Notations From the Grid (W-End Edition): On The State of the Cities

As we remember and embrace our World epitomized by the World Coming together durig the Winter Olympics,
Sometimes a picture noted below  is worth a billion words--Will we have the courage to overcome? 

Human population is growing and urbanizing. No need to panic but human impact needs careful management. Our cities need to be clean and free of pollution. We need to stop desertification to ensure food supply. Investment in permaculture and education are global priorities. pic.twitter.com/gryh6PwQaO

— Simon Kuestenmacher (@simongerman600) November 15, 2017

Notations On Our World (W-End Special Edition): On #2018 Elections; @realDonaldTrump

As part of our effort to showcase alternative views, we wanted to feature this done by the Guardian with the founders of the Indivisible Team as the 2018 Mid-Terms looms along with a snapshot courtesy of DC Reports along with the Resurgent:  

Indivisible founders anticipate 'a lot of good surprises' in November's midterms

Ezra Levin and Leah Greenberg, who created the resistance group in 2016, tell the Guardian about their plans to help progressive candidates The Resistance Now on Facebook Sign up for our weekly newsletter about the Resistance

Veronica Escobar became the Democratic congressional nominee for Texas’s US congressional district 16 on Tuesday. Photograph: Julio-Cesar Chavez/Reuters

Adam Gabbatt and Lauren Gambino  @adamgabbatt

The Resistance Now is a weekly update on the people, action and ideas driving the protest movement in the US. If you’re not already receiving it by email, subscribe.

If Democrats take back the House, Senate or both in the 2018 midterm elections, it will have been with the help of Indivisible, a leading resistance movement organization that was formed after the 2016 election by husband and wife Ezra Levin and Leah Greenberg. On the sidelines of the annual Progressive Caucus Center Strategy Summit in Baltimore, Levin sat down with the Guardian to talk about student activism, the midterms and why contentious primaries are not a bad thing. (This interview has been edited and condensed for brevity.) The Guardian: Progressives are pretty excited ahead of 2018, especially after the Democratic primaries in Texas. What was your takeaway? Ezra Levin: What we saw in Texas is what we’re seeing across the country in all of the special elections that have occurred so far: folks are jazzed up. When we started, we got a lot of questions like, “You’re advocating; you’re doing town halls; you’re calling members of Congress; you’re holding die-ins, but can you actually electoralize this? Can you actually win elections?” I think that question has been answered pretty definitively, again and again and again, in Alabama, in Virginia. The story is that a lot of folks who were never really involved in politics before are suddenly getting involved, and that changes the game because politics is a participatory support so suddenly when you have more people participating you get different outcomes. Guardian: Democratic primaries are crowded and, in some races, contentious. What is Indivisible’s strategy? Levin: Indivisible national is a network of 6,000 groups. At the national level, we will try to coordinate and support that network. But we won’t, for example, go into Houston or Austin and say: “This is the Indivisible candidate and you’ve got to get behind them.” What we will do is say: “Tell us who you are behind and we’ll try to elevate them. We’ll try to help you push them forward.” Philosophically, we don’t want national [organizations] coming in and telling us what we should do with our vote. We want control over it.

Gun control activists see surge of support after Florida shooting Read more

That dynamic of local control is really important. That means trusting your local groups and organizations on the ground and allowing them to choose the direction of that primary. And can be challenging for existing power structures. I really do hope the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and the rest of the infrastructure are learning that we should defer to the judgement of local groups. That’s where we’ll have the most success. After the primary, we think that it is incredibly important that progressives get behind whoever wins. Virginia was a model of that. Not everyone was aligned over who should win the gubernatorial primary but once there was a winner, everybody got behind him. We think that should happen everywhere. Guardian: How does student activism over gun control fit into the resistance movement and can activists channel that energy into the midterms? Levin: What you’re seeing is high school students awakened to the power that they have. And seeing students stand up for their own values really engages our network. They are so jazzed about finding ways to support these students so that it’s not just one march, or one action, but something that can achieve the change that they want to see. Guardian: Congress failed to enact protections for Dreamers by the 5 March deadline. What do you see as the next real opportunity to push for immigration reform?

Levin: There have been a series of opportunities to apply pressure, legislatively. Debt ceiling. Disaster relief. CR, the short-term budget. As we move forward into an election year, then there’s the opportunity to apply pressure through the electoral system and to ask candidates: Will you vote against a budget that fails to include a clean Dream Act? Will you vote if elected against funding a mass deportation force and continuing to carry out a fascist agenda? Guardian: Which races are you watching as we head into the 2018 midterms? Levin: The thing I’m most excited about is more unexpected victories like we experienced in 2017. More Alabamas. More rural Virginias. The reason why we think that’s possible is not just because there’s energy out there but because we’re actually contesting. We’re running candidates in these places and I think there are going to be a lot of surprises come November – a lot of good surprises. What we’re reading This year’s International Women’s Day came five months after the first revelations about Harvey Weinstein. The resultant #TimesUp/#MeToo movement has finally “brought recognition that each act of gender violence is part of an epidemic”, writes Rebecca Solnit in the Guardian. But this new movement did not just spring out of nowhere, Solnit says: “It is a revolt for which we have been preparing for decades”. The Guardian live-blogged International Women’s Day across three continents.

Rallies took place around the world for International Women’s Day. Photograph: Wiktor Szymanowicz / Barcroft Images

“Senate Republicans spent the end of Barack Obama’s term running out the clock on his picks for federal judges,” writes Kate Harloe at Mother Jones. “So when Donald Trump took office, he faced a nearly unprecedented number of vacant judgeships.” Trump has used that opportunity to nominate 69 judges – “more than any president since Reagan”, Harloe writes – and 71% of those are white men. Why Stormy Lawsuit Matters; Trump Policy Kills Two Workers Per Week and More The Stormy Daniels lawsuit is much more than entertainment and our David Cay Johnston explains why. Workers are dying at the rate of two a week from the toxic metal beryllium as the Trump Administration -- yet again -- delays a rule to protect workers from the toxic metal, our Sarah Okeson reports. We have a lot more for you, including our Terry H. Schwadron's smart pieces on Trump and Kim playing nuclear poker. Terry's  State's Rights Are What Jeff Sessions Says They Are points out how the traditional GOP position on federalism is being stood on its head. We hope reading these articles informs your understanding of our democracy. And we encourage you to tell others about our free, nonprofit news service that covers what you often won't find in the mainstream news about our government. Here are the news items that bear watching for today. We'll keep you up to date throughout the day at The Resurgent. Here's What's Behind Trump's Recent Polling Bump The reasons for Trump's sudden popularity are both good and bad for conservatives.  Read in browser »   Heart Warming A cardiologist suggests that climate change can be bad for the ol' ticker.  Read in browser »   President Trump's Stealth Appointment Of Radical Lesbian To EEOC Feldblum, originally appointed by Obama, believes that sexual freedom has priority over religious beliefs.  Read in browser »   Republicans May GAIN Seats in Senate Midterms Far from advancing any agenda of their own, the Democrats may have to take solace in merely grinding Trump’s to a halt.  Read in browser »   What Confuses Me About International Women's Day I just can’t seem to wrap my mind around why honoring and dignifying women must be politically partisan.  Read in browser »

Notation On Our World (Friday Special Edition): On #MarchForLife & Guns.....

The March For Life is slated to be held in Washington and Throughout the United States.     Our team selected a compliation of the debate so far as our view is that there will be no substantial progress on the Gun Debate--we hope we're proven wrong!!

Onward to the Week-End