"Heck of a Job, Petey!"
This makes W's Katrina debacle look like a triumph
I awoke this morning with one thought: Have any of them resigned yet?
And I was disappointed to learn that - as of this writing - the answer is still “no.”
The silver lining of that - for me - is that the podcast we recorded yesterday afternoon is still relevant. And that we have the right to be even more outraged than we were yesterday.
Most weeks during our podcast recordings, I have the foresight to note the time when Karoli or Aliza make a particularly good point - so I can easily find it when I’m editing the video. But I was so engrossed in discussing that Signal chat that I didn’t even look at the counter until 59 minutes had passed. And I took no notes at all.
Needless to say, it was a lively discussion. I hope you enjoy it.
Or listen:
Opposition Calendar
During the podcast, the three of us talked about some of the peaceful protests and demonstrations that are gathering steam around the country. The Tesla Takedown movement is among the most successful, and probably the easiest to join. Events are happening in front of dealerships, every weekend, all over the world.
Another event we discussed is the upcoming nationwide Hands Off national day of action on April 5, produced by a massive coalition of advocates that include 50501, Common Cause, MoveOn, Indivisible, chapters of the League of Women Voters, and unions like AFT, the NEA, and SEIU.
Melissa Ryan noted last week in her excellent Ctrl-Alt-Right-Delete email that this kind of protest is EXACTLY the kind of thing we MUST do to fight this alarming slide into authoritarianism. She quotes digital organizer Micah L Sifry:
[I]t’s going to take more widespread and concerted action that involves many more people than now in nonviolent forms of protest. As longtime readers know, the benchmark for successful movements against authoritarianism, according to Harvard researcher Erica Chenoweth, is when at least 3.5% of the population gets involved in regular, public, nonviolent acts of opposition. In the US that would mean at least 11.5 million people turning out on a daily to weekly basis. We are just baby steps towards that benchmark.
Melissa’s newsletter is one of many essential resources we recommend in our curated list of alternate news sources. Check it out here.
