MORNING MESSAGE
Sen. Jessica Ramos (D-NY)
We Win When We Are Genuine
We win when we are genuine: That's how we know we're on the right side of history. You are making every single personal sacrifice if you're doing it right (as an elected official). You need to make sure you have a coherent platform, and ensure you're the best possible communicator to your neighbors. That's ultimately what the job entails. It's also important that you have real roots in your community that you're running not because you think that your ideas are better than everyone else's, but because you already have the experience of talking to your neighbors and creating networks that serve the community better.
People’s Action is recruiting and training more than 500 grassroots community leaders to run for elected office at every level of government, who will co-govern to advance the values and goals in our People’s Platform. Sen. Jessica Ramos (D-NY) is one of our champions. She was elected last November to represent New York's 13th State Legislative District in Queens, as a first-time candidate. To read more about our co-governing work, click here.
Markets Tumble Amid Recession Fears
Key recession warning surfaces, sending stocks lower. WaPo: "Recession signals intensified Wednesday in the United States and in some of the world’s leading economies, as the damage from acrimonious trade wars is becoming increasingly apparent on multiple continents. The U.S. stock market tumbled to its worst day of the year on Wednesday, after a reliable predictor of looming recessions flashed for the first time since the run-up to the 2008 financial crisis. The Dow Jones industrial average fell 800 points, or about 3 percent, and has lost close to 7 percent over the past three weeks. Two of the world’s largest economies, Germany and the United Kingdom, appear to be contracting even as the latter forges ahead with plans to leave the European Union. Growth also has slowed in China, which is in a bitter trade feud with the United States."
IA Sen. Steve King Says Rape And Incest Save Civilization
Rep. Steve King asks if there would 'be any population of the world left' without rape or incest. Salon: "Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, questioned Wednesday if there would 'be any population of the world left' had rape or incest not occurred throughout civilization. 'What if we went back through all the family trees and just pulled out anyone who was a product of rape or incest? Would there be any population of the world left if we did that? Considering all the wars, and all the rapes and pillages that happened throughout all these different nations, I know that I can't say that I was not a part of a product of that,' King said at the Westside Conservative Club in Urbandale, Iowa. King, who does not support abortion, even in the case of rape or incest, argued his position from the perspective of the unborn fetus. The Republican congressman also defended his controversial New York Times interview from January, in which he suggested in an interview that he did not understand why Americans make such a big deal out of the terms 'white nationalist" and "white supremacist.'"
Israel Bars House Members After Trump Tweet
Israel denies Omar and Tlaib entry after Trump tweet. The Hill: "Israel on Thursday announced that it would deny Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) entry to the country during an upcoming overseas trip, according to multiple reports. The decision was announced moments after President Trump tweeted that it would show "'great weakness' for Israel to allow the two congresswomen into the country. The president has been an outspoken critic of both Omar and Tlaib, who last year became the first two Muslim women elected to Congress. The congresswomen have supported Palestinian rights and backed the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement targeting Israel. Both have been accused by other members of Congress of using anti-Semitic language, but leaders of both parties had said they should be allowed to visit Israel."
Immigrants Swept Up In MS Raids Face Deportation
Immigrants swept up in Mississippi raids face courts that deport most defendants. Truthout: "Hundreds of immigrants swept up in mass raids at meatpacking plants in Mississippi last week are now being held by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) at privately run jails hours away in western Mississippi and Louisiana. Waves of hunger strikes have swept through an expanding network of immigration jails in the region as immigrants and asylum seekers protest against indefinite detention in isolated facilities. Meanwhile, these detainees are facing courts that remove immigrants from the country at rates well above the national average. Just days before the August 7 raids, guards at two Louisiana immigration jails forcefully cracked down on protests staged by dozens of hunger strikers, many of them asylum seekers. Guards deployed pepper spray in both cases, and at the Pine Prairie ICE Processing Center, hunger-striking immigrants reported being beaten, shot with rubber bullets and thrown in solitary confinement. Jail officials denied allegations of 'excessive force,' but activists with the group Freedom for Immigrants released photos of jailed immigrants with dark, round bruises allegedly caused by rubber bullets."
How The U.S. Created The Central American Immigration Crisis
How the U.S. created the Central American immigration crisis. Common Dreams: "It is indeed a real crisis, not something the Trump administration simply cooked up to justify building the president's wall. But it is also absolutely a manufactured crisis, one that should be stamped with the label 'made in the U.S.A.' thanks to decades of Washington's interventions in Central American affairs. Its origins go back at least to 1954 when the CIA overthrew the elected Guatemalan government of Jacobo Arbenz. In the 1960s, dictatorships would flourish in that country (and elsewhere in the region) with U.S. economic and military backing. When, in the 1970s and 1980s, Central Americans began to rise up in response, Washington's support for right-wing military regimes and death squads, in Honduras and El Salvador in particular, drove thousands of the inhabitants of those countries to migrate here, where their children were recruited into the very U.S. gangs now devastating their countries. In Guatemala, the U.S. supported successive regimes in genocidal wars on its indigenous Mayan majority. To top it off, climate change, which the United States has done the most of any nation to cause (and perhaps the least to forestall or mitigate), has made subsistence agriculture increasingly difficult to sustain in many parts of Central America."
