WASHINGTON – What do social-justice warriors do on a Sunday night?
They hold “emergency mass organizing calls” to censure President Trump and provide a special training about white nationalism.
WND.com eavesdropped on MoveOn.org’s latest call Sunday evening, and here’s the skinny on what transpired.
Mehrdad Azemun, campaign director of People’s Action, began the call accusing President Trump of emboldening white supremacists with his rhetoric and racist policies, adding former chief strategist Steve Bannon’s departure from the White House should be regarded as the first step in defeating “white supremacy.”
“There is one less white supremacist in the White House,” he said. “Thanks to months of pressure and organizing, Trump fired Steve Bannon, who went running back to his same old job at the hub of racist Internet trolls, otherwise known as Breitbart News.”
MoveOn.org was launched in 1998 with a campaign of opposition to the impeachment of President Bill Clinton and emerged as a fundraising vehicle for Democratic Party candidates. Today, it is focused on pushing the impeachment of Trump. That’s how far MoveOn.org has moved on in 19 years.
“It’s been a week in which we’ve witnessed senseless violence and Donald Trump doubling down in favor of white supremacy,” said Azemun on the call Sunday night. “These events force us to understand our own history and the direction we choose as a country. Since Trump’s campaign began two years ago, we have seen a horrific spike in a number of organized hate groups and in the number of hate crimes targeting people of color.”
How does Azemun define “white supremacy”?
“Opposing illegal immigration and advocating budget cuts of social programs is a form of institutional white supremacy,” he explained.
How do MoveOn.org and the other social-justice warriors on the call fight back?
“Our work here is to the difficult work of standing against white supremacy – in every single one of its forms,” he said. “By opposing hate groups, by taking down racist monuments, by opposing hate speech and by routing out and reversing laws that are based on ideas of white supremacy, which we know can show up in so many different forms.”
He congratulated the “progressive” movement for expanding and successfully obstructing the Trump presidency.
“Of course we are concerned about Trump, of course we are concerned about his endorsement of white supremacists,” he said, despite the fact that Trump has never endorsed any white supremacists, but, rather, has repeatedly condemned them. “But remember, he is a failed leader, less relevant than ever and abandoned by so many people this week – CEOs, fellow Republicans – he’s played a massive game of subtraction. On our end, we keep adding, the folks who stand on the side of love, we keep winning, and we keep growing.”
The vice mayor of Charlottesville, Virginia, Wes Bellamy, joined the call and explained how his city’s government investment in public housing and GED programs will help blacks gain equity and defeat white supremacy.
“We are trying to do everything that we can to create equity in terms of moving forward, whether that’s equity in affordable housing, whether that’s equity in our city budget, in public parks,” he said. “We are not only addressing the issue of white supremacy with our words and with our actions – many of you have heard about the equity package that I proposed.
“There is a $4-million package to help bridge the gap and create equity: $950,000 to our African-American Heritage Center, which is the initial first African-American school in the city of Charlottesville that was the school for all the African-American schools in the area,” he continued. “We donated $250,000 to do renovations and updates a park in the local African-American community, $2.5 million to public housing and redevelopment, which is a very, very key initiative for us. $50,000 for free GED training, for anyone that lives in public housing. That is how we are moving the needle. Not just with our words. But with our action.”
Bellamy urged Democrats to cast their vote in the upcoming Virginia and New Jersey gubernatorial races as a way to condemn Trump’s support of white supremacy.
Next up was Tarso Luis Ramos, the executive director of Political Research Associates, who explained that the Republican Party is dependent on white nationalist coalition-building efforts, a coalition Trump built to win the presidency.
“There are intersecting targets for the right – race, religion, gender, class, and sexuality – and it’s important for us to come to each other’s aid,” he said. “White nationalists – are built beyond fairly small ranks with Trump supporters and others by mobilizing fear resentment and anger against multiple groups, courting relationships with Islamophobes, with anti-government patriot paramilitary, such as the Oath Keepers and three-percenters, and, also the men’s movement – misogynists, as well as anti-immigrant activists.”
And that’s the coalition that Trump built to win the presidency, MoveOn.org would have you believe.
Ramos claimed Trump’s policy agenda is premised on mainstreaming Nazi-ism.
“It’s our job to keep focus on the racist policies of this president – on immigration, the Muslim ban, police violence, mass incarceration, women’s health, health insurance, voter suppression, access to education, and on and on,” he said. “We cannot let the focus on Nazis serve to mainstream other parts of the militant parts of the far right.”
Rep. Bonnie Watson-Coleman, D-N.J., who introduced the resolution to “censure and condemn President Trump for his inadequate response to the violence in Charlottesville” called on Republicans to join her.
“We put together resolution to censure the president because of his support of these initiative because he is not looking out forthrightly and clearly with clarity against white supremacy and because he needs to rid his whole cabinet of those who embrace these ideologies,” she said. “So we put together the resolution of censure against the president. We have about 50 people who are members of Congress who’ve signed on.”
