Google’s New Union Will Put an Unconventional Organizing Model to the Test

The newly announced Google employees union, the Alphabet Workers Union, is the first union of white-collar workers at a major tech company. They'll be tasked with figuring out how to wield power while only a minority of the workforce

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Google employees walk off the job to protest the company's handling of sexual misconduct claims, on November 1, 2018, in Mountain View, California. (Mason Trinca / Getty Images)

BY ALEX N. PRESS, JACOBIN
01.04.2021

Google workers just announced the formation of a union: the Alphabet Workers Union.

The union — named after Google’s parent company — is not the first at the trillion-dollar tech behemoth. Eighty contract workers at Google’s Pittsburgh office voted to unionize in 2019. That same year, more than two thousand cafeteria workers at the company’s headquarters in Mountain View, California did the same. Security guards at Google have been organized since 2017. But a union that includes white-collar workers who are directly employed by Google is new. Also new is the union’s wall-to-wall approach, encompassing temps, vendors, and contractors, or “TVCs,” alongside direct employees, a good strategy given that TVCs make up over half of Google’s workforce.

Tech companies like Google work hard to keep their companies union-free. I’ve previously written that hostility to unions is foundational to the industry — it was a major reason Silicon Valley became tech’s epicenter, rather than the East Coast. As Intel cofounder Robert Noyce once said, “remaining non-union is essential for survival for most of our companies.” Noyce died a long time ago, but many current tech companies’ only claim to innovation is in finding new ways to evade labor law. White-collar workers at crowdfunding site Kickstarter and the app developer Glitch recently unionized, but the Alphabet Workers Union is the first such effort to go public at one of the FAANG (Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, Google) companies. As such, the announcement will trigger strong reactions in some boardrooms, regardless of what the union says or does.


The new union is backed by the Communications Workers of America (CWA), which has some seven hundred thousand members. It is affiliated with CWA Local 1440, and members will pay 1 percent of their total compensation as dues. According to the New York Times, CWA organizers began meeting with Google employees in late 2019, and the union’s seven-person executive council was elected by members last month. The union was organized as part of CWA’s Coalition to Organize Digital Employees (CODE) campaign, an effort that seeks to unionize video game employees and other tech workers.

As of this morning, the Alphabet Workers Union represents 227 people. That number raises a question. When TVCs are included, well over two hundred thousand people work at Google. What does a two-hundred-person union mean in that context?
Minority Unionism

“Minority unions” are unions that do not represent the majority of workers, and do not act as exclusive bargaining agents with employers. This approach is nothing new. Before the passage of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) in 1935, which codified workers’ right to union elections and exclusive representation by a union with majority support, minority unionism was common practice. Even without company recognition or a contract, such unions had shop stewards tackling workplace problems and pressuring the boss to redress them. They sustained momentum rather than allowing it to dissipate. And once the NLRA passed, those structures were a launching pad for broader unionization.

Minority unions aren’t simply relics of the past either. The difficulty of winning union recognition from employers in the United States has led many workers, particularly those in right-to-work states, to organize in such formations. Minority unions aren’t as powerful as a bargaining unit, but when conditions make such a unit impossible, they are better than nothing, offering additional protections and serving as a structure for collective action.

The question of whether the NLRA provides workers the right to bargain with an employer on a members-only basis, with the minority union representing its members and no one else, is unresolved. As Moshe Marvit and Leigh Anne Schriever note in a 2015 report on minority unionism, a case that would have brought the issue to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) in 2006 was ultimately cut short. Should Joe Biden nominate more labor-friendly appointees — and successfully get congressional approval for those nominees — the NLRB could conceivably rule in favor of this interpretation. Indeed, it may not be a coincidence that the Alphabet Workers Union went public just before Biden’s inauguration. Also of relevance for minority unions is a 2017 decision by the Trump-era NLRB that makes it harder for workers to carve out smaller bargaining units. Previously, unions had the ability to form in one unit and, after gaining a foothold there, expand to other units within the firm. That is no longer a possibility.

Although most Google employees do not live in right-to-work states, they do face an uphill battle. Pro-union Googlers likely do not believe they can get majority support for a union anytime soon, which is a reasonable assessment. The company has immense resources for fighting unionization and, according to a recent NLRB complaint, is willing to break the law to do so. The workforce is dispersed across the country and around the world, which makes organizing much more difficult. The majority of the workforce are TVCs, not directly employed by Google, meaning they can’t legally belong to a recognized bargaining unit that deals with the company — a more traditional union would exclude these workers, substantially weakening its leverage and standing, while deepening divisions between TVCs and direct employees. Most direct employees are highly paid, adding another potential source of division.

But in the United States, almost every workplace is a hostile climate, and yet workers still sometimes organize majority unions. It’s possible that the members in the Alphabet Workers Union see it, as the New York Times put it, as “an effort to give structure and longevity to activism at Google, rather than negotiate for a contract.” Such activism has been building at Google. In recent years, Googlers have scuttled a contract with the Pentagon, criticized work with US Customs and Border Protection, and organized a twenty-thousand-person walkout over the company’s mishandling of workplace sexual harassment.

If “union” is the word we use for workers acting collectively, a union drive at Google is no surprise given this recent history. Minority unions can still win workplace victories, even if they’re not in a position to bargain. These unions can also clarify divisions — Google, like many employers, pushes for employees to feel ownership over the company. But tech is like every other industry— executives are scheming to drive down wages. Every worker, even a software engineer, needs a union, and the existence of one at Google clarifies the antagonism that is foundational to any capitalist workplace.

But there are dangers in announcing a union effort so early on. Unions are about workers’ collective power; unionizing is a show of strength, one that doesn’t just protect workers engaged in collective action, but also inspires them to get off the sidelines and join the effort. A minority union with so few members risks doing the opposite, suggesting to workers who are not yet involved that unionism is a fringe concept, further isolating the organization.

It’s too early to know what the effect of the public launch of the Alphabet Workers Union will be, but the members hope it will build the organization. As Auni Ahsan, a software engineer and founding member of the union, told In These Times, “Thousands or millions of people will wake up and see this story and see that you don’t need to wait for the labor board to approve your union. You have a union when you say you have a union.”

The path to unionizing a tech company is strewn with obstacles, but that’s true of any company. If the existence of the Alphabet Workers Union encourages workers, both within Google and beyond it, to unionize, it’ll be a contribution. What remains to be seen is what exactly the union will do, and how Google will respond.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Alex N. Press is an assistant editor at Jacobin. Her writing has appeared in the Washington Post, Vox, the Nation, and n+1, among other places.

The Washington Riot Was a Defeat for the Far Right, Not a Triumph

The riot at the Capitol on Wednesday was a symptom of right-wing weakness, not power. The real danger isn’t a MAGA coup, but a restoration of the neoliberal status quo that produced the nightmare of Trump and his minions.

Members of the National Guard and the Washington D.C. police keep a small group of demonstrators away from the Capitol after thousands of Donald Trump supporters stormed the building January 6. (Spencer Platt / Getty Images)

01.08.2021

BY RAFAEL KHACHATURIAN STEPHEN MAHER, JACOBIN

The attack on the Capitol Building in Washington, DC on Wednesday by a mob of Trump supporters reinvigorated fears of a fascist threat to liberal democracy. Social media posts and liberal magazines of record immediately characterized the rampage as a coup. In a somber speech delivered while the occupation was still underway, Joe Biden described it as an “unprecedented assault” on American democracy “unlike anything we’ve seen in modern times.”

But alarming as the scenes in Washington were, these events in fact represented a significant defeat for the far right. The riot and its quick repudiation by the political and economic elite made plain that there is currently little base in the state or among big capital for a Trumpist coup, despite the apparent — and unnerving — participation of police and security forces.

Wednesday’s violence was certainly disturbing. But with so much focus on the potential rise of fascism, we risk losing sight of the more immediate threat posed by a new president, backed by all the forces of the state and capital, strengthened by the riot, and determined to restore the neoliberal status quo ante.
Elite Backlash

Over the past four years, extreme-right groups like the Proud Boys became core constituents of the “mainstream” Republican Party base. The political and rhetorical style of Trumpism, the political conflicts it created, carved out space for these groups to mobilize and organize. Throughout his presidency, Trump chose to consolidate this hard-right base rather than fashion a wider centrist coalition. This allowed these groups to build, and increasingly enter the political mainstream.

Trump was the first president in modern history elected with very little backing from big capital. The chaotic, personalistic, and kleptocratic nature of his administration meant that he remained a problematic representative of the general interests of the capitalist class. Nevertheless, prior to the pandemic, tax breaks, deregulation, economic growth, and a booming stock market allowed him to enjoy quiet support among Wall Street and big business — and to build a sufficient popular constituency.

Yet in the course of his refusal to accept the results of the 2020 presidential election, these bases of support shrank to the most militant core. In the wake of the siege on the Capitol, whatever inroads these hard-right forces made into mainstream politics appear to have collapsed, at least for now. This will only serve to deepen the crisis of the Republican Party, members of which either endorsed or at least accepted Trumpism, with various degrees of enthusiasm, over the past four years.

The takeover of the Capitol has laid bare the lack of backing, both among corporate elites and within state institutions, for far-right authoritarianism. Capital, it seems, is still committed to liberal democracy, which has served to safeguard its interests throughout American history. Trump was unable to build a base of power within the state sufficient to usurp its normal constitutional and juridical processes — as shown in his ongoing battle with the “deep state,” and the alienation of the military and national security apparatuses.

On Sunday, none other than Dick Cheney organized every living secretary of defense to sign a statement, published in the Washington Post, repudiating Trump and insisting the armed forces would not participate in efforts to overturn the election. Now, major business organizations have issued some of the harshest statements in their histories rebuking Trump and calling for an end to the chaos of his presidency.

The National Association of Manufacturers — which generally leans Republican and has been the strongest source of business support for Trump — called for Trump to be removed from office. Similarly, the larger and more powerful Business Roundtable also issued a strong condemnation and demanded Wednesday evening that Congress move ahead that night in declaring Biden the president-elect. BlackRock CEO Larry Fink and JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon each issued their own condemnations, along with many others from a cross-section of American businesses.

Even before Wednesday’s events, the capitalist class had soured on Trump. In the days after the election, leading CEOs met to coordinate a business response to Trump’s anticipated contestation of the election results. If this gathering of a literal committee for the management of the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie indicated anything, it was that they saw securing political stability, and ensuring the integrity of liberal democratic institutions, as squarely in their interest.
Blackshirts, Brownshirts, and MAGA Chuds

The rise of German and Italian fascism in the twentieth century took place in the context of severe splits within the ruling classes of these societies. Dynamic new capitalist sectors, especially advanced manufacturing, could not find space within existing state institutions for the expression of their political power. In response, they came to cultivate and support radical forces — fascist parties — which would restructure the state to accommodate their emerging supremacy within their national economies.

The riots in Washington have not emerged from such a division within the ruling elite and have left the American capitalist class more unified than ever. They have not only extended their support to liberal democratic state processes in general, but also to the Democratic Party and Joe Biden in particular.

To be sure, the Trumpian right will hardly vanish from the political stage when the transfer of power does occur. Nor will GOP primaries stop serving as engines of far-right radicalization once Trump leaves office. Indeed, Trump himself is an outcome of this very dynamic.

For these reasons, we should remain vigilant about the shape and direction that the far right takes after Trump. In particular, we should watch for footholds they might establish among the police and border control, as well as at the electoral level. This will be especially important going forward, as they may feel emboldened by the experience of storming the Capitol.

As establishment Republicans seek to distance themselves from Trump, they will have to navigate the contradictions between an angry and mobilized far-right base, on the one hand, and building a broader electoral coalition, on the other. As the congressional votes to certify the electoral college result showed, a significant number of House and Senate Republicans were willing to question the legitimacy of the election — sitting in the very chambers that had been stormed by the angry right-wing mob just hours before.

In addition, the GOP remains entrenched in state legislatures, which only became more significant in the wake of the recent election. This being a census year, this power within state governments will be crucial in allowing the Republicans to gerrymander districts, helping them maintain electoral power for the next decade. So too are they firmly ensconced within the courts — thanks, in part, to Trump.


This is particularly concerning in light of a recent poll showing that 45 percent of Republican voters approved of the storming of the capital. Yet this is a far cry from the 87 percent of Republicans who approve of Trump — suggesting that even many Republicans who support Trump were turned off by the attack. It is also far too low a number to win a national election, especially in light of how this figure contrasts with attitudes toward the attack among Democrats (96 percent oppose) and independents (two thirds oppose). It will be difficult for the GOP to maintain its radical base while also winning nationwide office.

Still, unless GOP voters are polarized against the extreme right, and turnout for Republican primary contests increases dramatically, the party could continue to be a vehicle for building this hard-right base at the state level and in congressional races. The poll numbers certainly suggest that these forces have plenty of room to organize and recruit.

Their ability to do so will hinge on the extent to which the motley far-right coalition can be held together without completely relying on the institutions of the national Republican Party. And, of course, the ability for these forces to pose a real threat to liberal democracy will ultimately depend on attracting support from big capital — a possibility that, for now, seems remote.

The Riot as a Teachable Moment

It is up to the Left to expose the linkages between the Republican Party and the far-right groups it has systematically mobilized and encouraged — and which will no doubt come under closer state scrutiny as Biden takes office. Highlighting these ties could create further divisions within the Republican Party, with the goal of fracturing and dismantling it as a political force.

However, focusing exclusively on the specter of a fascist threat will only serve to enable a restoration of bipartisan neoliberal stability under Biden — exactly what created the conditions for the extreme right’s growth in the first place. Democratic control of the Senate certainly improves the Left’s chances to advance a progressive agenda. But it does not, on its own, save us from a return to austerity over the longer term, or bring an end to ecological and social devastation.

Only by organizing and fighting, both on the terrain of the state and in the streets, can the Left hope to make any real progress toward addressing the climate emergency, mitigating the social crisis wrought by decades of neoliberalism, and expanding vital programs for social provision, such as Medicare for All. And this will mean not just defeating the Right, but also taking on Biden and the Democratic establishment, now poised to serve as the crucial vehicle for renewing the neoliberal consensus.

COREY ROBIN: WHAT TRUMP’S IMPEACHMENT COULD MEAN

01.09.2021
BY COREY ROBIN, JACOBIN

Impeachment could, in theory, turn Donald Trump into an even bigger symbol of a rotten political and social order. It could help bury the Reagan order once and for all. But establishment Democrats would never be interested in the type of impeachment that fundamentally challenged the status quo.
US president Donald Trump waves as he walks along the West Wing Colonnade before departing from the White House on January 13, 2020 in Washington, DC. Mark Wilson / Getty

Over the last four years, I’ve argued that this is a potential moment of realignment, where the Reagan regime we’ve been living under could be shattered and repudiated, and replaced by a new political regime.

One of the reasons I’ve pressed so hard on the Trump/Carter comparison is to point out that the Reagan regime, like the New Deal regime in the 1970s, is more vulnerable than we realize. I continue to maintain that Trump’s inability to rule—most spectacularly put on display this past week—reflects the crumbling power of that regime.

That doesn’t mean the regime can’t do damage on its way out. The last sentence of my book, The Reactionary Mind, makes a point of saying “how much it [the Reagan regime] will take with it on its way out, remains to be seen.” But that regime is far weaker than at any point since its inception.

Now we come to the question of impeachment.

The last impeachment of Trump focused on an issue that did not go to the heart of the Reagan regime but was much more about the perfidy of Trump himself. In this respect, it was not unlike the impeachment of Clinton, which was also about the man (and perhaps more loosely about the cultural changes in the country), and quite different from the impeachment of Andrew Johnson and almost-impeachment of Richard Nixon, which were focused on those men as symbols of a larger regime-type problem.

The possible promise of the impeachment of Trump now (I say possible promise deliberately, so please keep reading) is that it could, in theory, turn Trump into a much larger symbol of something more rotten. Wednesday’s mob was attacking the legislature and the results of a democratic election, in which the forces of a reactionary party suffered a blow. Not a lethal blow, but a blow. The mob’s attack was a white supremacist spasm against not a multiracial democracy but the possibility of a multiracial democracy.


And here we come to the issue of a realignment and the real stumbling block to a realignment and an impeachment that could be about something much more. If the Democrats were a party genuinely interested in realignment, they would be doing a few things. Not only would they want to win elections, but they’d want to shatter the Republican Party. More than that, they’d want to take over the state apparatus and turn it to far different ends: to genuinely empower black people (not just in terms of symbolic representation but in terms of housing, education, jobs, and criminal justice); to genuinely empower a broader working class, which includes high percentages of African Americans and people of color; and to transform all the anti-democratic vestiges of our sclerotic, ancient constitutional order (the role of the filibuster in the Senate, the non-representation of Puerto Rico, DC, and other colonies/territories, the role of the Supreme Court, and more).

If the Democrats were to pursue that political, social, economic, and cultural agenda, it would be fulfilling the promise of the Nevada primaries, where we saw a genuinely multiracial coalition striving toward a more perfect social democracy.

The impeachment and conviction of Trump by that Democratic Party could be a genuine moment of beginning. It wouldn’t shatter the Republican regime, but it would be the opening shot. It would put the GOP on notice, and it would put more hidebound forces in the Democratic Party on notice.

I have no idea whether the existing Democratic Party will in fact impeach Trump. (For the record, I think it has to; I don’t see how Wednesday’s violent storming of Congress can go unpunished, and if the impeachment should reach the Senate, the conviction has to include, as a punishment, the permanent barring of Trump from future office and, if possible, the declaration of his inability to pardon himself and his cronies. But I doubt the impeachment will get that far.)

But what I do know is that the Democratic Party as it is currently constituted is not prepared to use an impeachment to launch the kind of realignment I’m talking about. There are a lot of references today to Reconstruction, the Lost Cause, and all that, but whether or not today’s Republican Party is like the white supremacist cadre of former slaveholders and their allies, it’s very clear that today’s Democratic Party is nothing like the Republican Party that smashed the slaveocracy and then sought, through a multiracial coalition of Jacobins and proto-comrades, to reconstruct the South, to completely transform the society in which formerly enslaved and newly subjugated peoples could sit as equals in the temple of democracy.

Where does that leave us? Where we were before: in a moment of extended suspension, an interregnum between an old world and a new. I see real possibilities, in theory, for the kind of confrontation with the Reagan order, and could imagine an impeachment battle leading to the kind of confrontation within the Democratic Party that we need for a realignment. Whether it will come, I don’t know.

I don’t quite see the political forces necessary to turn these political battles of impeachment into a larger question of the social standing of citizens. But sometimes those necessary forces are summoned, to our surprise, through the very fact of struggle or limited political battle.

If it comes to impeachment, that would be my hope.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Corey Robin is the author of The Reactionary Mind: Conservatism from Edmund Burke to Donald Trump and a contributing editor at Jacobin.

 Some thoughts after the failed coup

by Ted Pearson 

Fri, Jan 8, via  caarpr

https://www.cc-ds.org/ 

In 1868 President Andrew Johnson was impeached. The heart of the charges against Johnson was that he had illegally attempted to prevent the Army from enforcing the 13^th and 14^th Amendments to the U. S, Constitution in the former slaveholding Confederacy. The Confederacy had been, perhaps, the first real fascist state in the world. Black slaves and poor white farmers there lived under a reign of terror. Conscription into the white supremacist army was universal and resistance was punishable by death. Dissent was criminal. Lynching of dissenters was commonplace. The repression was brutal. (See “Home Grown Yankees” by Isabella Black.) The Civil War they launched in the name of white supremacy cost the lives of 620,000 Americans in battle.

 

The essence of the charges against Johnson was that he had granted an effective amnesty to the traitors who had sought to destroy the United States of America. He allowed them to re-establish themselves in the South as the ruling class. The Senate failed to convict Johnson by one vote, a blot on that body that will remain forever.

 

In 1868 Johnson was driven out of office and Ulysses S. Grant was elected president. All three Reconstruction Amendments, including the 15^th which guaranteed male freed slaves the right to vote were enforced in the South by the U. S. Army. Some of the most progressive legislation in the history of the country was enacted in the South during that time. But the traitors were not arrested, were not tried, were not convicted, and were not imprisoned or executed, as traitors would have been under then existing law had it been enforced.

 

The price for the failure to prosecute the progenitors of this crime against the nation and against humanity quickly came due: in the 1876 election the leaderships of the Republican and Democratic Parties made a back-room deal to throw the election to Republican Rutherford B. Hayes in exchange for a commitment to withdraw federal troops from the South, thereby unleashing a new reign of terror by the Ku Klux Klan against Black people and the whole working class. By the turn of the century Black people in the South were disenfranchised. Local multi-racial governments were overthrown and cities burned. Black politicians were murdered. Slavery was re-established in another form - the convict lease system, and Black people (and poor whites) were reduced to peonage by returning the land to the former slaveholders. The status quo ante was re-established. The only difference was legally holding Black people as chattel.

 

The United States still pays for its failure to extirpate the evil mythology of white supremacy and its evangelizers: political, academic, and religious. We pay for it through all the crimes associated with it: police murders, torture, and wrongful arrests and convictions of Black, Latinx and working class white people, which keep communities under the thumb of exploitation, malnutrition, lack of adequate health care, collapsing housing, and failing schools. We pay for it in the continuing genocide of aboriginal Native American people, the rape of the natural resources of the land, and the destruction of the environment and climate of the Earth by the global capitalist system.

 

Contrast this with Reconstruction in Germany and Japan after the defeat of the racist Axis war machine that was responsible for the death of some 75 to 80 million people world-wide. The Nazi and Japanese war criminals were arrested, tried, and executed or imprisoned. Nazi and white supremacist parties were outlawed. Nazi and Imperial war propaganda was illegal. Germany and Japan today are still capitalist and still have many problems – including a revival of a far right – but generally they have a higher standard of living, better health, and more democracy than the United States. Instead of statues of Nazi leaders in Germany the Nazi death camps have been made into museums for anti-racist education of young people. In Japan weapons of mass destruction are outlawed and only actual domestic defense forces are allowed.

 

Here in the U. S. following the failed coup d’état by Donald Trump there have been calls to “heal the nation” and “bring us together”. No doubt, most of the mainly white people who fell for Trump’s racist dog whistles and calls to violence against all who opposed him were conned. Like the victims of most cons, they were victims of their own greed and irrational fears that their God-given entitlement to a position of privilege was under threat from immigrants, Black people, Muslims, and Jews.

 

The United States is at cross-roads. The failed Trump coup forces the nation to decide. Will we let the traitors go, free to plot again? All those who organized and inspired this siege of the Capitol that resulted in five deaths are guilty of murder by accountability, starting with the leader, Donald Trump. Will they be prosecuted? This is not a political-tactical question of whether it will exacerbate the divisions in our society. It’s a fundamental strategic question of whether we will begin to excise the cancer of white supremacy from the body politic of the United States and begin to restore and assert the true soul of the nation that lies in the hearts of all those who are exploited and oppressed.

  "Enabling President's Unhinged, Unstable, and Deranged Acts": GOP Blocks Measure Urging Pence to Invoke 25th Amendment

"Their complicity endangers America, erodes our democracy, and it must end."

by

Jake Johnson, staff writer

Published on Monday, January 11, 2021 by Common Dreams

Rep. Alex Mooney (R-W.Va.) and members of the House Freedom Caucus conduct a news conference outside the Capitol on Thursday, December 3, 2020. (Photo: Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)

A Republican congressman from West Virginia on Monday blocked a resolution calling on Vice President Mike Pence to invoke the 25th Amendment and remove President Donald Trump from office, a move that came as Democratic lawmakers unveiled articles of impeachment against the president that are expected to receive a vote later this week.

In a brief session Monday morning, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) requested unanimous consent to pass a measure (pdf) urging Pence to "convene and mobilize the principal officers of the executive departments of the Cabinet to activate section 4 of the 25th Amendment to declare [Trump] incapable of executing the duties of his office."

Rep. Alex Mooney (R-W.Va.)—one of more than 100 House Republicans who voted last week to toss Arizona and Pennsylvania's electoral votes—objected to the request.

In response to Mooney's objection, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said in a statement that House Republicans are "enabling the president's unhinged, unstable, and deranged acts of sedition to continue."

"Their complicity endangers America, erodes our democracy, and it must end," Pelosi added.

.@LeaderHoyer asks for Unanimous Consent on H.R. 21 calling on @VP Pence to convene and mobilize the cabinet to invoke Section 4 of the 25th amendment. @RepAlexMooney objects. pic.twitter.com/IoEoOfuUxj

— CSPAN (@cspan) January 11, 2021

Having failed to pass the measure by unanimous consent, House Democrats are expected to bring the 25th Amendment resolution to the floor for a full vote on Tuesday, followed by a vote on articles of impeachment as soon as Wednesday.

As Politico reported Monday, at least 218 House Democrats have signed on to Rep. David Cicilline's (D-R.I.) impeachment article, which charges Trump with "inciting violence against the government of the United States."

"Tomorrow, the House will vote on [the 25th Amendment] resolution in person and we expect it to pass," Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) tweeted Monday. "Then on Wednesday, we expect to vote on impeachment articles, which we also expect to pass. There can be no healing without accountability."

While Pelosi has committed to holding a vote to impeach Trump if Pence refuses to act, critics have chastised Democratic leaders for not moving more swiftly and forcefully in the wake of the deadly mob attack on the U.S. Capitol last week.

Murshed Zaheed, managing principal at progressive media firm Megaphone Strategies, argued that the unanimous consent request for the 25th Amendment measure was "an idiotic move that was going to fail with no upside" and called Democratic leaders "lollygaggers."

"Pelosi just wasted another day when she should have moved on this front immediately following the insurrection," said Zaheed, who is hardly the only progressive criticizing the speed with which House Democrats have moved on articles of impeachment.

There is no time to wait. Donald Trump must be impeached immediately. My statement on behalf of @MoveOn: pic.twitter.com/TmNnT2FC2Q

— Rahna Epting (@rahnamepting) January 11, 2021

Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said Monday that pressuring Pence and members of the Cabinet to take action against Trump is a lost cause and called on members of Congress to act as quickly as possible to impeach and remove the president.

"Pence isn't going to do the right thing, so we must," said Jayapal. "We need to impeach Donald Trump right now.

7,000+ Lawyers, Law Students Demand Hawley and Cruz Resign for Inciting 'Violence and Terror'

"Hawley and Cruz directly incited the January 6th insurrection, repeating dangerous and unsubstantiated statements regarding the election and abetting the lawless behavior of President Trump."

by Brett Wilkins, staff writer

Published on Monday, January 11, 2021
by Common Dreams

Republican Sens. Ted Cruz (Texas; center, fist-bumping) and Josh Hawley (Mo., directly behind Cruz) are facing growing calls for their resignation for inciting last week's deadly mob attack on the U.S. Capitol. (Photo: Erin Schaff/AFP via Getty Images)

A petition circulating among lawyers and law students calling for the disbarment of Republican Sens. Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz for their roles in inciting last week's deadly attack on the U.S. Capitol has received more than 7,000 signatures as of Monday afternoon, including over 1,000 members of the Missouri and Texas bar associations.

"In leading the efforts to undermine the peaceful transition of power after a free and fair election, Sens. Hawley [Mo.] and Cruz [Texas] attacked the foundations of our democracy," the petition reads. "Hawley and Cruz directly incited the January 6th insurrection, repeating dangerous and unsubstantiated statements regarding the election and abetting the lawless behavior of President [Donald] Trump."

"In leading the efforts to undermine the peaceful transition of power after a free and fair election, Sens. Hawley and Cruz attacked the foundations of our democracy."
—Lawyers' and law students' petition

"A violent mob attacked the U.S. Capitol," the petition continues. "Five people have died. The nation and the world watched as rioters took over the very halls and chambers that embody our democracy."

"Yet after the violence and terror of the day's events, Sens. Hawley and Cruz still chose to stand in the chamber of the U.S. Senate and persist in their baseless objections to the will of the people," it adds.

The Washington Post reports prominent signatories of the petition include former U.S. Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) and constitutional scholar Lawrence Tribe, a professor at Harvard Law School, Cruz's alma mater.



In less than 72 hours, thousands of lawyers and law students have called for the disbarment of Sens. Hawley and Cruz.

Lawyers—even U.S. Senators—must defend our democracy, not sabotage it. Join the movement, sign the petition, and share widely.https://t.co/mYcXJ2VWhh

— Daniel Ki (@danielrki) January 10, 2021

The petition was started by seven students at Yale Law School, where Hawley earned his juris doctorate. One of the students, Daniel Ki, told the Post that "we thought it was important to speak up."




"We decided to ask other law students and members of the bar to join in the call to begin immediate disbarment proceedings against Sens. Hawley and Cruz and have been inspired and heartened by the overwhelming response," said Ki.

The petition follows calls by Democratic Sens. Sherrod Brown (Ohio), Chris Coons (Del.), Patty Murray (Wash.), and Ron Wyden (Ore.) for Hawley and Cruz to step down. Murray on Friday accused the pair of having "broken their oath of office."


Even Republicans have strongly condemned the senators, with Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) on Sunday calling them "complicit in the big lie" that the 2020 presidential election was "stolen" or plagued with "widespread fraud." Toomey, however, stopped short of calling on the senators to resign.

Across the nation, people still reeling from what they saw unfold last week on live television joined in the chorus of condemnation of the senators and demanded their immediate resignation. Several hundred protesters braved subfreezing temperatures and the Covid-19 pandemic to take to the streets of downtown St. Louis on Saturday, chanting, "No Hawley. No KKK. No fascist USA" and painting "RESIGN HAWLEY" in the street in front of the historic Old Courthouse.



Photos: Hundreds gather in St. Louis calling for Hawley to resign https://t.co/Emrur73K7I via @pd_shutterspeed pic.twitter.com/OlzIpkWNPv

— St. Louis Post-Dispatch (@stltoday) January 10, 2021

The petition comes as the House of Representatives on Monday moved closer to impeaching Trump for inciting insurrection after Republican lawmakers blocked a House resolution calling on Vice President Mike Pence to invoke the 25th Amendment to remove the president from office.

The vice president—who was apparently marked by some of the Capitol insurrectionists for possible execution due to his perceived disloyalty to Trump—has given no indication that he would consider such a constitutional remedy.

Yes It Was Attempted by Wingnuts, But It Was a Coup Attempt Just the Same

Over 140 Republican congressmen and 8 senators joined the attempt to overturn the election even after the mob tried to kill or kidnap them.

by Juan Cole

A protester sits in the Senate Chamber on January 06, 2021 in Washington, DC. Congress held a joint session today to ratify President-elect Joe Biden's 306-232 Electoral College win over President Donald Trump. Pro-Trump protesters have entered the U.S. Capitol building after mass demonstrations in the nation's capital. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)

Wednesday 1/6 was clearly an attempted coup on Trump’s part. There is some controversy about this, depending on how analysts define a “coup.” It was of course not a successful coup d’état inasmuch as it failed to overturn the government or even to permanently install an elected president as an emperor for life. But that it was an attempted coup seems to me clear.

Trump had a three prong strategy to overturn the election of Biden. Part 1 was a propaganda campaign maintaining that he had won the election and it was stolen from him by irregularities in the swing states of Arizona, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Georgia. In all those states, minorities, coded by Trump and Trumpies as not real Americans, provided the margin of victory to Biden. The claim of electoral fraud was therefore in part a racist dog whistle.

It is a terrifying success, that Trump could hypnotize a population the size of the fifth continent into fervently believing a rank falsehood without a shred of truth to it.

Trump spread around his propaganda that Biden actually lost with his vast and effective communications machine. He reached his 70 million myrmidons on Twitter directly and frequently. He gave televised speeches carried on mass media like CNN in which he said he had won by a landslide. CNN tried to contextualize the lie, but video of a president speaking is more powerful than the tut-tutting of television reporters. The fascist media put in his service by the billionaires whose taxes he cut– Breitbart, Newsmax, Fox News, OAN all cast doubt on Biden’s legitimacy. Much of the Republican Party state and national leadership adopted Trump’s Big Lie, including House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and over 140 members of Congress. Even non-crazy Republicans adopted the mantra of irregularities, as in Pennsylvania, questioning the ruling of that state’s Supreme Court. You can argue the court made a bad ruling. You can’t argue that its ruling is not the law of the land.

The propaganda campaign was so successful that half of Republicans believe the big lie, some 23 million people, nearly the population of all of Australia.

It is a terrifying success, that Trump could hypnotize a population the size of the fifth continent into fervently believing a rank falsehood without a shred of truth to it.

Part II of the coup was to threaten, browbeat, and menace Republican officials in the four swing states into refusing to certify the Biden win. Monica Palmer and William Hartman, the two Republican canvassers for Wayne County in Michigan, initially refused to certify the results, in accordance with Trump’s wish, threatening to hold up the declaration of Biden’s win there. Only a massive public outcry made them back down. Trump then called Republicans from the Michigan state legislature to the White House for consultations, urging them to refuse to certify Biden. Trump repeatedly called the Georgia secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, and other officials in that state, using organized-crime code words to intimate that something bad would happen to them if they didn’t “find” the 11,000-some votes he needed to beat Biden. Raffensperger, to protect himself from any Trump retaliation, made and released a tape of the threatening conversation.

When the Republican state officials and legislators defied Trump and certified Biden’s election, Trump turned his attention to Congress. He worked the phones like a maniac, cajoling and threatening. He menaced any senators or congressmen who refused to vote against certifying the state tallies in the four swing states with being primaried. He told Kelly Loeffler, a Republican candidate for the senate in Georgia, that he would “do a number on her” if she didn’t reject Biden’s win in her state.

Trump’s scenario appears to have been this: Enough Republicans in the House and the Senate would reject the results in the four swing states to raise serious questions about a Biden win. Then Mike Pence, the president of the senate, would use this substantial dissent about the results to cast doubt on the results. Trump crony Michael Flynn suggested that Trump at that point use the military to “rerun the election,” according to the NYT. It became clear to Trump, however, that Pence would not play ball, and that he could only count on twelve Republican senators to try to overturn Biden’s election. He needed some way of applying even more pressure or of sowing enough turmoil to create an opening for some sort of decisive action on his part.

Part 3 of the coup attempt was to put pressure on Congress to challenge the Biden win through a massive rally of the far Right before the Capitol on January 6. Trump called for the rally, and came to address it in the late morning. Although he urged them to be peaceful, he did say “We fight like hell, and if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.”

Trump had done a dry run for this mob action in Michigan. When, last spring, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer imposed an economic lockdown to combat the rapid spread of the coronavirus, Trump tweeted out “LIBERATE MICHIGAN.” In response, an assemblage of white supremacists, conspiracy theorists, gun nuts and restaurateurs (!?) showed up at the state capitol in Lansing. Guess what? They invaded the statehouse and the lawmakers had to suspend their work that day. Trump’s attacks on Whitmer also had the effect of encouraging a far right domestic terror cell to make a plan to kidnap and possibly kill her.

With the Michigan example before him, it is impossible that Trump was unaware that his dog whistles to the far right, his demonization of leaders who defied him, could produce violence.

The mob of black shirts he assembled was intended to intimidate Pence and the legislators and to create chaos, of which he clearly thought he could take advantage. He used them to make clear to the Republican senators and representatives that the party faithful (the QAnon/ white supremacist mob) would not put up with anything else and that not only their careers but their very lives hung in the balance. Hence his glee when the Capitol was invaded.

Elements of the mob who invaded the Capitol were chanting “Hang Mike Pence,” and others wanted to get Nancy Pelosi. The politicians were in real danger, and it was only the efficiency of the Capitol police in whisking them away to safe rooms or the basement that saved their lives. Had Pence or Pelosi been kidnapped, wounded or killed, it would have halted the Biden certification process for some time, giving Trump the opportunity to find a way to remain in office. It is not that Trump himself urged or planned the breach of the Capitol or the infliction of harm on the legislators, it is that he was attempting to create an unnamed chaos, which he viewed as advantageous to his efforts to remain in office.

The unusual lightness of the police presence in DC compared to all the other demonstrations held in the past year raises questions about whether Trump’s security officials were attempting to make sure the mob was not interfered with. Gov. Larry Hogan said that it took 90 minutes for the Pentagon to give him permission to send in the Maryland National Guard once he asked. This was at a time when thugs were roaming the Capitol chanting “Hang Mike Pence.” An hour and a half response time seems a little slow under the circumstances.

It was a coup attempt of sorts. It reminds me of the much more successful 1953 CIA coup against Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh in Iran. CIA field officer Kermit Roosevelt bought mobs with millions of dollars in the capital to intimidate parliament and encourage anti-democratic forces to depose the prime minister.

Trump’s was a crackpot conspiracy-theory coup attempt, though. It was never plausible except in very fevered minds like those of Trump, Alex Jones and other exotic flora and fauna. But over 140 congressmen and 8 senators did join the attempt to overturn the election even after the mob tried to kill or kidnap them, which means it wasn’t as implausible as I wish it was. And the buy-in Trump has in the Republican Party for this coup attempt signals severe trouble ahead.

Juan Cole teaches Middle Eastern and South Asian history at the University of Michigan. His newest book, "Muhammad: Prophet of Peace Amid the Clash of Empires" was published in 2020. He is also the author of "The New Arabs: How the Millennial Generation Is Changing the Middle East" (2015) and "Napoleon's Egypt: Invading the Middle East" (2008). He has appeared widely on television, radio, and on op-ed pages as a commentator on Middle East affairs, and has a regular column at Salon.com. He has written, edited, or translated 14 books and has authored 60 journal articles.
© 2021 Juan Cole

As 'Dark Stain' of Guantánamo Begins 20th Year, Groups Demand Biden Close Offshore Prison

"Biden must reaffirm his commitment to closure and take the necessary action to accomplish it before we have to mark the 20th anniversary next year," says the Center for Constitutional Rights.

by Jessica Corbett, staff writer
Published on Monday, January 11, 2021
by Common Dreams

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For several years, critics of the Guantánamo Bay detention camp have dressed in orange jumpsuits at demonstrations calling for its immediate closure. (Photo: Amnesty International)


Less than two weeks before President-elect Joe Biden is set to take office, human rights advocates marked the 19th anniversary of the opening of the U.S. military prison at the Guantánamo Bay Naval Station in Cuba with impassioned demands for the next U.S. leader to prioritize urgently closing what has long been called a "dark stain" on the nation.

For nearly two decades of the seemingly endless so-called War on Terror—under three presidents—the U.S. government has indefinitely detained scores of men at Gitmo without trial or access to due process. The torture and detention conditions of the prisoners have drawn fierce criticism from around the world. Forty men remain detained at the prison.

An Amnesty International petition declares that "the treatment and imprisonment in Guantánamo are glaring human rights violations that the Biden administration must end now."

The human rights group circulated the petition and a video on Twitter Monday:



Today marks 19 years since #Guantánamo opened, and 40 Muslim men remain there today. We’re calling on USA President-Elect Joe Biden to close it immediately https://t.co/SnjFi23Rwg pic.twitter.com/EUa2Di2OhJ

— Amnesty International (@amnesty) January 11, 2021

During his eight years in office, former President Barack Obama, for whom Biden served as vice president, ultimately failed to deliver on his campaign promise to close the detention camp, established in 2002 under former President George W. Bush.

As a candidate, President Donald Trump vowed to keep Gitmo open and "load it up with some bad dudes." In January 2018, he signed an executive order to revoke an Obama order calling for the prison's closure. As HuffPost reported at the time:


Trump's move is more of a political statement than a practical change... Obama's 2009 executive order to close the prison, which he warned was a recruiting ground for terrorist groups at the expense of taxpayers, faced strong opposition in Congress that prevented him from transferring detainees to the United States.




The Obama administration managed to transfer nearly 200 inmates from the facility.

Since Trump's order, "no new detainees have come in and one has been transferred out," Amnesty pointed out Monday. "Biden has an opportunity to roll back this harmful policy and close the detention center."

In a statement Monday, the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), also called on the incoming Biden administration to close detention center. The organization represents six men who are still imprisoned there: Sufyian Barhoumi, Sharqawi Al Hajj, Mohammed al Qahtani, Abdul Razak Ali, Guled Hassan Duran, and Majid Khan.

"Today marks the beginning of the 20th shameful year of Muslim men being unlawfully imprisoned at Guantánamo," said the CCR, which organized a virtual vigil on Monday. "Even in a national landscape of brutal and extreme incarceration, the detentions of the men at Guantánamo—all of whom face life imprisonment without charge or fair trial—are unprecedented and yet largely invisible by now."



At 1 pm, join us, @dcmuslimjustice, @WitnessTorture, and @amnestyusa for a virtual vigil to mark the 19th anniversary of the opening of the detention facility at Guantánamo Bay.

Details:https://t.co/RLgI8UQx24 pic.twitter.com/Vz1IB4rOPW

— The CCR (@theCCR) January 11, 2021

The group explained that for all Gitmo detainees, "including our six clients—one of whom has been cleared for release for years, another of whom the United States openly acknowledged it tortured, and yet another who cut his wrists out of desperation about his fate—Guantánamo is an active site of trauma and despair. Yet, despite all that our clients have endured, they dare to hope for a life beyond Guantánamo, and we must fight for that. As the country transitions to a new administration, it is more vital than ever that closing Guantánamo once again becomes a policy priority.

"President Biden can and must take immediate action on the prison: appoint senior officials to carry out the mandate of closure release the men the government has not charged by now, starting with the six men already cleared for transfer; abandon the military commissions system; and bring existing cases of men who have been charged to federal court," the CCR concluded. "Biden must reaffirm his commitment to closure and take the necessary action to accomplish it before we have to mark the 20th anniversary next year."

 

Oldest Play in the Book': Critics Warn New Domestic Terror Laws Aimed at Pro-Trump Mob Would Be Used Against Legitimate Protest

"History shows that legislation going after 'domestic terrorism' will primarily be used to target Black organizers, Muslim communities, immigrant communities."

by

Jake Johnson, staff writer

A Capitol Police officer stands with members of the National Guard behind a crowd-control fence surrounding Capitol Hill a day after a pro-Trump mob broke into the U.S. Capitol on January 7, 2021, in Washington, D.C. (Photo: Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images)

Hearing ominous echoes of the post-9/11 crackdown on civil liberties, progressives are warning of the serious dangers posed by the renewed push for fresh laws targeting "domestic terrorism" in the wake of the deadly assault on the U.S. Capitol last week by a mob of President Donald Trump's fanatical supporters.

While acknowledging the threat posed by right-wing extremists across the nation and affirming the need for forceful action in response to last week's attack, observers noted that existing federal laws are more than sufficient to hold the insurrectionists to account for invading the halls of Congress with possible intent to hold lawmakers hostage, attempting to topple the U.S. government, and potentially committing murder.

"There are already plenty of tools at the government's disposal to crack down on far-right insurrection," The Week's Ryan Cooper wrote in a column on Sunday.

"Whatever powers Biden creates today can be used by the enemies of democracy tomorrow. Our civil liberties are simply too fragile, and the risk is much too great."
—Sarah Jones, New York magazine

The problem, Cooper argued, is not a lack of laws but rather a deficiency of will from "police departments and security agencies [that] are composed largely of conservative Republicans, and not a few open fascists." Putting new laws in place would only hand law enforcement agencies additional weapons to wield against the left, Cooper wrote.

"If you just charge the existing agencies with breaking up domestic insurgent networks, at best they will shirk, delay, and drag their feet, and at worst they will completely ignore the fascists while turning any new tools against Black Lives Matter and other left-wing protesters," said Cooper. "Indeed, this is already happening—so far, the charges against the fascist mob have been trespassing or other minor crimes, rather than the felony riot charges the leftist J20 defendants faced for simply being near minor property destruction in downtown D.C. on the day of Trump's inauguration."

As the Wall Street Journal reported last Thursday, President-elect Joe Biden "has said he plans to make a priority of passing a law against domestic terrorism, and he has been urged to create a White House post overseeing the fight against ideologically inspired violent extremists and increasing funding to combat them."

Biden made a point of identifying members of the Trump mob as "domestic terrorists" in remarks following last week's attack, which he condemned as an "all-out assault on our institutions of democracy" led by the incumbent president.

Not long after the mob stormed Capitol Hill, some commentators began calling on Congress to begin work on a specific statute targeting "domestic terrorism"; as ProPublica explained last week, "while federal statutes provide a definition of domestic terrorism, there is not a specific law outlawing it."

The call drew swift pushback from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), who tweeted Saturday that "as the vice chair of the Oversight subcommittee who ran investigations into domestic terror laws, I respectfully disagree."

"Our problems on Wednesday weren't that there weren't enough laws, resources, or intelligence," said the New York Democrat. "We had them, and they were not used. It's time to find out why."

Diala Shamas, a staff attorney with the Center for Constitutional Rights, echoed that point, telling The Intercept Sunday that "anyone familiar with the scope of surveillance and targeting of Black political dissents, or Muslim communities, knows that law enforcement has all the tools it needs to aggressively disrupt and hold accountable those who planned and participated in the storming of the Capitol."

"Why they didn't raises serious questions, but it was not because their hands were tied," said Shamas. "We don't need new terrorism designations."

Predictably, Biden falls for it. I'll say it again: history shows that legislation going after "domestic terrorism" will primarily be used to target Black organizers, Muslim communities, immigrant communities. It's the oldest play in the book. https://t.co/NEvW4AO6av pic.twitter.com/ZM1f2jv3cd

— Diala Shamas (@dialash) January 8, 2021

The notorious 2001 Patriot Act, passed in the wake of the 9/11 attacks with Biden's support, provides an expansive definition of "domestic terrorism" that—as the ACLU warned—was "broad enough to encompass the activities of several prominent activist campaigns and organizations," including "Greenpeace, Operation Rescue, Vieques Island, and [World Trade Organization] protesters and the Environmental Liberation Front."

The fears of civil liberties advocates were realized when, as predicted, law enforcement agencies proceeded to surveil and pursue animal rights advocates and environmentalists as well as Muslim Americans.

Warning Biden against enacting additional draconian measures in response to last week's mob attack, New York magazine's Sarah Jones wrote that the "state does not lack teeth" but "has too many at its disposal already." What's really missing in the way law enforcement and prosecutors handle protest—or violent uprisings—is lack of "discretion, and all sense of proportion" when they respond, Jones argued.

"Whatever powers Biden creates today can be used by the enemies of democracy tomorrow," warned Jones. "Our civil liberties are simply too fragile, and the risk is much too great."