Jake Johnson at Common Dreams writes—Hundreds of Thousands Expected to Join 'Historic Nationwide Mobilization' on Eve of Trump Impeachment Vote:
A coalition of progressive advocacy groups on Friday announced plans for a "historic nationwide mobilization" across the U.S. on the eve of the House's yet-to-be-scheduled vote on articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump.
Hundreds of thousands of people are expected to take to the streets around the country, said the "Nobody Is Above the Law" coalition, which includes MoveOn, Public Citizen, Indivisible, and Stand Up America, as well as more than a dozen other organizations.
"Protesters will gather in front of the district offices of House members as the lawmakers finalize their positions and at U.S. Senate offices as senators prepare for a likely trial," the coalition said in a statement. "Protesters will call on their representatives to uphold the Constitution and their oaths of office by supporting Trump's impeachment."
Nearly 120 events have already been planned in more than 80 cities in anticipation of the House impeachment vote. Check here to find an event near you. [...]
On its website, the coalition said the goal of the mass protests is "to demonstrate to our lawmakers that their constituents are behind them to defend the Constitution—and that Trump has left them no alternative to uphold their oath of office but to support impeachment and removal."
"The night before the House of Representatives takes a historic vote to impeach Trump," the coalition said, "we'll head to every congressional office and public square to declare that nobody is above the law as representatives finalize their positions and senators look on."
TOP COMMENTS • HIGH IMPACT STORIES
QUOTATION
“But what then is capital punishment but the most premeditated of murders, to which no criminal's deed, however calculated it may be, can be compared? For there to be equivalence, the death penalty would have to punish a criminal who had warned his victim of the date at which he would inflict a horrible death on him and who, from that moment onward, had confined him at his mercy for months. Such a monster is not encountered in private life.”
~~Albert Camus, Resistance, Rebellion & Death, 1957
TWEET OF THE DAY
BLAST FROM THE PAST
At Daily Kos on this date in 2003—A Little Sanity on Cuba:
President Bush has a chance to break with America’s outdated policy of isolating Americans from Cuba and sign a bill that would ease travel restrictions to the island. A veto seems assured. Maintaining his tenuous hold on Florida may depend on it. […]
For more than four decades, Castro’s unique blend of what Spanish speakers call caudillismo and a fierce nationalist form of communism has done more than any other factor to shape contradictory U.S. foreign policy throughout Latin America. Since the time of the Monroe Doctrine and the Roosevelt Corollary, the Caribbean has been seen as a U.S. “lake,” Latin America as “our backyard.” Out of this mindset grew an interventionism that brooked no meddlers from Europe and no objections from the peoples of the countries the U.S. chose to bring under its “protection.” While the U.S. did not create the dictators of Latin America, it nurtured many of them.
The coming of Castro, who soon linked himself to America’s No. 1 foe, exacerbated the older policy of backing thugs like Somoza in Nicaragua, Trujillo in the Dominican Republic and Batista in Cuba, men who were said by FDR’s men to be sons of bitches, but “our” sons of bitches. That expression of pre-World War II realpolitik summarized quite well what would become, 50 years later, the Kirkpatrick Doctrine—in essence, a policy of support for “our” bad guys as less evil than letting “their” bad guys gain power.
Since the fiasco at the 1961 Bay of Pigs and the nuclear close-call of 1962, Castro has overshadowed all of U.S. policy in Latin America. From the hemispheric Alliance for Progress to the counter-insurgent “low-intensity conflicts” in Bolivia and Colombia, from support for the generals of Brazil, Argentina and Chile to the trumped-up invasions of the Dominican Republic and Grenada, from the one-sided slaughters in Guatemala to the full-scale civil wars in El Salvador and Nicaragua, U.S. policy throughout the region has been mostly about Fidel.