Boycott Starbucks!

When we lack direct political power -- that is, have enough elected officials who stand for what we might believe in -- it is normal to turn to consumer power to make our point. This is a good impulse. How could I say otherwise as a veteran worker on the great farm worker grape boycott, back in the day?

In this moment of relative powerlessness we are encouraged to participate in plenty of consumer boycotts of firms that one way or another support the Trump regime: Tesla (that's easy for most of us), T-mobile, Amazon, Target. 

But here's another call for a boycott of a more traditional sort: workers are trying to unionize and win contracts at one of the most widely distributed consumer outlets in the country.

With more than a thousand Starbucks baristas on strike across 40 cities and growing, the No Kings Alliance is announcing its support for striking baristas and calling on consumers to pledge not to shop at Starbucks while baristas are on strike. 

For the last four years, Starbucks baristas have powered a historic, inspiring union organizing campaign, taking on one of the most powerful corporations in the world. Yet, the coffee giant continues to fight workers at every turn, cozying up to the anti-union Trump administration and racking up more federal labor law violations than any other corporation in U.S. history. 

Meanwhile, Starbucks CEO Brian Niccol was paid $96 million for just 120 days of work in 2024, paying himself 6,666 times what the average barista made — the worst CEO-to-worker pay inequity in the country. At the same time, Trump and his billionaire backers are doing their best to scare people out of speaking up for their rights on the job and in their communities. 

“We're sick of Starbucks executives seeking to lord over our workplaces, ignore our basic needs, and break labor law—all while the CEO makes millions. That's why we're on an unfair labor practice strike,” said Diego Franco, a Starbucks Workers United barista in Chicago. “Allies like the No Kings Alliance are helping power our movement forward, and we look forward to uniting together on the picket line.” 

Union baristas are demanding higher take-home pay, better hours to improve staffing in stores, and the resolution of hundreds of outstanding unfair labor practice charges for union busting.  

You can sign a boycott pledge here.

The barista role is too many peoples' entry level job these days. If that's to be the case, let's help these workers make it a good one! 

Roman Catholic bishops do right by immigrants

 

As pastors, we the bishops of the United States are bound to our people by ties of communion and compassion in Our Lord Jesus Christ. We are disturbed when we see among our people a climate of fear and anxiety around questions of profiling and immigration enforcement. We are saddened by the state of contemporary debate and the vilification of immigrants. We are concerned about the conditions in detention centers and the lack of access to pastoral care. We lament that some immigrants in the United States have arbitrarily lost their legal status. We are troubled by threats against the sanctity of houses of worship and the special nature of hospitals and schools. We are grieved when we meet parents who fear being detained when taking their children to school and when we try to console family members who have already been separated from their loved ones. ...

... To our immigrant brothers and sisters, we stand with you in your suffering, since, when one member suffers, all suffer (cf. 1 Corinthians 12:26). You are not alone!

We note with gratitude that so many of our clergy, consecrated religious, and lay faithful already accompany and assist immigrants in meeting their basic human needs. We urge all people of good will to continue and expand such efforts. 

We oppose the indiscriminate mass deportation of people. We pray for an end to dehumanizing rhetoric and violence, whether directed at immigrants or at law enforcement. We pray that the Lord may guide the leaders of our nation, and we are grateful for past and present opportunities to dialogue with public and elected officials. In this dialogue, we will continue to advocate for meaningful immigration reform. 

The Roman Catholic hierarchy is not where I am accustomed to look first for affirmation of universal human dignity. 

But the MAGA agenda of deportation and cruelty offends them and most of us. 

Here they speak bravely and broadly for compassion and justice. 

The fury to come

 

Even the complicated, partial release of the Epstein files has revealed and confirmed enough to make decent women (and men) see red -- and should help push our mad king off his phony pedestal.

I don't know how this plays out in younger age groups, but casual sexual exploitation of very young women is all too recognizable to most women in my age group. These guys, these powerful men, just assumed that women's bodies existed for their pleasure. (In their eyes, we had no souls.) Least culpably, some merely leered without remorse at young women; many of the richest and most powerful felt entitled to molest.

Some women can only deal with our dehumanization by men by denying it happens. A small number aid the perpetrators. In my generation, a lot of us gave up on men, even those men who were not personally guilty, but who couldn't see the burden women carry under the male gaze. Most women just soldiered on, living on a hurtful battlefield that is barely recognized by their male peers, even the men they love. 

And, if the good women and men with any power have the strength to pursue the Epstein revelations and implications, the nation faces a protracted release of stifled fury and agonizing confusion, necessary but terribly painful. Thanks Donald.

Cartoon via The Guardian. 

Let those migrants go!

So many bits of good news for both small "d" democracy and also Democrats in the recent election! I want to highlight one that most of us in much of the country didn't know about.

Voters Ousted This Pennsylvania Sheriff After He Signed Up to Collaborate With ICE

A populous, swing Pennsylvania county replaced its GOP sheriff on Tuesday after months of controversy over his joining ICE’s 287(g) program. The Democratic winner promises he’ll end the contract. 

... Since Donald Trump’s return to office, local and state agencies across the country have rushed in huge numbers to aid his deportation campaign by joining 287(g), which authorizes local law enforcement officers to act as federal immigration agents. The agreement in Bucks County granted [Sheriff Fred] Harran’s deputies the power to question the immigration status of people they encounter and to serve and execute arrest warrants on ICE’s behalf.  ...

... [Harran's] Democratic challenger, Danny Ceisler, a 33-year-old attorney and Army veteran, spoke up against the ICE partnership, putting the issue at the center of his campaign.

Ceisler defeated Harran by 11 percentage points last week, a margin of roughly 25,000 votes. He confirmed to Bolts after his victory that he intends to terminate the 287(g) agreement once he enters office. 

• • •

County sheriffs are part of "law enforcement" but they usually not the cops on the streets. They mostly run the jails (an important job) and guard public buildings. 

That's the case in my home county of San Francisco. I figured I should find out what our elected sheriff, Paul Miyamoto, is doing in ersponse to over-reaching federal immigration invaders. After all, San Francisco is a "sanctuary city" for migrants; we sure don't want our sheriff working with them.

On the one hand, in July, Miyamoto insisted 

he will not act as an "arm of immigration enforcement," refusing to hand over inmate information. 

We certainly hope that is the case.

But also, Miyamoto seems attracted to strange political buddies for a San Francisco sheriff.  In July he endorsed a MAGA Trump supporter for governor.

His reasoning seems shallow.

“I support Sheriff Chad Bianco, alongside other sheriffs in California, as a peer leader in law enforcement and in the work we do to keep our communities safe,” Miyamoto wrote in a statement to Mission Local. “Law enforcement is not defined by political parties, but grounded in a commitment to public safety and the integrity of the profession.” 

Maybe we ought to pay attention when Miyamoto comes up for re-election. This choice of friends seems madness.

San Francisco has had some quite benign sheriffs in my time here, especially the excellent Mike Hennessey. The job is not a stepping stone to anything so candidates are few.

Remembrance Day reflection

In most of the European world, this day -- November 11 -- is Armistice Day or Remembrance Day. The event commemorated is the silence after four bloody years of the guns on the Western front ending combat there in what we call the First World War. 

That First World War shaped and reshaped modern Europe, destroying empires and unleashing anti-capitalist, nationalist, and democratic forces that had been checked by old regimes. Those of us who observed the collapse of the Soviet Union have seen changes of somewhat comparable magnitude and import -- and those very changes were still part of the backwash of that First World War that is scarcely marked in the US today.

This informational plaque hangs at the Imperial War Museum in Manchester, England, a remarkable institution which seeks to bring to life this formative history. Like the United States, Britain is a multi-racial and consequently multi-historical society where citizens with origins all over the (mostly imperial) world can strive to learn from each other's past.

Perhaps, as we live the collapse of the American world empire facilitated by our greedy madman of a President, we should pause to remember our ancestors who lived a similarly disorienting, murderous transition. It ain't easy or safe living in a collapsing empire ...

When we fight, we win!

My friends in the hospitality union UniteHERE routinely end their meetings with the chant that serves as the title for this post. 

It seems a good day, a week after our huge election victories, to pass along the words of a veteran fighter.

Sherilyn Ifill, civil rights lawyer and the former head of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, has been in the trenches for freedom and wider democracy all her life. Her evaluation of where we sit after the recent election is both heartening and bracing.

Opponents of the Trump regime won just about everywhere as all observers note. But along with that happy outcome, we are seeing the rapid decline of the fascist project.

... As exhausted and overwhelmed as we feel, we should remember that they likely feel the same. They have taken on the extraordinary project of destroying one of the most powerful nations in the world – a nation with a national government, fifty state governments, tens of thousands of cities and local governments, a Supreme Court, hundreds of federal trial and appellate courts, fifty state court systems, and tens of thousands of courts within those systems. And they are attempting to do this with a skeleton crew - well-trained in harsh rhetoric, insults, petulance, and cruelty -- but almost entirely inexperienced in running anything of substance. 

They are destroying the apparatus of government because they know they cannot manage it. The ranks of those with even marginal competence available to work at a high level in this Administration are severely diminished. This is why embarrassingly subpar attorneys like Lindsey Halligan and Alina Habba are put in charge of key U.S. attorneys’ offices to prosecute Trump’s enemies, where they and their assistants stumble through the choreography of litigation, garnering ever-increasing impatience from federal district court judges. The Trump administration fires thousands of workers, and then hires back those same workers as agency heads realize that they’ve left no one sufficiently competent to log on to manage critical functions.

It's not as if the electorate finds these clowns inspiring.

... Trump is deeply unpopular. His poll ratings remain underwater. He has even lost podcast king Joe Rogan. ... Moreover, Trump is looking even more enfeebled than usual. He is mocked and sub-tweeted on the world stage by leaders who play to his vanity in the place of trying to negotiate with the erratic and unserious U.S. leader. 

Yes, J.D. Vance is waiting in the wings. But as a graduate of the Peter Thiel School of Charm and Deportment, he has neither the charisma nor the people instincts needed to garner the kind of support that Trump has enjoyed. ... 

... Trump’s lack of vigor has forced the egos that surround him to the top. No longer satisfied with being the ghoul behind the scenes, Stephen Miller wants everyone to know that he is in charge and that the plans being advanced are his. That is why we are seeing and hearing him more frequently, as he pauses for interviews outside the White House as though he is the President, shows up on news programs with regularity and even dispatches his wife as a (very uninformed and ineffective) talking head. 

But Miller is repulsive by any impartial standard. Watching him spew bile at endlessly increasing levels of manic zeal – has the effect of holding up a mirror to the worst of MAGA. It cannot be pleasant to look in the mirror when the image looking back at you is Stephen Miller. 

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is a disaster. ... 

... The Supreme Court has handed Trump some big wins. And there are more likely to come. But even members of the Court must be feeling the pressure of association with the images we are all seeing every day of masked ICE agents patrolling suburbs while dressed for battle in Fallujah. ...

Ifill suggests it is time to focus our resistance on Congress. (And how much more is this true when we've watched the Democratic Party leaders of the Senate fumble a potentially winning hand on health care and other issues.) Ifill focuses on the House. 

... And as I have often said, the abiding obsession of Republican House members is keeping their jobs. [Last Tuesday's] election was a wake-up call. Next year every seat in the House is on the ballot. No matter what they say before the cameras today, Republicans in the House are seeing the writing on the wall this week and they are feeling queasy. We should be prepared to challenge Republican incumbents. Show up and out at town halls. Democrats living in Republican districts should apply pressure to their Republican representatives. ... 

... [The November] election outcomes provided some critical lessons for Democratic leadership and donors. The Party’s base is not an optional constituency. Black women continue to power Democratic wins around the country. Democrats who stand by their convictions and the constituencies in our “big tent” do better than those who run on being “Republican-light” and who sacrifice inclusion to chase the white whale of “centrist voters.” The wins came in California and in New York City, but also in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, Mississippi, and Cincinnati, Ohio.

She prescribes hope to the resistant:

None of this guarantees that we will be saved from the abyss. But these are all encouraging signs that the fight is not finished. In the words of Yogi Berra, “it’s not over ‘til it’s over.” And even then, we fight.

Democratic Party leadership -- nothing to write home about. People rising -- a better power being born! 

Traitors to the people who elected them

Were they afraid they might not be able to fly off on vacation over Thanksgiving?

Ashamed to say, I worked to elect two of these.

On erasing transpeople

When Ibrahim Farajajé approached the TSA inspection station on his way to board a flight, he apparently aroused the suspicions of one of the agents. A 6-foot plus, skinny, Black, bearded older man wearing flowing robes, he was not your average American passenger. He wore cotton balloon pants that day.

"Drop your pants!" demanded the official.

"You don't want me to do that," replied Ibrahim.

His authority questioned, the official yelled fiercely: "Drop your pants!!"

"You don't want me to do that," replied Ibrahim softly.

So ordered, Ibrahim eventually complied -- only to have the inspector screaming at him the next minute -- "cover yourself up!" 

Apparently he didn't want Ibrahim's uncovered genitals hanging loose in the TSA line.

Ibrahim, since unhappily deceased, was both a distinguished academic scholar of religions and also a Russian Orthodox archpriest who later in life converted to Sufi Islam. You couldn't mess with Ibrahim.

• • •

The Supreme Court's off-hand order last week that transpeople should be forced to carry passports which name the sex they were assigned at birth reminded me of this anecdote which Ibrahim told delightedly.

One has to ask, why does the Court care so much that appearance should match historical record? They don't say. Appearance is not necessary for confirmation of identity. 

M. Gessen comments about carrying a passport which marks their gender as X...

[it] attests to the meaninglessness and uselessness of all gender designations. Why did the border officers need to know my gender at all? I match the age indicated in my passport. The photo is mine. New technology makes it close to impossible to travel using a look-alike’s documents; many passports contain iris scans and fingerprints.

The existence of transpeople and others of indeterminate gender evidently triggers anxiety and an icky feeling in some powerful Justices. 

Is that response rooted in a kind of essential prurience about sexuality that apparent gender fluidity triggers? Perhaps. 

Without explanation, the Court majority reveals that what they care about is their unease with the permanence of a social structure which privileges white, European, Christian maleness, and cisgender individuals. Their world is shaken.

That discomfort will expose some people to humiliation and even actual danger.

They cannot abide recognizing that some humans live outside their lines and others may color there. People like the Republican Justices are frightened by a society that affirms such a reality. 

The inability of live with harmless difference is a sickness of the soul. Courage in the recognition of difference is not automatic. It takes work. But a decent society strives to aid its members to do that work.

Am I Next?

When masked men wearing no badges start grabbing people off the streets, it's natural to ask "Am I Next?" Los Angeles artists are responding to ICE raids and an attempted federal militarized occupation with images that project the question on downtown buildings, according to a press release from the California Community Foundation. 

The project, "Am I Next?" will feature images, measuring about 20 by 30 feet, to confront attacks on civil liberties and the undermining of democratic norms that weaken civic life. The portraits feature a cross-section of Angelenos united in protest over recent U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service raids that have swept up hundreds of residents—many with no criminal record—and placed them in detention.

"We ask the question, 'Am I Next?' because when basic rights are taken away, anyone can be taken away, for any reason," said CCF President and Chief Executive Officer Miguel A. Santana. "If anyone's right to speak, protest or create can be stripped, if anyone can be targeted for their race, religion, identity or who they love, we are all in danger. Until justice is restored, no one is safe. Not one of us. Any one of us could be next."

 

This is not the first time Californians have asked a similar question. During a political campaign in 1994 when a Republican governor sought to reduce immigrant rights by initiative, opponents also asked "Who's Next?"

In those days, the majority of Californians went along with a fear-based attack on their neighbors. Today the vast majority of Californians have shown, by passing Prop. 50 by a 25 point margin to stiffen opposition in Congress against the Trump regime, that we understand that immigrants are our neighbors and ourselves.

Post election tidbits

Yes, there are other things in life besides fighting fascism and I'm busy with several of them, all to the good. But here are some morsels from Tuesday's national wipe out of MAGA and its ilk.

Let's start with a particular delight:

Alejandra Caraballo‬: 57% of all ad spending by Republicans in the Virginia governors race was on anti trans ads. Just an incredibly mismanaged campaign. Anti-trans politics are a losing issue.

{and] According to the Wapo: A Washington Post-Schar School poll from late last month showed that only about 3 percent of Virginia voters list policies about transgender students as top concerns, compared to far greater concern over economic security and the cost of living. 

Once upon a time, hating on LGBT folks was the right wings' magic bullet. As recently as 2008 in California. But overexposure to nonsense eventually wanes in efficacy. I'll make the bold prediction that trans-hate will also recede as people realize somebody is trying to make them look away from their actual interests and concerns. Here's hoping the process is rapid, though inevitably uneven and painful.

 • • •

We're finally seeing the generational transition of (small "d") democratic power that displaces my Boomer generation. About time.

I often find Jen Rubin annoying, but she sees what's in front of her face:

Democratic stodgy insiders seem not to appreciate that Gen Z-ers and Millenials are also more diverse than older generations. (And many white people in these age brackets have grown up, unlike their parents, among people whose religions, races, ethnicities, and languages differ than their own.) Along comes Mamdani, speaking from an immigrant’s vantage point about the values that have allowed New York to flourish as one of the most diverse cities on the planet. Entirely without pretense, he relates effortlessly with a swath of voters in a way that older, white politicians simply cannot. And while he has a specific religious and racial identity, he has given voice to New Yorkers of all backgrounds who feel overlooked by the white, rich power structure. 

I bet my ancestors thought the end was near when an Irish immigrant wave began to establish its democratic power in New York City in the 1850s. Then came the Italians in the later 19th century; the eastern Europeans in the beginning of the 20th; European-origin Jews by mid-century; and now the offspring of a wider world. Good for New York for continuing its historical role as a landing place for people yearning for a living and "to breathe free."

Another generational transition.

John Ganz celebrates his city, hoping he is seeing a break in a tiresome pattern: 

... Humanity has accomplished something truly incredible and almost utopian in New York: millions of very different types of people living peaceably—and sometimes even amicably—side by side. That’s every bit as real as the death and destruction halfway around the world. For me, New York is the living counterpoint to all that suffering and hate. It’s worth protecting and building upon. In fact, it’s the most important thing: New York City is, in my humble opinion, the greatest accomplishment in the history of human civilization. We’ve long set the standard for art, culture, industry, literature—you name it. Every good and great thing is available here. 

As Pericles said of Athens in the funeral oration, “Because of the greatness of our city, the fruits of the whole earth flow in upon us; so that we enjoy the goods of other countries as freely as our own.” But in politics, we resigned ourselves, with a weary smile, to a certain cynicism. Now we are attempting a politics that lives up to our humane and cosmopolitan aspirations. Wedded to some hard-nosed pragmatism, it might just work. 

Let's hope Mamdani is up to the challenge, as much as a mayor can be. My FIL, a life long New Yorker, called the job the toughest in American politics and he was probably right.

• • •

The man of the hour, Mamdani himself, knows no one succeeds without community: 

... And while we cast our ballots alone, we chose hope together. Hope over tyranny. Hope over big money and small ideas. Hope over despair. 

• • •

Let's give the last word to Bill McKibben, that climate prophet who has taken up the burden of trying to save humanity from ourselves:

Americans showed that the idea of this country is not dead just yet. We elected Muslims to historic office in the two states targeted on 9/11, we elected climate-conscious candidates to help run Georgia’s massive energy system—but more than that we began the repudiation of Trump and Trumpism. 

There is so so much more work to do, but as war leader Winston Churchill said after an early triumph in North Africa, “we have reached the end of the beginning.” 

As AOC—for my money perhaps the best political analyst in the country—put it, Americans understood “the assignment of fighting fascism right now. And the assignment is to come together across difference no matter what.”

This little election reminded us that participation in this messy, unjust, yet idealistic country is an unending struggle, but sometimes one that carries a moment.

No wonder the Commonwealth of Virginia turned more blue

It seems appropriate to pass on Diana Butler Bass' observations on what her Fairfax County suburban DC neighbors did yesterday. They have very good reason to hate the MAGA/Trump regime and they showed it.

Inside the tidy houses on my leafy street, they are ANGRY. They are hurt, furious, mad, distressed, and distraught. Because, in nearly every house on my street, Elon Musk, Russell Vought, Mike Johnson, and Donald Trump came calling — and destroyed their family’s sense of vocation, purpose, and well-being. These nice, middle-class families, committed to things like patriotism and service and the common good, had their work and incomes ripped from them in a fury of gleeful destruction. And the very government that once benefited from their labor, now laughs at their trauma.

The leafy suburbs have been, in effect, one more victim of political cruelty and a revenge crusade.

Some of my neighbors hang out signs. Some go to protests and “No Kings” rallies. But mostly, they are an introverted suburban lot. They protest by voting.

And on Tuesday, they turned out in droves to vote.

They voted against Donald Trump. They voted as if their lives and livelihoods — and those of their neighbors — depended on it. (Because they do.)

And they voted up and down tickets, in nearly every hamlet across the Commonwealth for Democrats. Governor, Lt. Governor, and Attorney General (and yes, he had made some awful mistakes in his political career).

The really surprising thing? The people of Virginia handed the House of Delegates to the Democrats. Right now, it appears that Democrats will win 64 house seats, just shy of creating a Democratic supermajority in state government.

I don’t think the Democrats have won this many seats since the Jim Crow era — and things were very, very different back then (and those Jim Crow Democrats were definitely not good for democracy). 

Awaiting Virginia results (Charlotte Rene Woods/Virginia Mercury)

The Washington DC suburbs are not the country. 

But Trump and his Republican enablers have another 12 months largely unhindered by effectual Democratic opposition to tear up the rest of the country as they have these suburbs. Most especially they'll gleefully harm the parts of the country which are the antithesis of MAGA -- racially and ethnically diverse, educated, serious people intent on building a serious future for themselves and their children. 

It will be a struggle. But most of us don't want what MAGA is doing to the country and we intend to take it back.