenge you in the courts, at state legislatures, and in the streets.

Surely, you remember the landmark lawsuits we won against you on family separation, the U.S. Census, and immigrants’ rights – some of which were decided by judges you appointed.

During your last presidency, we brought 434 legal actions, including 250 lawsuits against your administration’s anti-civil liberties agenda.

We also mobilized the power of our more than 1 million card-carrying members into the streets, at airports, and in state capitals.

We’ve developed a comprehensive roadmap to defend our rights beginning on day one. We’re not new to this.

At the ACLU, we play the long game. We’ve been around for 105 years and seen 19 presidents come and go.

That’s why any attempt to roll back the nation’s civil liberties on our watch will be hard fought and met with the full power of our resistance.

Steadfast and determined to make ours a more perfect union, we remain,

The ACLU

Donald Trump, Presidential politics

Roger Straw: The Morning After…

Roger Straw, Benicia CA

MAGA MORNING. Here are four poems, sharing my first thoughts and struggles with this morning’s news. How are you coping with the return to power of the Donald and his backers?  See also “Looking Forward” below. – Roger Straw

MORNING AFTER (6:29 AM)

I don’t want to know.
Don’t tell me.
Dread in the morning.
I can’t sleep.

All indications we have arrived at a Fascist era,
The election all but called,
I turn off the tv.
I can’t bear to look.

Don’t tell me.
I don’t want to know.

MORE TRUMP (7:19 AM)

Sympathy doesn’t heal
Encouragement isn’t enough
How will we live in a Fascist state?

ON THE NEWS (7:32 AM)

On the news of Trump’s return
My sister in Canada sent a single word, Sad.
I replied,
Devastating.
Don’t know what to do.
Afraid.
I woke up uninformed but suspicious of the outcome
We couldn’t bear to stay awake for the tv analyses
The endless parsing of Lackawanna County
And comparisons of turnout and margins in years past
We shut off the tv and went to bed.
To bed not pretending, just not ready to deal
To bed
Maybe that’s the only place of security
In the face of impending doom.

On the news of Trump’s return
And even more so,
On the news of our nation’s willing descent into the pit of Fascism
Of my neighbor’s Take Us Back flag, victorious,
Of the loss of the all-important US Senate,
Of the marginal swing of the US House,
Of 4 more years of Presidential pouting
And posturing
And attack
And race baiting
And outright racism and misogyny and homophobia
Of losses to come, losses without number
Of dark days…
On such news, it’s hard to summon courage
To bed is not secure, to bed where dreams will tell the truth
Truth spoken, not to power, but to the darkness

Into the void we go.
The swirl, the black hole.
Tell me there’s more.

WAKE-UP CALL (8:08 AM)

Ok, so life goes on.

On the morning after we learned the truth,
The truth that we are still and again the United States of White Men,
The truth that even the threat of dictatorial power and criminality
Can’t override the fundamental fear of gender parity,
Can’t overcome the reality of racism,
On this morning after,
After our shock,
After our disbelief,
After all the twists and turns of the five stages of grief,
Life goes on.

So where does life go?
When life goes on in a turned-back America,
When life continues under fascist power,
When life plows ahead regardless…
Where is our Dr. King?
Where is our Susan B. Anthony?
Who will wake the nation?
Who will organize on campuses
And call the People to demonstrate
A vision of freedom and goodness and light?

A wake-up call
On the morning of our nation’s backslide
On the morning of the reaffirmation of sexism and white supremacy
On November 6, 2024
A wake-up call.
Who will wake us up, America?

Looking forward…
Donald Trump, Olympics, Racism

Simone Biles trolls Trump after making Olympic history: ‘I love my Black job’

‘I love my black job’: Simone Biles mocks Trump’s offensive panel remarks

Olympic champion posts on X after ex-president’s disastrous interview at event for Black journalists

The Guardian, by Joanna Walters, 2 Aug 2024

The champion American gymnast Simone Biles found time overnight between counting her record haul of Olympic medals to ding Donald Trump on social media after his offensive and untrue remarks at a gathering of Black journalists earlier in the week.

She posted on X early on Friday: “I love my black job” with a black heart emoji alongside, responding to another post of her beaming with her latest Olympic gold medal.

“Simone Biles being the GOAT, winning Gold medals and dominating gymnastics is her black job,” posted the singer Ricky Davila.

ImageImage

The messages were an unmistakable takedown of the former president, who is once again the Republican party’s nominee for president.

Trump said in an interview with three top political journalists at the convention of the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) on Wednesday that migrants were “taking Black jobs” in the US.

When asked to define a “Black job”, he said it was “anybody that has a job”.

His interview, in which he delivered numerous gaffes and insults, dismayed and outraged those gathered at the convention in Chicago and millions watching live on TV. He questioned the US vice-president and Democratic presumptive presidential nominee Kamala Harris’s identity as a Black woman and elicited gasps and derisive laughter from the audience.

Later that day, Harris called the remarks divisive and said: “America deserves better.”

It is not the first time Trump has made such remarks: in the presidential debate with Biden, he said migrants were “taking Black jobs now … they’re taking Black jobs and they’re taking Hispanic jobs”.

Joe Biden responded later, telling the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), in a reference to Harris: “I know what a Black job is: it’s the vice-president of the United States.”