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Shailene Woodley Eyes Future Run For Congress Inspired By Bernie Sanders

The 25-year-old actress, who earned an Emmy nomination for her role in the critically acclaimed HBO series, has also made it her mission to champion a bevy of progressive causes off screen, and has even considered running for political office.
“There was a point last year when I was working for Bernie Sanders where I thought, ‘Huh, maybe I’ll run for Congress in a couple years,’” Woodley told The New York Times. “And you know what? I’m not going to rule it out. Who knows? Life is big, and I’m young.”
Woodley has been most actively engaged in speaking out against the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline and stood in solidarity with Native American communities at the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation. In October, the actress and 26 others were arrested for criminal trespassing while protesting the pipeline in Sioux County, North Dakota. Woodley documented her arrest in a Facebook Live video and uploaded a slew of testimonials from the ground.
The actress found a kindred spirit in Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who she actively campaigned for during the primaries of the 2016 election.

LoneStarMike (miss ya!)… remember how much they used to make fun of you at TOP for keeping up with these kinds of numbers?!

You’d Be Rich If You Could Leverage Facebook Like Bernie Sanders

He has earned seven million likes and millions of video views, all without a single kitten or puppy onscreen.

50,000 Working People Are Petitioning Bernie Sanders To A Town Hall Meeting

Last week, we sent the following invitation to Bernie and his staff and offered to accommodate his schedule. We are waiting for his reply.

Hi Senator,

On behalf of the many thousands of working people who have been inspired by our movement to Draft Bernie for a People’s Party, Dr. Cornel West and I would like to invite you to join us for a town hall on Sept. 9th at American University.

Over the past six months, I’ve had the privilege of working with thousands of your most dedicated and talented supporters and volunteers. Working people of all ages, colors, and genders who led their communities in the campaign to elect you president. These are the grassroots leaders who hosted canvasses, phone banked into every state, made social media an organizing hub, and greeted you at clutches. They gave you countless hours and funds that they often could not spare.

Your campaign gave them a common vision and purpose. Now they are united once more in their conviction that our nation needs a new genuinely-progressive party, and that you can create it for us and generations to come. Together, they are extending thousands of hands in invitation to the town hall, a conversation about our shared future as a country.

At the town hall we will discuss one of the greatest questions facing our movement: should we continue our efforts to reform the Democratic Party, or should we launch the new party that the large majority of Americans are calling for?

Please join us for…

The Draft Bernie Town Hall

Saturday, September 9 • 8:00-9:30 pm

American University • Washington College of Law

Washington D.C.

Loser! In 2020 Trump vs. Sanders Match-Up, Bernie Beats Donald Bigly

Donald Trump is already laying the groundwork for a second bid for the White House, but a new survey shows the deeply unpopular president losing big time in hypothetical match-ups against a number of other potential 2020 presidential hopefuls.

Against former Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Trump loses by a 13-point margin—51 percent to 38 percent—Public Policy Polling (PPP) found. Trump would also suffer a double digit loss against former Vice President Joe Biden, trailing the Democrat 39 to 51 percent.

He’d also lose against Sen. Elizabeth Warren (45 percent to 40 percent) and Dallas Mavericks owner and billionaire Mark Cuban (42 percent to 38 percent). Against Sens. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), he’d come out losing again 42 percent to 39 percent).

Another finding from the new poll: a plurality of voters support impeaching Trump—48 percent say he should be impeached compared to 41 percent who oppose it. PPP notes that it’s the fourth month in a row a plurality of survey respondents voiced support for his impeachment.

Worcester voters get first look at District 1 council candidates

Voters in District 1 Wednesday had their first chance to evaluate differences among the four candidates who will face off in a preliminary election in September in a quest to replace outgoing Councilor Tony Economou.

The District 1 race – one of only two in this year’s municipal election to generate enough candidates for a preliminary – will feature William S. Coleman III, Community Development Advisory Committee Chairman Edward L. Moynihan, social justice advocate Sean Rose and lawyer Gerardo Schiano.

In the Sept. 12 preliminary election, voters will whittle the field to two candidates who will square off in the Nov. 7 general election. Wednesday night, the candidates sought to distinguish themselves at a forum hosted by Greater Worcester Our Revolution, a local chapter of a national group that aims to continue pushing progressive policies espoused by U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont during the 2016 presidential election.

During a wide-ranging and friendly discussion in front of about 50 people, candidates agreed largely on priorities – schools and public safety being most often cited – and staked out positions on a variety of issues facing the city.

Harvard Study Confirms: #ExxonKnew and Misled Public About Climate Threat for Decades

A peer-reviewed study published on Wednesday confirmed “a discrepancy between what ExxonMobil’s scientists and executives discussed about climate change privately and in academic circles, and what it presented to the general public.”

“ExxonMobil contributed quietly to the science and loudly to raising doubts about it,” wrote Harvard researchers Geoffrey Supran and Naomi Oreskes in their study, published in the scientific journal Environmental Research Letters.

“Even while ExxonMobil scientists were contributing to climate science and writing reports that explained it to their bosses, the company was paying for advertisements that told a very different tale,” they concluded in a New York Times op-ed on Tuesday.

“Exxon has officially run out of excuses,” said Greenpeace USA climate liability campaigner Naomi Ages. “This peer-reviewed study from Harvard is just the latest piece of evidence indicating that the largest oil company in the world knew about the risks of climate change, but concealed them from the public and shareholders.”

Birmingham Mayoral Race: Woodfin and Bell gear up for runoff

The Birmingham Business Alliance says young professionals are Birmingham’s fastest growing demographic, that’s defined as millennials with a bachelor’s degree or higher.

Research from the BBA shows that particular population grew by more than 56 percent in the city since 2010.

Candidates were aware of that change as they campaigned.

Woodfin says he sought to reach voters of all ages and races. He says he’s still looking at numbers to see what role the change in demographics played.

“I hope the numbers I do see reveal we were able to bring out younger voters who are excited to come,” said Woodfin.

Wednesday, marks the first day of his runoff campaign.

“What’s your game plan now?” asked ABC 33/40,

“Oh, that’s simple,” replied Woodfin. “To take what we’ve done over the last year and do it in six weeks,”

Populist Challenger Stuns In Birmingham Mayoral Election, Will Go To Runoff

The South is not a place known for its radical politics.

Statewide, the region is dominated by right-wing Republicans. The Democratic Party is cordoned off in urban centers, but mayors typically avoid populist policy and tend to have a cozy relationship with the ruling GOP governors (just ask Atlanta’s Kasim Reed).

But over the past year, a new generation of populists has taken aim at these city centers, seeking to oust a Democratic establishment that has grown moribund, in favor of a radical politics that favors greater redistribution of power from elites to the common person.

In Jackson, Mississippi, this took the form of the election of Chokwe Antar Lumumba Jr. as mayor. His father was elected mayor in 2014 but tragically passed away. His son has vowed to carry on his legacy and make Jackson “the most radical city on the planet” — implementing forms of community control over government that are unheard of not only in the South, but in most municipalities anywhere in the country.

Tuesday night, the second domino came close to falling in Birmingham’s mayoral race. It was supposed to be an easy reelection for Birmingham mayor William Bell, a fixture of the state’s Democratic Party establishment who had been in office since 2010. In an Aug. 1 poll taken by a local news station, Bell held a wide lead, winning support from 54 percent of respondents with 57 percent saying Bell was doing an “excellent” or “good” job.

But Randall Woodfin, a 36-year-old former board of education president who ran an insurgent campaign promising, among other things, free community college for graduates of the city’s high schools, stunned observers by actually getting more votes than Bell on Election Day. Woodfin took 41 percent of the vote to Bell’s 37. That Aug. 1 poll had Woodfin at just 14 percent. Woodfin and Bell will both advance to a runoff on Oct. 3.

Single-Payer Fight Fuels Primary Challengers Against Establishment Democrats

It has been just over a year since the Democratic Platform Drafting Committee held a vote over whether the party should endorse a single-payer, Medicare for All health care system. The committee predictably declined to put it in the platform by a 7-6 vote. The seven no votes came from delegates chosen by Hillary Clinton, whose campaign was awash in money from the for-profit health system.

Following the vote, an exasperated Michael Lightly, public policy director of National Nurses United, made an important point: “If this [policy] is controversial in this room, it is the only room of Democrats in which it is controversial.”

Indeed, the Democratic Party’s institutional opposition to Medicare for All contrasts mightily with the will of Democratic voters. According to recent polls, nearly 80 percent of Democrats and 60 percent of the public support expanding Medicare to cover everyone — the very policy the single-payer movement has been pushing for decades.

Yet, much of the party remains an obstacle, rather than a vehicle, to this important reform. Prominent leaders such as Clinton, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and DNC chair Tom Perez have been hesitant at best and hostile at worst toward the policy.

So now, buoyed by momentum from the Bernie Sanders campaign and the opposition to the GOP assault on the health care, voters, organizations and candidates are sending a clear message: The failure of Democrats to support Medicare for All is morally indefensible. Those who don’t support this basic human right, organizers tell Truthout, should not be holding elected office.

‘The new Obama’: Abdul El-Sayed – America’s first Muslim governor?

The 32-year-old charismatic Muslim doctor is running for governor of Michigan and in the process trying to change US politics

Mayor, Police Chief Address Poverty-Crime Connection, Solutions Going Forward

Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba and Jackson Police Department Chief Lee Vance are working to increase the number of JPD police officers as well as implementing additional solutions to crime in the capital city. Lumumba and Vance held a press conference on Tuesday, Aug. 22, following multiple homicides in the past two weeks.

Lumumba, whose own brother was a victim of gun violence in 1992, said his administration is firmly committed against violence in the city, saying addressing the issue of violence is not limited to increasing police involvement.

“We are looking at holistic solutions to crime, understanding … that it’s not just the issue of policing,” Lumumba told reporters at city hall on Tuesday.

“Crime is not unique to Jackson; crime is not unique to majority-black populations. Wherever you find high poverty, you find high crime. So it’s about making certain that we properly give all of the tools and recourses to the police department to do their jobs, but it’s also about how we create opportunities within our city so that individuals are led away from those conditions which lead to it (crime).”

The mayor said his budget addresses the critical shortage of officers in JPD currently, by increasing funding for recruiting a new class of police officers. JPD now has 373 officers, although the department is budgeted for 419 officers, Vance said. Lumumba said his proposed budget will enable JPD to up their recruitment efforts.

The police chief echoed Lumumba, saying the solutions to violent crime are not limited to law enforcement.

SC Democrat Films TV Ad During Eclipse

A Democratic congressional candidate in South Carolina filmed a television commercial during the solar eclipse that moved across the United States on Monday.

Joe Cunningham – who is running for the Palmetto State’s first congressional district (map) – filmed the forty-five second spot at Cherry Grove boat landing in Rockville, S.C. as the Lowcountry fell under the eclipse’s “path of totality.”

Entitled “Darkness,” the ad was an attack on U.S. president Donald Trump – who won the reliably “Republican” first district with only 53 percent of the vote last fall.

“In an eclipse, light turns to darkness … but all we have to do is wait – and soon the light will be back,” Cunningham says in the spot. “When darkness falls on our democracy, though, we can’t wait it out.”

“Donald Trump is that darkness,” Cunningham continued. “Hate, divisiveness, everything Americas’ always stood against, he’s standing for. That’s why I’m running for Congress and why you need to use your voice too.”