The meatpacking industry has some of the highest rates of workplace injuries compared to most industries. Not to mention the immense physiological toll it puts on top of it all with workers getting high rates of PTSD, depression, etc.
Fun fact, there are two entire human rights watch reports just about the meatpacking industry
“When We’re Dead and Buried, Our Bones Will Keep Hurting” (2019)
"Blood, Sweat, and Fear: Workers’ Rights in U.S. Meat and Poultry Plants (2005)
Trump cut $400 million in federal funding despite them doing basically everything Trump wanted from them earlier. I hope this statement means someone inside the university is realizing that appeasement doesn’t work. Trump will keep demanding more from you and want you to be complicit in worse and worse actions with no end - until you stand up
They are doing a lot of these things, the media is just barely covering it. Here’s that coverage brought up higher. Could they and should they do more, absolutely and do put directed pressure them to do more, but let’s not pretend they are doing nothing. That just creates defeatism instead of the energy we need to keep the pressure up
Handful of the lawsuits that you probably didn’t hear about:
Democratic AGs win preliminary injunction against DOGE access to Treasury payment systems
Gov. Josh Shapiro Says Over $2 Billion of Federal Funding Is Unfrozen for Pennsylvania (following PA’s lawsuit)
20 Dem AGs sue over Trump efforts to fire probationary employees
Democratic AGs sue over cancellation of teacher grants
More than a dozen state attorneys general file lawsuit challenging Musk and DOGE’s authority
Democratic attorneys general sue to block Trump’s attempt to end birthright citizenship
Democratic National Committee Files Lawsuit Against Trump
And so many more. There are an insane number of lawsuits going on right now
In delay tactics, they could do more, but they have now starting using them. It’s more than zero that’s for sure. Keep the pressure up here for them to do more. Call your reps to deny unanimous consent more often - it’s starting to get through a bit. Here’s a few examples
Senate Democrats Hold Floor In All-Night Protest of Trump’s OMB Nominee (they held it for the maximum 30 hours)
Scoop: Senate Dems delay Tulsi Gabbard nomination (were able to do so because of some procedural stuff with how she filed her clearance)
Senate Democrats delay Kash Patel committee vote
In terms of protests, they are also speaking and rallying at them with again limited coverage. Here’s a few
Democrats Protest Outside USAID Headquarters as Trump Seeks to Dismantle Agency
Dems protesting outside the department of education, trying to get in and denied entry
Dems protesting outside of the EPA
And so on
Looks like the dems are planning to pass the Republican spending bill
That’s not what the article says. Only 1 dem voted in favor in the house out of 214. A number of senate dems have come out against the CR, and more keep going that way. Plus Rand Paul has also said he’ll vote no. For some reason, republicans aren’t using reconciliation (which would only need a strict majority for budget bills) so it goes to the filibuster which requires 60 votes and thus 7 flips without republican defections, 8 if you count Ran Paul’s pledged defection
Call you senator if they haven’t said what they plan to do, floods of calls will matter here a lot
Not to take away from the horribleness of what they’re trying to do, but he has been found now in some good news. They moved him all the way to Louisiana (for no justifiable reason) and after making contact with his attorneys a judge has temporarily blocked deportation order. Still keep a close eye on it
Keep boycotting, and join protests outside Tesla showrooms. ~60% of Musk’s wealth is in Tesla shares. Tank the stock and tank his wealth and thus influence
There are protests all across the US and starting to spring up in other countries. Here’s a list of upcoming ones + a guide to help organize one around you if none exist
Tesla share price is largely off of vibes, not how the company is actually doing. Boycotts and protests hurt the vibes more than the Trump money slush fund helps the vibes
If it was prices like every other automaker based on profit, it’d be enormously lower in price than it is
Keep boycotting, and join protests outside Tesla showrooms. ~60% of Musk’s wealth is in Tesla shares. Tank the stock and tank his wealth and thus influence
There are protests all across the US and starting to spring up in other countries. Here’s a list of upcoming ones + a guide to help organize one around you if none exist
Wait, wait you can have productive discussions like this on the internet? (Thank you for being receptive - we need more people like you)
Elected dems do hold town halls like this article talks about. If you are referring to dems not in office, they’re starting to do stuff like that. For instance:
Rep. Tom Kean Jr. (R) refuses to hold a town hall in NJ-07. So next Thursday March 13 in Summit, NJ former Rep. Tom Malinowski will hold a town hall meeting to discuss the current moment and what citizens can do to protect democracy. RSVP link here (or use the QR code): https://forms.gle/RcSVhWpsrLCfT9w67
https://bsky.app/profile/njindivisible.bsky.social/post/3ljww6godzc23
Comments like that unfortunately do the opposite - they make people defeatest which makes people stop paying attention to the situation at all
Elections are run at the state level including for federal offices. There have already been >48 state and local elections this year since January alone. Elections are way more than just the midterms and they are still happening. See https://ballotpedia.org/Elections_calendar
Normalizing the idea that elections wouldn’t happen is just playing directly into Trump and Musk’s hands
They want us to be so cynical we stop fighting back. They want us not to vote. They want us to not protest. They want us to not boycott. They want us too tired to fight
Don’t give in, we can still win these fights
Local & state level is where a lot of the progress will live on in the near future. Call your local legislators & vote in every local election - they are way more frequent across the country than you may realize
People have been suing and taking all kinds of action against DOGE, they just don’t get as many headlines as the horrible stuff. Dem state attorney have filed a ton and gotten things like federal funding to the state restored - see for instance PA getting $2 Billion in federal funding unfrozen. People are fighting, the media is just minimally covering it
Here’s a tracker of all the ongoing lawsuits https://www.justsecurity.org/107087/tracker-litigation-legal-challenges-trump-administration/
Elections are run at the state level including for federal offices. There have already been >48 state and local elections this year since January alone. Elections are way more than just the midterms and they are still happening. See https://ballotpedia.org/Elections_calendar
Normalizing the idea that elections wouldn’t happen is just playing directly into Trump and Musk’s hands
They want us to be so cynical we stop fighting back. They want us not to vote. They want us to not protest. They want us to not boycott. They want us too tired to fight
Don’t give in, we can still win these fights
This is also indicative that sometimes we can successfully pressure them to change their votes
We can win this fight
Strong suspicion that this whole trend has been beef industry influenced and or funded. Especially since they quite often decide to tout beef tallow (somehow as “healthy”) instead of a non-seed based oil like olive oil, avocado oil, etc.
For some context of the other things the beef industry has done before:
Using checkoff money, NCBA [National Cattlemen’s Beef Association] has developed what it has called a “Digital Command Center” – a sophisticated online monitoring system that tracks media outlets and social media for more than 200 beef-related topics. Hosted in Denver in a space that “looks like a military operations center combined with the TV section at an electronics retailer”, according to a recent Cattlemen’s Beef Board mailer sent to ranchers, the command center alerts members of NCBA’s issues management and media relations team whenever stories or online chatter rise above a certain threshold. It’s staffed 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, with personnel redundancies built in to make sure someone’s always watching.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/may/03/beef-industry-public-relations-messaging-machine
We don’t have to talk about this as a nebulous concept, there are groups that work to run progressives everywhere and they are currently seeing a surge in interest. We can get to work today
For instance, Run For Something supports progressives under 40 year-old both in primaries and general elections. They have had 26 thousand people sign up for them to run for local and state office since November alone. Jasmine Crockett came through the Run for Something pipeline, so this is not some hypothetical that doesn’t get results. They’ve gotten thousands of progressives elected at the local and state level, we can ramp that up. Consider running for state & local office yourself and encourage any progressive you know to run as well
Groups like Indivisible are also putting pressure on both Republicans and Dems and starting to get some degrees of success. For instance, they have gotten senate Dems to start using unanimous consent to slow down senate nominees like Russel Vought and RFK (they held the floor for the maximum 30 hours too)
You will always hear 10x more about the losses than the wins, but please know this is a fight we can win. There are people putting in the work and we can all join them
But EVs don’t even need more than one gear ratio because of how the motors…
What’s that? Musk designed it? Ah sounds about right, carry on
The overall reporting on this right now is kind of a mess. Most other outlets are disagreeing with the article and saying they will not vote for cloture (meaning will not let it pass the filibuster). But some others are saying the opposite
In any case, we ought to call our senators and keep the pressure up for them not to let it pass cloture. Call your senator and tell them to vote no not just on the bill but no on cloture. They have been getting a flood of calls and some senators are starting to publicly say they will explicitly not vote to pass cloture. Let’s make that pressure louder to make more of them to do the same
https://www.senate.gov/senators/senators-contact.htm