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Good morning! It’s Thursday, October 29th
National Cat Day
Again. Again! See this is why I think maybe Ruth is running the world because it just feels like a lot of cat days and very few dog days.
Or maybe because these are, in fact, the dog days.
Anyway, happy day Ruth.
And now, the news.
Spain Train Crash
-via ABC News
Starting with a horrific story out of Spain where at least 68 people are dead after what appears to be human error caused two trains on a high-speed line to crash into each other.
This is the second major train crash this year on the same line and involving the same trains from the same operators.
The earlier crash, which happened in January, killed 46 people.
Calling the crash "truly unbelievable," Spain's Transport Minister said an early investigation indicates that the crash was caused by an "inexplicable" order by the rail controllers that allowed one of the trains to keep going even though a safety failure had already caused a train further ahead on the tracks to stop.
Officials expect the number of victims, 68, to rise as the search and rescue continues.
Trump v Alaska
-via AP News
Moving to Alaska… I talked earlier this week about how Trump’s DOJ is ready to sue Alaska if the Republican incumbent loses – because if the Republican wins? Normal election. If the Democrat wins in a race that’s literally tied and has gone, in polling, from leans R to toss up… gotta be something fishy there. Gotta be some cheating. Maybe the killer whales did it? They’re VERY smart! (That’s real. We don’t even understand how smart they are but they’re like… you guys. They’re SO smart!)
Anyway, the point is… Trump is ready to attack, apparently, if the losers lose.
And on Wednesday Trump turned the volume up, calling for the criminal prosecution of Democratic candidate Mary Peltola after a newspaper obtained text messages between members of Peltola’s campaign talking about recruiting people with the same name as the incumbent Republican.
Here’s the deal… if true? Not a great look.
But not a crime! Not a crime.
They convinced someone to run for office… the candidate agreed to run and then the voters voted for him in the primary enough that he gets to run again in the general.
And you know what?
I’m sorry but I’m just not going to be lectured on the right or wrong way to run an election by a literal insurrectionist.
He was impeached in the House for inciting an insurrection.
That is a fact. The fact that the Senate, that Mitch McConnell (may his memory be a warning), didn’t think insurrection was good enough reason to convict is irrelevant to the fact that he was still impeached for inciting an insurrection.
And that’s aside from the fact that he’s a white supremacist and a credibly accused rapist, including a child rapist, and has been found liable for sexual assault.
So, you know… forgive me if I don’t really want to take his ethical barometer into account here. I’m not sure they’re aligned.
I, for example, grew up listening to Raffi.
And he fights with everyone except Stephen Miller. That’s the only person he’s never had an issue with. And that’s the same person who said if it were up to him there would only be 100 million Americans and they’d all look like him (meanwhile that dude he looks like someone that the 99 haunts at Haunted Mansion would be too scared to take him).
So, you know, sorry you don’t love a campaign tactic one candidate chose. It’s not my favorite, but weighing it against the tactics the Republicans are taking… gerrymandering, changing voter ID laws, and letting a child rapist stump for them… I think encouraging a candidate with a similar name and then letting the voters decide who they want to vote for in a ranked-choice voting situation is probably fine. Right?
I’ll tell you something… that felt good.
Dolores Huerta
-via NPR
And yes, for the last few days I’ve been ending with election stuff. But not today.
Because yesterday, Dolores Huerta, the labor leader, feminist, and civil rights icon, died. She was 96.
Huerta’s resume is long. And inspirational.
She founded the Dolores Huerta Foundation to train low-income individuals to become activists; founded the Agricultural Workers Association, which lobbies for better services for migrant workers; co-founded the Stockton chapter of the Community Service Organization, to organize things like voter registration drives, making sure driver’s license tests and voting ballots were offered in Spanish; she helped establish the Feminist Majority Foundation to promote Latina activism and visibility; she championed the DREAM Act, helping 100s of 1000s of kids stay in the only country they’ve ever known and find a pathway to citizenship; and President Obama’s presidential slogan, Yes We Can, came from her slogan, which is also still used to this day… sí, se puede.
It’s a rallying call.
Yes. We can.
She’s always in the news but she was in the news more than typical this past March, when a bombshell piece of reporting from the NY Times came out, with multiple women coming forward to allege that Cesar Chavez, the co-founder of the United Farm Workers, a civil rights icon, and one of the most well-known allies for workers’ rights, sexually abused, harassed, or raped multiple women and two underage girls, one starting when she was 12 and one starting when she was 13.
One of those women was Dolores Huerta who was one of his most prominent allies in the movement. She told the Times that Chavez pressured her into having sex with him in 1960 and raped her in 1966.
Both of those encounters led to pregnancies that she hid from everyone, including Chavez. In both instances, she placed the infants with families that she believed would be able to provide a more stable life than she could.
That was a big piece of news.
That is not her entire story.
She hid those assaults out of fear of what it would do to the labor movement, in addition to knowing that the police were already hostile to the movement.
For decades after, she worked with, and history paired her with, her abuser. They tied them together.
She did that, she put up with that, she lived through that, because she was fighting for her own power as well as the power of workers and their rights.
Dolores Huerta was, as we all are, a human being. And humans are complicated. No one is perfect.
But Huerta spent a lifetime working to make life better for others.
That is a choice.
I talk about choices a lot. When I talk about our current administration, I say that they actively choose to make life worse for people.
That’s a choice.
And frankly, that’s an easy one. The easy choice is to do something that makes your life better, even when it makes it worse for others. It’s lazy and uninteresting.
The harder choice. The one that takes way more work. The one that fewer people do, is spending their life in pursuit of making life better for everyone.
And that’s what Dolores did. As a union member, I have felt the ramifications of the life work of her and so many others. Because the labor movement has always been bigger than just one person.
She was a giant in the movement… she was not bigger than the movement.
Obviously, because we’re talking about unions, and Dolores Huerta, and it’s coming up on Election Day, I have to mention Lorena Gonzales, the president of the California AFL-CIO, and also the best babysitter/first bra purchaser you could ever ask for.
I come from a family where the women in my life have always been, to be, larger than life. But that is because they create a legacy, they create a future that is better for everyone.
That’s a choice.
Lorena worked very closely with Dolores and the official AFL-CIO statement included this from her: “on a personal note, Dolores Huerta showed generations of women they had a place in this labor movement. She was a singular trailblazer and the shoulders on which we continue to stand.”
On which we CONTINUE to stand.
Because, as we know… the work continues.
sí, se puede.
Yes. We can.
As always, I’ll let Dolores get the last word:
“Every moment is an organizing opportunity, every person a potential activist, every minute a chance to change the world.”
And that’s it. That’s the news.
Five days.
I’m proud of you.