Latest news with #Women'sMarch
Yahoo
15-05-2025
- General
- Yahoo
March for Women's Rights in Lafayette Square happening this Saturday
BUFFALO, N.Y. (WIVB) — Lafayette Square may be quiet on Thursday, but come Saturday at 2 p.m., it is expected to fill with thousands of people marching for women's rights as part of the Western New York Women's March. The event, organized in honor of Victorious Women's Month, aims to promote equality, dignity, and justice for all. 'It's about women's rights, her rights are human rights, and also about all of our rights that are connected,' Victoria Ross, the community coordinator for the Western New York Peace Center, said. The march will highlight the struggles faced by women, people of color, and other marginalized groups in the fight for equality. 'That's women, but that's also especially people of color and all marginalized citizens who have been oppressed and not treated fairly in this country,' Ross said. 'As much as we think we're about equality, we have a long way to go.' In addition to the march, the event will feature a series of activities aimed at building connections and empowering voices within the community. 'We have wonderful speakers that will be in the auditorium at the library, a live art demo and participation, but we'll also have an open mic section,' Ross said. The march is set to begin at 2:20 p.m. and will loop through the Michigan Street, the African American Heritage Corridor, a co-sponsor of the event. Ross emphasized that the march is open to everyone who supports the cause, encouraging participants to bring signs and join in. 'A bird needs two wings to fly, so men are welcome,' she said. 'One of my favorite signs in the Women's March, you can guarantee that there will be men there with a sign that says, 'I'm with her,' so we need everybody.' The Western New York Women's March is part of a broader movement to prioritize people and the planet. Gwyn Napier is a reporter who joined the News 4 team in 2025. See more of her work by clicking here. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
07-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Why Rev. William Barber Got Arrested at the Capitol
After Donald Trump won a decisive second term in November, conventional wisdom quickly congealed: #Resistance was dead. There was no Women's March. The regular weekend protests in D.C. weren't coming back. But then came the 'Hands Off' demonstrations around the country last month, which drew thousands of people opposed to Trump's agenda, Elon Musk's DOGE and a host of other conservative causes, and signaled a potential revival of the anti-Trump protest spirit. Rev. William J. Barber II, the prominent North Carolina pastor-civil rights activist-theology professor, fully embraced that approach last week, getting arrested in the Capitol Rotunda while praying against Republican budget cuts. In an interview with POLITICO Magazine, Barber rejected the notion that the resistance had ever died. Rather, he sees its work as part of a movement that has advocated for the poor and marginalized across eras, dating back to the abolitionist movement against slavery. It's a movement that has seen its setbacks — ask Frederick Douglass about despair — but with each passing month, year, decade, the effort grows. 'Movements and resistance are built on top of one another,' said Barber, founding director of the Center for Public Theology and Public Policy at Yale Divinity School. 'And you don't pit them against one another.' Barber also weighed in on the notion from some in the Black community that now was not the time for them to be active in protest movements, that it was best to sit this one out . He wouldn't criticize anyone's choice, but he made clear the success of any resistance would be built on a 'fusion movement,' a multiracial, interfaith grassroots coalition. And, Barber, who also serves as the director of Repairers of the Breach, a social justice organization, said prayer sessions for the group's 'Moral Mondays' actions will continue at the Rotunda — even when he can't be there, as was the case this week 'The movement will be there,' Barber says. 'And I'll be back.' This interview has been edited for length and clarity. During the first Trump administration, the #Resistance was very visible. We had the Women's March and the Black Lives Matter protests… Don't forget the Poor People's Campaign, a national call for moral revival, was in that mix all over the country. 400,000 people in the street. I remember that. But today we have people, including people in the media, arguing that the resistance is dead, that people on the left are exhausted. What do you think is the difference between the resistance movement then and today during Trump 2.0? I think the analysis is all off. We can't judge every year, every season by every season. It's not how you look at history. You know, there was a resistance that went on 40 years before Dr. King and John Lewis ever got to Selma. There was a resistance in Montgomery before Rosa Parks ever sat down. Movements and resistance are built on top of one another. You don't pit them against one another. I tell folks the greatest thing we should be focusing on, something that Frederick Douglass said when the Dred Scott decision came back. The abolition movement said, 'It's over. There's nothing we can do. The courts are against us, the law enforcement is against us. The academies are against us. The Congress is against us…' Frederick Douglass went into a kind of depression. [Then he gave a speech] about how monstrous this Dred Scott decision was. But then he says, 'We must receive this decision in a cheerful Spirit,' because history is filled with evidence that every attempt to [undermine] the abolition movement has only served to intensify and embolden our agitation. I hear what you're saying, and yet at the same time, we're in a very different era. So what do you see as different about the resistance movement today? We're in Trump 2.0; it's 2025. What's different from 2020 or 2016? [Trump's administration wants to] cut a trillion dollars from the budget and defund the so-called administrative state. Musk and DOGE, they believe in what's called technocratic feudalism. So what we have right now is a crisis of civilization, a crisis of democracy. They believe that the masses shouldn't really be involved in civil society. They believe the masses are too dumb. They are the great ones, the smart ones, and they kind of got a technocratic mafia, if you will, and then got a president. The reason we launched Moral Mondays is because we did an analysis. Give us the real analysis of what's going on, for instance, just with this budget. And when the reports came back, the reports are so bad that whatever tiredness we might have, then shake it off. Because these folks are talking about, by the time they finish this budget, they would have so bloodied the government and would have hurt not 1,000 people or 100,000 people, but millions of people. The worst thing we could do now is turn back, which is why Moral Mondays launched to really arrest the attention of the nation and say to America, 'Do you realize that right now, folks are trying to take 36 million people out of Medicaid?' You were you were arrested last week at the Capitol rotunda while praying against these Republican budget cuts — One of three. That's right, one of three people arrested. Police said they arrested you after multiple warnings for, quote, 'praying out loud.' Can you talk a little bit about what you were hoping to accomplish? We didn't go in to get arrested. Who would think he would get arrested for praying? [Laughs.] But we did go in to say that this nation, when you look at this budget, this nation needs pastoral and prophetic care. We went into praying. We sent every member of Congress our analysis of the high moral consequences of this budget. We requested a meeting with Mike Johnson, and we want to meet with [Hakeem] Jeffries, and want to bring high-level religious leaders that lead millions of congregants into a meeting with them and challenge them based on the Constitution they swore to uphold, and based on the damage that they're talking about doing. Because for us, praying is not just going through personal piety. Prayer for us is a prophetic act. What we're saying is, you cannot keep praying in this Congress, P, R, A, Y and open Congress with prayer, and then turn around and pass a budget that preys P, R, E, Y, on the most vulnerable people in this country. Can you explain a little what you mean by a 'prophetic act'? In the Bible, in Jeremiah 22 it says, 'Go down to the palace and pray and alert the leaders that they're wrong.' Our praying is a form of mourning. It's a form of saying how bad it is. It's kind of like what Pope Francis said, 'We must, we must, we must, we must, we must pray.' And praying is a form of challenge. Prayer is not just, 'Lord, give me this.' It is an act of defiance to those that would want to hurt others. It is a challenge. It's putting legs on our prayer. It's arresting the attention of the nation. That's why all of the clergy are wearing vestments. We want to be conspicuous. We are called to cry out in the public square. We are called to say to every nation that you're not going to be judged by how great your Wall Street account is. You're going to be judged by how you treat the poor, how you treat the immigrant, how you treat the sick, and by all of those measures, this budget fails. It fails. And not only does it fail, it is deadly. It is destructive, it is deceitful. Eight hundred people are dying a day from poverty. What's going to happen with this budget is more people are going to die. One estimate: 36 million people taken off of Medicaid would lead to something like 56,000 unnecessary deaths. Prayer is a very defiant act. [The theologian] Walter Wink called it rattling the cages of God and shaking up the systems of the world. And so we are here, right now, in this moment, to say, 'We're not afraid. We're not bowing.' As the anti-Trump protests were ramping up last month, there was a debate online among Black political influencers, particularly Black women, that it was time for Black people to sit this one out. There were fears that if Black people protested publicly, there would be increased police presence, like during the George Floyd protests. But it was also kind of cast as, 'We've done our part. Now it's time for us to rest. It's time for people of other races, particularly white people, to take to the street.' What are your thoughts on that? I don't have an opinion on it. My mind is totally focused on fusion organizing. In every generation, people have the right to decide what they want to do but this is what I said, 'If they cut 36 million people from Medicaid, that's Black people and brown people, that's white people, that's Asian people. That's people's lives being destroyed. If they cut money from housing, that's going to hurt Black people and brown people, the white people and Asian people, and people's lives are going to be destroyed. Everybody has to make that decision. We don't fight each other. If somebody decides, 'I don't want to be arrested, but I'll be a witness, or I'll register voters, or I'll preach about it.' Everybody can find a place. What we have to learn how to do is recognize that the movement is a marathon. It's not a sprint. You're one of the most prominent members of the religious left in America today. What do you think about how the Christian right has sought to wield power? Some MAGA supporters even say that Jesus' teachings are too 'woke,' particularly when they're defending Trump's policies. What do you make of that? You know, it's one of the reasons we founded the Center for Public Theology and Public Policy, which was to challenge the religious malpractice and heresy of the so-called Christian… I don't use [the phase] the 'Christian right.' I can't. There's no scripture that says you're on the Christian right or the Christian left. I don't use that language. I don't use conservative versus liberal. There's no scriptural text that does that. None. Not one. The greatest sin in the Bible, second only to idolatry, which is self worship, is mistreatment of the poor, the women, the widows, the children, the immigrants, or what is called the least of these. The prophets say, Isaiah, chapter 10, 'Woe unto those who legislate evil and rob the poor of their right and make women and children prey.' Jesus said, when he started his ministry, 'The Spirit of the Lord is upon me to preach good news to the poor.' You notice that they [MAGA] never say that their agenda is a Jesus agenda. They don't do that. You won't ever hear them talking about Jesus and the least of these, they just can't. And the reason is because their agenda has a Jesus problem and a biblical problem. It does not line up. Many people today get their news from clips that go viral on social media, rather than watching the evening news. How have you changed your activism to accommodate this reality? Oh, yeah, we have a thing called 14 points for moral organizing. We must use every form of social media, boost our organized account on every form of it. We use all of the videos, we use social media, we use press conferences. You have to fight in the air, on the ground and in the seat. You've got to fight using regular media. You have to fight using the written press. You have to fight by traveling and going and pulling people together. We're going to be everywhere we can with our message. [Among the goals of] neo-fascism is to act so fast and furious that people think that they don't have a chance. So people either doubt the truth or they don't feel the truth enough. And then they like to put faces on their numbers, which oftentimes more progressive movements can be a little weak on that. I've never done a major gathering or rally and didn't have a large portion of the front end of the program dedicated to impacted people, putting a face on the problem. We have a Black person, a white person, a brown person, all colors standing together. We want to show the world that this is what these cuts are doing. One group of people may bear a deeper brunt, but numerically, it's impacting all of us. So we have to use every form of social media, even the shorts, TikToks. You need to go get your young folks. Say, 'Tweet, tweet, tweet, tweet.' Anything we do, we put it out on social media, we video it and we cross-post it. So our cross posting may reach as high as 10, 20 million people, How will you measure success with your movement? When you start a moral movement, like when Rosa Parks sat down, you don't know if it's going to catch a fire or not. You have to prove that you have not succumbed to the lies, that you've not given your allegiance to those that say, 'Nothing can happen, nothing can change.' And secondly, a movement has to have keeping power. You know that we're not just cursing the darkness. We don't present just the problem. We present an agenda. Success is looking out and seeing that it's a fusion, that is white folk from Appalachian Kentucky organizing with Black folk from the Delta Mississippi, organizing with Latino people from the Tenderloin in San Francisco, and all in between. Success is we have Republican legislators because of the heat that they're getting back home. The speaker has said, 'We don't want to have a budget that cuts Medicaid.' Success is not only having a movement that protests, but says, 'Okay, they're not going to do this in the darkness.' Number two, we're going to prepare legal challenges. We're not going to give up the legal front. Number three, we're going to mobilize voters. We're going to mobilize not from a partisan perspective, but from a principled space and show people this is what the people currently in office are trying to do and have done. And guess what? Success is teaching them you really don't have to take this. Success is getting people to see their power. And poor and low wage people now have more power than they ever had. Have you ever brought your concerns directly to the White House, or have you had any interaction with the Trump administration? We've sent out letters and requests. They've never come to us and said, 'We desire to meet.' But we have an open letter that's going out to both sides , Mike Johnson and to [Hakeem] Jeffries, saying that we want a delegation of pastors, influential religious leaders, impacted people to come in and specifically deal with this budget and how bad it is. Whether or not Johnson and the MAGA group are going to accept it, we don't know. But what we do know is we're not stopping raising our moral critique. To say it's a moral movement, it is to say, 'It's not only worth living for, it's worth struggling for, and it's worth dying for.' You know, somebody said to me the other day, 'Why would you with chronic debilitating arthritis , why not just stay home or just write about it?' I don't talk about this a lot, you know, I have death threats. And my question is, 'Why wouldn't you, with whatever little bit of life you have, not use it for the betterment of humankind? So you're saying you're willing to die for the movement, for a moral movement? When it comes to fighting for children to have health care and poor folk to have the basics of life, and fighting for them to be heard, not just for me to be heard… All of us are going to die one day. From Covid, we learned that the best we have is six minutes. Because if you lose your breath for six minutes — the question is, what are you going to do with your six minutes, your six hours, your six days, your six weeks, your six months, your six years, or your 60 years? That's the question. Are you going to use it on the side of justice or the side of lifting people in love and truth? Are you going to live in the mythology that the greatest thing to do with your life is get up in the morning and figure out how many people you can hurt? What scares you the most these days and what gives you the most hope? The people who get up every day in this country and have reason to say, 'The hell with it,' the reason to say, 'Why am I working hard every day for $2.13 as a waiter, when a CEO is making 300 times more than the average worker?' And yet they still believe change can come. Are you optimistic? I'm hopeful. I don't have the luxury of being optimistic. Optimistic means that you know you have a certain level of happiness [for] things that [might] happen. Hope begins when people see unjust reality, and it doesn't quiet their spirits, it disquiets their spirits. And they decide they can no longer put up with reality as it is, and they begin to put their hands toward the work of changing. It is in that moment that you find hope. So I'm hopeful, and hope is a very powerful thing. I'm hopeful that transformation can come. Will it come without some tears and sweat and hurt and incarceration and feeling talked about, lied on and trying to break the spirit? Oh no, no. Won't come without that.
Politico
07-05-2025
- Politics
- Politico
Why Rev. William Barber Got Arrested at the Capitol
After Donald Trump won a decisive second term in November, conventional wisdom quickly congealed: #Resistance was dead. There was no Women's March. The regular weekend protests in D.C. weren't coming back. But then came the 'Hands Off' demonstrations around the country last month, which drew thousands of people opposed to Trump's agenda, Elon Musk's DOGE and a host of other conservative causes, and signaled a potential revival of the anti-Trump protest spirit. Rev. William J. Barber II, the prominent North Carolina pastor-civil rights activist-theology professor, fully embraced that approach last week, getting arrested in the Capitol Rotunda while praying against Republican budget cuts. In an interview with POLITICO Magazine, Barber rejected the notion that the resistance had ever died. Rather, he sees its work as part of a movement that has advocated for the poor and marginalized across eras, dating back to the abolitionist movement against slavery. It's a movement that has seen its setbacks — ask Frederick Douglass about despair — but with each passing month, year, decade, the effort grows. 'Movements and resistance are built on top of one another,' said Barber, founding director of the Center for Public Theology and Public Policy at Yale Divinity School. 'And you don't pit them against one another.' Barber also weighed in on the notion from some in the Black community that now was not the time for them to be active in protest movements, that it was best to sit this one out . He wouldn't criticize anyone's choice, but he made clear the success of any resistance would be built on a 'fusion movement,' a multiracial, interfaith grassroots coalition. And, Barber, who also serves as the director of Repairers of the Breach, a social justice organization, said prayer sessions for the group's 'Moral Mondays' actions will continue at the Rotunda — even when he can't be there, as was the case this week 'The movement will be there,' Barber says. 'And I'll be back.' This interview has been edited for length and clarity. During the first Trump administration, the #Resistance was very visible. We had the Women's March and the Black Lives Matter protests… Don't forget the Poor People's Campaign, a national call for moral revival, was in that mix all over the country. 400,000 people in the street. I remember that. But today we have people, including people in the media, arguing that the resistance is dead, that people on the left are exhausted. What do you think is the difference between the resistance movement then and today during Trump 2.0? I think the analysis is all off. We can't judge every year, every season by every season. It's not how you look at history. You know, there was a resistance that went on 40 years before Dr. King and John Lewis ever got to Selma. There was a resistance in Montgomery before Rosa Parks ever sat down. Movements and resistance are built on top of one another. You don't pit them against one another. I tell folks the greatest thing we should be focusing on, something that Frederick Douglass said when the Dred Scott decision came back. The abolition movement said, 'It's over. There's nothing we can do. The courts are against us, the law enforcement is against us. The academies are against us. The Congress is against us…' Frederick Douglass went into a kind of depression. [Then he gave a speech] about how monstrous this Dred Scott decision was. But then he says, 'We must receive this decision in a cheerful Spirit,' because history is filled with evidence that every attempt to [undermine] the abolition movement has only served to intensify and embolden our agitation. I hear what you're saying, and yet at the same time, we're in a very different era. So what do you see as different about the resistance movement today? We're in Trump 2.0; it's 2025. What's different from 2020 or 2016? [Trump's administration wants to] cut a trillion dollars from the budget and defund the so-called administrative state. Musk and DOGE, they believe in what's called technocratic feudalism. So what we have right now is a crisis of civilization, a crisis of democracy. They believe that the masses shouldn't really be involved in civil society. They believe the masses are too dumb. They are the great ones, the smart ones, and they kind of got a technocratic mafia, if you will, and then got a president. The reason we launched Moral Mondays is because we did an analysis. Give us the real analysis of what's going on, for instance, just with this budget. And when the reports came back, the reports are so bad that whatever tiredness we might have, then shake it off. Because these folks are talking about, by the time they finish this budget, they would have so bloodied the government and would have hurt not 1,000 people or 100,000 people, but millions of people. The worst thing we could do now is turn back, which is why Moral Mondays launched to really arrest the attention of the nation and say to America, 'Do you realize that right now, folks are trying to take 36 million people out of Medicaid?' You were you were arrested last week at the Capitol rotunda while praying against these Republican budget cuts — One of three. That's right, one of three people arrested. Police said they arrested you after multiple warnings for, quote, 'praying out loud.' Can you talk a little bit about what you were hoping to accomplish? We didn't go in to get arrested. Who would think he would get arrested for praying? [Laughs.] But we did go in to say that this nation, when you look at this budget, this nation needs pastoral and prophetic care. We went into praying. We sent every member of Congress our analysis of the high moral consequences of this budget. We requested a meeting with Mike Johnson, and we want to meet with [Hakeem] Jeffries, and want to bring high-level religious leaders that lead millions of congregants into a meeting with them and challenge them based on the Constitution they swore to uphold, and based on the damage that they're talking about doing. Because for us, praying is not just going through personal piety. Prayer for us is a prophetic act. What we're saying is, you cannot keep praying in this Congress, P, R, A, Y and open Congress with prayer, and then turn around and pass a budget that preys P, R, E, Y, on the most vulnerable people in this country. Can you explain a little what you mean by a 'prophetic act'? In the Bible, in Jeremiah 22 it says, 'Go down to the palace and pray and alert the leaders that they're wrong.' Our praying is a form of mourning. It's a form of saying how bad it is. It's kind of like what Pope Francis said, 'We must, we must, we must, we must, we must pray.' And praying is a form of challenge. Prayer is not just, 'Lord, give me this.' It is an act of defiance to those that would want to hurt others. It is a challenge. It's putting legs on our prayer. It's arresting the attention of the nation. That's why all of the clergy are wearing vestments. We want to be conspicuous. We are called to cry out in the public square. We are called to say to every nation that you're not going to be judged by how great your Wall Street account is. You're going to be judged by how you treat the poor, how you treat the immigrant, how you treat the sick, and by all of those measures, this budget fails. It fails. And not only does it fail, it is deadly. It is destructive, it is deceitful. Eight hundred people are dying a day from poverty. What's going to happen with this budget is more people are going to die. One estimate: 36 million people taken off of Medicaid would lead to something like 56,000 unnecessary deaths. Prayer is a very defiant act. [The theologian] Walter Wink called it rattling the cages of God and shaking up the systems of the world. And so we are here, right now, in this moment, to say, 'We're not afraid. We're not bowing.' As the anti-Trump protests were ramping up last month, there was a debate online among Black political influencers , particularly Black women, that it was time for Black people to sit this one out. There were fears that if Black people protested publicly, there would be increased police presence, like during the George Floyd protests. But it was also kind of cast as, 'We've done our part. Now it's time for us to rest. It's time for people of other races, particularly white people, to take to the street.' What are your thoughts on that? I don't have an opinion on it. My mind is totally focused on fusion organizing. In every generation, people have the right to decide what they want to do but this is what I said, 'If they cut 36 million people from Medicaid, that's Black people and brown people, that's white people, that's Asian people. That's people's lives being destroyed. If they cut money from housing, that's going to hurt Black people and brown people, the white people and Asian people, and people's lives are going to be destroyed. Everybody has to make that decision. We don't fight each other. If somebody decides, 'I don't want to be arrested, but I'll be a witness, or I'll register voters, or I'll preach about it.' Everybody can find a place. What we have to learn how to do is recognize that the movement is a marathon. It's not a sprint. You're one of the most prominent members of the religious left in America today. What do you think about how the Christian right has sought to wield power? Some MAGA supporters even say that Jesus' teachings are too 'woke,' particularly when they're defending Trump's policies. What do you make of that? You know, it's one of the reasons we founded the Center for Public Theology and Public Policy, which was to challenge the religious malpractice and heresy of the so-called Christian… I don't use [the phase] the 'Christian right.' I can't. There's no scripture that says you're on the Christian right or the Christian left. I don't use that language. I don't use conservative versus liberal. There's no scriptural text that does that. None. Not one. The greatest sin in the Bible, second only to idolatry, which is self worship, is mistreatment of the poor, the women, the widows, the children, the immigrants, or what is called the least of these. The prophets say, Isaiah, chapter 10, 'Woe unto those who legislate evil and rob the poor of their right and make women and children prey.' Jesus said, when he started his ministry, 'The Spirit of the Lord is upon me to preach good news to the poor.' You notice that they [MAGA] never say that their agenda is a Jesus agenda. They don't do that. You won't ever hear them talking about Jesus and the least of these, they just can't. And the reason is because their agenda has a Jesus problem and a biblical problem. It does not line up. Many people today get their news from clips that go viral on social media, rather than watching the evening news. How have you changed your activism to accommodate this reality? Oh, yeah, we have a thing called 14 points for moral organizing. We must use every form of social media, boost our organized account on every form of it. We use all of the videos, we use social media, we use press conferences. You have to fight in the air, on the ground and in the seat. You've got to fight using regular media. You have to fight using the written press. You have to fight by traveling and going and pulling people together. We're going to be everywhere we can with our message. [Among the goals of] neo-fascism is to act so fast and furious that people think that they don't have a chance. So people either doubt the truth or they don't feel the truth enough. And then they like to put faces on their numbers, which oftentimes more progressive movements can be a little weak on that. I've never done a major gathering or rally and didn't have a large portion of the front end of the program dedicated to impacted people, putting a face on the problem. We have a Black person, a white person, a brown person, all colors standing together. We want to show the world that this is what these cuts are doing. One group of people may bear a deeper brunt, but numerically, it's impacting all of us. So we have to use every form of social media, even the shorts, TikToks. You need to go get your young folks. Say, 'Tweet, tweet, tweet, tweet.' Anything we do, we put it out on social media, we video it and we cross-post it. So our cross posting may reach as high as 10, 20 million people, How will you measure success with your movement? When you start a moral movement, like when Rosa Parks sat down, you don't know if it's going to catch a fire or not. You have to prove that you have not succumbed to the lies, that you've not given your allegiance to those that say, 'Nothing can happen, nothing can change.' And secondly, a movement has to have keeping power. You know that we're not just cursing the darkness. We don't present just the problem. We present an agenda. Success is looking out and seeing that it's a fusion, that is white folk from Appalachian Kentucky organizing with Black folk from the Delta Mississippi, organizing with Latino people from the Tenderloin in San Francisco, and all in between. Success is we have Republican legislators because of the heat that they're getting back home. The speaker has said, 'We don't want to have a budget that cuts Medicaid.' Success is not only having a movement that protests, but says, 'Okay, they're not going to do this in the darkness.' Number two, we're going to prepare legal challenges. We're not going to give up the legal front. Number three, we're going to mobilize voters. We're going to mobilize not from a partisan perspective, but from a principled space and show people this is what the people currently in office are trying to do and have done. And guess what? Success is teaching them you really don't have to take this. Success is getting people to see their power. And poor and low wage people now have more power than they ever had. Have you ever brought your concerns directly to the White House, or have you had any interaction with the Trump administration? We've sent out letters and requests. They've never come to us and said, 'We desire to meet.' But we have an open letter that's going out to both sides , Mike Johnson and to [Hakeem] Jeffries, saying that we want a delegation of pastors, influential religious leaders, impacted people to come in and specifically deal with this budget and how bad it is. Whether or not Johnson and the MAGA group are going to accept it, we don't know. But what we do know is we're not stopping raising our moral critique. To say it's a moral movement, it is to say, 'It's not only worth living for, it's worth struggling for, and it's worth dying for.' You know, somebody said to me the other day, 'Why would you with chronic debilitating arthritis , why not just stay home or just write about it?' I don't talk about this a lot, you know, I have death threats. And my question is, 'Why wouldn't you, with whatever little bit of life you have, not use it for the betterment of humankind? So you're saying you're willing to die for the movement, for a moral movement? When it comes to fighting for children to have health care and poor folk to have the basics of life, and fighting for them to be heard, not just for me to be heard… All of us are going to die one day. From Covid, we learned that the best we have is six minutes. Because if you lose your breath for six minutes — the question is, what are you going to do with your six minutes, your six hours, your six days, your six weeks, your six months, your six years, or your 60 years? That's the question. Are you going to use it on the side of justice or the side of lifting people in love and truth? Are you going to live in the mythology that the greatest thing to do with your life is get up in the morning and figure out how many people you can hurt? What scares you the most these days and what gives you the most hope? The people who get up every day in this country and have reason to say, 'The hell with it,' the reason to say, 'Why am I working hard every day for $2.13 as a waiter, when a CEO is making 300 times more than the average worker?' And yet they still believe change can come. Are you optimistic? I'm hopeful. I don't have the luxury of being optimistic. Optimistic means that you know you have a certain level of happiness [for] things that [might] happen. Hope begins when people see unjust reality, and it doesn't quiet their spirits, it disquiets their spirits. And they decide they can no longer put up with reality as it is, and they begin to put their hands toward the work of changing. It is in that moment that you find hope. So I'm hopeful, and hope is a very powerful thing. I'm hopeful that transformation can come. Will it come without some tears and sweat and hurt and incarceration and feeling talked about, lied on and trying to break the spirit? Oh no, no. Won't come without that.
Yahoo
07-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Rachel Maddow Reveals the Biggest Difference of Second Trump Term
Rachel Maddow stopped by Late Night with Stephen Colbert Tuesday to share her thoughts on Trump's first 100 days back in office. When Colbert asked her if there were any big differences so far from Trump's first 100 days back in 2017, Maddow pointed to the type of backlash Trump's received. 'You might remember, he was inaugurated in the first term and then the day after was the Women's March,' Maddow explained, describing the march as 'one of the hugest peaceful civil disobedience demonstrations all over the world that there's ever been.' Maddow continued, 'This time was different. This term people protest in, I swear, all 50 states, every day. And it never stops. ... I'm covering protests in Tuscaloosa and Boise and Lima, Ohio.' 'I have to watch local news clips to figure out how to pronounce the name of the town where there's the demonstration,' Maddow said. Maddow, who has not taken a weekday off for Trump's entire first 100 days, explained why she was in a far more hopeful mood than she expected to be before Inauguration Day: 'There isn't a Republican member of Congress anywhere in the country, in any congressional district, who can show his or her face without getting yelled at by his or her constituents about what Trump is doing. And that is different,' Maddow said. 'That's what happens when you cut Meals on Wheels,' she said. 'You cut Head Start. You mess with Social Security. You do all this stuff, you are never gonna survive politically, and that's the message the American people are sending already.' Maddow's other big insight into Trump's second term so far focused on what hadn't changed from 2017. 'The common wisdom when Trump was coming back for a second term was that he would have worked out all the kinks,' Maddow said. She continued, 'The common wisdom was he'll be better at it this time around. Not true. Turns out there was no 'learning about how to do the stuff.'' Colbert chimed in, 'That's a common problem with authoritarianism, isn't it? Because it all kind of has to go through one guy.' Maddow agreed, bringing up Trump's recent comments that implied he was inspired to re-open Alcatraz from a Clint Eastwood movie. 'Personalization of government means you are depending on the personal competence of the guy in charge,' Maddow said. 'He [Trump] thinks movies are real. Well, that's a limiting factor in terms of what can happen at an authoritarian government.'
Yahoo
06-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
I Protested Trump 1.0 in All Kinds of Ways. Here's Why I'm Sitting Out This Time.
Sign up for the Slatest to get the most insightful analysis, criticism, and advice out there, delivered to your inbox daily. Over the past few months, millions of people across the country have poured into the streets to protest the Trump administration, thanks to the organizing efforts of groups like Hands Off and 50501. Sometimes they focus on specific government policies targeting immigrants, tariffs, trans people, and DOGE cuts, but they're broadly all pro-democracy demonstrations that started with the 'People's March' before Trump's second inauguration in January. In previous years, I would have been right there with them, but not this time around. Instead, I smile and wave at the protesters, sometimes raising a fist in solidarity, then I carry on with my day. When I read about them—or the administration's plummeting approval ratings—I feel strangely unmoved. Some observers think these protests are more effective than the ones associated with the first Trump administration, namely the 2017 'Women's March' and the 2020 BLM protests. The main difference seems to be that the earlier iterations had the words women and Black in them, while these are focusing on democracy. The implication is that the earlier protests problematically emphasized identity over democracy and that perhaps that flaw is why we still ended up with a majority of voters signing everyone up for four more years—at least—of Trump. Maybe focusing on identity got us into this mess, or maybe it's the identities we've been focusing on: gender (read: women), race (Black Americans), trans people. But how can identity alone be the scapegoat when 92 percent of Black women voted for democracy in 2024? When Black people have consistently been the most pro-democracy progressive voting bloc in American history? Maybe the real change in the latest protest movements is simply that 92 percent of Black women are fed up with explaining just how much racism costs all Americans. The 92 Percent Movement is about Black women taking time for ourselves even during this political crisis, or maybe especially during it. Some have wondered why more Black people aren't showing at this iteration of anti-Trump rallies. Well, we're taking a breather, or maybe we're just sitting this one out altogether. It seems like an inopportune time to be a political wallflower, but it's not so easy to bounce back from what happened on Nov. 5. We've turned inward, drawing support from other Black women, reminding each other of our worth and protecting our mental health. It's still true what Malcolm X said about Black women being the most disrespected and unprotected in America, so we look out for each other. That's what Michelle Obama did when she decided to skip Trump's inauguration and even Jimmy Carter's funeral, where she would have been seated next to Trump. Nope, not doing it this time. During an interview with Oprah Winfrey, writer Maya Angelou famously advised, 'When people show you who they are, believe them the first time.' I think that applies to countries and electorates too. This wasn't even the first time, so hopefully we really believe them now. Kamala Harris did not lose in a landslide but she should have won in one as the most qualified candidate in recent history, running against an opponent who couldn't be more different. It felt like a referendum on women, specifically Black women. It wasn't just that 8 in 10 Trump voters were white or that 53 percent of white women voters supported him, but that more voters of color were drawn to Trump, including a record number of Latino voters showing support for the Republican candidate. To be fair, Trump's fake populism weakened Democratic support across all minority groups, including Asian Americans and Black Americans, with more younger men of color voting Republican than ever before. Basically, the Trump campaign was able to chip away at a coalition Black women thought they could rely on. Everyone has their reasons for how they voted, but it hurt, and the rejection felt personal on some level. And still, Black women turned out in record numbers to support Harris because we knew just how much was at stake and we wanted to be proud of the role we played in helping to elect America's first female president, a Black woman. My hands were actually shaking when I cast my ballot because I was so excited to be a part of such a historic day and proud of how far we had come as a nation. By the end of the day, I was reminded where I live. I was reminded of what the majority of Americans think about women, especially Black women, and the deliberate ignorance of the misconduct (and downright criminal behavior) of powerful white men. Harris' loss was more than just heartbreaking for us. It provided clarity about just how uninterested America remains in protecting or listening to Black women, and certainly in how little it cares to be run by one. America wants to protect its love affair with white supremacy. At the Democratic National Committee, Rep. Hakeem Jeffries hilariously riffed on a Taylor Swift song when he compared candidate Trump to an old ex-boyfriend who keeps hanging around, saying, 'Bro, we broke up with you for a reason. We are never, ever getting back together again.' But here we are, and it sort of feels as if Black women are the third wheel. White America and its allies have to figure out something about themselves that we can't teach them. They need to realize how whiteness in all its forms—including white supremacy and the way it intersects with democracy—is the biggest identity politics of them all. I've been thinking a lot about George Yancy's New York Times op-ed 'Should I Give Up On White People?,' published two years into Trump's first presidency. In it, he reflects on the hate mail he received, including detailed death threats, after daring to ask white people to reflect on their racial biases and racism in an earlier piece, called 'Dear White America.' Yancy, a Black philosopher, had tried to model radical honesty by acknowledging his own sexism and how being a man affords him privileges compared with Black women. He was calling for white America to, as Luvell Anderson described it, stop believing lies about its history, lies about the havoc whiteness has wreaked and how it weakens democracy. In the end, Yancy decided to focus on the greater good, on the white people who had also reached out to thank him for sharing his thoughts and challenging them to reflect more deeply about their own. I'm glad that worked for Yancy. But the 92 Percent Movement is not about waiting for white people to finally appreciate the many faces of white supremacy. Being a 92 Percenter means turning inward at this critical moment. That's not the same as giving up. We are caucusing among ourselves and rallying around those who have been unceremoniously sidelined and cheering on our rising political stars. Through consumer boycotts and 'buycotts,' we're spending with politics in mind. We're not holding a grudge or licking our wounds—we're trying to process what seems like a tragic misunderstanding America can't see its way out of. At a conference for female leaders, Harris herself spoke about the chilling effect Trump's turbulent first months back in the Oval Office have had on people afraid to speak out. As a college professor, I see that among students, faculty, and administrators alike, who fear becoming targets. But she also said, with a laugh, 'I'm not here to say 'I told you so.' ' Some folks have been asking her to do and say more, as if she ought to be one of the leaders of an anti-Trump push, despite literally being the main person trying to defeat him in the first place. She likely will not be that leader—and it's not a chilling effect that has her and other Black women sitting this one out. We're not afraid. We're just reclaiming our time.
