All the News You Didn’t Even Know Was Going Down

Since our last update, several stories have broken out that deeply affect every single person that reads these words.

The first is that literally miles of antarctic ice have begun collapsing into the sea. If this process continues, and there is no reason to believe that it won’t, outside of a global upheaval against industrial capitalism and a whole lot of luck, then very soon scientists predict that sea levels will rise to the point that they will start to flood coastal cities.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration has rolled out it’s shitty ass new budget, which calls for literally trillions of cuts for social services and the meager lifelines that neoliberal late capitalism provides to it’s unwanted souls. This new budget also includes billions in cuts for medicaid. Meaning, even if the AHCA is defeated in the Senate, if you’re broke and poor, which millions of Americans are, you’re probably about to be fucked.

Grabbing more airtime from the goddamn librah mediyah however has been ongoing whining about Trump and his connections to Russia, as the DNC seems to dance around if they will push for impeachment, which more and more, seems unlikely.

Meanwhile, tensions remained high across the US, as this week members of the Alt-Right proved once against that they are the biggest domestic white supremacist terrorist threat, second only to the police and the State. On June 10th, far-Right forces are preparing to launch a series of anti-Muslim marches and rallies, as their forces once again attempt to find a common point of unity to bring them together against imagined enemies to validate their existence.

Back to the bigger picture, more and more, institutions of the bourgeoisie are signaling the coming breakdown of civilization, and point to both the growth of extreme wealth inequality as well as the the realities of climate change. Jorgen Randers, author of a new book that picks up where The Limits of Growth left off, argues that moving from this path is not going to happen through the existing institutions. He states:

“The world will not rise to the occasion of solving the climate problem during this century, simply because it is more expensive in the short term to solve the problem than it is to just keep acting as usual. The climate problem will get worse and worse and worse because we won’t be able to live up to what we’ve promised to do in the Paris Agreement and elsewhere.”   

As the breakdown begins, the tendency towards border militarization, war, and outright authoritarianism and fascism will only continue to grow. It will also accelerate not only the stratification of whole societies, rachet up natural disasters, and lead to intense poverty, but also continue to push more and more people into becoming refugees through displacement.

Autonomous zones, combative movements, the ability to grow our resilience, skills, and infrastructure, and the ability to fight back in whatever forms available – to bring this system down before it kills us all. We need it all.

In that spirit, let’s get to the news. 

Trump that Regime

Trump’s budget ain’t gonna make shit great, but it will slash upwards of $1.7 trillion dollars in social cuts. As Kate Randall wrote:

The Trump administration will unveil a fiscal year 2018 budget today that includes $1.7 trillion in cuts to major social programs. The plan marks a new stage in a bipartisan social counterrevolution aimed at eviscerating what remains of programs to fight poverty and hunger and provide health care for millions of workers. The Democratic Party has chosen to base its opposition to Trump not on his assault on working and poor people, his attacks on democratic rights, or his reckless militarism, but on his supposed “softness” toward Russia.

Moreover, these cuts will hit medicaid hard:

The budget plan announced by the Trump administration on Tuesday would cut more than $1.4 trillion over ten years from Medicaid, the main federal health insurance program for the poor and disabled, according to detailed analyses of the budget document by both conservative and liberal think tanks.

While White House officials sought to conceal this truth, the impact of the budget would be to dramatically worsen access to health care for the 74 million people now covered by the program, half of them children. The inevitable result will be greater sickness and suffering, and earlier deaths, for vast numbers of Americans.

Dumb shit the NSA created led to a bunch of computers getting infected with malware:

Over the past four days, some 350,000 computers have been infected by the so-called “WannaCry” malware, including 70,000 devices such as MRI scanners, blood storage refrigerators and operating equipment used by Britain’s National Health Service. As a result of the attack, the NHS was forced to turn away emergency room patients and divert ambulances, potentially resulting in serious illnesses and even fatalities.

The worm is a piece of “ransomware” that encrypts users’ data until the creators receive a payment. It uses “exploits” developed by the US National Security Agency as just a small part of the NSA’s catalog of hacking tools.

Check out the new episode of The Anarchists video podcast for more in depth analysis.

Much of Trump’s moves to slash programs that many people depend on like food stamps and medicaid is generating some blow back from his former supporters:

Wesley Easterling noted that Trump had a kind of “charisma about him, something different.” The county he lives in typically goes for Democrats but in 2016 it went for Trump, despite having one of the highest poverty rates in the country.

Easterling is on food stamps and Medicaid and he believed Trump when the then-candidate swore he’d never touch Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. Trump lied and Easterling and his family are fearful they’re going to lose critical benefits they need to stay afloat.

“I mean, I felt just like I was — just like he played me for a fool,” he said with a look of sadness in his eyes. “I mean, I kind of took it personal.”

Furthermore: 

Cuts also will go to water and wastewater plants that help provide clean water to communities. The White House claims it’s because the private sector can do a better job at cleaning water than the municipal infrastructure can. That’s exactly what happened to Flint, Michigan when Gov. Rick Snyder (R-MI) replaced a system with a private sector solution to a non-existent problem.

Trump promised Flint he would help them. Instead, he cut their funding and is working to replicate the problem nationwide.

In more Trump news, the administration continues to go into meltdown over findings about Russian connections, leading Trump to continuously attack the media through his twitter account. Meanwhile, Bannon continues to wig out of his wart covered face, attacking Trump’s rich son law Kushner as a “globalist cuck,” can’t make this shit up folks!

We can only hope that the Alt-Right’s influence on Bannon continues to wear off and he ends up taking out the entire White House with him in a final blaze of glory. Except for Kellyanne Conway, she’ll probably unfortunately never die.

And for all the liberals out there that still think voting actually matters, they might want to hurry up and finally do something about the fact that Voter ID systems are literally kicking off hundreds of thousands of voters, largely of color, from the rolls. Trump is hoping to push the success of this voter repression by establishing a ‘voter fraud panel.’ Heading this up will be long time lawyer-racist douchebag lawyer Kris Kobach. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center:

A Yale-trained lawyer, Kobach has served as counsel to the Immigration Reform Law Institute (IRLI) since 2004. IRLI is the legal arm of the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), a group whose leaders have historical ties to white supremacists and eugenicists and who have made numerous racist statements.[1] He joined IRLI after a two-year stint as a White House fellow working in the U.S. Justice Department under Attorney General John Ashcroft during the Bush administration.

Speaking of suit and tie Nazis from the group FAIR, it seems that Julie Kirchner has a brand new job with Homeland Security:

Lastly, there’s a lot of evidence that points to not only Trump’s approval rating totally slipping, but moreover, his base of strong and steadfast supporters being totally eaten away:

Trump’s base seems to be eroding. There’s been a considerable decline in the number of Americans who strongly approve of Trump, from a peak of around 30 percent in February to just 21 or 22 percent of the electorate now. (The decline in Trump’s strong approval ratings is larger than the overall decline in his approval ratings, in fact.) Far from having unconditional love from his base, Trump has already lost almost a third of his strong support. And voters who strongly disapprove of Trump outnumber those who strongly approve of him by about a 2-to-1 ratio, which could presage an “enthusiasm gap” that works against Trump at the midterms. The data suggests, in particular, that the GOP’s initial attempt (and failure) in March to pass its unpopular health care bill may have cost Trump with his core supporters.

But while support and more importantly Trump’s base is fucking tanking, the number of people who fucking hate the guy is also growing:

The number of Americans who strongly disapprove of Trump has sharply risen since early in his term, meanwhile, from the mid-30s in early February to 44.1 percent as of Tuesday. In most surveys, Trump’s strongly disapprove rating exceeds his overall approval rating, in fact.

The important take away in this reality is that the contingent within Trump’s base that voted for him because they thought that he was a populist who would make their lives better and return jobs, have largely turned their backs on Trump and largely over class issues; namely healthcare.

While the hardcore far-Right base is still there, emboldened and looking for a reason to exist and fight, the key thing for anarchists and autonomous anti-capitalists to remember that the widespread belief that Trump as a instrument of populist change is over. The question is: will this anger be channeled into someone else selling snake-oil, or will the poor and working class begin to take action in it’s own self-interest?

As the former Trump voter in Kentucky stated, “The little guy is gonna have to fight for the little guy.”

School’s Out Forever

Over 100 New Jersey students told Paul Ryan to stick his Ayn Rand books up his fugly ass and refused to take a picture with him.

Meanwhile, while Mike Pence was attempting to put words together in a sentence at a graduation ceremony, students walked out on him.

Smash the ICE

In Denver, people celebrated a victory over a deportation attempt. According to Unicorn Riot: 

On the morning of Friday, May 12, 2017, Jeanette Vizguerra left church grounds for the first time in nearly three months. She had been living in sanctuary since February 15, 2017, at First Unitarian Society of Denver and at First Baptist Church, away from her four children.

Vizguerra has lived and worked in the U.S. for over 20 years and is recognized internationally for her immigrant rights work and other activism. One month ago, as she was still in sanctuary, Vizguerra was named one of TIME Magazine’s “100 Most Influential People” of 2017.

Ever since Vizguerra migrated to the U.S. from Mexico, she has worked tirelessly for human rights and immigrant rights. She started working as a janitor and became a union organizer, which led to her owning her own cleaning and moving company. All the while organizing rallies, protests, and other events, to spread awareness and promote change in immigration policy.

The Intercept also has a haunting piece about Mother’s Day in ICE detention that we encourage people to check out.

Class War

Big ups to the IWW for some successful campaigns, the first in the Twin Cities, where workers announced at a co-op that they were joining up, and in Ann Arbor, where canvassers also joined.

The AT&T strike is over, after pickets took place across the US: 

Once again, the CWA is urging AT&T workers to rely on various Democratic politicians, although the Democrats spearheaded the deregulation of the industry and the destruction of hundreds of thousands of jobs. The CWA is also exploiting workers’ concerns over the outsourcing of call center jobs to the Philippines and other low-wage countries by encouraging workers to support the US Call Center Worker and Consumer Protection Act. The Democratic Party-backed measure would encourage customers to demand that they speak to call center workers in the US, and is in line with Trump’s scapegoating of foreign workers for “stealing American jobs.”

In Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, Larry, who has been working for AT&T for 22 years in the operations department, said, “We’ve been without a contract since February. They keep on outsourcing jobs. It gives them more profit.” In terms of the three-day strike, “I think we should go a little longer so they realize we are serious. We ought to be working as a group,” he said, referring to other striking workers who have been isolated by the CWA and IBEW bureaucracy.

Also in Haiti, action continues in the streets from garment workers.

Destroy the Fascist Creep

Some quick stories that may be flying under the radar. A ‘red-pilled’ New Hampshire Rep claims that all feminists “want to be raped,” the Miami New Times reports that Milo had to pay models to attend his launch party. The same models later learned who he was and attempted to hide from being photographed. In Canada, various white nationalist and far-Right groups are in a total state of infighting. It appears that the Bundy militia will not be charged for their armed takeover of a government facility. Lastly, check out this great article on the ‘American Guard,’ a blend of white nationalism and far-Right ideology from the same idiots who brought you the Soldiers of Odin.

The SPLC also has more info about the upcoming anti-Muslim rallies on June 10th: 

To date, events are scheduled in 23 cities covering 18 states. The march is primarily being organized by ACT for America staffer Scott Ryan Presler, a man who runs the closed Facebook group being used to plan the events. The group also indicates that ACT is recruiting the services of anti-government groups to act as security for the rallies.

The Facebook page, created just over a month ago on April 23, currently has over 1,500 members.  The racist and violent content directed toward Islam and Muslims is plentiful. 

Amongst the racist posts and memes, activists are providing updates about the progress of organizing the events, additions of locations and speakers. There is also evidence that ACT is reaching out to anti-government groups to act as security for the rallies on June 10, a trend that SPLC has documented recently.

According to Lisa Gee, one of the March Against Sharia organizers — the Oath Keepers, one of the largest anti-government groups in the U.S. — and three percenters or III%ers, a subsection of the anti-government movement that harbors anti-Muslim views are both set to provide security at some of the events on June 10.

One story that really slipped through the cracks in the last few weeks is this report from The New Republic, about a group of white supremacist Trump supporters in 2016 who planned to carry out a Oklahoma City style attack against a group of refugees:

The three men were the founders of a new anti-Muslim white supremacist group that called itself the Crusaders. As their inaugural act, the FBI said, the men were plotting to carry out a Timothy McVeigh–style bombing in Garden City, Kansas, about an hour north of Liberal. Their plan was to detonate two cargo vans loaded with massive amounts of ammonium nitrate in the parking lots of the Garden Spot Apartments, a sprawling complex straddling both sides of West Mary Street. The drab, one-story units were inhabited primarily by Somalis and other refugees, who had come to Garden City to work at the nearby Tyson meatpacking plant.

Also in Madison, Indiana, antifa drove out the Klan and in San Luis Obispo, comrades confronted Alt-Right troll Lauren Southern, (the image on the top of the post is from an anonymous supporter who send them pizza).

Fire to the Prisons

Lots of updates on Solitary is Torture in Milwaukee, read up on the demands of the Folsom hunger strikers here, and check out this following podcast on the fight to close Riker’s prison:

Beyond Prisons – Episode 5: Shut Down Rikers Island Feat. Akeem Browder

Shout Outs

Check out these awesome J20 benefit shirts here. 

Donate to help the comrade recovering from being attacked by a neo-Nazi in Portland here.

Events are being planned across the world for June 11th, a day in solidarity with Marius Mason and long term anarchist prisoners. More info here.

Mobilize to oppose the anti-Muslim events being organized by far-Right groups on June 10th here.

It’s Going Down

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