Then what shoes to wear – not open toed sandals because they have no protection, but tennis shoes have laces but they will take them making the shoes hard to keep on. They will take my shoes anyhow so go with tennis. Thick socks and clean not ripped underwear as my mother always said.
I don’t want to take my cell phone so they can’t track me but also then I can’t video. But there will plenty of others who can. Take my passport card because a driver’s license is not proof of citizenship in AZ. Take credit card and cash for bail. Take nothing else so not to implicate anyone or for anyone to steal in the jail. Be hydrated but not so hydrated you have to pee every five minutes. Be fed but not so fed you have to do other business any time soon. Memorize a phone number to call. Let someone know where you are going and when you should be back. Take COVID masks for spraying of tear gas and extra masks for others.
I went through all this just to go to a demonstration against ICE. Imagine if you were a person of color and had to go through this every time you walked outside your door. And not only for yourself, but your children too. No wonder people of color have higher blood pressure and more heart attacks and strokes. So would you if you had to carry this fear 24/7 Ruby and Liam: Makes me cry every time I look at it.
The weekly protest I go to had averaged about 7-15 people until a couple of weeks ago. Then it jumped to 30 after the execution of Good and then 60 after the execution of Pretti. Today it dropped back to about 30 again. Please keep coming to the Rush Hour Resistance protests. We need to keep up every ounce of pressure we can.
On the general strike day, January 30, I went to the demonstration in Phoenix down at the capital. It was 79 degrees and I was using my sign to block the sun. When I got home, I had photos from my sister in Wisconsin showing my 16-year-old great nephew and his entire school including the teachers and principal who were marching in the falling snow. That is the Wisconsin I grew up in. Glad to have it back.
Tucson schools just shut down since so many teachers and students were going to be out. That is what they all should have done. Instead, some schools want to punish students by suspension for exercising their First Amendment rights. One over caffeinated male threatened that if the kids didn’t show up for school they would be kicked off the football team and cheering squad.
The legal standard since Tinker v. Des Moines in 1969 is whether the students’ actions disrupt the school. If they don’t disrupt, students have a right to express their First Amendment opinion at school. If students don’t show up for school, they have not disrupted anything at school and cannot be punished. Due to such threats, Secular Coalition drafted a handy memo for students to use. You can find it at secularaz.org. We argued they should get extra credit not punishment for putting their learning about the foundations of this country into practice. Aren’t you teaching them to be good citizens and participate in democracy?
On other fronts, the administrations solution to the increasing needs of the elder community is not to offer more services. It is not to extend Medicare to home health care. It is not to lower drug costs. It is not to increase Social Security funds by taxing those making over $184,500.
No. The administration’s solution is to decrease the wages of care workers. We already have a shortage of care workers. Most of them are women and especially women of color, often recruited abroad. And that is the solution of this administration – reduce their wages. Can you say D U M B.
An attorney in Ohio working in the Lawyers Defending American Democracy (LDAD) group wanted to find out the facts about how the economy under this administration has impacted real people. Here’s what he found: 2024 economic numbers are to the left and 2025 economic numbers are to the right:
- Real wages (wages after inflation): -.2% vs. -.6%
- Inflation: 2.9% vs. 2.7%
- Unemployment: 4.1% vs. 4.4%
- Job Creation/month: 168,000 vs. 49,000
- GDP: 2.8% vs. 2.0%
- S&P: Up 13.3%
- Dow: Up 11.5%
- NASDAQ: Up 16.9%
Conclusions:
- The more you had invested in stocks when this administration took office, the better off economically you are.
- The more you needed a job or depended on wages, the worse off economically you are.
Any questions?
As we find better ways to respond to the fascist onslaught, think about the old Welcome Wagon. When someone new moved into the neighborhood, the neighbors put together a basket (or wagon) with food and coupons from local shops, information about local groups and events, and contact information for the local government. Many communities are already showing this kind of coherence i.e. the mutual aid groups. Let’s make sure we are not forgetting people as we fight the monster.
