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Love implementing the demands of justice

Climate activists demand better, Republicans demand worse

PRESENTED BY POWER AT ITS BEST

Sunrise activist arrested at Joe Biden campaign headquarters on Monday. Credit: Credit: Rachael Warriner

You love to see it: About 100 youth climate activists with the Sunrise Movement blockaded the Joe Biden presidential campaign headquarters in Wilmington, Del., calling for the president to declare a climate emergency, demand a ceasefire in Israel, and end the era of fossil fuels. Wilmington police arrested 20 of the demonstrators. Sunrise Campaign Director Kidus Girma explained:

“Climate change is at our doorstep. Our homes are flooding, we’re breathing in toxic air, Black people like me are dying while the President expands oil and gas production to record levels. Then President Biden goes around and claims he’s a climate president and wants our votes? That’s bullshit.”

The League of Conservation Voters’s Tiernan Sittenfeld, however, offered Biden lots of smooches, calling him a “true climate champion” in The New York Times:

“The League of Conservation Voters applauds Mr. Biden for his stellar climate leadership to date, is looking forward to more climate progress through executive action in his first term, and is all-in to help re-elect him so he can finish the job in a second term.”

LCV is working hard on selling Biden to young people.

More love is in the air, as Greenpeace protesters held a mock party for Shell’s announced £22.4 billion in profits for 2023 outside the oil gian't’s London headquarters.

And the Goddess of Love was flooded with valentines by Last Generation activists yesterday. To be more precise, the protesters briefly attached photographs of recent deadly flooding in Italy to the glass case of Botticelli’s Birth of Venus.

Climate activists at the Birth of Venuss

Two climate activists on Tuesday targeted Botticelli’s masterpiece “The Birth of Venus” hanging at Florence’s Uffizi Gallery, attaching images of recent flood damage in the Tuscany region on the protective glass. Credit: Emiliano Benedetti

The Senate is now on vacation through next week, having passed its $95 billion foreign military aid package by a vote of 70-29. The three Democrats who voted against the bill in protest of its support for Israel’s indiscriminate campaign in Gaza were Sens. Bernie Sanders and Peter Welch of Vermont, and Jeff Merkley of Oregon.

The awful Tom Suozzi is back in Congress, having won back the seat he gave up for his embarrassing run for New York governor, which was briefly filled by the fabulist George Santos (R-Lunatic). When Suozzi is sworn in, the Republican majority will narrow to 219-215. Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) and President Biden celebrated Suozzi’s victory as an opportunity to move the Democratic Party to the right on immigration policy, but Suozzi’s real priority is protecting the profits of the Wall Street billionaires in his district.

On their second attempt, Republicans squeaked through their impeachment of Homeland Security Secretary Alexandro Mayorkas for not being enough of a xenophobic fascist at the border on a 214-213 vote. Now they can get back to their primary order of business, defending the fossil-fuel industry whose pollution is responsible for the global migrant crisis.

At 2 pm in the afternoon, the Rural Climate Partnership, a new grantmaking organization backed by the Wallace Global Fund, McKnight Foundation, and Stolte Family Foundation, is hosting a webinar on new communications research on rural renewable energy siting, which is a hotly contentious issue, with local communities trying to ban solar and wind farms across the nation.

In the House, Republicans are going after environmental policies on multiple fronts:

Also at 10 am, Agriculture holds a hearing with Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, Budget holds a hearing with Congressional Budget Office director Phill Swagel, and Transportation’s emergency management subcommittee interrogates FEMA head Deanne Criswell about the propriety of FEMA being engaged with emergency management other than climate disasters, such as the Covid and border crises, and supporting the resettlement of Afghan refugees.

Hearings on the Hill:

Climate Action Today:

Thanks for subscribing and spreading the word. If you’ve got job listings, event listings, or other hot news, I want to hear it. Connect with me—@[email protected], @climatebrad on Threads, and  @climatebrad.hillheat.com on BlueSky.

As Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., said:

“Power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love.”

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