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Momentums snappy social media campaigns gleaned millions of shares. Photograph: Bloomberg/Getty Images

Not so long ago, in the slur-filled era before this years election, Momentum, the grassroots group of supporters for Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, were routinely dismissed as armchair activists, cultish Trots, delusional young nafs, or some combination of the three. Now, media coverage of the group carries headlines such as How Momentum changed British politics for ever and How Momentum HQ perfected social media outreach.

The 24,000-member group didnt deserve those dismissive pre-election labels, but it has certainly earned the more recently positive ones. Credited with mobilising the youth vote, Momentums snappy social media campaigns gleaned millions of shares. The group also sent scores of campaigners some of them first-time canvassers into the countrys most marginal constituencies, helping to drive up support for Labour, house by house and street by street.

Using an online map of marginal seats as well as WhatsApp and phone banks to enlist and direct activists, the group transformed Labours canvassing game, helping to turn seats such as Canterbury, Sheffield Hallam, Derby North and Croydon Central into Labour wins. MPs who may once have criticised the group are now more enthusiastic, while Momentum organisers say that, since members and constituency campaigners worked so closely in the past six weeks, relations are more cordial. Those who were divided over past splits in the Labour party got to know each other and found that they got along.

Now, Momentum wants to build on the oh, lets just go with it momentum to militate against any complacency over Labours dramatic increase in voter share, now at 40%, or disillusion that the party nonetheless lost the election. Since the general election, the Labour party has gained 35,000 new members, while 1,500 have joined Momentum. With greater numbers, capacity and credibility, the task now is ensuring more activists join in and are election-ready because who knows how soon were going to have to do it all again.

But elections arent the only focus. For a start, Momentum wants to move away from the idea that political campaigning only takes place when votes are needed. It plans to engage in community action, whether thats voter registration campaigns or support for local causes, so that the group and, by extension, the Labour party, is organically active at grassroots level. Not to re-open old wounds and definitely not now the Labour party is united in support for its leader but this terrain might have been broached sooner, were it not for Momentum instead having to rally in support of Corbyn during last years leadership challenge.

In any case, such endeavours, however embryonic, have already begun. Last year, local Momentum groups started to collect and volunteer for food banks. Now, national organisers are looking at the possibility of running these independently, although the idea isnt to provide tinned beans bearing party slogans so much as to support local communities in tackling hardships also addressed by Labours political offer. At a time when so many have been terribly affected by the recession and Conservative austerity cuts, there are multiple social issues where Momentum could get involved.

The focus seems to be on harnessing the political engagement unleashed by Corbyns leadership and fostering unity among Labours different voter groups. This pursuit of collectivism, in the face of decades of rampant individualism, was always one of the more radical aspects of Corbyns leadership. It was in evidence throughout his campaign speeches, where he often spoke of societys many cohorts as one community, binding together groups young and old, black and white, nurses as well as builders and office workers that are more often encouraged to compete against each other in the current economy.

Momentum draws inspiration and cross-pollinates ideas with the leftwing Syriza party in Greece and Podemos in Spain, both of which were fed by practical, grassroots organising to counter the effects of crippling austerity cuts. In Greece, for instance, the social movements that ran health clinics, food banks and legal aid centres were the blood supply for the Syriza party now leading a coalition government. In the UK, Momentum is also looking at growing the information-sharing debates developed by the World Transformed, which launched parallel to the Labour party conference in Liverpool last year and hosts political events.

The intention is to convert social media clicks and shares into practical action: the demand for Momentums election campaign training and turnout on the doorstop has shown that there is a desire to get involved, given the means, confidence and skills to do so. Its also pretty much what grassroots democracy looks like a movement that chimes with and feeds into a viable political party. And its this combination a left wing effective both at parliamentary and community level that could help turn the Labour party into an unstoppable political force and propel it into power.

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Momentum's grassroots democracy can make Labour an unstoppable force - The Guardian

We begin with circle time, then move on to Leninist doctrine.

Photo illustration by Lisa Larson-Walker. Photo by Thinkstock.

Before I became a parent, this countrys lack of affordable, government-supported child care was something I thought about sympathetically every once in a while, in between long yoga classes and leisurely novel-reading. I always diagnosed this hole in our social services as a feminist issuethere arent publicly funded day cares because conservatives dont want women to work.

But a few weeks ago, as I negotiated a change in my baby daughters day care setup and inwardly raged against our countrys sorry support for child care, I suddenly remembered reading historian Nancy Cohens 2013 piece in The New Republic about the role of red-baiting in the failure to pass universal child care in the early 1970s. Do we really lack good, publicly funded preschools not only because some people think women should stay at home, but also because some people are afraid of Communism? Maybe! At the very least, the government-run day care services the Soviet Union provided have shadowed our efforts to get a version of the same in the United States.

The first Americans to think and talk about Soviet day care were leftist feminists in the 1920s, who praised it as an exciting innovation. The Bolsheviks believed that capitalism had created a new contradiction, felt most painfully by women, between the demands of work and the needs of family, historian Wendy Z. Goldman writes. Capitalism would never be able to provide a systematic solution to the double burden women shouldered. Services such as day care and communal kitchens and laundries were the Bolsheviks way of putting into practice Marx and Engels ideas about eliminating the oppressive structures of the bourgeois family. S. Ia. Volfson, a Soviet sociologist, wrote in 1929 that the traditional family will be sent to a museum of antiquities so that it can rest next to the spinning wheel and the bronze axe, by the horsedrawn carriage, the steam engine, and the wired telephone. Historian Julia Mickenberg writes in American Girls in Red Russia: Chasing the Soviet Dream that many American suffragists and New Women were drawn to the Soviet Union because it embodied a promise of the good life and explicitly included womens emancipation in that promise. (Disclosure: Mickenberg was one of my dissertation advisors.)

When American feminists visited the new nation in the 1920s, they wrote about what they saw in glowing terms. The Soviets set up day nurseries at a time when Americans would have known them only as charities operated to house poor children while their mothers worked. In a 1928 book, American visitor Jessica Smith described the day nurseries in glowing terms: Wide sunny rooms, rows of cribs with gay coverlets, play rooms with slides and chutes and steps to exercise tiny limbs, great colored blocks, pictures on the walls. Mothers could drop by to nurse their infants, and a sanitary kitchen with a trained dietician made the proper food for every age.

This beautiful dream of quality universal day careif it ever truly existedwent sour quickly. As Mickenberg writes, material shortages and deep-seated sexism within Russian society limited womens gains. By the middle of the 1930s, Goldman argues, the process of forced collectivization created fresh streams of homeless, starving children, and rapid industrialization subjected the family to new and terrible strains. Trying to get things back on track, leaders began to encourage Soviet women to return to the home, and female workers lost much of the ground they had gained in entering male-dominated fields. Workplace discrimination continued despite government regulations, and cuts in funding for day care followed.

During the same time period in the U.S., the Depression and then World War II forced a reimagining of mothers role in the economy. As more middle-class moms went to work, the idea that day care was a welfare service for desperately poor single mothers began to transform, historian Elizabeth Rose writes. The understanding had been that day care was simply custodial: a way to keep poor kids from cutting themselves with knives or falling out of windows while their mothers toiled at factories. Now, however, people started to think of day care as potentially educational or enriching. In this social climate, the Works Progress Administration created 1500 preschools, mainly as an employment scheme for teachers. These schools served 50,000 children between 1933 and 1943. It was the first time the government put money into early childhood care, with hopes that the successful pilot would lead to more permanent and extensive services. WPA nursery school leaders expected their program to lead to public preschools for all young children, historian Molly Quest Arboleda writes. During World War II, the Lanham Act funded child care centers (including some of the former WPA schools) that served as many as 1.5 million kids.

In the immediate postwar period, many women wanted to see the Lanham Act centers stay open. One activist fighting to keep public centers open in Philadelphia at the end of the war wrote to the Childrens Bureau: Weve won the bloodiest war in history, now lets win permanent Day Care for our children.

It was not to be. Molly Quest Arboleda found that many women involved in the WPA nursery schools, either as teachers or supporters, faced accusations of Communist sympathies. Susan B. Anthony II (the more famous Susans grandniece) came under investigation by the House Un-American Activities Committee for her work with the Congress of American Women, which had named the conversion of wartime day care centers into permanent social fixtures as one of its three main goals. Governor Thomas Dewey of New York called protestors asking him to keep child care centers open Communists. Elizabeth Rose found that many of those who wrote in to a Philadelphia Bulletin forum on publicly funded child care used anti-Communist language. One wrote, America is built on the bedrock of family ties and we refuse to imitate the Soviet Union, where 6,000,000 children are in such centers while the mothers are in forced labor camps.

The Soviet Unions child care system was indeed expanding and becoming more systematized. In 1956, wanting more women to enter the workforce, Nikita Khrushchevs regime started an early childhood education program that became an extensive network of kindergartens and nurseries. These day cares did (as American critics charged) de-emphasize parental involvement in childrens education, instead leaning on the theories of psychologists and pedagogues who were considered more up-to-date than parents. Psychologist Alison Clarke-Stewart writes that childrens activities in Soviet day cares were the most highly developed and uniform in the world, and that nothing was left to chance in the curriculumeverything was planned and specified, even the temperature. Children were taught industriousness, aesthetics, charactergroup awareness, problem solving, and creativity. Soviet day cares put a strong emphasis on cooperation and sharing, and as soon as they could talk, children weregiven training in evaluating and criticizing each others behaviors from the point of view of the group.

These readily available, sophisticated, but highly standardized day cares made an impression on Western visitors wary of Communist centralization and indoctrination. One such impression may have led to the downfall of a possible American equivalent to the Soviet day care system. The Comprehensive Child Development Act, which got through Congress in 1971 before being vetoed by Richard Nixon, would have created nationally funded child care centers providing early childhood services and after-school care, as well as nutrition, counseling, and even medical and dental care. The centers would charge parents on a sliding scale. But Pat Buchanan, as special assistant to the President, convinced Nixon to veto the plan.

Brigid Schulte interviewed Buchanan about this decision for her book Overwhelmed, and he told her hed visited the Soviet Union when the CCDA was being debated: We went to see the Young Pioneers, where these little kids four, five, and six years old were being instructed in Leninist doctrine, reciting it the way I used to recite Catechism when I was in the first grade, he said. Either this experience truly, deeply affected Buchanan, or perhaps he wantedas the bills sponsor Walter Mondale later wroteto use the issue to rally cultural conservatives and create a little maneuvering room to make the China trip. (If Nixon threw conservatives a bone in the matter of day care, he could more easily sell them his plan to normalize relations with Communist China.)

Whatever his motivation, Buchanan successfully influenced Nixon to inject anti-communist language into his veto. Our response to the challenge of child care must be a measured, evolutionary, painstakingly considered one, consciously designed to cement the family in its rightful position as the keystone of our civilization, Nixon wrote. For the Federal Government to plunge headlong financially into supporting child development would commit the vast moral authority of the National Government to the side of communal approaches to child rearing over against the family-centered approach.

When Mondale and his co-sponsor, Representative John Brademas, tried again in 1975, grassroots fundamentalists torpedoed the revised legislation. As Nancy L. Cohen writes, an anonymous flyer circulated widely in churches in the South and West, claiming that the legislation would give children fantastical rights to sue their parents and organize labor unions. Sally Steenland, director of the faith and progressive policy initiative at the Center for American Progress, said of the conversation over day care at the time: I remember seeing books with these really alarming pictures of state-funded nurseries in the Soviet UnionSwaddled infants tightly wrapped in rows of beds side by side, massive rows, and it was impersonal and supposed to be terrifying. And it was like: this is daycare. According to Cohen, Buchanans redwashing of day care was a political hijacking so fabulously successful it wiped away virtually any trace of its own handiwork.

When my friends and I bemoan our own child care conundrums, anti-communism is not the first thing we blame. But on the right, writers and pundits still invoke it to condemn the very concept of government-funded day care. Michele Bachmann, speaking on the floor of Congress in 2009, characterized President Obamas vision for child rearing as send that little baby off to a government day care center from the day that baby is born. A cheerily designed website called Daycares Dont Care features a history of day care that sports a clip-art hammer and sickle. It quotes a woman who spent most of her childhood in Communist Polands daycares: The assembly line time table, with everyone having to perform together on cueThe grubby, institutional food. The absence of real contact with adults, which meant that fights and squabbles were usually settled on the survival of the fittest principle. In the Federalist, political scientist Paul Kengor explicates the Marxist idea of the abolition of the family, describing the Soviet push to put kids in day care and the Supreme Courts support for same-sex marriage as equally radical measures. On the website of Concerned Women for America, a blog post asserts, True feminist ideology is steeped in Marxist thought. The government must redistribute wealth, control businesses to make them hire us, and even take on the responsibility of raising our children via government daycare for us to be equal.

Does it help to know that some of the mindset keeping us from having government-funded day care is anti-communism, in addition to simple anti-feminism? Im not sure. But Im still making phone calls to figure out how to cover my daughters care on Fridays! That part I'm sure about.

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Your Child Care Conundrum Is an Anti-Communist Plot - Slate Magazine (blog)

Benjamin writes, "Missouri Governor Eric Greitens has called for a special session to basically make Saint Louis less of a 'sanctuary city' for those seeking abortion. This special session will lead to some pretty hefty taxpayer expense, of course, and has faced some opposition. In an inexplicable turn of events, this has lead to state Representative Mike Moon [R-Ash Grove] [@realmikemoon, +1 573-751-4077, Mike.Moon@house.mo.gov] a member of the Tea Party, to literally slaughter/Indiana Jones de-heart a live chicken, on video. Because, abortion."

"Like any good career politician, when I get the call, I go back to work," Moon says, snapping the animal's neck. "God gave man dominion over animals. He allows us to raise them properly, care for them, and then process them for food so we can sustain life. And thats what Im doing here with this chicken."

As he talks, Moon is chopping up the bird. He digs in, pulling out its organs as he continues: "So weve been called back to this special session for the primary purpose of supporting life, protecting the unborn specifically."

Then he goes for the heart.

"I think we need to get to the heart of the matter here," Moon says, holding the heart out to the viewer. (Ewww!!!) "So today, Im filing a bill that will lead to the stopping of abortion in the state of Missouri, and I hope youll support it. So stay tuned for more details."

Missouri Legislator Decapitates Live Chicken on Facebook Because Abortion [Sarah Fenske/Riverfront Times]

In Washington today, a bizarre development that breaks with years of political and press tradition. This cant have anything to do with their secret plan to take away health care, could it?

Greg Gianforte is a short-tempered, hyper-conservative Montana political hopeful who is standing for the GOP in a special election for a Congressional seat; he is also invested in Russian firms that are under US sanction.

The best way to fight gerrymandering is to prove to courts that electoral districts have been unfairly formed, a tactic thats been used successfully in places like North Carolina; but for this to work, you need good demographic data to show that the district is unfair, and for that, you need an accurate census.

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Missouri Tea Party rep responds to abortion controversy by slaughtering chicken because "God gave man dominion ... - Boing Boing

The Indivisible Guidehas become a 26-page must-read for people looking to oppose President Trumps agenda. The guide which has been viewed or downloaded more than 2 million times, according to the organization also offers a supplemental section on how to demand copies of Trumps tax returns.

Is Trump colluding with Russia or enriching himself off the presidency? Until we see Trumps tax returns, we cannot be certain that foreign governments dont have leverage over Trump that can be used to influence American policy, saysthe supplement.

Yet this progressive political organization which is founded and staffed by former congressional staffers has not disclosed where its money is coming from.

The California Report requested financial statements and donor lists for the group. Indivisible spokespeople told us theyve raised more than $2.2 million from 30,000 individual donations since they started accepting donations in January, including some foundation money and dollars from high net worth individuals. They declined repeated requests to name any of these individuals.

Nonprofit organizations often cite privacy concerns as a reason to not disclose their donor lists, and Indivisible says it is no different. Angel Padilla, a former Democratic congressional staffer and one of the founders of Indivisible, saidthose privacy concerns arethe only thing stopping Indivisible from releasing the names of its donors.

Sarah Bryner, research director for the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonprofit that tracks money in politics, saidIndivisible has no legal obligation to disclose its donors if it doesnt run election ads supporting or opposing a particular candidate. Indivisible hasnt done that yet, but it is set up as a 501(c)(4), adesignation that allows the organization toengage in political activity, so long as that is not its primary activity.

If theyre trying to influence election outcomes, we feel like people should know about whos funding those efforts, said Bryner. But theres also the question of privacy for donors, and if theyre not spending money in such a way that they would be influencing those election outcomes, then generally people defer towards protecting that privacy.

TheOrigin Story

On election night, Padilla, one of the groups founders, was hanging out with friends and other former congressional staffers, expecting to watch the first femalepresident get elected.

Watching the forecasting flip throughout the course of the night was a traumatic experience, said Padilla.

In the following days, asTrumps victory began to set in, and progressives in California and across the country started planning their resistance, Padilla and his friends realized they could play a unique role.

We, as former staffers, realized that weve kind of been through this before but on the flip side, he said. We were on the Hill when Obama was first elected, when Congress was controlled by Democrats, and we saw how organized local activism was able to slow down much of the Obama agenda.

These staffers had seen the rise and success of the Tea Party and thought they could use thosetactics local activism and defensive politics to accomplish the same thing, but on the other end of the political spectrum. The goal: stymie Trump and take back Congress.

They put together a public Google document with insider tips forinfluencing members of Congress, which eventually morphed into the 26-page Indivisible Guide and ultimately the fully fledged nonprofit organization helping local groups organize against the Trump presidency.

Like us, you probably deeply disagree with the principles and positions of the Tea Party, the founders wrote in their guide. But we can all learn from their success in influencing the national debate and the behavior of national policymakers.

Tea Party of the Left

As the Tea Party gained power and national recognition, many started asking who was funding what appeared to be a grass-roots movement. Multiple media organizations dug into the groups financesand reported that Americans for Prosperity a conservative political advocacy group founded by billionaire Republican mega-donors David and Charles Koch had been working with and supporting the Tea Party from its inception.

So what about Indivisible? Who are they getting their money from?

Last month, the group published its fundraising philosophy, which is centered on four guiding principles: a focus on small donations; diversified funding sources; only accepting funds from those who support and uphold our progressive values; and making fundraising thesecondary focus to supporting local chapters.

We wont take money from an organization that we dont think is a progressive organization, said Padilla. If there are things they might be involved in that we disagree with, we wont take their money.

The group also says it wont take money from political parties, leaders or candidates to avoid any appearance of influence on our strategy, said Padilla. That includes Hillary Clinton, who sent an email to her supporters last month announcing the formation of her new political group and naming Indivisible, among other groups, as an organization it planned to financially support.

Padilla saidIndivisible was thankful to be recognized by Clinton, but would not be accepting donations from Clintons group or asking for donor lists from her, the Democratic Party or other elected officials.

We didnt want it to seem like we were getting money directly from Hillary Clinton, he said. We wanted to make sure to everyone that we are maintaining our independence.

Independent or Institution?

But the Tea Party, the group that Indivisible hopes to emulate, doesnt buy the talk of independence.

You didnt see Karl Rove or John Boehner or Mitch McConnell embrace the Tea Party like youre seeing Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer and the Democratic Party [embrace Indivisible], saidTaylor Budowich, executive director of the Tea Party Express, one of the most successful national Tea Party organizations. If there was some sincere organic nature to [Indivisible], its been from day one co-opted by the major Democratic and left institutions.

Budowich finds the talk of Indivisible being the Tea Party of the left and copying his groups tactics silly, he said. It was hisgroups message lower taxes and less government regulation that resonated with voters and got them engaged, according to Budowich, as opposed to any specifictactics.

He is open, though, to the possibilitythat Indivisible could succeed like the Tea Party has and saidits doing a good job of knocking on doors, protesting town halls and raising money. But he arguesits ties to the Democratic Party establishment make it fundamentally different from the Tea Party.

We control literally every branch of government, and weve redefined what the Republican Party is, said Budowich, of the Tea Party. So, in many ways, this grass-roots movement has co-opted an institution. That cant happen with this movement on the left, because its already the same thing.

The Next Step in a Strategy

Indivisible founder Padilla saidtheir group is in a stronger position now than the Tea Party was at this point eight years ago, citing better-than-expected results for Democratic challengers in special elections to fill seats in traditionally Republican congressional districts.

But Budowich pointedout that Democrats have failed to win any of those seats, while Tea Party-supported Republican Scott Brown surprised many by winning the open U.S. Senate seat in Massachusetts in 2010.

To achieve a similarvictory, Indivisible would likely have to continue its imitation of the Tea Party by endorsing candidates for office which brings it back to the question of political funding.

Right now, it seems like were talking mostly about a grass-roots organization that hasnt started doing that kind of electioneering yet, saidBryner, of the Center for Responsive Politics. If they were to do that, then yes, that [donor] information would need to become public.

Indivisible is currently formulating an electoral strategy that it hopes will replicate the Tea Partys success in getting like-minded candidates into office. The group hired Maria Urbina, who used to work for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, to be itspolitical director and create a plan.

That strategy and how far Indivisible chooses to stepinto the electoral arena will ultimately determine how much financial information needs to be made public.

See the article here:
Who's Funding the Anti-Trump Movement? We Don't Know - KQED

KYIV -- A Belarusian man who was one of the first protesters killed during the Euromaidan protests in Kyiv in 2014 has been posthumously awarded a Hero of Ukraine medal.

President Petro Poroshenko handed the medal to Mikhail Zhyzneuski's parents in Kyiv on June 13, making him the first foreigner awarded the high honor.

Poroshenko thanked the parents for raising a man he hailed as "a hero who was a great Belarusian and a great Ukrainian in his heart."

"He gave his life for our and your liberty," Poroshenko said at the ceremony.

The protests erupted late in 2013, after President Viktor Yanukovych scrapped plans for a landmark pact with the European Union and vowed to strengthen trade ties with Russia instead.

Zhyzneuski and another protester Serhiy Nihoyan, a Ukrainian of Armenian origin, were shot dead in central Kyiv on January 22, 2014.

A third protester, Roman Senyk, was severely wounded that day and died three days later.

As the number of protesters shot by snipers or killed in clashes with police grew, the victims became known as the Heavenly Hundred.

Yanukovych abandoned power in February 2014 in the face of mounting protests and fled to Russia, while a Western-oriented government was ushered in in Kyiv.

Russia reacted by seizing the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine and fomenting anti-Kyiv unrest in eastern Ukraine, where the ensuing war between Russia-backed separatists and government forces has killed more than 10,000 people.

Zhyzneuski's mother, Nina Zhyzneuskaya, told RFE/RL that the award was important to her and her husband and gave them a sense of "closure."

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Belarusian Killed On Kyiv's Maidan Honored As Hero Of Ukraine - RadioFreeEurope/RadioLiberty