Deadline for Democracy

People are organizing for real action.

Author

Brad Johnson
December 06, 2021

PRESENTED BY STREET BLOCKADE BRIGADES

I’m happy to report today that Tuesday will be a Good News Day.

However… this weekend there was a stupid but still chilling rally of over 100 white supremacists at the Lincoln Memorial. And Joe Manchin has said “nah” to passing Build Back Better any time soon.

Pictured: Neo-Nazis, not the Invisible Man Clone Army

So it’s probably fair that ShutDown DC and allied organizations are calling the street actions they’re organizing tomorrow to blockade the Capitol “Deadline for Democracy.”

For too much of the Washington, DC establishment, it’s still business as usual with polite lunch meetings, press conferences, and inaction while ‘negotiations’ play out. If we want to win the breakthroughs we need in this moment, we need to disrupt business as usual and open up space for a new kind of politics.

Among the street brigades are climate justice activists organized by

The blockades will be followed by a rally at the Capitol at noon. Sign up or contribute.

The next act in Tuesday’s Good News is the official launch of Third Act, a grassroots climate organization for “visionary elders” (people over the age of 60) led by 350 founder Bill McKibben. The Zoom launch is at 8 pm on Tuesday.

Navigator CO2 Ventures is planning to build the 1300-mile Heartland Greenway pipeline to transport liquid carbon dioxide through Iowa captured from ethanol plants and fertilizer plants to an injection site in southern Illinois, and is holding local meetings across the route to promote the project now. Objections are being filed.

Kate Aronoff reports that Chilean far-right climate-denier presidential candidate José Antonio Kast had a grand time in Washington, D.C. last week, meeting with climate-denier Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) at his office, and having tapas with business executives including PepsiCo (“PepsiCo recognizes that climate change is one of the greatest challenges facing our food system”) and UnitedHealthGroup (“Named to the Carbon Disclosure Project’s (CDP) Leadership Band in 2020 for efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions”). Unfortunately for polite business-as-usual lunch meetings, leftist climate hawk Gabriel Boric is leading in the polls—and Chile’s presidential election is December 19.

Kast’s polite lunch meeting with corporate execs at La Taberna del Alabardero. Credit: El Mostrador

Someone today is going be one of Hill Heat’s first 100 subscribers! —@climatebrad

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