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During a rally in support of U.S. House candidate Summer Lee on Thursday, Sen. Bernie Sanders called out super PACs bankrolled by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and billionaire donors for spending big to crush progressives in Pennsylvania and elsewhere across the country, efforts that the Vermont senator decried as pathetic and corrosive to democracy.

If they are successful, they will carry this into November, Sanders warned at the event in Pittsburgh, which was held days before the May 17 Democratic primary in Pennsylvanias 12th Congressional District. They have billions of dollars at their disposal.

We need a strong progressive like Summer in the Congress, Sanders added. But honestly it is even more important that we tell these billionaires that we will not allow them to buy elections and control this democracy.

In recent weeks, the United Democracy Project (UDP) a super PAC that AIPAC founded late last year has spent more than $2 million attacking Lee or boosting her primary opponent Steve Irwin, a corporate lawyer and former Republican congressional staffer.

Billionaire Haim Saban, a longtime AIPAC supporter, is UDPs biggest individual donor.

Democratic Majority for Israel a super PAC with close ties to AIPAC has also been spending in support of Irwin fresh off its success in Ohios 11th Congressional District, where the group helped defeat progressive champion Nina Turner earlier this month.

These ads, paid for by AIPAC, are attacking Summer because shes not a loyal enough Democrat,' Sanders said Thursday, referring to a recent 30-second spot by UDP highlighting Lees past criticism of the Democratic Party. But what you should know is that this organization is funding over 100 Republican candidates.

So here you have a super PAC saying shes not a loyal Democrat while theyre endorsing over 100 Republicans, including many who even refuse to acknowledge that Joe Biden won the election, the Vermont senator continued. Talk about hypocrisy. Talk about a corrupt political system. And that is why Summer and so many of us are going to do everything that we can to put these super PACs out of business by overturning Citizens United.

Lee, too, slammed the special interests that are pouring money into Pennsylvanias 12th District in an attempt to undermine her campaign, which includes a platform of Medicare for All, a Green New Deal, and tuition-free public colleges and universities.

When people attack you or when they come for you, you must be doing something right, Lee, a current member of the Pennsylvania State House, said in a fiery speech to the crowd of supporters gathered in Pittsburgh Thursday night. But I want to be clear in this moment: Its not me theyre attacking Theyre worried about you. If they were in this room right now, they would not be able to stare us in the eyes.

If you are somebody in this country who cares about people, why would you want to stand in the way of healthcare for everybody? Lee continued. If you care about this country and you care about our party the way they say, why would they stand in the way of clean air and water? How dare they get in the way of us fighting for every worker to have a living wage and a union and paid sick and family leave.

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Sanders Slams AIPAC and Billionaires for Spending Millions Against Progressives - Truthout

Hardesty at an event on May 6th. (Photo: Jonathan Maus/BikePortland)

Despite a tsunami of outside funding to candidates running to the right of Portland City Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty, her popularity broke through and she took home 41% of the vote for her City Council seat.

Thats just one of the big headlines from last nights primary election.

Many observers thought the combination of voter outrage at the state of Portlands problems and an influx of money from a political action committee backing Hardestys opponent would do more damage to her chances. But Hardesty was all smiles at her election night gathering at Redwood Cafe on SE Stark and 79th where sources say the good vibes lasted well into the night.

With about 32% of ballots counted, Hardesty has 41% of the votes. Shell be in a runoff with either Rene Gonzalez or Vadim Mozyrsky, who are currently separated by only 879 votes. Gonzalez is currently at 24.2% and is barely edging out Mozrysky at 23.4%. There will be many opinions as to which challenger has a better chance of overtaking Hardesty in November. Gonzalez has been much more direct in his campaign against Hardesty and many of his views on key issues like policing (hes endorsed by the Portland Police Association) and housing are further to the right than Mozyrskys; but hes not nearly as well-funded.

In the other contested Portland city council race, incumbent Dan Ryan did what most people expected him to do. He handily overcame challenger AJ McCreary by a split of 58% to 25% and avoided a runoff.

Here are a few more thoughts and results from other races weve been watching closely:

Theres a lot more analysis and results still to come in, so stay tuned! The next update in the counts is scheduled for 6:00 pm today.

One last note about the results, counts in Clackamas County are going very slowly so we dont have a good picture of how that part of the region voted.

What struck you about last night? Are you happy? Hopeful? Sad? Despondent? Meh?

Jonathan Maus is BikePortlands editor, publisher and founder. Contact him at @jonathan_maus on Twitter, via email at maus.jonathan@gmail.com, or phone/text at 503-706-8804. Also, if you read and appreciate this site, please become a supporter.

Front Page, Politics election 2022

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Election recap: Hardesty holds onto over 40% of vote as progressives breath sigh of relief - BikePortland.org

Former Kentucky Rep. Charles Booker overwhelmingly won the states U.S. Senate Democratic primary on Tuesday, taking the progressive candidate one step closer to his goal of unseating far right Republican Sen. Rand Paul in November.

With about 97 percent of votes counted as of Wednesday morning, Booker has won over 73 percent of the votes in the state, beating out the next most popular candidate, Joshua Blanton, by over 60 points. Booker, a Black racial justice activist, ran on a platform of connecting the hood to the holler in other words, connecting the states urban and rural residents in unity.

The commonwealth of Kentucky has never had a Black person to be the top of the ticket, to be a major party nominee for U.S. Senate, Booker said in his acceptance speech on Tuesday night. If anybody tells you change is not possible, if anybody tells you that ceilings cant break, tell them, look at Kentucky.

Paul won the Republican nomination by a landslide, with over 86 percent of votes on Wednesday morning.

Polling has found that Paul has a strong chance of winning over Booker in the red state this fall; a Mason-Dixon Polling & Strategy poll from earlier this year found that 55 percent of those polled said theyd vote for the incumbent, while 39 percent said theyd vote for Booker. A far right politician, COVID denier and supporter of Donald Trumps attempted coup, Paul has been a U.S. senator since 2011, largely representing a capitalist libertarian viewpoint.

Booker ran on a progressive platform, supporting proposals like Medicare for All and calling for a Green New Deal. He has said that Kentucky voters have been inspired by racial justice movements in recent years and that there are opportunities to unite Kentuckians, regardless of race or residence, behind common goals.

Major unions and progressive organizations have endorsed Booker; when Booker ran to oust Sen. Mitch McConnell in 2020, he gathered endorsements from popular progressive lawmakers like Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York).

Democrats have historically had a hard time winning against Republicans in Kentucky. The last time the state had a Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate was in 1999, over 20 years ago.

In 2020, Amy McGrath an establishment-backed Democrat who spent millions to defeat Booker in the primary roundly lost to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who has been in office since 1985. McConnell won by nearly 20 points, despite the nearly $91 million spent on the race by McGraths campaign.

At the time, political reporters and progressives said that Booker could have won against McConnell, had the Democratic party establishment not lined up behind McGrath, who the Louisville Courier-Journal editorial board called unimaginative and uninspiring in their endorsement of Booker. Considering that Booker lost by only about 3 points to McGrath in that election despite having been outraised 50-to-1 in campaign funds was a show of the progressive appetite among Kentucky voters, analysts said.

This time around, as of the end of April, Paul has over $8 million on hand going into the general election campaign, while Booker has only around $470,000, according to OpenSecrets. The race will be closely watched. While Booker faces long odds, a triumph over Paul would be a huge win for the progressive wing of the Democratic Party.

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Progressive Charles Booker Wins Primary to Challenge Rand Paul in November - Truthout

By David M. GreenwaldExecutive Editor

Pushing back against the notion that Progressive Reform is in retreat, Philadelphia DA Larry Krasner during a forum said, We are winning. How much are we winning? Two years ago, 10 percent of the US population had a progressive prosecutor. It is now 20.1% of the US population.

He added, There is no political party in the United States that is as successful as the one youre looking at, which is the progressive prosecutor partyif you want to call us thatnobody can match that.

While San Francisco DA Chesa Boudin faces a recall vote next month and LA DA George Gascn is facing a recall drive, it is important to remember that these are only the latest attempts to thwart progressive prosecution and criminal justice reform.

Before them, both Kim Foxx of Cook County (Chicago), Illinois, and Larry Krasner of Philadelphia were elected and faced various efforts to push back. The four of them were part of a discussion on Tuesday about efforts to reform the criminal legal system.

The discussion was co-hosted by the LA Progressive and ACLU and moderated by LA Black Lives Matter Founder Melina Abdullah.

Krasner was one of the first of the wave of progressive prosecutors and the state has done everything to turn back the tide of reform. But even with a well-financed opponent backed by the police union, Krasner still prevailed with nearly two-thirds of the vote.

So what do they do when they cannot beat us in elections? Krasner asked. Number one, they try to end democracy because elections are not working for them. And number two, they recall, they recall George. They recall Chesa. They recall in Virginia, theyre doing it right now. Any state where they can do it, theyll do it.

What are they doing in Pennsylvania? he asked. Well, they tried to pass a bill to term limit me, which has already passed the Pennsylvania house. They tried to pass a bill to take away my cases, which has already passed in the Pennsylvania housewhat we are going to do in the future, because it doesnt seem to be working out any other way, is we are going to save democracy.

As he was speaking, his office was preparing to secure the election for one of the most watched primaries in the country on Tuesday.

He then said provocatively, The way that we are going to do it is somehow slowly were going to convince our colleagues in the Democratic Party that instead of running away from criminal justice reform, they better run at it and hug it as hard as they possibly can, because the reality is, Donald Trump knows how to turn out Duck Dynasty and a bunch of guys with long beards who want to kidnap people. And if Democrats dont stop acting like its the Clinton era and rejecting progressives and rejecting criminal justice reform, then they will not turn out the sensible and progressive and young and broke and Black and brown votes that they need to beat this bunch of fascists.

He said this starts with Chesa Boudin and George Gascn and our colleagues in Virginia who are being recalled as well.

He noted the nonsense Im facing and the nonsense Kim Foxx has faced from the very beginning.

He said, She (Kim Foxx) was outspent five to one, and she beat that bum by 20 percent. He said, The people want what we have and thats why other people are trying to steal away what the people want.

Krasner argued, The people are 100 percent with us. It is the institutions that are not ready to embrace, Its getting better, but its media. It is the mainstream political parties that should be supporting us. It is judges. Although that changes, you know, this is a great social justice movement. Like any other, it takes a few decades. Lets just say maybe 30 years. Were in a crucial part of that success, which is weve gotten to the point where they vigorously fight us.

He argued that they figured out that they cant beat us in the ballot box.

So what are they going to do now? he asked. Lets find a way for 15 people to cause a new election for Chesa. Thats what theyre trying to do.

He continued, saying it is absolutely essential that we not be back on our heels. The democratic party in the United States has been playing Republican light ever since at least bill Clinton, if not before that. People do not want Republican.

He predicted that John Fetterman would win the Democratic nomination for a key Senate seat.

This is a guy who is a political outsider in many ways, an anti-politician. He flew a flag with a marijuana leaf on it from the State Capitol as Lt. Governor, when everybody thought that was nuts, five, six years ago, he said. He is about to win by 30 points over the Clinton era candidate.

He said, And the reality is we have had to do this on our own. We have not always been kissed and embraced by the mainstream democratic party. Its one of the institutions that we have to modify. We have to change. Its just not immediate.

He predicted that both George (Gascn) and Chesa (Boudin) are going to get through it.

I believe in my heart that what is going to happen, is when the people get to say what they want to say, at the end of the day, theyre going to say, we wanted it, he said. This is part of the normal process of a social justice movement.

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Commentary: Krasner Offers a Fiery Defense of Reform and Progressive Prosecution, Pushing Back against the Recall - The Peoples Vanguard of Davis

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It's time that progressive politicians condemn left-wing extremist violence with the same lack of equivocation as most conservatives denounce right-wing extremism

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Former Conservative minister and senior RBC executive Michael Fortier and his family were asleep in their Montreal home at 1:30 a.m. on May 4, when he was woken by a neighbour banging on his drain pipe to warn him that the Jaguar and Land Rover parked in the driveway were on fire.

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The neighbours daughter had been studying for her final exams and saw the flames, alerting her parents. The warning allowed Fortier, his wife and three kids to get out of the house unscathed. One witness said someone could have died if the flames had engulfed the house.

The next day, surveillance footage showed two men pulling up on bikes, taking out a package and tossing it towards one car. They left as casually as if leaving an ice cream shop, said someone who saw the footage.

Responsibility for the attack was later claimed by anonymous extremists on the anarchist website MTL Counter-info, acting in the spirit of vengeance. They claimed to be supporting Wetsuweten land defenders trying to block the Coastal GasLink natural gas pipeline in B.C. As glaciers melt and drought, fire and famine spread, Mr. Fortier thinks that his money and connections will protect him, his children and grandchildren. But the ecologically-dispossessed will know the names of those responsible. He must understand that no one is safe amid the storm, it concluded.

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RBC has become the focus for a number of acts of vandalism smashed windows and spray paint on bank branches and the home of RBC Quebecs president even though it is only one of 20 or so lenders to Coastal GasLink.

But the attack on Fortiers home was a noticeable escalation. It invites the question: what will these furtive eco-warriors do for an encore? How far will they go to prove the point that no one is safe?

This is not the first time that left-wing extremists have targeted the Coastal GasLink pipeline. On Feb. 17, around 20 hooded figures cut the locks on a construction site near Houston, B.C., before threatening workers and causing millions of dollars of damage to heavy equipment. Video footage showed attackers wielding axes, hitting a truck with an employee inside and firing off flares. The RCMP said last week that it has made no arrests and has no updates on the incident.

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While horrific hate crimes such as the mass shooting in Buffalo have, rightly, focused attention on the scourge of right-wing extremism, ideologically motivated violence on the far-left is often characterized as legitimate protest, perhaps because there are lingering sympathies with its goals among progressives. But it is not acceptable or justifiable.

To be clear, research across Western countries indicates that the number of victims claimed by right-wing extremists and jihadists is far, far higher than those killed by the left. But as Teun van Dongen, a senior research fellow at the International Centre of Counter-Terrorism (ICCT), wrote recently: Fairness means we hold all forms of extremism to the same standards, not that we consider all forms of terrorism to be equally dangerous and harmful.

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While left-wing extremism may kill fewer people, assessments by law enforcement in Western countries consider the threat to be increasing and evolving. Germany, for example, recorded a record number of crimes committed by left-wing extremists in 2020. Notably, violence is increasingly directed toward people, rather than symbolic targets like buildings and vehicles.

A survey by the ICCT suggested left-wing terror attacks far outnumber attacks by jihadists and right-wing extremists, particularly in Germany and Greece, even while the number of victims is a fraction.

The concern is that left-wing websites are incubators for hate that in time might spawn similar levels of violence as the white supremacy online breeding grounds.

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The U.S.-based Network Contagion Research Institute noted that some anarcho-socialist websites use the kind of violent rhetoric and dehumanizing insults usually associated with jihadists and right-wing extremists.

In Canada, ideologically motivated violent extremism has been dominated by extreme anti-authority rhetoric that in the words of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service is often rooted in the weaponization of conspiracy theories. CSIS said it has observed a marked increase in violent threats to elected officials since the onset of the pandemic.

Statistics Canada said hate crimes in Canada rose by more than a third to 2,669 in the first year of COVID the largest number since comparable data became available in 2009.

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All reasonable people condemn the crimes committed against Black, Jewish, Indigenous and Asian populations by white supremacists.

But the same opprobrium should be awarded to anarcho-socialist violence, on the basis that all extremism should be held to the same standard.

As for the people the Montreal anarchists claim to be championing, many members of the five Wetsuweten bands, including elected chiefs and some hereditary chiefs, support the $6.2-billion pipeline and strongly resent the interference of outsiders who oppose it.

Im sick and tired of our people living off welfare were still living in poverty and people are just trying to work and make some money, said Theresa Tait Day, a hereditary sub chief. I ran into a few claiming to be land defenders coming to Smithers. I said go home, we dont need you here. But they did come and one even had a warrant out for their arrest.

Its time that progressive politicians condemn left-wing extremist violence with the same lack of equivocation as most conservatives denounce right-wing extremism.

Email: jivison@postmedia.com | Twitter: IvisonJ

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John Ivison: A banker's cars firebombed in the night and progressive politicians stay silent - National Post