Because the pundits and fawning media wouldn’t do it, a courageous young activist named Ashley Williams had to pay $500 to ask Hillary to answer for her super-predator “bring them to heel” remarks.
As she (sort of) apologized yesterday for her poor choice of words, Hillary Clinton said, “My life’s work has been about lifting up children and young people who’ve been let down by the system or by society.”
That’s not true. So let’s look at the children and young people she didn’t lift up.
She didn’t lift up the children of U.S. families who lost one million jobs because of NAFTA, and the children of families in Mexico who also suffered job loss and lower incomes. “Although unpopular with unions,” she wrote, “Expanding trade opportunities was an important [Clinton] administration goal.”
She didn’t lift up the children who suffered from extreme poverty, which doubled after welfare reform (she wanted a “formal role” in passing the bill) and tripled in single-mother households.
She didn’t lift up the children in union families whose backs she did not have when she is said to have never spoken up in support of labor unions while on the board of Wal-Mart.
She didn’t lift up the children of gay parents who were listening in 2004 when she said, "I believe marriage is not just a bond but a sacred bond between a man and a woman.”
She didn’t lift up the children whose families fell apart because for-profit prisons do better when more people go to prison. (Despite what’s been said, her campaign continues to benefit from the industry.)
She didn’t lift up the countless numbers of children killed in the illegal and immoral Iraq War, a war she had to know (we all knew!) was based on lies, was in contravention of international law, and would take place in a country whose population was 50% children.
She didn’t lift up children in families who are among the 10 million refugees and 250,000 dead because she worked to block a ceasefire in Syria because she cared more about isolating Iran than creating peace.
She didn’t lift up the children in China who will suffer because her message to China was that human rights issues shouldn’t get in the way of business.
She didn’t lift up the children who will suffer because her starting point, before even negotiating, is a $12/hour minimum wage.
She didn’t lift up the children who will suffer because she undermined Obama’s efforts to stabilize relations with Iran.
She didn’t lift up the children who are among the 2,800 civilians killed by airstrikes because she approved arm sales to Saudi Arabia that were used to bomb Yemen. (We can take comfort that the Saudis and Boeing were contributing to the Clinton Foundation as the deal went down.)
She didn’t lift up the children who died or suffered because of her disastrous support of regime change in Libya, consequences be damned.
She didn’t lift up the children of labor leaders disappeared and beaten in Colombia because she broke a 2008 campaign pledge and supported free trade in Colombia despite knowing that the government was using threats of violence against trade unions. (We can take comfort in the $130 million given to the Clinton Foundation by Frank Giustra, a billionaire who profited from the deal.)
She didn’t lift up the children who suffer because fracking, which she promoted around the world as environmentally safe, poisons their water.
She didn’t lift up the untold numbers of children killed because she voted (along with every Republican) to block a ban on cluster bombs, for fuck sake.
She didn’t lift up the millions of children whose families lost their houses because she failed to join other Democrats who were trying to crack down on Wall St.
She didn’t lift up the children in Honduras who suffered because of her support for an illegal coup against the democratically-elected president, in contravention of international agreements, the advice of her ambassador, and the unanimous vote of every nation in South America, because her pal Lannie Davis was consulting to the people behind the coup, and because Zelaya had the temerity to advocate for higher wages.
She didn’t lift up the children in Haiti who suffered severe hunger because her State Department put pressure on the government of Haiti to keep them from raising the minimum wage to 62 cents an hour because Fruit of the Loom and Levi’s thought that was too high.
She didn’t lift up the children fleeing violence in Central America who she thinks should be sent back to “send a message.”
There’s a reason she calls herself a friend and admirer of Henry Kissinger.
Hillary Clinton does not stand up for children and young people.
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My diary from earlier this week, The Definitive, Encyclopedic Case for Why Hillary is the Wrong Choice, has been shared on Facebook more than 38,000 times. It’s changing some minds. I’d appreciate your keeping it out there on FB and Twitter.
#whichhillary
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UPDATE:
Good morning, y’all! Hey, please do me a favor and stop projecting hated and bitterness onto me. That’s not where I’m coming from. I don’t hate Hillary. I just love the truth.
If you support Hillary, just own it and own her record. Sure, you can explain and justify this thing or that thing. But no one has answered for the entirety of who she is and what she stands for.
So vote the way you want to, knowing that in Hillary you are supporting someone who has taken the hawkish, anti-union, anti-worker, anti-poor position repeatedly, has illegally supported illegal coups, still takes money from the for-profit prison industry (even though she says she doesn’t), refused to help ban cluster bombs, has broken campaign pledges so she could support authoritarian governments, has never seen an arms deal she didn’t like, supports Monsanto and fracking, has stood in the way of ceasefires that were inconvenient to her aims, wants to send desperate children back to where their lives are endangered, and has personally intervened around the world to make sure that poor brown people have stayed poor.
That’s her record. I’m just pointing it out so we’re all clear on that. You can attack me or question my motives (motive: I fucking love justice), but in the end you have to just own it.
Know, this, too. If Hillary wins, we’re going to lose another generation of young people who have never been given a reason to support the Democratic party. I was in New York yesterday listening to brilliant, courageous young activists and movement builders. At the end, an older man raised his hand and harrumphed about voter registration.
Without missing a beat, one of the young women said, “We can’t get young people to support corrupt institutions. They don’t want to do that anymore.”