Новости за 18.11.2016

On November 16, students at more than 80 universities, colleges and high schools nationwide staged walk-outs, sit-ins and rallies urging their administrations to protect immigrants at risk of deportation by the incoming Donald Trump administration. The nationwide protests, which took place under the banner of the hashtag #SanctuaryCampus, called on universities to join the ranks of cities that limit their cooperation with the Department of Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Читать дальше...

It’s official: President-elect Donald Trump has nominated Senator Jeff Sessions (R – AL), a longtime ally, to become his attorney general. Sessions is known as an immigration hard-liner with an alleged history of racist remarks and actions, sparking fears that his confirmation could mean major changes at the Department of Justice (DOJ)—especially as it relates to communities of color.

There is simply no other way to put it: The election of Donald Trump was a disaster for the Left and for all those struggling against exploitation and oppression in the United States. We face an energized white nationalist movement, a right-wing-controlled legislature and executive branch, and soon, a Supreme Court hostile to labor and progressive causes. 

Two days after the election, I ran into a friend who supports himself with Social Security and part-time work as an apartment building maintenance man. I asked whether he'd voted. No, he said, not since 1968. Voting is like the busywork they give kids, he said. Crayons and coloring paper. They let us have an election to keep us occupied—pat us on the head, tell us what good children we are, admire the pretty pictures we've drawn. Then they do as they please.

This article was first posted at Verso Books.

We should resist the temptation to over-interpret Trump’s election as an American Eighteenth Brumaire or 1933. Progressives who think they’ve woken up in another country should calm down, take a stiff draught, and reflect on the actual election results from the swing states. 

Data, of course, is incomplete. The leading exit polls, like Pew and Edison, are hardly flawless in their harvesting of opinion and the final word on the turnout... Читать дальше...

Like each new American presidential campaign, this one was the longest in history. Election Day was the culmination of 17 months’ worth of anxiety, all compressed into six hours of punditry, memes and math. Less than two hours after Midwest polls closed, Pantsuit Nation began to convulse. This wasn’t supposed to happen.