“sitting on a couch to protest climate change” is too perfect a parody of progressive activism https://t.co/pkbe944utc
— Promo Code: Rudy (@canderaid) July 25, 2022
Kids, these days. The kid who sent the tweet works for Cori Bush, and he had himself a busy day:
This morning, 5 of my coworkers and I were arrested for peacefully protesting in @SenSchumer’s office. Amid record heat waves & worsening climate disasters, we called on the Majority Leader to pass climate policy as a matter of urgency. His office called the police. pic.twitter.com/yaw02mKILO
— esp✨ (@emmasage__) July 25, 2022
WE’RE OUT! We, Hill staff, did something outside the box because we need Schumer and Biden to do something outside the box.
We are acting on the emergency basis this moment requires in hopes they will too. We have no other choice, we’ve tried everything. We won’t give up. pic.twitter.com/LLJq3vnk1z
— Saul (@saaaauuull) July 25, 2022
While getting paid, and while not doing anything for the people in St Louis who need help with an immigration case, or a lost veterans check, or who need money to repair a collapsing bridge
You know, the work you do when you’re not on committee staff, but in a member’s office https://t.co/kWYjKWDd7V
— Dana Houle (@DanaHoule) July 25, 2022
Rep. Bush won’t leash him in — his performative activism fits her style — and he’s getting much tweet-comment luuuurve from the predictable suspects.
Ten years from now, assuming the usual trajectory, he’ll be making big money on the Wingnut Wurltizer circuit explaining how ‘I didn’t leave the Democrat Party, they left me’…
Elizabelle
Can’t those fuckers go sit in some Republican offices instead? Do we need to explain what’s going on to these … Hill staffers?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
so this is what they mean by “meeting the moment”?
curious if anyone has seen what they think they mean by “keep negotiating”. As a boring old old, the only think I can think of is “offer Manchin more concessions!”. But I’m sure they think they mean “have John Fetterman come down and loom over him! That’ll do the trick!
ETA: I’m gonna send that climate activist on the right six bucks so she can buy a reusable water bottle. I’m sure if I googled for three minutes I could find evidence that Dasani is worse than Exxon!
SiubhanDuinne
When I saw the post title, I thought it was going to have something to do with Matt Gaetz telling TPUSA that women who support abortion rights are unfuckable because they “look like thumbs.”
schrodingers_cat
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: It seems like progress is optional if you identify as a progressive
BTW did you see this ?
Baud
I don’t think specifically protesting Dems makes much sense and sends the wrong message to voters.
That aside, perhaps I’m old fashioned, but I view Hill staffers as alter egos of their Congressperson, at least when on the job. If Bush wanted to do this, she should have done it herself.
Old Man Shadow
Why won’t Schumer and Biden put on their magic Green Lantern ring and make Climate Change go away?
MisterForkbeard
@Elizabelle: Twitter is filled with people saying “If Schumer really cared, he’d MAKE Manchin cave and do it!”
lefthanded compliment
“You got the wrong office, kid. Manchin’s is down the hall and to the right.”
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I did! I love it.
Tony G
@MisterForkbeard: If I were emperor I would make it a criminal offense to say that “The Democrats control Congress” when 50 Republicans will oppose any good legislation and when Manchin and Sinema are obviously working on behalf of the Republicans. Are these kids really that stupid, or do they have some other agenda?
Baud
@lefthanded compliment:
Yeah, once that becomes dogma, there’s not much you can do but write them off.
Odie Hugh Manatee
Little Tonya Hardings, kneecapping the Democrats once again. Fucking predictable.
Baud
@SiubhanDuinne:
Right wingers have been calling liberal women ugly for decades. It’s not even that original.
Geminid
@Tony G: They’re not that stupid and they do have another agenda. Walid Shaheed of the Justice Democrats laid it out in a tweet in November of 2018: a “hostile takeover” of the Democratic Party.
japa21
@Geminid: Which means they want Republican control of the government for the remaining short life of this country. Short life being dependent on the Republicans gaining control.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
My favorite
repliesreply from that original threadScout211
Turning from Dem congressional staffers to Republican congress members who are just awful:
I don’t know this guy, but the Pennsylvania jackals would. He voted no on marriage equality and three days later attended his gay son’s marriage. WTF?
Link
SiubhanDuinne
@Baud:
Oh, I know. I was very much there for the feminism wave of the late ‘60s-early ‘70s. It was a go-to line for
conservativeRepublicanchauvinisticmost men.Baud
@Geminid:
Honestly, I don’t think they’d know what to do with the Democrats if they somehow succeeded in taking it over.
Geminid
@japa21: Shaheed took that tweet and a few more like it down, but not before the Justice Democrats’ critics screenshot them. The JD’s are more cautious in their rhetoric now. And slyer, as these staffers show.
Alison Rose 💙🌻💛
@MisterForkbeard: do they expect Schumer to beat him up?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@SiubhanDuinne: Marc Short (Pence CoS) had some thoughts on Gaetz
in potentially more important Marc Short news, he and another top Pence aide testified to a grand jury last week, probably in anticipation of all the shade podcasters and twitter threw at Merrick Garland over the weekend.
kindness
It’s funny. Democratic Hill staffers publicly shred President Biden and Sen. Schumer for not doing enough for climate change. Do these special somebodies think it all gets done with the wave of a wand? They work up there. How is they don’t know that isn’t how it works. I mean, I get it kinda. The system isn’t working. Normally it would be chugging along fine. Except Republicans now require 60 votes to leave and go to the bathroom so….
Baud
@Alison Rose 💙🌻💛:
To be fair, that would be something that would unify the party.
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
“We made Garland do it!”
OzarkHillbilly
Instead they are focused on an existential crisis for the human race. Which, trust me on this, was very much affecting the people of St Louis with triple digit daytime highs and *hot and humid* nights the past few weeks, weeks where every paved horizontal and bricked vertical surface radiated all the heat it had absorbed that day all night long… And held back some from the day before.
I am very sorry for all those people disappointed by the young folks who do not direct their energies into what their older and obviously more intelligent betters think they should.
How dare they???
** trust me folks, pick an un-airconditoned brick 4 family flat and try to sleep in it on a July night in the VanderLou or Marine Villa neighborhoods.
Scout211
You want Biden to be more forceful? He came out swinging today against Trump ahead of Trump’s planned “law and order” speech in DC. Link
Bill Arnold
I looked at the most recent several months of saaaauuull’ s tweets, and from that they are at least not obviously Republican, but OMG they need to work on their tactics. (They appear to be quite sincere about their worries about global heating, to be clear.)
This is about a slow but reliable threat to human civilization and to the world’s ecosystems. Keeping climate gigacide advocates out of power, and separating the ones in currently in power from power, are both necessary steps. Helping to elect Republicans is working for the enemy.
West of the Rockies
Speaking truthiness to power…
Lyrebird
Nice catch!!! sfaik Dasani is Coca Cola and yes they at least used to threaten access to drinking water around the world.
Sigh.
Shout out to Max Rose’s campaign, which IS meeting the moment by emailing me a fundraising letter based on the opponent’s vote against contraception.
SiubhanDuinne
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Generally speaking, I have very little use for Marc Short (or anyone in the Penceshire district of Trumpland), but I do hope his instincts here are right.
dmsilev
@kindness: Some Reps. choose their staff to focus on policy, or on constituent service. Others focus on performative displays of ‘activism’.
Baud
@dmsilev:
Which other reps have staff that do this? I recall AOC had a staffer who she let go because he picked fights with her colleagues.
japa21
@OzarkHillbilly: I think the complaint is that they are not showing much awareness of how government works. Neither Schumer nor Biden can do much about the climate at the present time, but they are acting as if they can. And instead of doing things for the constituents, they are grandstanding.
No one is doubting that we are in an existential crisis on the climate. Is this the best way to deal with it?
catclub
Yes.
Suzanne
@japa21:
What is the best way to deal with it? Keeping in mind that probably everybody who cares about climate change already votes for Dems.
SiubhanDuinne
@Baud:
I love autocorrect so hard.
ETA: Damnit, Baud, don’t go making corrections after the fact. You have rendered my comment pointless.
Baud
@SiubhanDuinne:
I caught it before it timed out.
Baud
@Suzanne:
If they vote. The key is turnout.
SiubhanDuinne
@Baud:
i know. Curse you. See #37.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I think there have been more than one, but I’m guessing you’re thinking of this guy, Saikat Chakrabarti
Tony G
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Actually, “offering Manchin more concessions” doesn’t work anyway. He takes the concessions and then breaks his “word” anyway. I was young and dumb once (now I’m old and dumb) — but I was never as dumb as these kids.
different-church-lady
Youth is wasted on the young.
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Yes, that’s the one I had heard about.
Tony G
@SiubhanDuinne: I had to look that one up in Urban Dictionary. Apparently it’s a phrase among frat boys and other idiots.
Geminid
@Baud: The Justice Democrats thought they hung the moon when they put the “Squad” in office during the 2018 midterms. They thought this was the beginning of an avalanch that would sweep away the Democratic old guard. When the JDs got down to choosing candidates to run in 2020 they decided their path to power lay through the incumbents of the Black Caucus. They managed to create a lot of hard feelings very quickly. Now a lot of Democrats hate their guts.
There is a small twitter community dedicated to stalking and exposing the JDs, including Justice Dem Watch, Liz Burgh (who researches their FEC reports), Spandan Reclaim the Fight, and Leftsplintered. They claim that Justice Democrats and allied groups like Brand New Congress and the Sunrise Movement are basically an “op” that has Republican and Russian support. I wouldn’t neccesarily go that far, but the critics have come up with some very interesting activities and connections.
different-church-lady
I brought up the WaPo front page and…
…did I enter Bizzaro World?
Baud
@different-church-lady:
I wasted my youth when I was young.
Gravenstone
Congressional staff who don’t understand, and apparently refuse to learn how the legislative process actually works. Yeah, they’ve got a bright future.
Baud
@Geminid:
My frustration is that this seems to be a recurring pattern. Some lefty movement or group or issue gets some traction, there’s a flurry of interest and excitement, and then the leaders don’t know what to do next and the whole thing just fizzles out or turns on itself.
As someone who is usually sympathetic to the underlying policy, I’ve grown tired of believing that this time will be the time things will be different.
ObedMarsh
Last year, after basically being priced out of Tempe, AZ, I moved to downtown St. Louis. After over 25 years of political activity, I haven’t found any interest in Cori Bush’s office to even acknowledge my contacts, much less respond. Quite a difference from when I spent time actually discussing issues face-to-face with state and Congressional representatives back ion AZ. But, oh boy, I get a couple of fund raising e-mails from Cori a day, though, so I shouldn’t complain about constituent outreach.
So yeah, it’s annoying when, instead of focusing on the real roadblocks to real action on climate change, they use their energy on their own allies.
Oh, and yes, I pretty much know what it’s like to try and sleep in this area without air conditioning. I was 15 before I lived in a house with AC. I also walk to work in downtown STL every work day. It’s been miserable, and I know that it will be like this every summer from now on. So we have to focus on getting the right people elected so that there can be political action on climate change. And that means pushing for that one goal. Getting elected in the first place by having a unified party.
Ken
I’m suddenly thinking of, oh, every story ever told about magic rings, djinn, monkey’s paws, and wishes. Which in turn reminds me of the claims that there are easy technological solutions to the problem, most of which have “oh shit” failure modes as bad as any djinn working strictly to the literal words of your wish.
Ken
Yeah, but we can’t get rid of them yet.
Baud
@different-church-lady:
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I’ll take it though.
Tony G
@Geminid: x Well, that’s cute. The term “hostile takeover”, of course, comes from corporate raiders who take over a corporation by buying a majority of the stock. Aside from that being a tweet-worthy phrase, I don’t know what the hell that means in terms of a political party. The closest equivalent, I guess, would be to take over the party by running candidates, and then winning, primaries for many different offices throughout the country. I don’t think that that has been happening in the past four years. If it has, I haven’t noticed it. What it really means, I think, is the undermining of the Democratic Party so that, in the near future, Republicans will once again control both houses of Congress and the Presidency. And then … some undefined stuff will happen … which will lead to a Real Socialist Revolution. In other words, these people are worse than useless. (I wonder how many are trust fund kids with very affluent parents?)
LeftCoastYankee
Scolding and mocking them for “not knowing how government works” when it clearly is not working (on climate change) isn’t a very convincing argument.
They are part of “our team”, and clearly “Wait and vote” isn’t convincing them climate change will be addressed.
I’m sure they’d take suggestions on “outside the box” activism.
Geminid
@Baud: Rep. Ocasio-Cortez let Chief of Staff Saikat Chakrabarti and Press Secretary Corbin Trent go in August, 2019. This was a month after a bitter House Democratic Caucus blowup over the emergency border funding bill that took nine days to defuse.
After a “progressive” amendment to the funding bill failed, Charkrabarti made some tweets that infuriated Democratic Reps. Then he got into a fascinating Twitter exchange with Native advocate Julian Brave Noise-Cat over whether Sharice Davids (KS-3) had enabled racism with her vote against the failed amendment. That prompted a scorching reprimand from the “Office of Caucus Chairman,” i.e. Hakeem Jeffries.
A few weeks later Chakrabarti and Trent were gone. Charkrabarti was Walid Shaheed’s predecessor as head of Justice Democrats, and founded the outfit along with Cenk Uygur and Kyle Kulinski.
lowtechcyclist
Like what, pray tell? Declare 48 votes to be a majority? Young people are supposed to be the outside-the-box thinkers, not old folks like Schumer and Biden. So I’d love to hear their brilliant ideas for what their elders should do with the White House, a thin House majority, and 48 votes in the Senate.
Geminid
@lowtechcyclist: They done told you: “Meet the Moment!”
Urban Suburbanite
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: That she got rid of that guy seemed one of the earliest demonstrations that she could hold her own. It wasn’t just that the chief of staff was picking fights on his own, it’s that he was really public about trying to set himself up as this rising political leader and the one giving orders. That’s a real problem for any elected official. (There’s something similar going on with Kshama Sawant’s party – she’s the scary Seattle councilwoman you’re all told to be scared of)
Eolirin
@LeftCoastYankee: Any attempt at activism needs to have a viable framework for how change occurs or it’s just bullshit.
Every successful movement in this country had a plan for how they were going to actually get their objectives through, either by backing specific legislation or creating a movement to affect local political change in furtherance of specific policy changes.
They’ve all been clear sighted about what’s been necessary to get there. You need the votes. So you get out there and make it so you have them; you work the electorate as well as the politicians, you build organizing structures with specific purposes. Even if it takes decades. Or a century in some cases.
This is not that. This is a waste of time for everyone, except maybe the people doing it if you assume bad faith on their part, and you probably should. If they’re acting in good faith they don’t know how to count to 50.
People yelling because things aren’t getting better instead of doing the work to make them better don’t deserve to be taken seriously. This is a real crisis. Performative bullshit isn’t going to help solve it.
justinb
Okay, so I finally broke down and donated yesterday. To Republicans. $1. That got me redirected to a page asking me for more money to please help me cover their transaction costs. No can do. Tapped out.
Did I mention that I’ve worked in electronic funds payments for the better part of a decade? I figure I just sucked about $.40 out of their pockets. Made me feel good. Not as good as when I used the postage paid label to send used cat litter to Romney, but still.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Step 1: Imagine a time machine…
Other than that, I’m the wrong guy to ask. I’m not a great believer in “outside the box” activism. It usually looks, as it does here, like pointless self-indulgence.
I remember how bad things had to get to get Obama into office, and trump out.
Geminid
@justinb: Justice Democrats founder Saikat Chakrabarti managed to walk away with millions from his work with electronic payments company Stripe. His boss was a guy named Peter Thiel.
Eolirin
@justinb: Hmmmm. I wonder if it makes sense to put some thought into (legal) disruption campaigns, like getting a lot of people to do that repeatedly, flooding phone lines, feeding them bad data, etc, or if staying exclusively focused on turnout on our side is the better play.
chopper
well sitting around in the AC has to be a climate protest of SOME kind, right
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@chopper: They also tweeted about it, on twitter dot com, which I am told also counts as activism
Urban Suburbanite
There’s a lot behind Congress’ engineered dysfunction, I think we can all agree on that. And sure, this was a stunt. So are most things in politics. But Schumer is (technically) the Senate Majority Leader. Someone should be yelling at him. And the other Congressional leaders. For reals. There should be someone screaming on either side of Ted Cruz’s bed (well, the nutrient chamber pulsating dimly in the guest room – Heidi wasn’t having that fucking thing in the master bedroom) all night, every night. Someone should be shrieking while Joe Manchin is hunched on the toilet. Jim Jordan shouldn’t be able to put on a singlet and watch wrestling movies without teams of creepy twins shrieking.
If two dipshits can hold up Congress, why not hold things up to bitch out Schumer.
Geminid
@Eolirin: An ironic aspect to this affair is that Schumer negotiated with Manchin privately precisely because the relatively public BBB negotiations created so much strife and bad feelings. Schumer intended to get what he could without the uproar that followed the failure of the BBB bill.
“Not so fast, Schumer!” these young “idealists” say. They want him to reopen negotiations so they can milk as much strife and turmoil as they can get from it.
gwangung
Huh. Isn’t that the key point? Aren’t there better targets than CBC members?
Urban Suburbanite
@Eolirin: People managed to tank ICE’s informant line by spamming it with reports of Alf and anal probes.
All activism is performative to some degree. The same goes for politics.
Eolirin
@Urban Suburbanite: Some things are only performative. Those things are worthless.
Tony G
@Geminid: Ha! Peter Thiel again. Say what you will about that guy, but he’s doing a great job destroying this country. Owning and operating far-right Republican candidates like JD Vance and “Blake Masters” (an obvious gay porn name) while using the “Justice Democrats to undermine the Democratic Party. It’s impressive.
@Geminid:
Geminid
@gwangung: The JD’s look to primary older, moderate incumbents in very blue districts. They may have persuaded themselves that Black voters in particular would be receptive to more fiery, “progressive” politicians. Challenges to CBC members like Ohio’s Joyce Beatty and Illinoisan Danny Davis got turned back, but Cori Bush managed to knock out Lacy Clay on her second try, in a low turnout primary during the Covid epidemic. Now Clay has endorsed her opponent this year, Steve Edwards. The primary is a week from tomorrow.
Tony G
@Tony G: So, as usual, I was wrong about these kids. They’re not dumb. They’re not even the trust-fund kids from my long-ago college days, doing some performative “leftism” before they settle down to work on Wall Street. They are operatives of Peter Thiel — a sociopath who is determined to destroy what’s left of democracy in this country.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I clicked around and skimmed a couple stories on the Great Couch Occupation– Axios, Gizmodo– no one as far as I can tell has asked them how, exactly, they want Schumer to renegotiate, what they want him to offer, what and whom they want (to use language typical of their sort) thrown under the bus
Geminid
@Tony G: It’s not clear that Thiel is behind Chakrabarti and the Justice Democrats. Researcher Liz Burgh did come up with a $500,000 donation to their PAC from a California biotech company owner who used to be a big backer of conservative Congressman Dana Rohrabacher. Since 2018 he gives his money to people like Tulsi Gabbard and the JDs. I think his name is Charles Dunlop.
Geminid
@Geminid: Liz Burgh did come up with an interesting series of small donations by Chakrabarti and an associate to a fairly obscure candidate. These were made in 2015, not long before Chakrabarti went to work for the Sanders campaign. Burgh thinks these donations were a dry run to see how they were treated in Federal Election Commission reports.
Burgh asserts that some of the small donations the Justice Democrats brag about are not in fact small donations. There are reporting requirements for donations above $200 dollars, but Burgh suspects that a lot of “small” donations are large ones made through smaller, repetitive electronic payments. She considers this a form of “dark” money.
The FEC’s reporting requirements were instituted in an era where someone making a large political donation wrote a check. Electronic payments have changed this though.
The Thin Black Duke
@Urban Suburbanite: These white assclowns are useless. End of story.
justinb
@Geminid: Whoever the Rs have processing up through to the fed (assuming they’re not their own clearing house, and they’re not), plus the CC company rails the transactions ran across, walked away with more than a dollar. Unless they are stupid. I guarantee that they’re not as dumb as whatever Republican (oh, we can accept credit cards now?) front group you can think of.
Liminal Owl
@SiubhanDuinne: Thank you. Same here.
gwangung
I’m a lot like the older, “moderate” Black voters–definitely in age, different ethnicity, and VERY probably in pragmatism–fiery rhetoric means jack shit if I’m not convinced you know what you’re doing; i.e., can you get elected against Republicans.
These yo-yos need to marry their progressive policy with attention to bread and butter issues.
justinb
@Eolirin: There’s no substitute for boots on the ground. OTOH, a lot of the other stuff you mention can be done by robots at the same time. One does not preclude the other, as long as you get the pipelining right.
Geminid
@Geminid: Correction: Cori Bush’s primary opponent is Missouri legislator Steve Roberts, not Steve Edwards.