Looked at the agenda of the upcoming Labor Notes conference and couldn’t help but note that the fall elections and electoral work generally were nowhere to be found. There’s an explanation for this omission, an easy one I would think. In any case, it’s a missed opportunity.

Republicans in Washington and across the country are falling over themselves in their effort to deny trans gender young people their rights, identity, and humanity. Meanwhile, when it comes to protecting young people and children in school they stand in the way of gun control legislation and other measures that would make schools safer. This is, in my view, criminal behavior. Lets make them pay in November.

We can’t come close to imagining the feelings of horror and helplessness that those childern felt yesterday in their school in Uvalde, but we should try.

To think of a united front against the Republican Party and the larger right wing authoritarian movement that fails to include President Biden and the Democratic Party is the worse kind of sectarian nonsense. It has the smell of radicalism and left wing polltics, I suppose, but not the substance. It’s a form of radicalism that, strategically speaking, gives little thought to what kind of coalition stands any chance of defeating the gathering white nationalist authoritarian juggernaut, while preserving our democracy and setting the stage for a new era of social progress.

At a moment like this, don’t blame Congress or Washington for the failure to pass gun control regulation. Pin the tail on the donkey – the Repubican Party and its legislative obstructionism. Even to blame the gun lobby or NRA or the right wing media becomes a dodge if in the same breadth the GOP and its central role in blocking gun control laws, isn’t highlighted.