Use Trump's anti-BLM Executive Order to arrest him, given those who invaded the Capitol 10 yrs. & defund the Capitol cops

I'll make this blog post simple and short, so I'll get straight to the point.

You may remember that back in June, while the Black Lives Matter protests were raging in the wake of the death of George Floyd, that US President Donald Trump issued an executive order that threatened up to ten years in federal prison for destruction of federal property.

.....This action is taken effective immediately, but may also be used retroactively for destruction or vandalism already caused. There will be no exceptions!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 23, 2020

Later, on 26 June 2020, he actually did issue "Executive Order on Protecting American Monuments, Memorials, and Statues and Combating Recent Criminal Violence"

Which clearly states:

Sec. 2.  Policy.  (a)  It is the policy of the United States to prosecute to the fullest extent permitted under Federal law, and as appropriate, any person or any entity that destroys, damages, vandalizes, or desecrates a monument, memorial, or statue within the United States or otherwise vandalizes government property. 

This would certainly include those who trespassed in, and vandalized, the Capitol building. It continues:

The desire of the Congress to protect Federal property is clearly reflected in section 1361 of title 18, United States Code, which authorizes a penalty of up to 10 years’ imprisonment for the willful injury of Federal property. 

It would also seem that these Trump terrorists should be eligible for that maximum. Trump's Executive Order also applies to those who merely incite the violence and destruction:

(b)  It is the policy of the United States to prosecute to the fullest extent permitted under Federal law, and as appropriate, any person or any entity that participates in efforts to incite violence or other illegal activity in connection with the riots and acts of vandalism described in section 1 of this order.

So it seems to me that Trump should be charged under the terms of his own Executive Order, along with Rudy and Don Jr. And finally:

(e) It is the policy of the United States, as appropriate and consistent with applicable law, to withhold Federal support from State and local law enforcement agencies that have failed to protect public monuments, memorials, and statues from destruction or vandalism.

So, it seems to me that Trump's Executive Order also give good grounds for defunding the Capitol Police. 

More, later...

Clay Claiborne

 

  

 

  

Why is Trump looking to the Electoral Commission of 1877 for salvation?

It will surprise no student of history that the white supremacists fighting to illegally extend the presidency of Donald Trump with a stunt in Congress on Wednesday, that seeks to overturn the popular and electoral vote in favor of a congressional coup, should turn to the Electoral Commission of 1877 for precedence. That commission, set up by Congress to resolve the disputed presidential election of 1876, led to the Compromise of 1877 that result in the end of the post-Civil War black reconstruction, and the rise of white terrorism and Jim Crow in the South.

Eleven Republican senators in open rebellion against the Constitution cited the example of the 1877 Electoral Commission in their Joint Statement from Senators Cruz, Johnson, Lankford, Daines, Kennedy, Blackburn, Braun, Senators-Elect Lummis, Marshall, Hagerty, Tuberville on Saturday:

“The most direct precedent on this question arose in 1877, following serious allegations of fraud and illegal conduct in the Hayes-Tilden presidential race. Specifically, the elections in three states-Florida, Louisiana, and South Carolina-were alleged to have been conducted illegally.

“In 1877, Congress did not ignore those allegations, nor did the media simply dismiss those raising them as radicals trying to undermine democracy. Instead, Congress appointed an Electoral Commission-consisting of five Senators, five House Members, and five Supreme Court Justices-to consider and resolve the disputed returns.

“We should follow that precedent.”

Occurring as it did, less than a dozen years after the Civil War, the presidential election of 1876 was still preoccupied with the unfinished business of that great conflict. Democrat Samuel J. Tilden and Republican Rutherford B. Hayes were the main contenders. That year 185 electoral votes were required to win. When they all were counted Tilden had 184 and Hayes had 165 with 20 electoral votes from four states unresolved.

At the time, the roles of the two major parties was in many ways the reverse of what it is today. Then, the Democrats were the party of white supremacy, while the Republican party was still the party of Lincoln. After the Civil War, radical Republicans, together with ex-slaves and some poor whites, advanced a second American revolution in the South that came to be known as black reconstruction. This was largely possible because federal troops stationed in the South after the Civil War suppressed those opposed to the freemen.

Those hoping to overthrow black reconstruction, and return the old capitalist planter class to power in the South coalesced around the Democratic Party. In 1876, Tilden carried most of the South. Sanctions over the use of terrorism to suppress the black vote resulted in two slates of electors being presented to Congress from three southern states—Louisiana, Florida, and South Carolina. In Oregon, there was an issue involving a single elector, but the selection of the president was to be decided in the South.

It was because they were presented with these competing slates of electors that congress passed the Electoral Commission Act which was signed into law by President Ulysses S. Grant on January 29, 1877. As stipulated in the act, a 15-member Electoral Commission was then formed to decide which electors to count.

Congressman James Monroe reported, “It was from the beginning a Democratic rather than a Republican measure." In the October 1893 edition of The Atlantic, Monroe wrote about why he and many other Republican representatives refused to support the bill:

They contended that it was a compromise of principle like that of 1820, which condemned half the country to slavery; like that of 1850, which gave us the Fugitive Slave Law. It belonged to a class of weak concessions which had always injured the country and ruined every party that had touched them. 

In short, it was another in a long series of compromises with white supremacy.

As many other critics of this goofy demand for an Electoral Commission in 2021 have pointed out, the precedent of 1877 simply doesn't apply because, in this case, nobody is presenting competing slates of electors to Congress. Duh! All electors have already been certified and accepted as of 14 December. There's nothing for an Electoral Commission to decide. Of course it doesn't apply, but I'm more interested in why they find it such an attractive precedent in spite of its in-applicability. 

I think they liked the results of the Electoral Commission of 1877. Although it did end up naming Hayes as president, the Democratic friends of white supremacy were able to wring some important concessions from the Republicans, not the least of which was that Hayes would remove federal troops from the South. W. E. B. Du Bois called it “the bargain between Big Business and the South (p. 691)” in his "Black Reconstruction in America 1860-1880." He describes the commissions work:

“Negotiations were entered into and conferences held. On the 26th of February, 1876, there were three conferences. The outcome was an agreement. The Republicans guaranteed that Mr. Hayes, when he became President, would by non-interference and the withdrawal of troops allow the planter-capitalists, under the name Democrats to control South Carolina and Louisiana…This meant that Southern landholders and capitalists would be put in complete control of disfranchised black labor (p. 692).”

86 years after DuBois, long time GOP operative Karl Rove acknowledged the racist aspects of that commission's work on Fox News Outnumbered today:

“Back when we had the commission in 1876/1877 in the election involving Rutherford B. Hayes,  the president was sworn-in in March, and the electoral commission of that era was already underway investigating the efforts in the South to wipe out the black Republican votes in states like Florida, and thereby toss those states into the Democratic column.”

The white supremacists planters and capitalists of the Antebellum South had been out of power less than a dozen years before the Compromise of 1876 put an end to one of the great experiments in revolutionary democracy in the United States by bringing them back. As the federal troops receded, the Ku Klux Klan emerged and the terror campaigns against African-Americans multiplied. Measures were taken to effectively disenfranchise the former slaves, and starting in 1876, what became known as the Jim Crow segregationist laws started being passed. Many would stay on the books till 1965.  

In a backlash against the rising diversity of American life, we have seen a resurgence of misogyny and white supremacy coalesce around the presidency of Donald Trump. In this last-ditch effort to extend his presidency, they have turned to the example of the Electoral Commission of 1877, not because it is a good fit for the facts of their case, but because they seek a similar outcome, a resurgence of reaction. 

While it's not surprising that those seeking a resurgence of white supremacy today should look to the model and law created by those seeking to do the same after the Civil War, they would do well to listen to Du Bois:

“The revolution of 1876 was, in fine, a victory for which the South has every right to hang its head. After enslaving the Negro for two and one-half centuries, it turned on his emancipation to beat a beaten man, to trade in slaves, and to kill the defenseless; to break the spirit of the black man and humiliate him into hopelessness; to establish a new dictatorship of property in the South through the color line. It was a triumph of men who in their effort to replace equality with caste and to build inordinate wealth on a foundation of abject poverty have succeeded in killing democracy, art and religion (p. 707).”

The dozen or so GOP senators and a hundred-plus Trump fans in the House certainly have every right to hang their heads.  Like those that proposed that first Electoral Commission, they are still trying “to replace equality with caste and to build inordinate wealth on a foundation of abject poverty,” but this time they shall not succeed “in killing democracy, art and religion.”

Clay Claiborne

Let's make Trump the anti-authoritarian vaccine

Happy New Year. 2021 doesn't have a hard act to follow.

The world, especially this country, has been put through the {wringer,ringer} in the last four years of Donald Trump "presidency," and 2020 proved to be a real zinger. A year ago, we didn't know what a novel coronavirus was, let alone what it could do. Since then it has killed 1.8 million people worldwide, 350 thousand of them in the United States, and we now face not only a novel coronavirus, but multant novel coronaviruses as well! 

Trump's mismanagement and utter disregard for human life is the biggest reason why 4.25% of the world's population has suffered 18.89% of the COVID19 deaths in spite of being a wealthy country with advanced medical technology, and extensive industrial infrastructure. 

So, this might be a good time to put Trump's much hyped "Operation Warp Speed" into context by remembering that both the Russians, and Chinese had vaccines earlier, and the first US vaccine was developed by Pfizer outside of the Trump program. Now that they've started actually vaccinating people, even though they are starting with the low-hanging fruit of health care workers, and people in group homes, they are doing so at a rate that will take about ten years before they get to everyone in the US. (These projections may be exaggerated, because they probably don't take into account all the people who won't need vaccinations because they will be dead before it gets to them.) Warp speed indeed! 

Of course, our response to the pandemic isn't the only thing Trump has degraded.

Many other countries have already brought this pandemic under control ahead of a vaccine by practising the disciplines of mask wearing, contact tracing, and quarantine as necessary. Vietnam, for example, a country with 28% the population of the US, has lost only 35 people. We, on the other hand, have been put in the position of having to wait for Big Pharma to come to the rescue.

Fortunately, it looks like they have, or at least their scientists, and other workers have, and we now have  a number of vaccines that can put down this pandemic—provided they can now manage to get it into enough people's arms.

Can there be "vaccines" against "diseases" of the body politic?

With all the attention to the pandemic and vaccines, we've gotten an education on how vaccines work. We have learned how they imitate the pathogen, or some of its aspects, so that the body's immune system can learn to recognize the elements of the disease, and produce antibodies to fight it. Early vaccines even used a weaken form of the virus or bacteria to create the vaccine, although this could be very dangerous. Some used a related animal disease, like cowpox to make humans immune to smallpox. All worked in basically the same way: After the body wages a small bout with the weaken "disease," which may be no more than a sore arm for a day, the body has learned to recognize the disease, and mount a winning defense against it should the body encounter it in its most virulent form.

It is my most fervent wish for 2021 that the Trump presidency will have a similar lasting effect on the body politic of the United States: That this Trump experience will be like an anti-authoritarian and anti-racist vaccine for the United States.

After all we've seen over the past four years, there is no doubt that he would be a fascist dictator if he could. Fortunately for us, this wannabee Hitler is a buffoon. We have been suffering from a weak version of an authoritarian attempt to overthrow our democracy, such as it is.  

Finally, land is in sight. Its beginning to look like we weathered this storm. Nobody expects what is euphemistically referred to as "Trump's base" to go away in 2021, but Trump out of power will be a good start. It will be an even better start if we learn to recognize the signs of developing dictatorship, and patch our systems to better defend against fascism. Still, it ain't over till..does a fat lady sing at the inauguration? Anyway, it ain't over till then. Until January 20th, the circus is still in town, and Trump will still be trying to execute his ham-handed coup d'état.

So, we must remain vigilant, and not take anything for granted. Here are some important dates to watch:

3 January 2021: The new congress is sworn in. 

It is also the 1st anniversary of Trump's assassination of Iranian commander Qasem Soleimani. If there is an Iranian revenge attack, it may be a false-flag attack, like the Gulf of Tonkin attack US President Lyndon B. Johnson, and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara hatched up in 1964 to get the US fully involved in the war in Vietnam.

As documented in Vietnam: American Holocaust, we found this interesting phone call between McNamara and LBJ that took place before the fateful second attack:

MCNAMARA: Now this is an action that we might well wish to consider after the second attack. But I think it would be inappropriate, and General Wheeler agrees, and Dean Rusk agrees, inappropriate to provide the task force commander that authority. There will be ample time for us, after a second attack, to bring this problem to your attention, and you can then decide how far you wish to pursue the attacker into his base area....

LBJ: But I wish we could have something that we already picked out, and uh

MCNAMARA: We'll see

LBJ: and just hit about three of them damned quick. Right after

MCNAMARA: We will have that, and, and I, I've talked to Mac Bundy [national security adviser] a moment ago and told him that I thought that was the most important subject we should consider today, and, and be prepared to recommend to you a response, a retaliation move against North Vietnam in the event this attack takes place within the next six to nine hours. And we

LBJ: All right. Now we better do that at lunch. There's some things I don't want to go in with these other, I want to keep this as close as I can. So let's just try to keep it to the two.

MCNAMARA: I will be prepared to do so at lunch.

The NVA never made a second attack, but this didn't stop LBJ from claiming it, and using it to get congress to pass the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which is the closest the US got to a Declaration of War in Vietnam.

If the Trump does try to trump-up an excuse for war, it won't even add to his list of firsts for a US president. So if a fracas develops between the US and Iran in coming weeks, ask who benefits? Cui Bono? Would Iran really risk war only days ahead of the change to an administration that promises to move back to jaw-jaw, and rejoin the Iranian nuclear deal?

On Wednesday, two nuclear capable US Air Force B-52s flew a "show of force" mission over the Persian Gulf near Iran. The US has a history of staging false-flags in Gulfs. Watch for it. In November, Trump was talked out of making a pre-emptive strike on Iran. Then. Now he is much more desperate.

Last month Trump removed much of the top civilian leaders of the military and replaced them with people loyal to him. Whatever his people at the Pentagon are doing, they are playing it close to the vest, and refusing to share with the Biden transition team.

Now we are being prepped for such an attack. Today's CBS Evening News is reporting:

Tonight US military officials tell CBS News that Iran, and its militias, may be planning to attack—act against a US embassy or military base in the region. This as a top Iranian commander is vowing revenge for the US air strike that killed General Qasem Soleimani one year ago.

This is the new civilian Pentagon leadership Trump just put in charge for final weeks that is spinning these tales to the media, the same officials who are still refusing cooperation with Biden's transition team.

Trump may try to start a war with Iran ahead of the transition as a pretext for keeping power. Given his long-time obsession with nuclear weapons, I wouldn't rule out his using one of the "little" nukes he had developed (so they could be more usable☺). In February, Trump had some of these so-called low-yield missiles deploy to boomers. Why would he have done that if he didn't contemplate using them?

Erik Prince is famous for creating the private mercenary army Blackwater. He's still tops in that field; he has already done a number of jobs for Trump, and his sister, Betsy DeVos, is Trump's Secretary of Education. Prince and his ilk are just the sort that Trump would call on for black-ops with Iran, or a little off-the-books intrigue in the US, and Trump just pardoned four Blackwater killers.

4 January: Trump campaigns in Dalton, Georgia for the state’s two Republican senators, Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue. Perdue is currently in quarantine "out of an abundant of caution." I knew he would say that.

5 January: Georgia Senate run-off election. We all know why this is important. Moscow Mitch has got to go!

6 January: Congress meets in joint session to confirm the electoral college vote. This is D-Day.

This is the crucial day. Several GOP congressmen and at least one senator have said they are going to challenge the vote. Like all of Trump's "legal" attempts to overturn the election, this too will fail. 

Trump has called for his supporters to come to Washington, DC for "Wild Protests," as congress votes. The Washington Post is reporting:

Threats of violence, ploys to smuggle guns into the District and calls to set up an “armed encampment” on the Mall have proliferated in online chats about the Jan. 6 day of protest. The Proud Boys, members of armed right-wing groups, conspiracy theorists and white supremacists have pledged to attend.

In this scenario, Trump is counting on his Iran war to galvanize his supporters, sow chaos, and drive anti-war protesters onto the streets. This threat to stay in office even after the election has been certified will also bring the people to the streets. While he has his supporters, including the Proud Boy types, gathered in Washington. 

JANUARY SIXTH, SEE YOU IN DC!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 30, 2020

Using this chaos as an excuse, he will attempt to invoke the Insurrection Act in a last desperate attempt to stay in power illegally. If the does that, it will be our biggest challenge yet, and it is one we must meet and beat back before we can declare Trump the vaccine and not the lingering disease.

Clay Claiborne

Will Trump order the Army onto US streets in a desperate attempt to continue his control?

At the first presidential debate, US President Donald Trump famously told the white supremacist Proud Boys to “Stand by.” Now we know what he was telling them to stand by for: Proud Boys is calling for a million MAGA march in Washington, DC on Saturday. Is Trump hoping that they can cause enough violence and disruption to allow him to declare martial law and deploy US soldiers on to American streets to preserve his presidency?

After the May murder of George Floyd, racial justice protests broke out across the country under the banner of Black Lives Matter, Trump wanted to send regular US Army troops to suppress the protests. At the time, this move was opposed by the only other person in the US government that can issue direct orders to the military, Secretary of Defense Mark T.  Esper.

Because the 1878 Posse Comitatus Act limited the power of the federal government to use federal military personnel to enforce domestic policies within the United States, Trump could legally deploy the US military for domestic law enforcement only by invoking the Insurrection Act of 1807. This rarely used act allows the President to deploy US. military and federalized National Guard troops for particular circumstances, such as suppressing an insurrection. While the Black Lives Matter protests were wide-spread and massive, they hardly represented an attempt to overthrow the US government.

Two days after President Trump threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act, and send active-duty military troops to control the growing wave of protests, Esper came out and publicly opposed Trump's move towards martial law. At a 3 June press conference, Defense Secretary Mark Esper said:

“The option to use active-duty forces in a law enforcement role should only be used as a matter of last resort and only in the most urgent and dire of situations. We are not in one of those situations now. I do not support invoking the Insurrection Act.”

A month later, 5 August 2020, Esper called the protests in the wake of George Floyd's murder “a wake-up call not only for America, but for himself,” according to Military Times. He continued:

“I don’t think what everybody appreciated — at least me, personally — is the depth of sentiment out there among our service members of color, particularly Black Americans, about how much the killing of George Floyd — and the other incidents that preceded it and succeeded it — had on them and what they were experiencing in the ranks as well.”

He promised to step up efforts around diversity and inclusion in the Defense Department.  He also banned the Confederate flag from military bases and supported the renaming of those named after Confederate traitors. About Trump invoking the Insurrection Act he added:

“I was really concerned that that continued talk about Insurrection Act was going to take us in a direction, take us into a really dark direction, and I wanted to make clear what I thought about the situation as secretary of defense and the role of the active-duty forces. And to kind of break the fever, if you will, because I thought that was just a moment in history where ... if somebody doesn’t stand up now and say something and kind of push the pause button, then ... it could spiral.”

We are there now. Esper is gone, fired by Trump in a tweet on Monday. Esper said about his firing, “Who’s going to come in behind me? It’s going to be a real ‘yes man.’ And then God help us.” In his final message to the troops he thanked them for putting “People and Country first,” and admonished them to “always do the right thing.”

The yes man replacing Esper is Christopher C. Miller. He is the director of the National Counterterrorism Center, and now he has been named as acting defense secretary.

Trump didn't just replace the defense secretary, he decapitated much of the Pentagon's top civilian leadership and replaced them with Trump sycophants and white supremacists. By Tuesday, top officials overseeing policy, intelligence and the defense secretary’s staff all had resigned. 

James Anderson, the Pentagon’s acting policy chief, is being replace by retired Brig. Gen. Anthony Tata. He is a racist who promoted the conspiracy theory that former President Barack Obama was a “Manchurian candidate,” and a “terrorist leader.”  He called Islam “most oppressive violent religion I know of.”

Jen Stewart, the Defense Secretary's chief of staff, has been replaced by Kash Patel, a Devin Nunes acolyte who has had a number of roles in the Trump administration, including helping Republicans discredit the Russia probe

Joseph Kernan, undersecretary of defense for intelligence, is being replaced by Ezra Cohen-Watnick, was a close ally of former national security adviser Michael Flynn.

Trump is clearing house, and putting Trump loyalists in key positions in the Pentagon. He is likely doing that with other federal agencies that wield the coercive powers of the federal government. It is also rumored that Christopher A. Wray, the F.B.I. director, and Gina Haspel, the C.I.A. director, could be next in line to be fired.

Why is he doing this with only 70 days left in his legal term as president? Is it possible that he is planning a coup that will require invoking the Insurrection Act and martial law? While that seems far fetched given the 200 year history of stable transfers of power in the US, at least one person who knows his way around the Pentagon says “Mark me down as alarmed.” Retired four star general Barry McCaffrey doesn't give any credence to the idea that the Esper firing is a simple question of revenge for opposing Trump in the past.  He's seriously worried that they are looking at illegal methods of using the power of the US military, and other security agencies, to turn Trump's presidency into a dictatorship. “This is some crazy thinking inside the White House,” he said,  “We are in a risky situation right now.”

We need to take his situation very seriously. It's clear that Trump has no intention of conceding the election to Biden, or leaving the White House before he is forced out. What makes this situation so perilous is that many Republican lawmakers and other administration officials, such as the Secretary of State, appear to be backing Trump's attempt to ignore the clear mandate of the voters.

🚨 CALLING ALL PATRIOTS 🚨

THE MILLION MAGA MARCH CARAVAN IS HEADING TO WASHINGTON D.C. 🇺🇸

THEY WILL BE DRIVING THROUGH THE ENTIRE COUNTRY AND ARRIVING THIS WEEKEND TO PROTEST THE CONTESTED ELECTION

THE #MILLIONMAGAMARCH JUST GOT A WHOLE LOT BIGGER WITH #TruckersForTrump 💥 pic.twitter.com/g6L6Ke87f1

— Million Maga March (@MilionMagaMarch) November 10, 2020

They know that all the fuss they are making over dead people voting, which no doubt happens in every election in which ballots can be submitted before election day, or their extra poll watchers leaving dissatisfied, has a snowball's chance in hell of overturning the election. These are just tactics to distract, and buy time. As are the excuses given by various Republicans that they are just giving Trump time to adjust to the new reality.

Most probably, they will try to convince Republican controlled state legislatures to overrule the voters in their state and instead, send Trump friendly electors to college. They must know this won't be accepted by the people either. They also know from the Black Lives Matter protests of the Summer, and the recent massive celebrations of Trump's defeat, that there will be massive resistance to any attempt by the Trump cabal to stay in power.

This is the best explanation for these recent changes in the leadership of the coercive arms of the federal government.

Where do the Proud Boys come in? And by the way, they have recently dropped the thin veneer of being multi-ethnic defenders of “Western Civilization”, and declared themselves white nationalists. 

Trump can't just declare martial law on a whim. That would never do. He has to have a cover story, an excuse to invoke the Insurrection Act. This Million MAGA March could be just the ticket, provided anti-fascist fighters take the bait and engage with them.

If this scenario seems far fetched, it would be good to remember that Trump had ordered ordered active-duty troops from Fort Bragg, North Carolina, to assemble outside the D.C. area to put down the Black Lives Matter protests in June, before Esper strongly objected. That's how close we came.

Any woman that has broken up with an abusive boyfriend will tell you this is the most dangerous stage of the relationship.

We must now think about the unthinkable, and prepare to repel attempts by the Trump cabal to use state violence to stay in power.

Clay Claiborne

Time of the Preacher by Willie Nelson

It was the time of the preacher

In the year of '01

Now the lesson is over

And the killing's begun

It was the time of the preacher

In the year of '01

When you think it's all over

It's only begun

Why Joe Biden is a lesser evil than Bernie Sanders or Greens' Howie Hawkins

In November 1975, I learned my first hard lesson about third party voter suppression. It was a very personal lesson. 

Clay Claiborne @ Amcar - 1975

At the time, I was the Shop Steward for Department 102 at a boxcar factory, the Amcar division of American Car & Foundry [AFC], down by the river in St. Louis, Mo. 

We had just come off a 20 week strike that started on the 3rd of May, and ended on the 20th of September. There were several thousand workers at this plant, half of them African American, divided among several unions. I was among the 700 or so in the International Brotherhood of Railway Carmen of America, Local 365, AFL-CIO.

Before the strike, a core of several dozen activist workers formed a cross-union organization by the name of Labor Power that helped propel the militancy of the strike; as a result it continued to grow during the strike, and after. On the strength of that work, I ran as the Labor Power candidate for Steel Plant Committeeman, which would have given us a seat on the local's executive board. When all 304 ballots were counted, I had lost by a mere 6 votes.

Some said I lost because I ran openly as a communist. Others said I lost because I ran a militantly anti-racist campaign. But I alway felt I lost because local leadership had convinced another member in my department, A. Baldridge, to run even though he had absolutely no chance of winning. He drew only 9 votes, most likely from friends in our department, and that gave local leadership the outcome they were desperate to achieve.

Fast Forward...

If A. Baldridge had said about his 9 votes, “Whatever happened to working class solidarity?,” he could have presaged 2020 Green Party presidential candidate Howie Hawkins' “Whatever Happened to Left Solidarity?” complaint in CounterPunch, 26 Oct. 2020.

Similar to the way Fox News tries to pretend the pandemic is not the context for everything else they are presenting; this is another one of those cases where what is not said, what is missing upon reflection, is the biggest problem. 

Because of Trump's 2016 victory, and what has coalesced around him since, a resurgence of white supremacy is on the ballot in 2020. That is the number one issue. All others are secondary. Howie Hawkins doesn't get that; neither did Bernie Sanders for that matter,

Joe Biden at least gets that. That's why his campaign slogan is “Battle for the Soul of the Nation.” It's why he campaigned at Gettysburg, and in Georgia. It's why he did well in South Carolina. He says it's why he got into the race in the first place. 

Unlike World War II, the American Civil War was not ended on terms of unconditional surrender; certainly not with regards to white supremacy. A sort of compromise was reached. Although forced to relinquish some of its most offensive habits, it was allowed to linger on. With struggle, its operations have been diminished with time.

Now, surrounding the Trump presidency, we have seen a resurgence of white supremacy, and an attempt at a breakout. In 2020, a kind of "Battle of the Budge" against racism is going on, and Bastogne is on the ballot. If Trump gets a second nod for his racist and fascist policies, and another four years to reshape the government and the country, the results could be catastrophic for humanity.  

Bernie Sanders

From the beginning, Biden has been running an anti-racist campaign. That is the battle that must be taken to Trump et al. That is the minimum requirement for the opposition candidate in this particular go round. At least Biden meets that, which is more than can be said about Howie Hawkins, or Bernie Sanders.

Marianne Williams was the only other candidate in the Democratic primary debate that got it. In response to the bickering over the branding of environmental and health policy at the first CNN Presidential Candidates debate, Tuesday, 30 July 2019, she warned them to focus on the question of the year:

I assure you I lived in Gross Point, what happened in Flint would not have happened in Gross Point, this is part of the dark underbelly of American society, the racism, the bigotry, and the entire conversation that we're having here tonight, if you think any of this wonkiness is going to deal with this dark psychic force of the collectivized hatred that this President is bringing up in this country, then I'm afraid that the Democrats are going to see some very dark days.

Unfortunately, she was never taken seriously as a contender. She endorsed Bernie, after she dropped out, and then she endorsed Biden.

What is prompting this new turn toward racism? 

“There will be no Medicare for All or Green New Deal from the Democrats," Hawkins complains. Sorry, not this go round, that's not number one and two on the list right now. The question is how will the nation respond to this attempted resurgence of racism in the United States? The millions that protested under the banner of Black Lives Matter after the murder of George Floyd voted with their feets this Summer, and they were of all colors. This Fall, our attentions turn to the ballot box because it still represents the most direct, and hopefully, the least painful way, of getting the Trump cabal out of power soonest. Many things make this an imperative, not least of which is that because of the pandemic, tens of thousands of lives hang in the balance. 

And Howie Hawkins just doesn't get it. He doesn't ever really make an ant-racist argument.

When Hawkins does get around to discussing what would be called “The Negro Problem” in another era, he manages to do it without mentioning racism or Trump, while making a Fox-News-like critique of the Democrats:

[W]e fight for affordable housing and against the brutality of police forces that do what the Democrats in the cities designed them to do, which is to keep downscale people, particularly Black people, down and out of upscale communities.

Whatever does he mean by “downscale people”? Are all Black people “downscale people”? He doesn't give us a clear answer. Instead, we are subjected to such nonsensical drivel as this: 

The simple-minded trope that a vote for the Greens is a vote for Trump ignores the fact that a Green vote is in the Green column, not Trump’s. It is an anti-Trump vote, a stronger anti-Trump vote, and a second front against Trump that adds to the total against Trump.

Okay, I thought I had a basic grasp of this electoral college thing, but now I'm confused. Where does “Total Votes Against Trump [TVAT]” fit in? What column does it go in when it comes to determining which individual candidate has more than 270 electoral votes?

Hawkins whines and complains like Trump; he continues, even “ecosocialists are not calling for system change in this election.” Yes! Get the Net! The only system change on the ballot this year is the moves in the direction of an openly white supremacist and authoritarian state being implemented by Trump, his cronies, and his enablers. People from all over are rallying around the Biden/Harris campaign to oppose this reactionary system change.

Instead of bemoaning a lack of “Left Solidary,” and proposing the cure be that everyone join him in his blindness towards the current situation, maybe he should drop his own competing bid for president, and join with the great masses of progressive people by voting for Joe Biden, and putting an end to the hard reign of Trump.

Green Party is being used for Voter Suppression

The Senate Intelligence Committee Report on Russian Active Measures Campaigns and Interference in the U.S. 2020 Election cited the work of cybersecurity researcher Renee DiResta: 

Voter suppression narratives were in [the data], both, on Twitter (some of the text-to-vote content) and within Facebook, where it was specifically targeting the Black audiences. So the groups that they made to reach out to Black people were \ specifically targeted with 'Don't Vote for Hillary Clinton,' 'Don't Vote At All,' 'Why Would We Be Voting, ' 'Our Votes Don't Matter, ' [and] 'A Vote for Jill Stein is Not a Wasted Vote. '

This is how the Russians did voter suppression in 2016. They also supported the Jill Stein campaign more directly, as did certain Republicans, with the goal of  helping Trump win.  Trump understands the value of voter suppression. In a leaked audio, he can be heard rejoicing over low black voter turnout in 2016  “Many Blacks didn’t go out to vote for Hillary ‘cause they liked me. That was almost as good as getting the vote, you know, and it was great,”

In Wisconsin, the Republicans have been helping both Kanye West and the Green Party get on the ballot because they understand the value of 3rd party voter suppression. Knowing that a vote for Hankins was almost as good as a vote for Trump, some well known Republican lawyers were happy to help, and Hawkins was happy to accept their help. He excused the collaboration with “You get help where you can find it.”  He has a similar excuse for accepting help from Putin's Russia via appearances on RT: “Beggars can’t be choosers.”  It looks like while Howie is warning his supporters “Don't vote for the lesser of two evils,” he is acting like the enemy [GOP/RT] of my enemy [Biden] is my friend. 

At the end of that 20 week strike, we ended up voting for a contract that was less than we were fighting for. The advise "don't vote for the lesser of two evils," never made practical sense. Sometimes you just have to make the best of a bad situation.

Friends in High Places...

I have many stories from my years at the boxcar factory. This is my favorite...

On Strike 20 weeks in 1975

The company attempted to fire me many times, but the union, and the workers always fought hard to get me back in—until the last time. Once I even had to file a case with the National Labor Relations Board[NLRB].

James, a friend, was an overhead crane operator. It was a thing of beauty to watch him rotate the whole side of a boxcar 180°, while avoiding all the obstacles, as he moved it from one side of the plant to the other. The hook on his crane was half my size. So skillful was he that his idea of a good joke was to silently maneuver the tip of that hook under the back of my hard hat, and lift it slightly to announce his presence 50 ft. overhead. 

After I got back from one of these firing attempts, people told me of a stunt he had pulled in the struggle to get me back. Using a 10-ton parts bin, he pinned my foreman against a large machine so delicately that while the foreman, Joe Fielder, couldn't extract himself, not a bone was broken, and no real injury was done.  Then he leaned out of the cab, and yelled down at him a warning, “You stop f*cking with Claiborne!” before releasing the frightened manager.

After I heard that story, when someone asked me how I got my job back, I simply said, “I have friends in high places.”

Clay Claiborne

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