Thousands gathered in Boise, Idaho last Saturday to voice their support for DACA and protest Trump's plans to end the program. “There are so many injustices currently happening and DACA is not one of them,” Cristina, in attendance at the Boise rally, told Toward Freedom. “DACA students and DACA recipients are not criminals. They are students going to college, trying to be someone in life.”
The expanding wars in Afghanistan, conflict with North Korea, the U.S. African Command (AFRICOM), U.S. intervention in Venezuela, proposals to increase the military budget by $75 billion, and the war on African/Black people are all interrelated expressions of the systemic violence that the US state is waging and prepared to wage to salvage its rapidly declining power.
Source: The Intercept
In a Summer of Wildfires and Hurricanes, My Son Asks “Why Is Everything Going Wrong?”
The news from the natural world these days is mostly about water, and understandably so.
We hear about the record-setting amounts of water that Hurricane Harvey dumped on Houston and other Gulf cities and towns, mixing with petrochemicals to pollute and poison on an unfathomable scale. We hear too about the epic floods that have displaced hundreds of thousands of people from Bangladesh to Nigeria (though we don’t hear enough). And we are witnessing, yet again, the fearsome force of water and wind as Hurricane Irma — one of the most powerful storms ever recorded — leaves devastation behind in the Caribbean, with Florida now in its sights.
The most impacted continent by climate change and weather induced disasters – Africa, which contributes only 4 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions – is now experiencing back-to-back droughts that have left at least 8.5 million people in Ethiopia in dire need of food aid. At the same time, severe drought has deepened in Somalia with the risk of famine looming for about half the population.
Source: Waging Nonviolence
The Trump administration is reviving the threat of nuclear war in a way that no other U.S. presidency has done since the Cold War.
While the confrontation with North Korea’s expanding nuclear and ballistic missile program has taken center stage, Trump’s ham-fisted engagement with Taiwan, missile strikes against the Russia-linked Assad regime in Syria and the rapid push for a nuclear weapons modernization program all contribute to a new and unique climate of nuclear threats.
Source: TomDispatch
It was bloody and brutal, a true generational struggle, but give them credit. In the end, they won when so many lost.
James Comey was axed. Sean Spicer went down in a heap of ashes. Anthony Scaramucci crashed and burned instantaneously. Reince Priebus hung on for dear life but was finally canned. Seven months in, Steve Bannon got the old heave-ho and soon after, his minion, Sebastian Gorka, was unceremoniously shoved out the White House door. In a downpour of potential conflicts of interest and scandal, Carl Icahn bowed out. Gary Cohn has reportedly been at the edge of resignation. And so it goes in the Trump administration.
Copyright Toward Freedom 2019