Not out of the woods yet …
Republican efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act were teetering on the brink of failure on Friday, after John McCain said he would vote no on the Graham-Cassidy healthcare bill.
But teetering on the brink of failure is not the same as plunging headlong into failure – hence the message from the activist group Indivisible on Friday afternoon: “THIS IS NOT OVER”.
Indivisible is hosting more than 73 rallies across the country over the next week in an attempt to defeat the bill, with activists planning to hold “sit-ins or die-ins” at senators’ state offices. The organization has also published detailed scripts for calling elected officials.
Our Revolution, meanwhile, has set up a page urging supporters to get involved as efforts to beat the bill continue.
Net news
Net neutrality advocates are planning two days of protest in Washington DC this week, as they fight off plans to defang regulations meant to protect an open internet.
The Guardian’s Dominic Rushe reported that a coalition of activists, consumer groups and writers are calling on supporters to attend the next meeting of the Federal Communications Commission, in Washington on 26 September. The next day the protest will move to Capitol Hill, where people will meet legislators to express their concerns about an FCC proposal to rewrite the rules governing the internet.
Battle for the Net, which is organizing the protests, is also planning events across the country.
Pelosi heckled
Nancy Pelosi was confronted by demonstrators from the Immigration Liberation Movement in San Francisco this week, days after she and Chuck Schumer met Donald Trump to discuss a deal to extend protection for undocumented people who were brought to the US as children.
Pelosi and Schumer said they had reached a deal with Trump that did not include funding for the border wall, but could include other security provisions.
"You're a liar!:" 'Dreamers' confront Pelosi over negotiations with Trump over DACA https://t.co/vng0UfBFUD pic.twitter.com/GjohsVfCvu
— NBC Bay Area (@nbcbayarea) September 18, 2017
Activists were not convinced about the efficacy of working with the president, nor about the conviction of the Democratic party as a whole. They rushed the stage as Pelosi held a press conference in San Francisco. Sandy Valenciano, one of the protesters, later wrote about the situation for the Huffington Post:
The Democratic party plays into Trump’s tactics while pretending to put up a fight. Instead, party leaders endanger the lives of people of color by taking middle-of-the-road stances on issues that affect the lives of immigrants.
Democrats have long kept their doors closed to community members and chosen to advance the agendas of corporate lobbyists and donors instead. Immigrant communities have not forgotten that Pelosi stood behind programs like Secure Communities (S-Comm) and the Priority Enforcement Program (PEP-Comm), policies that streamlined deportations in communities that are already heavily over-policed.
What we’re reading
- There’s an election in Germany this Sunday. It’s looking likely that Angela Merkel will win. That’s good for her but not for the planet, according to the Guardian’s George Monbiot. Merkel is beholden to industrial lobbyists, Monbiot says, one of many things that make her the “world’s leading eco-vandal”.
- The so-called “Free speech week” begins at UC Berkeley on Sunday. The guest list is a veritable who’s who of angry white people, including Steve Bannon and his estranged scion Milo Yiannopoulos, although Ann Coulter has said she will not appear. “What’s bringing them together this time around is a belief that free speech is now being stifled in political discourse across the country,” explains German Lopez over at Vox.
