Marc Murphy and Dan Canon on Tuesday's election.

Marc Murphy is an attorney, freelance cartoonist and the editorial cartoonist for the Louisville Courier Journal. His comment appeared at Facebook.

---

Broken.

Regardless of what happens on Tuesday, America is broken in a way the removal of Donald Trump alone cannot fix. In the way cell phone video has exposed the brutal racism of our nation to those who are finally willing to believe with their eyes what our black neighbors have been telling our ears for generations, the pandemic has exposed our economic and social infrastructures for the wealth-serving, draconian frauds they have been at least since the rich convinced the white poor that taxes exist only to build a road to communism. The so-called political “division” hasn’t for a long time been between citizens of good faith with differing strategies to create a better country, there is in most respects now simply a right side, and an irredeemable wrong side.

Even if he loses - and in the unlikely event he concedes without trying to finally execute our democracy - millions upon millions of Americans will have voted for a man who has moved past pretending to care about the truth, about the Constitution, about the world, or about anything other than his own immoral interests. These millions, many of whom you know, work with, attend soccer games with, and even celebrate holiday meals with, will have voted for him for reasons well known and well-explained elsewhere. For some of them increasing their own wealth through the stock market, by lowering taxes, and even by protecting their suburban property values is the limit of their interest in the “politics” they otherwise sneer at because they are insulated from the cruel world for others they help build.

Far more of those millions of Trump voters, however, are either the unwitting victims of the very economic and social strategies they support, or have decided that protecting what has become their white Christian (in name only) world is worth the sacrifice. These are broad descriptions but more detailed analyses paint these voters in no better light: The Catholics, for instance, dishonoring the Church’s social justice - truly Christ-like - tradition by supporting a man and a party who violate the Commandments and The Beatitudes daily in exchange for a so-called Pro-Life vote.

The pandemic rolled into the United States like the Germans into Poland because this nation - without universal health care, without guaranteed basic income, without even a national impulse to care for others institutionally - was quite literally the least-prepared and most vulnerable allegedly developed country on the planet. Not only was there no national strategy there were lies, disorganization and self-interest in its place. The states were left to decide that, ultimately, families and business could ironically only afford to survive the virus financially if they were forced to risk surviving it medically by “opening up”. The simple act of wearing a mask became weaponized and used by the President himself as a way to identify the weak, and his enemies. The United States of America in 2020 decided, quite intentionally, that hundreds of thousands of deaths of mostly old and disproportionately non-white citizens were acceptable collateral damage. Like it always had.

America isn’t great. In its history when it was doing great things it had its foot on the necks of the descendants of slaves and 155 years after the end of the Civil War and even after these last months of marching we expect gratitude because *maybe* there will be revised Use of Force standards or some such thing for the police. The Democratic Party spent hundreds of millions of dollars this campaign cycle supporting candidates who can’t really distinguish themselves from their Republican opponents and even hope to appeal to Trump voters. America doesn’t have a tradition of a true opposition party and that’s why we live less in a democracy and more in an oligarchy, in which power and wealth continues to be more consolidated in the hands of a few, and the systems are perverted to serve only their interests. Interests that pay no taxes, because their private helicopters and 3-ton SUVs don’t need new roads, they pay for their own healthcare and private schools, and they don’t give a shit about you. We should eat cake, they would say.

There are no gallows outside our Bastille. But fundamental change can come through non-violent means and there were candidates this cycle willing to take the first steps down what will be a hard road. “Decency” is nice, but it doesn’t buy a child’s surgery, it doesn’t fix her school, it doesn’t pave her road or provide— how is it I’m writing this in 2020? - clean drinking water. “Decency” doesn’t remake our militarized police departments from the ground up. “Decency” doesn’t make the minimum wage a livable wage. “Decency” tells everyone to be patient. We’ve been patient too long. Hundreds of thousands died because of it, and hundreds of thousands more will. Tuesday has to be a beginning, not the end.

---

Dan Canon lives in the neighborhood. He replied, also at Facebook.

---

Every last word of what Marc Murphy says here. I'm an avowed optimist, but that optimism is very big-picture these days - like, humanity's probably gonna be okay. But America is probably not. I'm looking down the road and trying to spitball outcomes that don't leave us a third-world country with a strongman dictator in another decade (at best), and I don't see very many. Murphy's no cynic. Both of us have had up-close looks at the institutions that run our lives, and they are very, very fucked.

I predict Trump loses on Tuesday, but what happens as a result? What comes after Trump? What happens when the GOP comes up with a younger, healthier, fascist pig - one who's capable of tying his shoes and speaking above a third-grade level?

Rough seas ahead, mates.

Fire in the Hole.

Just a wee bit of clarity, then some music, and finally a benediction. The content herewith is derived from past posts.

Labor Day is May 1, by Jonah Walters (Jacobin)

Today is a boss's holiday.

 ... Tragically, our labor movement was never strong enough to buck the tyranny of capitalism for good. And today, with union membership in dramatic decline and workers under sustained attack from the political establishment, this militant past often feels like a distant, even irretrievable, memory.

But American workers did contribute at least one lasting legacy to the international movement for working-class liberation — a workers’ holiday, celebrating the ideal of international solidarity, and eagerly anticipating the day when workers might rise together to take control of their own lives and provide for their own well-being.

That holiday is May Day, not Labor Day.

---

Fathom the note on Woody Guthrie's guitar, and follow the link to hear the songs.

Top Ten Labor Day Songs, by Peter Rothberg (The Nation)

In honor of Labor Day, I’ve revised a previous attempt at the impossible task of naming the best songs ever written about working people. The list is highly debatable; songs about work and working people cut across genres and generations. I know it’s a travesty to neglect “Which Side Are You On?” and Johnny Paycheck’s classic “Take This Job and Shove It.” It also seems impossible that I’ve excluded Bruce Springsteen, Billy Bragg, Nina Simone, and John Mellencamp, and given such short shrift to the rich history of punk rock odes to the insanity of wage slavery. Hopefully, these songs will get people thinking about their own favorite musical celebrations of the working condition.

Dan Canon's congressional campaign was in full swing on Labor Day, 2017, and the candidate (he lost in the 2018 primary) had cogent thoughts about Labor Day. Well, it's about time someone around here did, and consequently, I believe they're worth repeating.

---

A couple of thoughts about Labor Day:

I've represented workers against big business here in my community for a decade now. Union folks don't often get to me, because they have a line of job protection that most American workers don't have. Most of the employment protections non-union folks *do* have were also a direct result of the labor movement. Overtime pay, workplace safety rules, anti-retaliation provisions - these are all thanks to unions, and affect most workers whether they've ever paid dues or not.

The issues brought to the fore by labor unions are more important now than ever. As plenty of people have rightly pointed out, our insane wealth gap has just emboldened the rich to take even more, not to generously lavish the working class with raises and pensions, because almost no one is telling them they can't. Labor unions tell them they can't. So oligarchs over the last decade or so have been pretty brazen about trying to break the back of organized labor as a whole. They keep the concentration of wealth at the top from getting even worse, and the top is pretty adamant that they'd *like* for it to get worse.

But it's too simplistic to say that the effort to gut unions is just based on greed. It's also part and parcel of the GOP/new-American-fascist agenda. Down here, if we are organized, we are a threat to the top. The more and better we are organized, the more of a threat we pose. And so naturally, the more divided we are, the less a threat we pose to an increasing concentration of wealth and power at the top. In fact, if we are very divided, we might not even notice such concentration at all. We might deny that it exists. We might think it doesn't affect us. We might not have time to care.

This is why there's a concerted effort to divide us up. Black v. white, Christian v. Muslim, straight v. gay, cis v. trans, etc. It makes us disorganized. Unfocused. Weak.

Where would you start a campaign of disorganization, were you to run one? Who would be among your primary targets? I bet one would be: the folks who have already known how to organize and get results for more than a century.

That's the reason we see our friends, families, and neighbors in the labor movement under attack. It's not just about making a few more dollars at the expense of someone else's hard work. It's about perpetuating divisions and preventing the amalgamation and galvanization of those of us down here below.
Let's all buy a drink for a union member and tell 'em we've got their backs. They've had ours for more than a hundred years.

Dan Canon discusses the marriage equality case, 5 years on. Now is it the turn for racial justice?

Dan Canon's column in LEO Weekly last week. Click the link, read it all. We're very fortunate to have Dan, Valerie and their kids in the neighborhood.

Marriage equality case 5 years later: Can that victory be replicated for racial justice?

 ... My naiveté served me well. We went to the Supreme Court in 2015. We won.

I got my feather and hung it on my wall. Our clients, and millions of other people, can get married. I’ve been to lots of weddings over the last five years. I’ve even officiated a few. It feels good.

I suppose it’s for the best that I didn’t recognize then what I see clearly now: Of all the ways to try to bring about social change, filing a lawsuit and leaving it to a judge in the Midwest, or the South, or anywhere, is among the worst. As evidence, I offer a detail that is often lost in the retelling of the marriage cases: We lost. We lost in the court of appeals on our way to the Supreme Court. We lost in the court that presides over Kentucky, Ohio, Michigan and Tennessee. We lost in a court that hears hundreds of cases every year on police misconduct, inmates’ rights, immigration detention, free speech, abortion and every other hot-button issue anyone has ever cared about. We lost, just like the national organizations said we would. We lost, just like everyone loses. And since the Supreme Court takes so few cases, losing at that court is the end of the line for most people seeking to make change through what we think of as proper, respectable channels.

By the time we lost in the lower court, pro-marriage activists were accustomed to losing legal battles ...

 ... For now, I’ll celebrate our surprising win in an institution designed to make losers. I’ll celebrate the marriages of Tim and Larry, Greg and Michael, Kim and Tammy, Maurice and Dominique, Paul and Randy, and Luke and Jimmy. And even as the buzzards circle the great bird that gave me my defunct quill, I’ll celebrate what the marriage case stands for: The hope that the mythology of American equality can be realized, even if we don’t quite know the recipe for it.

Dan Canon with electoral prescience: "What do you think you can win by starting with your compromise number?"

In the latest installment of THE UNFUCKING OF THE MIDWEST (at LEO), Dan Canon explains a phenomenon that I always thought should be obvious. To end a negotiation positively, one has to begin it properly.

This is why folks who consider themselves "liberal" or "left" currently find themselves occupying a tar paper shack off in Center Right Land.

Why Republicans win at negotiating… and moderates lose.

In our civil justice system, 99% of all cases settle before trial. Sometimes for a little money, sometimes for a lot. As such, we lawyers end up doing a lot of negotiating. So much, in fact, that we tend to take for granted the basic principles of skillful dispute resolution: Calculate the midpoint and try to subtly pull your opponent away from it. Don’t bid against yourself. Make the other side think they’ve won something. Imagine you’ve got a client who wants to leave a negotiation with $50,000. Your opponent’s starting offer is $5,000. You don’t start negotiating at $50,000 — that’s your compromise number. You’ve just set your client up to resolve the case somewhere in the $20,000 range (that being the midpoint between your number and your opponent’s).

Instead, you start at $150,000. That signals to the other side that your final number is somewhere in the $70,000 range. If they spend an entire negotiation thinking that they need to pull you away from $70,000, landing on $50,000 seems like a big victory for them, even though that’s exactly what your client wanted. You made them think they won something. Say it doesn’t go that way, though. Say the other side puts on the brakes at $40,000 — lower than you would have liked. That’s still much higher than $20,000 and, therefore, much better than you could have done if you had used your ideal number as your opening offer.

Students and clients often ask: Why not just be honest? Isn’t it better to just put your cards on the table, say what you want and say “take it or leave it?” But it doesn’t work that way. Protracted negotiation is not about honesty or dishonesty; it’s a psychological process. It’s about anticipating — and hopefully changing — your opponent’s expectations along the way. You may have to adjust your own expectations, too. In fact, your expectations might be adjusted whether you like it or not, because what seems realistic at the beginning of a negotiation is often totally unrealistic by the end.

In the coming months, a complex set of negotiations will be playing out among candidates vying for all kinds of elected positions. And while a government full of lawyers is not nearly as much fun as one full of fighter pilots, actors, optometrists and radio hosts, I wish some of our Democratic candidates (and incumbents) could at least brush up on the basic principles of negotiation. What I would like them to ponder this cycle is: What do you think you can win by starting with your compromise number?

Canon on independent local voting: "You vote not for the party but for the candidate you know; your friend, your neighbor, your friend’s neighbor, someone you went to elementary school with."

Some fine points by Dan Canon, who lives among us right here in Nawbany.

National Politics Taint Local Races And Lay Waste To Societal Norms, by Dan Canon (LEO Weekly)

... In years past, there was not a lot of daylight between Republican and Democratic candidates at the state and municipal levels in Indiana and Kentucky; you often still can’t distinguish one from the other if they don’t tell you. It is not uncommon for a local politician to switch parties depending on who is likely to get more votes at the top of the ticket. So, to a degree, national-level politics have long influenced what goes on in small towns.

The degree has gradually increased over the last few decades, as federal wedge issues have been made the focal point of every political contest in America, from the Clarksville dogcatcher to the Rabbit Hash dogmayor. This shift has not happened by accident; the GOP was shrewd enough to localize national issues in order to dominate state legislatures and redraw the federal map, a strategy that has proved stunningly successful ...

Allow me to skip to the conclusion.

... The real question is: Given that these are the devils we know, what does a (Matt) Bevin victory or a (Bob) Hall victory say about the degree to which people have adopted the national lens as the one through which all politics should be viewed? Dissembling, insulting teachers, bulldozing family homes or outright insane behavior — do these still matter to heartland voters on Election Day? Or, has our collective attention span been whittled away to the nubs of abortion and immigration, with no room for anything else?

If the former, then I think there’s real hope for our fragile republic and for the Midwest in particular. Nearly a hundred years ago, an editor of the Terre Haute Tribune said of iconic socialist Eugene Debs: “Ninety-five percent of the people [in Terre Haute] don’t like his ideas, but they worship the man.” For now, it is still acceptable — even desirable — to cast yourself as an independent voter in small-town Indiana. You vote not for the party but for the candidate you know; your friend, your neighbor, your friend’s neighbor, someone you went to elementary school with. You couldn’t imagine them doing anything too nefarious. As long as this is still true, there is a chance, however slim, that progressives who’ve laid roots in their communities can win municipal offices and state legislatures. In red states, the image of left-wing populists has needed rehabilitation at least since the McCarthy era, and mainstays of small towns are just the people to do it. Alas, it seems this cycle will be more about expelling the worst devils we know and meeting some new ones. Let’s hope we can at least do that.

Of course, it depends on what is meant by "progressive," given that the differences between Bob Hall and Jeff Gahan are paper-thin at best, but I'll refrain from quibbling with a thought-provoking essay.

As LEO reminds us: Dan Canon is a civil rights lawyer and law professor. “Midwesticism”is his short-documentary series about Midwesterners who are making the world a better place. Watch it at: patreon.com/dancanon.

Labor Day 2019: It SHOULD be honored on May 1. Today is a boss's holiday, but we'll celebrate with songs about working people, and thoughts by Dan Canon.

Just a wee bit of clarity, then some music, and finally a benediction. The content herewith is derived from past posts.

Labor Day is May 1, by Jonah Walters (Jacobin)

Today is a boss's holiday.

 ... Tragically, our labor movement was never strong enough to buck the tyranny of capitalism for good. And today, with union membership in dramatic decline and workers under sustained attack from the political establishment, this militant past often feels like a distant, even irretrievable, memory.

But American workers did contribute at least one lasting legacy to the international movement for working-class liberation — a workers’ holiday, celebrating the ideal of international solidarity, and eagerly anticipating the day when workers might rise together to take control of their own lives and provide for their own well-being.

That holiday is May Day, not Labor Day.

---

Fathom the note on Woody Guthrie's guitar, and follow the link to hear the songs.

Top Ten Labor Day Songs, by Peter Rothberg (The Nation)

In honor of Labor Day, I’ve revised a previous attempt at the impossible task of naming the best songs ever written about working people. The list is highly debatable; songs about work and working people cut across genres and generations. I know it’s a travesty to neglect “Which Side Are You On?” and Johnny Paycheck’s classic “Take This Job and Shove It.” It also seems impossible that I’ve excluded Bruce Springsteen, Billy Bragg, Nina Simone, and John Mellencamp, and given such short shrift to the rich history of punk rock odes to the insanity of wage slavery. Hopefully, these songs will get people thinking about their own favorite musical celebrations of the working condition.

Dan Canon's congressional campaign was in full swing on Labor Day, 2017, and the candidate (he lost in the 2018 primary) had cogent thoughts about Labor Day. Well, it's about time someone around here did, and consequently, I believe they're worth repeating.

---

A couple of thoughts about Labor Day:

I've represented workers against big business here in my community for a decade now. Union folks don't often get to me, because they have a line of job protection that most American workers don't have. Most of the employment protections non-union folks *do* have were also a direct result of the labor movement. Overtime pay, workplace safety rules, anti-retaliation provisions - these are all thanks to unions, and affect most workers whether they've ever paid dues or not.

The issues brought to the fore by labor unions are more important now than ever. As plenty of people have rightly pointed out, our insane wealth gap has just emboldened the rich to take even more, not to generously lavish the working class with raises and pensions, because almost no one is telling them they can't. Labor unions tell them they can't. So oligarchs over the last decade or so have been pretty brazen about trying to break the back of organized labor as a whole. They keep the concentration of wealth at the top from getting even worse, and the top is pretty adamant that they'd *like* for it to get worse.

But it's too simplistic to say that the effort to gut unions is just based on greed. It's also part and parcel of the GOP/new-American-fascist agenda. Down here, if we are organized, we are a threat to the top. The more and better we are organized, the more of a threat we pose. And so naturally, the more divided we are, the less a threat we pose to an increasing concentration of wealth and power at the top. In fact, if we are very divided, we might not even notice such concentration at all. We might deny that it exists. We might think it doesn't affect us. We might not have time to care.

This is why there's a concerted effort to divide us up. Black v. white, Christian v. Muslim, straight v. gay, cis v. trans, etc. It makes us disorganized. Unfocused. Weak.

Where would you start a campaign of disorganization, were you to run one? Who would be among your primary targets? I bet one would be: the folks who have already known how to organize and get results for more than a century.

That's the reason we see our friends, families, and neighbors in the labor movement under attack. It's not just about making a few more dollars at the expense of someone else's hard work. It's about perpetuating divisions and preventing the amalgamation and galvanization of those of us down here below.
Let's all buy a drink for a union member and tell 'em we've got their backs. They've had ours for more than a hundred years.

You can help Dan Canon with his new project: Midwesticism: Stories from the End of America.

Alas, so much for Dan Canon, 3rd District council person. A boy can dream. Meanwhile, read all about Dan's next project can consider becoming a supporter.

I did.

Midwesticism: Stories from the End of America

A better world. To the extent there is something we all want universally, it's this. We may have very different ideas of what that might be. But we want it. Sometimes (maybe most of the time) it seems impossible to do anything meaningful to get it.

The courts, the legislature, the executive branch, all the existing systems we have in place are not tools of justice, liberty, equality, or anything we want or expect them to be. And as demonstrated by the last election, even when the rest of the country makes a little progress, the Midwest lags behind, and sometimes seems to be moving backwards.

And so the question becomes: *how* can we make things better?

After a life as a musician, lawyer, and politician, I've come to an important conclusion: The real stuff of social change happens through narrative - telling each other our real stories, our lived experiences. And there are lots of stories to tell. Great stories. Life-changing stories. World-changing stories.

Over the last few years, I've built a media presence by fighting for change in people's lives. I've got a platform to tell those stories. I intend to use that platform. I think I can do a lot more good like this than by running for office (for now). And so I'm excited to give you a little glimpse into what we've been working on the last couple of months in the video below. It's a multimedia project focusing on extraordinary people in the Midwest - people who are making a better world, often without accolades, and sometimes without even knowing it themselves. Essentially, we are trying to carry on the work and spirit of my campaign without the ugliness, ineffectiveness, and enormous expense of electoral politics.

We have a lot planned for this project. A veteran film crew, researchers, social media experts, the works. And holy cow, you are NOT gonna believe the content. The stuff our subjects talk about is going to change the way you look at the Midwest, the people in your own backyard, and the nature of how we go about shaping the world around us. I want to help give people a roadmap for making a better world, one piece at a time, and I think that’s what this project will do.

Of course, we need your help. If you've got a couple of extra bucks - even $5.00 - to help us out every month (now that candidates are not vying for your every dollar), that's amazing. But if you can share this and tell everyone you know about it, that's great too. And if you know anyone we should profile, let us know!

Dan Canon is writing a column for LEO as News & Tribune contemplates a "knitting for piety" foldout.

Dan Canon, a New Albany resident, writing a column for LEO; Danielle Grady, former News & Tribune reporter, now a staff writer for LEO.

Danielle has an excellent piece about the Sherman Minton Bridge: Sherman Minton Closure Could Cut Lifeline For West Louisville.

Seeing as Dan, our favorite fire-breathing socialist, is writing for a Louisvile newspaper with an entire section devoted to beer, maybe the News & Tribune can have Tom May start writing Christian-oriented beer columns -- you know, pairing psalms with IPAs.

That'd be par for the TopGolf mediocrity course for the likes of Bill Hanson, wouldn't it?

THE UNFUCKING OF THE MIDWEST: Of the law, politics and our coming blindness, by Dan Canon (LEO Weekly)

... Over the last 20 years as a musician, an activist, a lawyer and a politician in Indiana and Kentucky, I’ve seen the fucking over of the Midwest play out in an incalculable number of ways, affecting an incalculable number of lives. But I’ve also seen enough to maintain a glimmer of optimism — if just enough to get by.

In this series, I’ll be telling the stories of folks here who, for whatever reason, have been shortchanged by the institutions that govern their day-to-day existence. I’ll be talking to the good people in our communities who are working on solutions to the underlying problems. And I’ll be sharing what I learn from them about meaningful ways you and I can help unfuck the Midwest.

Stay with me. And if you know any good stories, send them my way.

Howard Zinn: "Let us not be disconsolate over the increasing control of the court system by the right wing. The courts have never been on the side of justice."

As a prelude to the Dred Scott Decision Brett Kavanaugh Supreme Court confirmation drama, our own Dan Canon took to Salon to pour acid on the situation.

I too am savagely impartial and should be a Supreme Court Justice

Brett Kavanaugh’s WSJ op-ed has made me see the light. I too can be indifferent in court!

I was moved by Judge Brett Kavanaugh's opinion piece published in the Wall Street Journal last night. After all, he is a white, straight, middle-aged male lawyer, just like me. He's also a father, a son, a nephew, a cousin, probably a second cousin, perhaps even a godfather or a dutch uncle or something. And like me, he enjoys beer. Not plebeian beer, I bet; just the good stuff. We have a lot in common.

Sure, I didn't go to Yale or Harvard or Georgetown, and I barely even passed the bar, but yet I feel a close kinship to the judge for one major reason: we are both fiercely impartial. In fact, I would go so far as to say that (with all due respect) I am even more impartial than Judge Kavanaugh. And it is my commitment to extreme, nonpartisan, militant impartiality that leads me to believe that I am at least equally qualified to serve on the Supreme Court. If Kavanaugh's nomination peters out (and I do not mean that as a joke, though I concede it was an unfortunate choice of words in this context), or if, God forbid, some other deistic guardian of neutrality on the High Court should die or retire, I would accept President Trump's nomination ...

Ouch. 

As usual, Howard Zinn is on target even though he's dead. This article was published on October 21, 2005 and is reprinted here in its entirety.

Local dilettantish progressives, please read it. 

---

Howard Zinn: Don’t Despair about the Supreme Court, by Howard Zinn (Progressive)

It would be naive to depend on the Supreme Court to defend the rights of poor people, women, people of color, dissenters of all kinds.

John Roberts sailed through his confirmation hearings as the new Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, with enthusiastic Republican support, and a few weak mutterings of opposition by the Democrats. Then, after the far right deemed Harriet Miers insufficiently doctrinaire, Bush nominated arch conservative Samuel Alito to replace Sandra Day O'Connor. This has caused a certain consternation among people we affectionately term "the left."

I can understand that sinking feeling. Even listening to pieces of Roberts's confirmation hearings was enough to induce despair: the joking with the candidate, the obvious signs that, whether Democrats or Republicans, these are all members of the same exclusive club. Roberts's proper "credentials," his "nice guy" demeanor, his insistence to the Judiciary Committee that he is not an "ideologue" (can you imagine anyone, even Robert Bork or Dick Cheney, admitting that he is an "ideologue"?) were clearly more important than his views on equality, justice, the rights of defendants, the war powers of the President.

At one point in the hearings, The New York Times reported, Roberts "summed up his philosophy." He had been asked, "Are you going to be on the side of the little guy?" (Would any candidate admit that he was on the side of "the big guy"? Presumably serious "hearings" bring out idiot questions.)

Roberts replied: "If the Constitution says that the little guy should win, the little guy's going to win in court before me. But if the Constitution says that the big guy should win, well, then the big guy's going to win, because my obligation is to the Constitution."

If the Constitution is the holy test, then a justice should abide by its provision in Article VI that not only the Constitution itself but "all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the Supreme Law of the Land." This includes the Geneva Convention of 1949, which the United States signed, and which insists that prisoners of war must be granted the rights of due process.

A district court judge in 2004 ruled that the detainees held in Guantanamo for years without trial were protected by the Geneva Convention and deserved due process. Roberts and two colleagues on the Court of Appeals overruled this.

There is enormous hypocrisy surrounding the pious veneration of the Constitution and "the rule of law." The Constitution, like the Bible, is infinitely flexible and is used to serve the political needs of the moment. When the country was in economic crisis and turmoil in the Thirties and capitalism needed to be saved from the anger of the poor and hungry and unemployed, the Supreme Court was willing to stretch to infinity the constitutional right of Congress to regulate interstate commerce. It decided that the national government, desperate to regulate farm production, could tell a family farmer what to grow on his tiny piece of land.

When the Constitution gets in the way of a war, it is ignored. When the Supreme Court was faced, during Vietnam, with a suit by soldiers refusing to go, claiming that there had been no declaration of war by Congress, as the Constitution required, the soldiers could not get four Supreme Court justices to agree to even hear the case. When, during World War I, Congress ignored the First Amendment's right to free speech by passing legislation to prohibit criticism of the war, the imprisonment of dissenters under this law was upheld unanimously by the Supreme Court, which included two presumably liberal and learned justices: Oliver Wendell Holmes and Louis Brandeis.

It would be naive to depend on the Supreme Court to defend the rights of poor people, women, people of color, dissenters of all kinds. Those rights only come alive when citizens organize, protest, demonstrate, strike, boycott, rebel, and violate the law in order to uphold justice.

It would be naive to depend on the Supreme Court to defend the rights of poor people, women, people of color, dissenters of all kinds. Those rights only come alive when citizens organize, protest, demonstrate, strike, boycott, rebel, and violate the law in order to uphold justice.

The distinction between law and justice is ignored by all those Senators--Democrats and Republicans--who solemnly invoke as their highest concern "the rule of law." The law can be just; it can be unjust. It does not deserve to inherit the ultimate authority of the divine right of the king.

The Constitution gave no rights to working people: no right to work less than twelve hours a day, no right to a living wage, no right to safe working conditions. Workers had to organize, go on strike, defy the law, the courts, the police, create a great movement which won the eight-hour day, and caused such commotion that Congress was forced to pass a minimum wage law, and Social Security, and unemployment insurance.

The Brown decision on school desegregation did not come from a sudden realization of the Supreme Court that this is what the Fourteenth Amendment called for. After all, it was the same Fourteenth Amendment that had been cited in the Plessy case upholding racial segregation. It was the initiative of brave families in the South--along with the fear by the government, obsessed with the Cold War, that it was losing the hearts and minds of colored people all over the world--that brought a sudden enlightenment to the Court.

The Supreme Court in 1883 had interpreted the Fourteenth Amendment so that nongovernmental institutions hotels, restaurants, etc.-could bar black people. But after the sit-ins and arrests of thousands of black people in the South in the early Sixties, the right to public accommodations was quietly given constitutional sanction in 1964 by the Court. It now interpreted the interstate commerce clause, whose wording had not changed since 1787, to mean that places of public accommodation could be regulated by Congressional action and be prohibited from discriminating.

Soon this would include barbershops, and I suggest it takes an ingenious interpretation to include barbershops in interstate commerce.

The right of a woman to an abortion did not depend on the Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade. It was won before that decision, all over the country, by grassroots agitation that forced states to recognize the right. If the American people, who by a great majority favor that right, insist on it, act on it, no Supreme Court decision can take it away.

The rights of working people, of women, of black people have not depended on decisions of the courts. Like the other branches of the political system, the courts have recognized these rights only after citizens have engaged in direct action powerful enough to win these rights for themselves.

This is not to say that we should ignore the courts or the electoral campaigns. It can be useful to get one person rather than another on the Supreme Court, or in the Presidency, or in Congress. The courts, win or lose, can be used to dramatize issues.

On St. Patrick's Day, 2003, on the eve of the invasion of Iraq, four anti-war activists poured their own blood around the vestibule of a military recruiting center near Ithaca, New York, and were arrested. Charged in state court with criminal mischief and trespassing (charges well suited to the American invaders of a certain Mideastern country), the St. Patrick's Four spoke their hearts to the jury. Peter DeMott, a Vietnam veteran, described the brutality of war. Danny Burns explained why invading Iraq would violate the U.N. Charter, a treaty signed by the United States. Clare Grady spoke of her moral obligations as a Christian. Teresa Grady spoke to the jury as a mother, telling them that women and children were the chief victims of war, and that she cared about the children of Iraq. Nine of the twelve jurors voted to acquit them, and the judge declared a hung jury. (When the federal government retried them on felony conspiracy charges, a jury in September acquitted them of those and convicted them on lesser charges.)

Still, knowing the nature of the political and judicial system of this country, its inherent bias against the poor, against people of color, against dissidents, we cannot become dependent on the courts, or on our political leadership. Our culture--the media, the educational system--tries to crowd out of our political consciousness everything except who will be elected President and who will be on the Supreme Court, as if these are the most important decisions we make. They are not. They deflect us from the most important job citizens have, which is to bring democracy alive by organizing, protesting, engaging in acts of civil disobedience that shake up the system. That is why Cindy Sheehan's dramatic stand in Crawford, Texas, leading to 1,600 anti-war vigils around the country, involving 100,000 people, is more crucial to the future of American democracy than the mock hearings on Justice Roberts or the ones to come on Judge Alito.

That is why the St. Patrick's Four need to be supported and emulated. That is why the GIs refusing to return to Iraq, the families of soldiers calling for withdrawal from the war, are so important.

That is why the huge peace march in Washington on September 24 bodes well.

Let us not be disconsolate over the increasing control of the court system by the right wing.

The courts have never been on the side of justice, only moving a few degrees one way or the other, unless pushed by the people. Those words engraved in the marble of the Supreme Court, "Equal Justice Before the Law," have always been a sham.

No Supreme Court, liberal or conservative, will stop the war in Iraq, or redistribute the wealth of this country, or establish free medical care for every human being. Such fundamental change will depend, the experience of the past suggests, on the actions of an aroused citizenry, demanding that the promise of the Declaration of Independence--an equal right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness--be fulfilled.

Labor Day should be May 1. Today is a boss's holiday, but we'll celebrate with songs about working people, and thoughts by Dan Canon.

Just a wee bit of clarity, then some music, and finally a benediction. The content herewith is derived from past posts.

Labor Day is May 1, by Jonah Walters (Jacobin)

Today is a boss's holiday.

 ... Tragically, our labor movement was never strong enough to buck the tyranny of capitalism for good. And today, with union membership in dramatic decline and workers under sustained attack from the political establishment, this militant past often feels like a distant, even irretrievable, memory.

But American workers did contribute at least one lasting legacy to the international movement for working-class liberation — a workers’ holiday, celebrating the ideal of international solidarity, and eagerly anticipating the day when workers might rise together to take control of their own lives and provide for their own well-being.

That holiday is May Day, not Labor Day.

---

Fathom the note on Woody Guthrie's guitar, and follow the link to hear the songs.

Top Ten Labor Day Songs, by Peter Rothberg (The Nation)

In honor of Labor Day, I’ve revised a previous attempt at the impossible task of naming the best songs ever written about working people. The list is highly debatable; songs about work and working people cut across genres and generations. I know it’s a travesty to neglect “Which Side Are You On?” and Johnny Paycheck’s classic “Take This Job and Shove It.” It also seems impossible that I’ve excluded Bruce Springsteen, Billy Bragg, Nina Simone, and John Mellencamp, and given such short shrift to the rich history of punk rock odes to the insanity of wage slavery. Hopefully, these songs will get people thinking about their own favorite musical celebrations of the working condition.

Dan Canon's congressional campaign was in full swing on Labor Day, 2017, and the candidate (he lost in the 2018 primary) had cogent thoughts about Labor Day. Well, it's about time someone around here did, and consequently, I believe they're worth repeating.

---

A couple of thoughts about Labor Day:

I've represented workers against big business here in my community for a decade now. Union folks don't often get to me, because they have a line of job protection that most American workers don't have. Most of the employment protections non-union folks *do* have were also a direct result of the labor movement. Overtime pay, workplace safety rules, anti-retaliation provisions - these are all thanks to unions, and affect most workers whether they've ever paid dues or not.

The issues brought to the fore by labor unions are more important now than ever. As plenty of people have rightly pointed out, our insane wealth gap has just emboldened the rich to take even more, not to generously lavish the working class with raises and pensions, because almost no one is telling them they can't. Labor unions tell them they can't. So oligarchs over the last decade or so have been pretty brazen about trying to break the back of organized labor as a whole. They keep the concentration of wealth at the top from getting even worse, and the top is pretty adamant that they'd *like* for it to get worse.

But it's too simplistic to say that the effort to gut unions is just based on greed. It's also part and parcel of the GOP/new-American-fascist agenda. Down here, if we are organized, we are a threat to the top. The more and better we are organized, the more of a threat we pose. And so naturally, the more divided we are, the less a threat we pose to an increasing concentration of wealth and power at the top. In fact, if we are very divided, we might not even notice such concentration at all. We might deny that it exists. We might think it doesn't affect us. We might not have time to care.

This is why there's a concerted effort to divide us up. Black v. white, Christian v. Muslim, straight v. gay, cis v. trans, etc. It makes us disorganized. Unfocused. Weak.

Where would you start a campaign of disorganization, were you to run one? Who would be among your primary targets? I bet one would be: the folks who have already known how to organize and get results for more than a century.

That's the reason we see our friends, families, and neighbors in the labor movement under attack. It's not just about making a few more dollars at the expense of someone else's hard work. It's about perpetuating divisions and preventing the amalgamation and galvanization of those of us down here below.
Let's all buy a drink for a union member and tell 'em we've got their backs. They've had ours for more than a hundred years.

Gahan bans ‘Heyburn Nine’ from entering Nawbany city limits, then slaps down some Hammer vinyl.

That's okay, mister mayor. An ICE-cold Bud Light should take care of the activism-induced headache, but at least it's your pal Greggie having to cope with it and not Shane.

Boy, wouldn't THAT be entertaining.

Heyburn Nine’ plead not guilty over disrupting immigration court, federal charges loom, by Jonathan Meador (Insider Louisville)

Carla Wallace seemed relaxed as she stood on the damp concrete steps of the Hall of Justice Tuesday morning as efforts by a committed group of local activists to change U.S. immigration policy moved from the streets to the courtroom.

The calm remained even as Wallace, a member of a group dubbed the “Heyburn Nine,” began to shout.

“Abolish ICE!” Wallace said, leading about two dozen supporters and eight fellow co-defendants in a now-familiar chant, a battle cry of the protest movement against the Trump Administration’s “zero-tolerance” immigration policy and Immigration and Custom Enforcement’s policy of separating families at the border.

“Abolish ICE!” the crowd behind her responded.

It's good to see Dan Canon back from his holiday and once again tending to the legal needs of activists.

Dan Canon, a civil rights attorney and former Democratic candidate for Indiana’s 9th Congressional seat, is representing two of the nine arrested protesters. He told Insider that “anybody who can be saved from removal (by ICE) is a victory,” adding that he was inspired by his clients’ actions.

“(My clients) were there to not only exercise a fundamental American right of protest but a fundamental human right to stand against injustices perpetrated by your own government no matter who they’re against,” Canon said.

The charges brought by the city stem from direct action taken by the activists last week, in which nine members of Occupy ICE Louisville blocked access to the Heyburn building, home of the city’s immigration court. According to members of the group, the action was intended to disrupt that court’s proceedings and prevent deportation actions.

Caufield makes the case for Canon for Congress.

Kate Caufield's name has appeared in the Tom May Compendium so often this year that she's almost as ubiquitous as, well, Tom May himself.

I had a letter to the editor in support of Dan Canon and Canon For Indiana printed in the News and Tribune today. If you live in IN-9, please consider casting your vote (if you haven’t already) for Dan. He is as real as real gets.

As of 9:00 p.m. Friday night, the "letters to the editor" section of the on-line Tom May Anthology hadn't been updated since April 24, so here's the letter in its entirety, as copied from her post on Facebook.

--

I’ve lived in the 9th district of Indiana since we moved here in 1988- when I was 12.

I’ve experienced middle school, high school, college, and now my career and child raising years here in this incredibly dynamic district of this beautiful state. I’ve seen candidates and politicians come and go: Some were elected, some were not; some made changes for the better; some did not.

I’m not a believer in negative campaigns. However, I AM a believer in true representation by an elected official. To that end, I’d like to raise a concern about Canon’s opponent, Liz Watson. While Liz may truly believe in what she thinks is best for this district, she hasn’t been here to experience all of the changes that IN-9 has gone through in the past 10-15 years.

Instead, she’s spent the past decade plus working and living in Washington, DC- most recently with the House Democrats, and including doing work lobbying with the National Women’s Law Center. To be clear, there’s nothing wrong with her career choices or her decision to move away from the 9th district. In doing so, however, she made her preferred choice known: DC over Indiana. When she chose to move home, it came with an ask: Send me back to DC with your money and your votes. As a constituent of IN-09, that troubles me greatly. How can you represent me, when you haven’t the faintest idea how the past decade has shaped the district?

That said, never have I been more excited to vote for a candidate than I am in this primary election. Dan Canon has chosen to live in IN-9 for most of his life, and knows the struggles of these past 30 years as the district has endured as our country has changed. He’s fought for the values that I believe wholeheartedly in: Equality for all, and human dignity. He didn’t just start fighting for them, though- he’s been doing it long before the thought of running for a political office crossed his mind.

Because of his passion and his commitment for living here, and knowing all of the unique things that make this district what it is, Dan Canon is who will have my vote ‪on May 8.‬

Roger encourages you to vote for Dan Canon for Congress.

It’s been a while since NA Confidential attempted any sort of comprehensive candidate endorsement slate, although on occasion individual aspirants have been singled out for praise.

This blog is a one-man show, and there isn’t an editorial board. Maybe there should be, as composed of friends and volunteers. That’s something to consider for the general election, but not for the primary, apart from letting readers know which candidates made public statements about the NAHA putsch.

Election Day draws near. Find out which candidates have issued public statements about Deaf Gahan's public housing acreage takeover.

That said, the Confidentials voted this morning at the clerk’s office, and my vote went to Dan Canon for 9th district congressman.

Ironically, last week I was walking up Main Street and ran into Liz Watson, Canon’s opponent, who was out canvassing. A third candidate, Rob Chatlos, also appears on the Democratic ballot.

Watson’s campaign manager was with her, and when she asked me if she had my vote, he interjected: “He (Roger) is a Canon guy.”

I nodded, and she asked why. I told her that as a leftist/socialist in a Northern European mold, Canon’s platform jibes more closely with my point of view. That’s the truth of the matter.

But there’s something else.

Watson appears to have the support of the local Democratic establishment, and if we’re speak here about endorsements, seeing 15 of Watson’s yard signs cluttering John Rosenbarger’s lawn emphatically isn’t one of them. The local Democratic “brain trust” is the problem, not the solution, and most of them are supporting her.

Some of my closest friends disagree, and that’s okay. In terms of conscience, my primary reason for supporting Canon is the strength of his platform, not my writhing revulsion with Adam Dickey’s usual beige suspects.

Canon’s platform is not perfect. Almost nothing is said about foreign policy, especially American war-mongering around the globe. I’ll be asking Dan for more substance on foreign policy in the run-up to the general election.

And if Watson wins?

Dude, when it comes to the pressing issues of the day, I’m no friend of Trey Hollingsworth.

I’m also sick and tired of voting “against” Republicans by voting “for” the inanity of the Democratic National Committee’s neoliberal cash envy.

Ask me again next Wednesday.

Until then, my personal endorsement goes to Dan Canon for Congress.

Read Dan Canon's statement about the issue of public housing in New Albany.

Without further ado, here is 9th district congressional candidate Dan Canon's statement about the issue of public housing in New Albany. It is a thoughtful, nuanced response, and I appreciate it very much.

---

As readers of this page may already know, my friends at NA Confidential have criticized me more than once for not commenting on New Albany's housing situation as it stands. Though I've often talked about housing broadly, even in New Albany, there are a few reasons for my relative silence on the specifics of this issue thus far.

First, I have been waiting for release of a finalized, official plan to see what it looks like. Housing advocates generally agree that decentralized public housing is, on the whole, a good thing. I'm hoping to see a plan that ensures no one loses their home, and that puts the folks who are currently in public housing into a better situation.

Second, there is an ever-present concern of appearing to use the poor, or any marginalized group, as a political pawn. My campaign has canvassed and called public housing residents in New Albany. For the folks we've talked to, this doesn’t seem to be a top issue (many were not aware of it at all), and so commenting on this felt almost artificial. I realize now that this is the wrong way to think about this issue - I’ll discuss that more below.

Third, there are some details I shouldn’t publicly comment on because I learned them wearing my lawyer hat, which complicates things a bit.

In the aggregate, this issue has created a unique challenge for me and for my campaign. There’s a lot of messaging power wrapped up in a race like this, and the people of my hometown are important to me, so I’ve been tinkering with an official statement for a while. The long and short of it is: none of the above reasons are good enough to maintain silence on the issue as it presently stands.

As detailed in a video my campaign produced late last year, Charlestown has run scores of people out of single-family homes in the Pleasant Ridge neighborhood by levying outrageously high fines for alleged code violations. The owners, unable or unwilling to pay fines that total more than the value of the house itself, are coerced into selling their houses to a developer for a pittance. Houses sit vacant, boarded up, falling in on themselves, while the remaining residents' property values plummet. It now looks like a scene out of the Walking Dead. The transparent - and practically admitted - goal of Charlestown's Mayor is to run enough people out of Pleasant Ridge so that the neighborhood may be bulldozed and replaced with a new subdivision; one filled with homes in the $400k range. The Mayor is on record suggesting that the residents of Pleasant Ridge, who "don't contribute anything," can simply move to a different town. I've called it the starkest example of class warfare I have ever seen in Indiana.

There are other contenders, of course. A few years ago in Indianapolis - a city which then had no secular homeless shelters - a tent city was dismantled. Around 70 refugees, veterans, seniors, people suffering from mental illness, and other vulnerable individuals were dispersed, then-Mayor Ballard expecting that they would simply vanish. Ultimately, he was right - those affected had little means, little political power, and no voice.

Prior examples such as these should be a cautionary tale for any halfway compassionate executive, legislative, or administrative body that seeks to do anything that dramatically affects housing: things often go very badly for those who are most vulnerable. So naturally, as I listen to the people in the know who would be directly affected by a plan to demolish public housing in New Albany, it seems the real torture is the fear of the unknown. Imagine being told "someday, in the near future, you will lose your home." "When?" you ask. No one knows. "Where will we go?" No one knows that either. For the poor, many of whom have been repeatedly cheated by the various institutions that govern their daily lives, not much will help ease the fear that comes with that news. Chalking it up to the usual complications of urban planning and administration doesn't help. Arcane legalese doesn't help. Pointing to the federal government’s lack of support doesn’t help. Saying "just trust us" doesn't help. Even a concrete plan, clearly put in writing for all to see, might not help. These minds will not be eased until a specific remedy is explained - as in "you will move to x address at y date and time" - and perhaps not until that specific remedy is fully implemented.

The damage is done in Charlestown. People have been displaced. Lawsuits rage on, but the neighborhood will never recover. The former residents of Pleasant Ridge will likely never be made whole, rich developers will go on being rich, and it’s unlikely that anyone will be made to account in any meaningful way. New Albany might yet be given the benefit of the doubt; Charlestown cannot. I should be clear that I haven’t spoken with Mayor Gahan or Dave Duggins prior to this statement, but I hope to. I am, generally speaking, an optimist, and so my expectation is that they and other city officials are earnestly working on a fix that will not leave anyone homeless. I understand that the folks who read and contribute to this page may not be so optimistic, but perhaps that’s as it should be. The time to ensure no one is left homeless is now; not after a neighborhood has been swallowed whole.

As such, I recognize the need for maintaining a robust public discourse on an issue like this. The fact that not many public housing residents seem to be engaged in this struggle is, in fact, more a reason to speak up than not to. When powerful interests anywhere feel like they are not being watched, they tend to run roughshod over folks who have the quietest voices. I learned this important lesson early on as an activist, I relearned it as a lawyer, and it would seem I'm learning it yet again as a politician. This is what organizations like We Are New Albany are for, to be sure. But politicians who are frequently in the public eye - and that's me these days, I guess - have a duty to speak up, too. To the extent that I've failed in that duty, I apologize to the readers of this page and to the affected residents. I grew up with you folks, I care about you and I am listening.

A final point on this: We Are New Albany has endorsed Representative Ed Clere, a Republican, as a candidate who will presumably protect their interests. Likewise, Senator Ron Grooms has had some strong language for New Albany’s Democratic administration. But GOP politicians have consistently voted for decades to keep wages low, sabotage organized labor, gut housing programs, and generally screw the working classes in every way imaginable. NA Confidential’s contributors have characterized the silence of my colleagues and me as leaving a leadership void. Perhaps they are right. While I respect Ed, I am inclined to look at both his stance and Grooms’ comments as part of a cynical ploy by Republicans - who, on the whole, are openly antipathetic to the poor - to fill that void. Naturally, I am concerned as to what they might fill it with.

Apart from voting records, in Indianapolis, we saw an example of a Republican administration’s effort to make the homeless disappear. In Pleasant Ridge, we've seen an example of how Republican administrations treat low-income residents of private housing. Maybe Ed is different, but he still plays for the same team. Right now, that's a lot like playing baseball in hockey gear, insisting that you're somehow going to change the game. Still, Ed at least shows up and puts on the gear, and there is something to be said for that.

And I get it; there are plenty of Democrats who would do, and have done, the same as the administrations in Charlestown and Indianapolis. Abuse of the poor and the vulnerable is not, and has never been, a purely partisan affliction. We can combat such abuses with vigilance, which is the promise of We Are New Albany. I can make that promise as well. The good people in my hometown deserve as much. We will be watching.

Canon, actually: "Dem Candidate in Deep Red District Comes Out in Favor of Reparations."

Last summer, we were in Chicago for British embassy matters when Dan Canon declared his candidacy at NABC's downtown location, now again dubbed Bank Street Brewhouse, where he made his announcement against a backdrop of hop vines, urban brick remnants, the cloud-hugging Elsby Building, and Rosa L(uxembourg) Stumblebus, the longtime company logo prominently displayed on her side next to his banner.

Eight months down the campaign trail, this photo is iconic. It keeps popping up in media coverage both near and far, and whenever I see it, my eyes are immediately drawn to the symmetry of beer man lofting keg positioned just behind Canon's clenched fist.

Whatever else I might say or not say about my history with NABC, it's probably already obvious that when I see the company logo -- one always intended to be a sign of progressive thought -- appearing next to a candidate of Canon's caliber, it makes me quite happy.

So do his platform positions. 

Dem Candidate in Deep Red District Comes Out in Favor of Reparations, by Colin Kalmbacher (Law and Crime)

A Democratic congressional candidate in a red state is bucking conventional wisdom and party politics by endorsing a raft of explicitly left-wing and populist policy proposals–including reparations for African-Americans.

Dan Canon is running for Indiana’s ninth congressional district. This district includes the city of Bloomington and most of the Indiana side of the Louisville metro area. Canon himself is locally known as a prominent civil rights attorney who helped secure same-sex marriage rights in nearby Kentucky.

The “Priorities” section of Canon’s campaign website positions the candidate firmly in the progressive mold–but goes even a bit further than that. One of the specific policies Canon aims to see enacted is, as mentioned above, reparations for African-Americans.

Canon’s website offers a fairly lengthy breakdown of the candidate’s support–reproduced in full below [emphasis in original]:

Work to close the racial wealth gap in ways including, but not limited to: encouraging support for minority-owned enterprises; protecting the integrity of the federal judiciary and executive cabinet by encouraging diverse appointments; support for measures to demilitarize local law enforcement units, particularly in communities of color; support for the Commission to Study and Develop Reparations Proposals for African-Americans Act (H.R. 40); introduce and support legislation authorizing private unjust enrichment actions to be brought against corporations and other entities that reaped enormous benefits from the trans-Atlantic slave trade.

The Commission to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African-Americans Act was introduced in Congress by Representative John Conyers and currently has 32 cosponsors. Canon’s support for the bill puts him solidly on his party’s left-most flank, as do some of his other campaign positions ...

Amanda Beam's excellent newspaper column is called "Polling position."

The recent poll generated by Liz Watson's campaign was snapped up with lightning speed by the News and Tribune, elevating just another social media tout redolent of the AdamBot's knee-pants DNC tactics primer to the status of genuine news item. I find this regrettable, given that the newspaper hasn't offered the same freebie to surveys subsequently released by Dan Canon's campaign.

Either both these question-asking efforts are sufficiently reputable for newspaper coverage, or neither. I can't determine why one is, and the other isn't, although it is at least gratifying that management allowed Amanda Beam's excellent column to be published.

The past week has been critical for me in making a final decision about how to vote in May. I've leaned Canon from the start; admittedly, there's a final piece of the puzzle to be pressed into place, and I trust it will.

In the interim, merely remember that when the party establishment is the problem, party establishment candidates push no favorable buttons with me. If you have access to the newspaper's articles, I strongly encourage reading the entire column. Meanwhile, here's the middle section of it.

BEAM: Polling position, by Amanda Beam

... Fast forward a few days. I noticed an article on social media that revealed one of the results of the poll I had taken. However, not included was who had commissioned the survey or the questions they asked in the order they had appeared.

Call me crazy — again — but if a campaign paid for a survey I find it difficult to treat the results as valid.

So if you know me and my big mouth, then you would understand I could only do one thing. I spoke up not so eloquently on social media. Citing my own experience with the survey, I questioned who commissioned the poll and, ultimately, its validity.

Sometimes when you ask questions you get great responses. Other times you get insinuations that you are a mindless twit.

I got both ...

Dan Canon: "ICE as it presently exists is an agency devoted almost solely to cruelly and wantonly breaking up families. The agency talks about, and treats, human beings like they’re animals."

Canon: "Abolish ICE and reform the immigration system from the ground up."

It’s Time to Abolish ICE, by Sean McElwee (The Nation)

A mass-deportation strike force is incompatible with democracy and human rights.

Dan Canon is running for Congress in Indiana’s ninth district this year. A career civil-rights lawyer, Canon filed one of the cases against gay-marriage bans that eventually became the landmark Obergefell v. Hodges, and he proudly wore a Notorious RBG shirt under his suit to the Supreme Court. He is currently representing individuals suing Donald Trump for inciting violence at his rallies.

Canon has also defended clients swept up by Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids, and fought a Kafkaesque deportation system that, at one point, wouldn’t even disclose the location of his client. Now Canon believes ICE should be abolished entirely.

“I don’t think a lot of people have any kind of direct experience with ICE, so they don’t really know what they do or what they’re about. If they did, they’d be appalled,” Canon told me. “ICE as it presently exists is an agency devoted almost solely to cruelly and wantonly breaking up families. The agency talks about, and treats, human beings like they’re animals. They scoop up people in their apartments or their workplaces and take them miles away from their spouses and children.”

(snip)

The call to abolish ICE is, above all, a demand for the Democratic Party to begin seriously resisting an unbridled white-supremacist surveillance state that it had a hand in creating. Though the party has moved left on core issues from reproductive rights to single-payer health care, it’s time for progressives to put forward a demand that deportation be taken not as the norm but rather as a disturbing indicator of authoritarianism.

White supremacy can no longer be the center of the immigration debate. Democrats have voted to fully fund ICE with limited fanfare, because in the American immigration discussion, the right-wing position is the center and the left has no voice. There has been disturbing word fatigue around “mass deportation,” and the threat of deportation is so often taken lightly that many have lost the ability to conceptualize what it means. Next to death, being stripped from your home, family, and community is the worst fate that can be inflicted on a human, as many societies practicing banishment have recognized. It’s time to rein in the greatest threat we face: an unaccountable strike force executing a campaign of ethnic cleansing.

An addendum: