It’s been about two months since I have planted it, and I am thrilled about how well it has turned out. It is carpeting beautifully, and spreading out instead of growing up like it is sometimes known for. Can’t wait till it fully carpet’s!!!
🅱️ocialist 🅱️lternative is the North American section of International Socialist Alternative, a socialist organization with close to ten thousand active members on 6 continents.
CWI comrades have been instrumental in the fight for affordable housing
and a higher minimum wage here in the US, the abortion rights movement
in Ireland, the struggle against transphobia in the UK, underground labor organizing in China and Nigeria,
and the fight against climate change and capitalist hegemony all over the world.
You might have heard of the Kshama Sawant election campaigns in Seattle– that was us! In 2013 and again in 2019 we ran a candidate for Seattle city council on a platform of living wages and affordable housing, and we busted Bezos’s balls.
SAlt’s goal is to build a movement for social justice and workers’
rights in the United States independent from the two major parties and
from corporate control.
From the website:
Socialist Alternative is the organization that
spearheaded the campaign to elect Kshama Sawant to Seattle City Council
in 2013, the first independent socialist elected in a major U.S. city in
decades. We then led the successful campaign to raise Seattle’s minimum
wage to the highest in the country, providing a massive boost to the
$15 Now campaign that is spreading around the country.
Kshama Sawant was successfully re-elected to the Seattle
City Council in 2015 as a Socialist Alternative member, without any
corporate cash, despite half a million dollars being spent on the
campaign to unseat her.
Socialist Alternative is a national organization fighting
in our workplaces, communities, and campuses against the exploitation
and injustices people face every day. We are community activists
fighting against budget cuts in public services; we are activists
campaigning for a $15 an hour minimum wage and fighting, democratic
unions; we are people of all colors speaking out against racism and
attacks on immigrants, students organizing against tuition hikes and
war, women and men fighting sexism and homophobia.
We believe the Republicans and Democrats are both parties
of big business, and we are campaigning to build an independent,
alternative party of workers and young people to fight for the interests
of the millions, not the millionaires.
WHAT WE STAND FOR
Fighting for the 99%
Raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour, as a step toward a living wage for all.
Free, high quality public education for all from
pre-school through college. Full funding for schools to dramatically
lower student-teacher ratios. Stop the focus on high stakes testing and
the drive to privatize public education.
Free, high quality health care for all. Replace the
failed for-profit insurance companies with a publicly funded
single-payer system as a step towards fully socialized medicine.
No budget cuts to education and social services! Full
funding for all community needs. A major increase in taxes on the rich
and big business, not working people.
Create living-wage union jobs for all the unemployed
through public works programs to develop mass transit, renewable energy,
infrastructure, healthcare, education, and affordable housing.
For rent control combined with massive public investment in affordable housing.
A guaranteed decent pension for all. No cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid!
A minimum guaranteed weekly income of $600/week for the
unemployed, disabled, stay-at-home parents, the elderly, and others
unable to work.
Repeal all anti-union laws like Taft-Hartley. For
democratic unions run by the rank-and-file to fight for better pay,
working conditions, and social services. Full-time union officials
should be regularly elected and receive the average wage of those they
represent.
No more layoffs! Take bankrupt and failing companies into public ownership.
Break the power of Wall Street! For public ownership and democratic control of the major banks.
Shorten the workweek with no loss in pay and benefits; share out the work with the unemployed and create new jobs.
Environmental Sustainability
Fight climate change. Massive public investment in
renewable energy and energy-efficient technologies to rapidly replace
fossil fuels.
A major expansion of public transportation to provide low fare, high-speed, and accessible transit.
Democratic public ownership of the big energy companies,
retooling them for socially necessary green production. A “Just
Transition” for all workers in polluting industries with guaranteed
re-training and new living-wage jobs.
Equal Rights for All
Fight discrimination based on race, nationality, gender,
sexual orientation, gender identity, religion, disability, age, and all
other forms of prejudice. Equal pay for equal work.
Black Lives Matter! Build a mass movement against police
brutality and the institutional racism of the criminal justice system.
Invest in rehabilitation, job-training, and living-wage jobs, not
prisons! Abolish the death penalty.
Defend immigrant rights! Immediate, unconditional legalization and equal rights for all undocumented immigrants.
Fight sexual harassment, violence against women, and all forms of sexism.
Defend a woman’s right to choose whether and when to
have children. For a publicly funded, single-payer health care system
with free reproductive services, including all forms of birth control
and safe, accessible abortions. Comprehensive sex education. At least 12
weeks of paid family leave for all. For universal, high quality,
affordable and publicly run child care.
Fight discrimination and violence against the LGBTQ community, and all forms of homophobia and transphobia.
Money for Jobs and Education, Not War
End the occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq. Bring all the troops home now!
Slash the military budget. No drones. Shut down Guantanamo.
Repeal the Patriot Act, NDAA, and all other attacks on democratic rights.
Break with the Two Parties of Big Business
For a mass workers party drawing together workers, young
people and activists from environmental, civil rights, and women’s
campaigns, to provide a fighting, political alternative to the corporate
parties.
Unions and other social movement organizations should
stop funding and supporting the Democratic and Republican Parties and
instead organize independent left-wing, anti-corporate candidates and
coalitions as a first step toward building a workers’ party.
Socialism and Internationalism
Capitalism produces poverty, inequality, environmental
destruction, and war. We need an international struggle against this
failed system. No to corporate “free trade” agreements, which mean job
losses and a race to the bottom for workers and the environment.
Solidarity with the struggles of workers and oppressed peoples internationally: An injury to one is an injury to all.
Take into public ownership the top 500 corporations and
banks that dominate the U.S. economy. Run them under the democratic
management of elected representatives of the workers and the broader
public. Compensation to be paid on the basis of proven need to small
investors, not millionaires.
A democratic socialist plan for the economy based on the
interests of the overwhelming majority of people and the environment.
For a socialist United States and a socialist world.
“But conrad,” you say, “how am I get involved with this very good and nice organization??” Well, that’s easy!
SAlt has active branches
in Florida, New York, Pennsylvania, Washington DC, Washington state,
California, Oregon, Massachusetts, Arkansas, Texas, Illinois, Ohio,
Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota, AND accepts at-large / nomad
members.
You need only follow this link and fill out the form and somebody will get back to you real quick.
The new bill makes amendments to the Terrorism (Police Powers) Act 2002. It provides that if the police commissioner has declared an incident a terrorist act, then officers responding to that incident are permitted to use lethal force when they deem it “reasonably necessary.”
As of mid-2019, Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming are currently pursuing an end to federal protections for grizzly bears, while L!z Cheney (Republican, Wyoming’s sole representative in the House) is making headlines by insulting Indigenous peoples’ bear preservation efforts. After Wyoming attempted to remove grizzly protections, the outcome of the “Crow Indian Tribe et al. v. United States of America et al.” case reinstated some measures. Some of the plaintiffs: Northern Arapaho Elders Society; Crow Creek Sioux Tribe; Standing Rock Sioux Tribe; Pikani Nation, Hopi Nation Bear Clan; Crow Indian Tribe.
Referencing the case, Cheney, in mid-2019, said this:
“The court-ordered relisting of the grizzly was not based on science or
facts, but was rather the result of excessive litigation pursued by
radical environmentalists intent on destroying our Western way of
life.”
Technically, the grizzly’s US distribution is managed as 6 separate population segments, also referred to as recovery zones. In decreasing order of grizzly bear population strength, these areas are:
(1) Northern Continental Divide - about 800 to 1,000 bears (Glacier National Park and the Bob Marshall Wilderness Complex, an extension of the crest of the Canadian Rockies, providing a contiguous corridor for Canadian grizzlies to enter the US) (2) Greater Yellowstone ecosystem - 600 to 800 bears (3) Selkirk Mountains - about 85 bears (4) Cabinet-Yaak ecosystem - about 50 bears
(5) North Cascades region - less than 20 bears
The crest of the Bitterroot Range and the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness is also technically considered a formal grizzly recovery zone, but management agencies and organizations formally say that there are no grizzlies currently residing here. This isn’t true, however: grizzlies do live or at least travel through in the Bitterroot Mountains. In October 2018, a grizzly was captured/relocated from a golf course near Stevensville, in the Bitterroot Valley. On 15 July 2019, a grizzly was tracked as it travelled through the Bitterroot Valley near Hamilton, eventually returning to the Lochsa-Selway region of central Idaho.
Here’s a map displaying how grizzlies in the Northern Continental Divide and Greater Yellowstone ecosystems wander extensively outside of the recovery zones, wilderness areas, and undeveloped land. (These regions, where bears wander, are displayed in the cross-hatched area, in this map from the US Forest Service.)
From the Interagency Grizzly Bear Committee:
Here’s a look at current (2018) grizzly distribution in the Yellowstone region.
You can watch a neat and oddly satisfying animated map GIF of the past 30 years of Yellowstone-area grizzly bear range expansion : [x]
People familiar with the Yellowstone to Yukon (Y2Y) concept would recognize these habitat corridors in the Northern
Rockies. There is contiguous forested mountain habitat from Alaska,
Yukon, and northern British Columbia which extends along the Canadian
Rockies crest and eastern BC’s Columbia Mountains, through Glacier and
the Bob Marshall Wilderness Complex, through northern Idaho’s
cedar-hemlock forest, and to Yellowstone. The corridor also provides
home to wolverine, fisher, mountain caribou, Rocky Mountain elk, moose,
Canadian lynx, mountain lion, black bear, etc.
Some of those habitat corridors:
31 March 2020:
Lawsuit Challenges Trump Administration’s Authorization to Kill 72 Grizzlies Near Yellowstone: […] [C]hallenging the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s decision to
allow 72 grizzly bears to be killed to accommodate livestock grazing in
Wyoming’s Bridger-Teton National Forest, near Yellowstone National Park.
The grazing program area, approved by the U.S. Forest Service
late last year, encompasses the headwaters of the Green and Gros Ventre
rivers and two designated wilderness areas. The area provides important
habitat for Yellowstone grizzly bears — listed as threatened under the
Endangered Species Act — and other imperiled fish and wildlife species. The
challenged decision authorizes the killing of up to 72 grizzly bears
over the 10-year life of the reauthorized grazing program. The decision
places no limits on killing female bears or cubs, even though females
with cubs live where the proposed killing would be permitted. [Center for Biological Diversity.]
Rep. Ilhan Omar on Friday unveiled legislation aimed at providing relief to “the millions of Americans currently at risk of housing instability and homelessness” by canceling all rent and home mortgage payments for the duration of the Covid-19 pandemic.
“The coronavirus crisis is more than just a public health crisis—it’s an economic crisis,” Omar, a Minnesota Democrat, said in a statement. “Minnesotans are losing jobs, getting their hours reduced, and struggling just to put food on the table. We must take major action to protect the health and economic security of the most vulnerable.”
“Congress has a responsibility to step in to stabilize both local communities and the housing market during this time of uncertainty and crisis,” said Omar. “In 2008, we bailed out Wall Street. This time, it’s time to bail out the American people who are suffering.”
Omar’s legislation, titled the Rent and Mortgage Cancellation Act, would not merely suspend rent payments temporarily and require tenants to pay back-rent when the coronavirus subsides.
The bill, as Omar’s office emphasized in a summary, “would constitute a full payment forgiveness, with no accumulation of debt for renters or homeowners and no negative impact on their credit rating or rental history.”
“The legislation will establish a relief fund for landlords and mortgage holders to cover losses from the cancelled payments and create an optional fund to fully finance the purchase of private rental properties by non-profits, public housing authorities, cooperatives, community land trusts, and states or local governments—in order to increase the availability of affordable housing during this downturn,” the summary states.
Omar outlined her new bill in a live-streamed press conference on Friday with fellow members of Congress, housing activists, and tenants.
The Rent and Mortgage Cancellation Act is co-sponsored by Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), Mark Pocan (D-Wis.), Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.), Veronica Escobar (D-Texas), Jesús García (D-Ill.), and Grace Meng (D-N.Y.).
The bill was also endorsed by dozens of progressive advocacy groups, including People’s Action, the Center for Popular Democracy, and the National Coalition for the Homeless.
“The Rent and Mortgage Cancellation act offers the only solution that can meet the scale and depth of our immediate needs related to housing, and establish a new framework for longterm recovery,” Tara Raghuveer, Homes Guarantee Campaign Director at People’s Action, said in a statement. “Congress must act to suspend rents and mortgages, and to prevent a 2008-style disastrous real estate bonanza.”
