Sanders economic inequality forum attracts 1.7 million viewers

Some 1.7 million people tuned in to watch Sen. Bernie Sanders moderate a discussion about wealth inequality and poverty Monday night.

The event was the second town hall the Vermont independent has held at the Capitol this year. At the first event in January, which drew more than 1 million live viewers, Sanders and a panel made the case for a single-payer health care system — a proposal the senator has pitched for decades.

Like the first town hall event, Sanders focused the second panel discussion on one of the other longstanding themes of his political career: economic inequality.

Sanders took to the stage to cheers and applause from hundreds of people at the U.S. Capitol. He was flanked by more star power than his first event — including one of his chief allies in the Senate, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., activist filmmaker Michael Moore, and Darrick Hamilton, an economics and urban policy professor at the New School.

Over the course of the 90-minute town hall, the panel pointed to examples of extreme poverty in the United States, called for a resurgence of unions, and took aim at the political power of wealthy corporations and individuals.

How do we reenergize the American people to stand up and take on the 1% who is prepared to step on everyone in their way?#InequalityTownHall pic.twitter.com/HDpuS4RfB6

— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) March 20, 2018

"The top 10% of households have over 70% of the nation’s wealth. The bottom 50% have 1% of the nation’s wealth. The typical black household has about 10 cents on the dollar of the typical white household.” – @DarrickHamilton#InequalityinAmerica #HandsOff

— TalkPoverty.org (@TalkPoverty) March 19, 2018

.@SenWarren mentions poverty among Native American communities: 1/3 of all people who are living on tribal lands have no access to the internet, she says #InequalityTownHall

— Hanna Trudo (@HCTrudo) March 19, 2018

It’s not good enough to just be against Trump. We have to have a vision for this country of where we’re going to go. #InequalityTownHall

— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) March 20, 2018

I'll wear my "F" grade from the NRA as a badge of honor after I beat Paul Ryan.https://t.co/2h58Iam7R6

— Cathy Myers (@CathyMyersWI) March 19, 2018

The March for our Lives, explained

Thousands of people are expected to rally in Washington, DC, this weekend for a March for Our Lives protest to advocate for gun control. Thousands more will join them at other marches in cities large and small across the country.

Their motto is #NeverAgain.

This march, happening Saturday, March 24, at noon Eastern time in DC, marks the second big push of teenage activism against gun violence in the wake of the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. Close to a million students stood up and streamed out of classrooms across the country last week as part of the National School Walkout. The protest honored the victims of the Parkland shooting one month ago and called on lawmakers to pass gun control legislation.

Another national school walkout is planned for April 20, the anniversary of the Columbine shooting.

The survivors of the Parkland shooting spearheaded the March for Our Lives. Coming on the heels of the walkout on March 14, it is another early sign that this renewed push for gun reform is gathering strength.

Lane Murdock, a sophomore at Ridgefield High School in Connecticut who started a petition for the idea of an April 20 walkout, told Vox these protests are more than symbolic. They’re the first step in a real grassroots movement for concrete changes to gun laws.

“There is a lot more to come,” Murdock said. “It’s big enough that it scares me. It’s going to be hard — but it’s realistic enough that I know we can get it done.”

March for Our Lives plans hundreds of ‘sibling marches,’ many in Trump country

Multiple Injuries Reported in Shooting at St. Mary’s Co. High School

Multiple people were injured in a shooting at a high school in southeast Maryland Tuesday morning, the St. Mary’s County sheriff’s office confirmed.

The shooting happened Tuesday morning at Great Mills High School in Great Mills, Maryland.

A Twitter post from the St. Mary’s County Sheriff’s Office asked parents not to report to the school due to the incident, but to go to a high school in nearby Leonardtown instead.

The school’s website said the building is on lockdown, but the incident has been contained. It didn’t give further information.

In “Call for Peace” Address, Bernie Sanders Takes on Endless War and Global Oligarchy (video @ transcript at link).

In a wide-ranging speech viewed by more than 11,000 people from over 30 countries, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) on Sunday commemorated the 15th anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq by highlighting its devastating consequences and issuing an urgent call for a global agenda that pursues “peace, not war” and “development, not destruction.”

“We need to invest in our children, in our elderly, and in healthcare and education and environmental protection. We do not want more and more war,” Sanders said. “People in my country, the United States, and all over the world are sick and tired of spending billions and billions of dollars on nuclear weapons, war planes, missiles, bombs, and tanks.”

Sanders — who was joined on Sunday at the #CallForPeace event by Korea expert and peace activist Christine Ahn, Raed Jarrar of Amnesty International, and Jenny Town of the US-Korea institute — also used his speech to highlight global crises ranging from human-caused climate change to the rise of oligarchy.

“Increasingly, in the United States and around the world, we see an economic and political system in which a small number of multi-billionaires and corporate interests have increased control over the world’s economic life, our political life, and our media,” Sanders said. “Inequality, corruption, oligarchy, and authoritarianism are inseparable. They must be understood as part of the same system, and fought and opposed in the same way.”

These are crises that can only be solved through international cooperation, not unilateral action by powerful nations, Sanders argues.

@DonMidwest tagging you so you can find this upon your return overseas.

Governor candidate El-Sayed asks for ruling on eligibility

After early doubts, United Auto Workers back Gretchen Whitmer for Michigan governor

Democratic power brokers are falling in line behind Gretchen Whitmer’s bid for governor after a winter of discontent.

Two months after union leaders and Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan engaged in a closed-door campaign to recruit another Democrat into the race, endorsements are coming fast for Whitmer, the former Senate minority leader from East Lansing.

On Monday, the United Auto Workers followed Duggan and the Teamsters in endorsing Whitmer. Leaders of both unions, UAW President Dennis Williams and Teamsters President James Hoffa, had met with Duggan in January to try to recruit U.S. Sen. Gary Peters into the race, as Bridge Magazine first reported.

..

“Endorsements from organizations like the UAW do make a big difference in the Democratic primary, but Democrats have their own sort of civil war between the establishment and new wave progressives,” said Richard Czuba, a pollster with the Lansing-based Glengariff Group.

“We have many endorsements from people, but are not focused on endorsements from establishment,” Thanedar, an Ann Arbor entrepreneur, wrote in an email to Bridge.

El-Sayed’s campaign provided Bridge a list of about 20 endorsements from progressive groups such as Justice Democrats, the Michigan Democratic Party Young Democrats Caucus, the People for Bernie Sanders, the American Muslim Caucus and Black Lives Matter activist Shaun King.

Where’s Zuck? Facebook CEO silent as data harvesting scandal unfolds

The chief executive of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, has remained silent over the more than 48 hours since the Observer revealed the harvesting of 50 million users’ personal data, even as his company is buffeted by mounting calls for investigation and regulation, falling stock prices, and a social media campaign to #DeleteFacebook.

Facebook’s shares slid 6.77% on Monday following the news, knocking $36bn off the company’s valuation as investors worried about the consequences of the revelations. Zuckerberg owns 16% of the company and personally saw his fortune fall $5.5bn to $69bn, according to Forbes’ live tracker of the world’s wealthiest people.

The embattled social media company announced on Monday that it will engage a digital forensics firm to conduct an audit of Cambridge Analytica to determine whether or not the firm still has copies of the data in question.

The Observer reported this weekend that a company called Global Science Research (GSR) harvested tens of millions of Facebook profiles and sold the data to Cambridge Analytica. The New York Times reported on Saturday that Cambridge Analytica still possesses “most or all” of the harvested data. Cambridge Analytica has denied knowing that the data was obtained improperly.

Time to cut ties with the digital oligarchs and rewire the web

Facebook’s reckless vanity has made the headlines again, with the revelation that data it held on about 50 million users was exploited commercially without their consent, and that when Facebook found out about this, it did pathetically little. We only know this thanks to the bravery of a whistleblower. This is yet another scandal in a troubled period for the company, with a growing sense that it is all profit, no responsibility. But the current malaise goes wider than Facebook. On the internet more widely, the advertising-supported model has demanded its payout, and as a result our experience of the web is getting worse. Like rats scrambling to get back on a sinking ship, senior former-Facebookers are lining up to express regrets. It all feels too little, too late.

The problem of large corporations posing a threat to democracy is an old one. Monopolies that vest control of markets in a single person create “a kingly prerogative, inconsistent with our form of government”, declared US senator John Sherman in 1890, when he introduced his eponymous act, which became the cornerstone of American competition law. Facebook looks increasingly like digital royalty, and not in a good way. It controls vast amounts of our data and curates what we read with a mysterious and mercurial flair. As the Cambridge Analytica files show, the platform appears to prioritise advertisers over users, and doesn’t do enough to control how the data it collects is handled by third parties. Of course, Facebook is not the only offender: Amazon and Google have enough fingers in enough pies to make digital oligarchies a problem we can no longer ignore. But what is to be done? How could we make a platform such as Facebook less autocratic?

In the first place, it is critical that we understand this as a systemic problem with the business model. With that in mind, we could follow Sherman’s example and break up the market using anti-trust laws. But there are also ways to create alternatives from the bottom up. Governments and regulators could foster the conditions in which alternative networks with more democratic foundations could flourish.