National Call to Action
Stay Mobilized Until Kavanaugh is Defeated: No “Business As Usual”
Everyone Who Can Possibly Go to Washington, DC Between Now and When Kavanaugh is Defeated—Get There NOW
No Reliance on the Politicians
The Hands of the FBI Must Not Be Tied, the FBI Must Be Free to Conduct a Full Investigation of All the Charges Against Kavanaugh
Mass Direct Action Now to Defend Democracy and Defend Women’s Rights
Confirming Kavanaugh sends a message to women across the country that victims of sexual assault should stay silent. Defeating Kavanaugh sends a message that victims should speak out, stand up, and fight.
Resist. Confront. Disrupt. Fight to win (AND WE CAN WIN)!
Over the past week, the protests and confrontations in Washington, DC, by the Resistance, the mass movement against Trump, have been pivotal in reversing the impending catastrophe of Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court nomination. Above all, the courageous determination and action of women who are survivors of sexual assault and abuse have been decisive in making it possible to defeat Trump and the Republicans’ rush to put a sexual abuser on the US Supreme Court. The indelible courage of Christine Blasey Ford’s disclosure of Brett Kavanaugh’s sexual assault and her testimony last Thursday showed the nation a real hero. Other women have answered her call, and have since come forward with their own searing accounts of Kavanaugh’s sexual assaults: Deborah Ramirez, Julie Swetnick, and Elizabeth Rasor. Our support for Dr. Ford and all these women is unequivocal and categorical. The stand they have taken has dragged this nation from the precipice of a national and international disgrace to the genuine possibility of saving American democracy.
Despite Professor Blasey Ford’s courageous and obviously true testimony Thursday, afterwards, on Thursday afternoon and Friday morning, the Republican politicians were still attempting to jam Kavanaugh’s nomination through the US Senate Judiciary Committee, filling the Senate hearing room with the gross male rage of a bunch of crude sexist bullies, repeating one after the other the long-discredited arguments misogynists have used to silence women trying to fight against sexual assault. The Democratic politicians on the other side who supposedly opposed Kavanaugh and rightly claimed to support Dr. Blasey Ford’s testimony, behaved far too much as if they had been abused into passivity themselves by the Republicans’ abusive ranting and raving, rather than finding the courage to really defend Blasey Ford’s heroic stand and actually fight to win.
Under these circumstances, two young women, Ana Maria Archila and Maria Gallagher had to join Blasey Ford and the other Kavanaugh accusers as the real heroes of this struggle. On Friday morning, after the supposed open-minded Republican Senator Jeff Flake announced that he would actually vote with the other Republicans to send the Kavanaugh nomination to the full Senate for a vote for confirmation, these two women caught the cowardly Senator Flake in an elevator. They genuinely and passionately spoke truth to power. They expressed the indignation and determination of millions of women across the nation and the Resistance fighting for the future of democracy in America to break the suffocating silence imposed on the victims of sexual assault and abuse by American society for far too long. Their confrontation with the timid Senator Flake communicated the reality that for the rest of his life, wherever he goes, he will be held accountable for his role in accepting or rejecting sexual predator Brett Kavanaugh on the US Supreme Court. They demanded, “Look at me when I’m talking to you,” when Flake tried to avoid hearing their own declarations of their histories of sexual assault. Their bold and decisive action, not the passive, boring, and half-stepping speeches of politicians inside the committee, forced Flake, after the elevator confrontation, to change his position and demand an independent FBI investigation of the sexual abuse charges against Kavanaugh before a vote could take place in the full Senate. The audacity of Archila and Gallagher is a model for how our movement can and must carry through on the fight we need to make now.
With MORE of this kind of bold and determined direct action in DC between now and the final vote on Kavanaugh, our movement can win. We must make the most of this opportunity. With the Senate confirmation vote officially postponed only by a week, we must act and we must act fast. Hundreds of people have been protesting inside and outside of the Capitol. Throughout the course of this entire process, fresh Resistance forces need to flood the capital. We need a mass confrontation of the movement with the politicians, especially the ever-so-timid waverers Jeff Flake (R), Susan Collins (R), Lisa Murkowski (R), Paul Manchin (D), and Heidi Heitkamp (D), and demand that they oppose Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation. This entire fight over Kavanaugh’s nomination makes clear Rule #1 of the movement: do NOT rely on the politicians to fight; rely on ourselves and each other to win.
“Never again” begins now. It is obvious the confirmation of Kavanaugh will send a message that in America, people who are sexually assaulted or abused should keep silent. That message must be defeated, and the message sent by Christine Blasey Ford and the other heroic survivors who have been speaking out must prevail. Kavanaugh has also clearly, throughout his career, been an enemy of the legal and political gains of the women’s movement, in particular an enemy of the right of women to control over their own bodies secured in 1973 in the Roe v Wade decision. Despite the statements to the contrary of certain cowardly waverers, it is obvious that Kavanaugh will take advantage of the first opportunity he could get to overturn Roe all together, and until he can accomplish that, vote to render Roe v Wade a dead letter in practice as much as possible. Trump would not have nominated him if that were not the case.
In addition to the message aimed at silencing the struggle against sexual abuse and the attack on the fundamental rights of women, the threat of Kavanaugh’s confirmation places democracy at stake in yet another way, which is completely bound up with Donald Trump’s aspiration to create an authoritarian presidency. Even among Trump’s short list of reactionary candidates to nominate to the Supreme Court, Brett Kavanaugh stood out as holding absolutely extreme positions in favor of presidential power and against presidential accountability. In particular, Kavanaugh has publicly argued repeatedly that presidents should not be subject at all to investigations like the Mueller investigation. For the past year, the Mueller investigation has been the only governmental process aimed at determining the role the Trump campaign may have played in conspiring with Putin’s attempt to distort and determine the results of the 2016 presidential elections. Only the Mueller investigation can make possible holding Trump accountable for his numerous efforts to obstruct justice and turn the FBI, the Justice Dept. as a whole, and the nation’s intelligence agencies into his own personal state police. Given that there are already four judges on the Court ready to uphold a very expansive view of presidential power, Kavanaugh’s confirmation would create a long-term majority prepared to uphold the emergence of a reactionary, authoritarian presidential dictatorship over the next period of American history, beginning with an imminent set of decisions pertaining to the Mueller investigation.
The future of democracy is at stake. We are being called by history to meet the challenge of this extraordinary moment.
To all supporters of the movement to defeat Kavanaugh and Trump: get to DC this week, however you can. Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the US Supreme Court must be defeated. While Dr. Ford’s forthright courage was celebrated across the nation, anyone watching last Thursday’s performance by Brett Kavanaugh shuddered in disgust at his debauched rage. His performance was, from the beginning to end, the behavior of a guilty man. His testimony left no doubt that he is a dangerous misogynist and sexual predator. He presented an appalling display of exactly the kind of judge who should never receive a lifetime appointment to the most powerful court in the world. His testimony made utterly clear that Kavanaugh on the Court would be the closest equivalent to giving Donald Trump a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court.
Until Dr. Ford came forward, Kavanaugh’s nomination seemed all but secured. Today, the opposite is true. Today, Kavanaugh’s nomination presents a test of the #Metoo movement that has come forward against Trump’s misogyny, his promotion and defense of sexual assault that has been central to his political platform. As long as Donald Trump, as Abuser-in-Chief, remains in office, misogynist men like Kavanaugh will feel they have a greenlight to attack, harass, objectify and abuse women. By defeating the nomination of Kavanaugh we will be dealing a blow to Trump’s attacks on democracy and his movement of reactionary supporters who have been emboldened to carry out misogynist, immigrant-bashing, and racist attacks.
Now more than ever, as our nation stands at a crossroads, the Resistance must rise to our historic challenge. This is no time for “business as usual” or to rely on the promises and maneuvers of cynical politicians or the FBI. BAMN calls on all anti-Trump and pro-democracy Resistance fighters to join us in action to defeat the nomination of Justice Brett Kavanaugh to the U.S. Supreme Court, and to force Trump to resign or be removed. The future of freedom and democracy is in our hands.
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Insurance companies are supposed to protect us from catastrophic risks. Yet when it comes to climate change, the largest threat to humanity, U.S. insurance companies are doing the exact opposite. With their massive investments in fossil fuel companies and insuring of drilling and mining projects, the U.S. insurance industry is making a terrible problem worse. This has to stop. Hundreds of lobbyists for the U.S. insurance industry are coming to downtown San Francisco for a convention. Join us at lunch time to send them a message: Insure Our Future—Stop Insuring Climate Change!