NOTES News ACT Letters

IN THIS SECTION BLM10 ACT Letters (sometimes the dates of the letters are approximate) 2020/10/06 on foreign influence in elections    2020/09/15 voting fraud/illegal alien vote harvesting in California 2020/09/21 replacing Ruth Bader Ginsburg,  etc… See also: BLM1-23 List of Topics Notes Notes - Personal - Black Lives Matter   Black Lives Matter input from bulk of #1 News/#2 Personal Notes Jews/Israelis -Warning about their possible biases in news articles  --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Open Leftist Threats That Political Terror Is Coming To America Whether Trump Wins Or Not By Stella Morabito The Federalist Many leftists have directed some deeply disturbing rhetoric at conservatives and Trump supporters in recent months, claiming President Trump’s bombast is responsible for the political polarization of today’s America. This is pure nonsense. Sure, Trump talks about MS-13 as “animals,” Antifa as “thugs,” and Hillary Clinton as crooked enough to “be in jail.” His supporters know his presentation to be a bombastic and theatrical schtick, but he never threatens any group of voters. By contrast, some ominous tones, even homicidal and terrorist tones, are coming from the mainstream left. Increasingly, through mainstream media and Big Tech, high-profile leftists are speaking openly about violence to be inflicted on Trump and all his supporters. I’m not talking specifically about the Antifa and Black Lives Matter street violence we’ve seen in places like Denver and Portland, which includes outright murders of Trump supporters. I’m referring here to voices that normalize and promote open terror against any freedom-respecting person who has different views from those blessed by left- wing leaders, media, and Big Tech. Seven examples are included below. 1. A Think Tank Guy Should Meet…A Firing Squad First, in a chilling Twitter incident, agitator Nils Gilman called for the execution of journalist and former Trump adviser Michael Anton. Gilman publicly stated, “Michael Anton is the Robert Brasillach of our times and deserves the same fate.” Brasillach was a Nazi collaborator in France whose fate was execution by firing squad. Neither Gilman nor Twitter took down the tweet, despite many protests, including a public letter of grave concern from the Claremont Institute, where Anton is a senior fellow. Gilman Gilman is head of the George Soros-funded Berggruen Institute and a co-founder of the “Transition Integrity Project,” which war-gamed the ouster of Trump from office regardless of whether he wins re-election. Anton’s crime, in Gilman’s mind, was publishing an article about Gilman’s project in the American Mind, titled “The Coming Coup.” Why is Gilman’s Sept. 21 death threat against Anton still up on Twitter an entire month later? Will it remain up after the election? 2. Shoot This CEO For Not being Woke Enough Second, former Twitter CEO Dick Costolo objected to the company Coinbase’s decision to ease up on forcing employees to engage in social justice agendas such as critical race theory. Costolo accused Coinbase’s CEO Brian Armstrong of being among the “me-first capitalists” who would be the first lined up and “shot in the revolution.” Costolo, who has 1.5 million Twitter followers, added that he would “happily provide video commentary” of the executions. The tweet has disappeared, although there is no mention of it being deleted. One response comes with a screenshot though: Costolo 3. If Trump Loses, His Supporters Remain ‘An Existential Threat’ Third, if the Democrats take over the reins of power — in an election, a coup, or a bought-and-paid-for “color revolution” — what happens to those who have supported Trump? Take a look at this Aug. 1 Salon article, which argues that even if Biden wins, Trumpism “will survive the election and continue to be an existential threat.” Author Paul Rosenberg examines the arguments in writings by John Feffer and other anti-Trump pundits who believe there is a lot of work to be done to force the “de-trumpification” of America. They compare Trump supporters to Nazis or the Baathists of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and describe America under Trump as a “pathocracy.” Rosenberg cites Feffer, who says the solution is “to drain the swamp Trump created, bring criminal charges against the former president and his key followers, and launch a serious campaign to change the hearts and minds of Americans who have been drawn to this president’s agenda.” He even brings up the Nuremberg trials as instructive, trials that resulted in death sentences for 37 Nazis. That isn’t good enough, however, according to Feffer. It’s important to go after “low-level participants” to root out Trumpism. It recommends enforcing this changing of “hearts and minds” so that there is “an attitudinal shift that could lead to lasting transformation.” This is not a far cry from re-education camps and coercive thought reform. The formula appears to be threefold and on a large scale, “the scale on which we need to be thinking,” according to the Salon article. First, divide the so-called redeemable Trump supporters from those intent on keeping America great. Second, send those who are problematic to virtual education camps. Third, stomp out all the ideas the power elites don’t like. In the same vein, former Labor Secretary Robert Reich, who has 1 million Twitter followers, recommended that a “Truth and Reconciliation Commission” be established to rid the nation of Trumpism. Robert Reich 4. Prosecute Everyone Who Supported Trump Fourth, former MSNBC host Keith Olbermann recently ranted that everyone associated with Trump, including his enablers and supporters, must be “prosecuted and convicted and removed from our society.” To many, Olbermann might seem to be a has-been, but he has nearly 1 million Twitter followers. He represents the viewpoint of many in the propaganda media that control more than 90 percent of the megaphones. Olbermann referred to Trump supporters as “maggots” who needed to be chased from the stage. 5. Trump Supporters ‘Must Be Eradicated From Society’ Fifth, on Aug. 4, 2019, a supposed religious scholar and CNN contributor Reza Aslan announced on Twitter — a tweet still up as of Oct. 22 — that all Trump supporters “must be eradicated from society” along with Trump, and that there is “no longer any room for nuance.” Aslan has nearly 300,000 followers. His extremely defamatory and threatening tweet reads verbatim: “The President is a white nationalist terror leader. His supporters — ALL OF THEM — are by definition white nationalist terror supporters. The MAGA hat is a KKK hood. And his evil, racist scourge must be eradicated from society.” Tweet 6. Openly Attacking Members of Congress Sixth, the organized violence against guests at the Republican National Convention as they left the White House in August showed new levels of open hostility against the right. Most notably, the mob swarmed Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., and his wife, who were convinced they would have been severely injured or killed if there were no police presence. This represents a ramping up of the Antifa and Black Lives Matter attempt to normalize extreme violence against any perceived political opponent. Agitators even set up a mock guillotine on the spot with an effigy of Trump in it. 7. Plots to Dox Political Opponents Seventh, the left is now using doxing tools to invite widespread targeting of Trump voters. A recently unveiled database called “The Media Manipulation Casebook” is described as a means of gathering personal information that exposes anonymous Trump supporters. NBC News reporter Brandy Zadrozny appears to use it to find “addresses, property records … even Amazon wish lists” that can be a “goldmine for learning about what a person reads, buys, and wants.” At the same time, open-source materials, such as donations tracked by the Federal Election Commission, are being used to invite the targeting of Trump donors, either by name or address on a hostile site. The information can be used much like the Southern Poverty Law Center’s “hate map,” which triggered the attempted murders at the Family Research Council and the GOP baseball practice. Terror Is Predictably Increasing Examples of hostilities toward Trump supporters abound. Many are connected to the potential for violence should Trump win re-election. As the examples above show, however, the threat of terror is even greater should he lose. If Democrats gain control of the White House and other branches, the left has spoken openly of their intent to punish a huge swath of Americans with a program that threatens to cancel them, impose thought-reform programs on them, and worse. How far will this go? Members of the domestic terror organization Weather Underground, headed up by 1960s radical Bill Ayers, explained some 50 years ago that when “the revolution” came, a lot of Americans would have to be located to education camps. This sounds eerily like what Reich and others are now proposing after they oust Trump. Weather Underground members said that those who didn’t comply despite re-education, which they estimated would include about 25 million Americans, would have to be eradicated, as in killed. Of course, that could never happen here, right? Just remember that history is littered with societies filled with decent, normal people who descended into chaos and murder, often incited by propaganda from a heavily controlled media. However unlikely this seems, we must pay close attention to these patterns so we don’t repeat some of the darkest days of history. October 6, 2020 from email Make no mistake, foreign influence in our elections is indeed a bad thing. The biggest threat to our electoral integrity comes not from Russians, but from allowing illegal aliens to affect congressional apportionment.  Absent President Trump’s recent order, states can increase their number of representatives in Congress if they have more illegals aliens. More representation means more political clout in Washington and more ability to direct federal dollars home to those states.  And when millions of illegal aliens are concentrated in just a few states, counting them gives political power to foreign nationals who choose to come here in violation of our laws, and takes power from Americans by diluting their votes. One can easily see the noxious incentive that creates for states: flood your state with illegal aliens and reap the political and financial rewards.   More representatives in Congress also means more votes for a state in the Electoral College. Another reward for encouraging foreign nationals to violate our immigration laws is to receive more importance in presidential elections. This is not the policy of a country that wants to be sound and prosperous for the long term. President Trump’s apportionment order raises another question: is there any founding principle of this country we are not prepared to abandon? Americans are not united by their DNA, but by our belief in uniquely American ideas such as the Bill of Rights and that we are endowed with those rights by a Creator, not government. That is why we have taught these concepts to our children from an early age.  Those who apply for U.S. citizenship legally are similarly required to learn about America’s history and its commitment to individual liberty. Foreign nationals here illegally, by contrast, have none of that grounding. They often come from countries run by oppressive dictatorships where the United States is despised. An oppressive nanny state is often all they know and expect from government. Unscrupulous politicians see these people as gullible marks whose votes can be purchased with the promise of a utopia that can never exist. That is precisely why such politicians are staunchly opposed to any measure that restricts illegal aliens from our electoral process.  Electoral integrity is one of the vital pillars upon which our country stands. To abandon it in the name of political correctness and the quest to consolidate political power is to set our country on a downward spiral from which it may never recover. At that point we will be no better than the authoritarian, corrupt and poverty-stricken states from which many prospective immigrants flee.  This is a battle worth fighting. Few other issues are as important. Let us not forget our history when we need it most. 2020/09/30 Hard Copy letter dated September 15, 2020 ACT has mailed a letter indicating vote fraud in California; using illegal aliens who are paid to vote illegally.  ACT is suggesting people watch for this across the board. Excerpt from letter: I need to alert you to an election scandal that gets no coverage in the media.  Recently, a friend told me about a devious scheme the Radical Left has used to buy votes for illegal aliens and defeat conservative candidates.  Leftist “community organizers” were going through urban neighborhoods in Southern California - inhabited by mostly immigrants who speak little or no English - and paying them $15 each for their vote! ACT has epeatedly warned against the mail-in ballot system, as well. 2020/09/21 An Argument for Filling Ginsburg’s Seat Immediately By Frank Salvato In the aftermath of the death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, tensions on both sides of the aisle are high. With a hotly contested General Election just weeks away, some in the pundit/activist spheres, conditioned by the acceptance of civil unrest in our urban areas, are calling for acts of violence should President Trump nominate his pick to fill the vacancy on the bench. The problem with this, besides the obvious, is that Mr. Trump has no choice but to deliver his nomination to the Senate for confirmation unless he is to be irresponsible to the nation’s needs and the Constitution’s mandates. In an array of tweets, several self-important personalities issued violent threats against the country should the President and the Senate actually do their constitutional duties:   “If they even TRY to replace RBG we burn the entire f-----g thing down” and “Over our dead bodies. Literally,” tweeted Reza Aslan, an Iranian-born CNN host, born-again Islamist, and author.   “F--k no. Burn it all down,” tweeted Aaron Gouveia, author of Raising Boys To Be Good Men: A Parent's Guide to Bringing Up Happy Sons in a World Filled with Toxic Masculinity and Father who defended his 5-year old son’s right to wear fingernail polish.   “We’re shutting this country down if Trump and McConnell try to ram through an appointment before the election,” tweeted Beau Willimon, a former aid to John Dean’s failed Senate bid and screenwriter who pilfered the idea for House of Cards from the British version.   “Burn Congress down before letting Trump try to appoint anyone to SCOTUS,” tweeted Emmett Macfarlane, a Canadian professor at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada.   If you are disturbed by the level of hatred, aggression, and complete disregard to the rule of law and the US Constitution then you haven’t been paying attention to what has been going on in the whole of America’s urban centers for the past six months. But what both the foreign nationals and the US citizens noted above do not understand, for their constitutional illiteracy, is that there are two pressing reasons why Justice Ginsburg’s seat needs to be filled before the November election. First and foremost, the country needs a full compliment on the US Supreme Court should there be any contest to the election results this November the likes of Bush v. Gore in 2000. A deadlocked 4-to-4 decision regarding the election of a president would send a fireball of violence into the streets of our nation, not to mention dismantle continuity of government. With our nation as divided as it is, we would almost assuredly devolve into a Second US Civil War. But more important is that the President and the US Senate are mandated by the US Constitution to execute the workings of government. The moment a vacancy is created it is mandated that the process of filling that vacancy begin. The bad precedent that politicians have set in elongating this process is just that: bad precedent. Article II, Section 2 of the US Constitution states, in part:   “[The President] shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur; and he shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by Law...”   As you can see, nowhere in this Article, or anywhere else in the US Constitution, does it call for a period of mourning, an exception in an election year, or a hiatus due to an impending election. The US Constitution simple vests the authority and mandates its execution. Just as when the vice president is immediately sworn in as president when a president is tragically taken from us, so too is it necessary to immediately begin the process of filling vacancies in every other constitutional branch of office and especially in the face of a critical national election. The execution of these constitutional duties is not a sign of disrespect for the recently passed, it's a mandated exercise in continuity of government, and that is government's obligation to its people. Politicians would love to drag out the filling of Justice Ginsburg's seat on the bench for political reasons; to suit their political agendas. Activists, Marxists revolutionaries, and ideologues would relish the elongation of the process in hopes that Mr. Trump loses his re-election bid so that Biden (or Harris) might nominate someone approved by the group-think, oligarchic elite of the Marxist-Progressive Left, the cabal that controls all things Democrat. But politics is not government. Let me say that again. Politics is not government. We all have gotten so used to mistaking political acts for acts of government that we have become accepting of the falsehood that the political parties have any legitimacy in the execution of government. We have been duped into believing that politics is government, but politics is not -- and never should have been -- a component of government. The shrieks of the political class who threaten retribution are the sounds of ideologues threatening the US Constitution. Politics and political operatives hold no sway over the mandates of the US Constitution. And while the Sen. Schumers and Speaker Pelosis of the Left talk about a period of mourning, that mourning must happen simultaneously with the execution of government, which means the seating of a ninth US Supreme Court justice prior to a national election. President Washington warned us in his farewell address that politics would be the ruin of the Republic. So far, his warning has been both spot on and ignored. Where some would say the enemy is inside the gates, I put it to you that the enemy is, in fact, elected to office. 2020/09/18 Sabra v. Maricopa County Comm. College Dist. Excerpt from letter A WIN directly below: The fact that CAIR is taken seriously as a Muslim "human rights " or "civil rights" group by such media outlets as the New York Times and the Washington Post as well as the ACLU and many Democratic lawmakers is a slap in the face to authentic human rights groups. CAIR was created in 1994 to be a part of a Muslim Brotherhood-run Hamas support network, and it was named an un-indicted co-conspirator in the Hamas money laundering trials of the top officials of the Holy Land Foundation. It has a long record of supporting and rationalizing Islamic terrorism as well as making anti-Semitic comments. A WIN FOR FREEDOM OF SPEECH AGAINST ISLAMIC “CANCEL CULTURE” by Steven Emerson IPT News Long before the term "cancel culture" was ever coined, Islamist groups in the United States and elsewhere in the West had embarked on a massive campaign to suppress freedom of speech on campus, in the media, in Hollywood, and in the book publishing industry by claiming that any mention of the term radical Islam or any of its evil concepts was a "racist slur" against the Islamic religion. But something happened to the successful campaign of intimidation by the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR). A federal judge last month dismissed CAIR's latest attempt to censor discussion of links between Islamic doctrine and terrorism at Arizona's Scottsdale Community College (SCC). As we reported in June, the lawsuit sought "an injunction against the Maricopa Community College District, which SCC is part of, and Professor Nicholas Damask to block use of course materials deemed to 'have the primary effect of disapproving of Islam.'" Even if this were an accurate summary of Professor Damask's course materials, which it was not, it is not illegal in the United States to disapprove of Islam or any other religion. Yet SCC student Mohamed Sabra took exception to these three questions on one of Damask's exams, and CAIR wanted to block the use of such material. The offending questions and answers were: Q. Who do terrorists strive to emulate? A. Mohammed Q. Where is terrorism encouraged in Islamic doctrine and law? A. The Medina verses [i.e., the portion of the Qur'an traditionally understood as having been revealed later in Muhammad's prophetic career] Q. Terrorism is _______ in Islam. A. justified within the context of jihad. Sabra's lawsuit asserted that "the only objectively reasonable construction of Damask's actions is that his primary message is the disapproval of Islam. Damask's module quiz forced Sabra to agree to his radical interpretation of Islam. When Sabra did not, he was penalized by getting the questions wrong and impacted his grade." These questions and answers cannot reasonably be construed as denigrating Islam, as the fact that Islamic terrorists refer to their understanding of Islamic teachings to justify their particular actions is widely known, and nowhere does Damask assert that this is the only possible understanding of Islamic teachings, or that all Muslims believe the same things. The lawsuit was an attempt to stigmatize any discussion of how terrorists use Islamic texts, and to foreclose upon any possibility of understanding their perspectives, motives and goals. Defining Jihad The lawsuit also took issue with Damask's use of terrorism and Middle East expert Walid Phares's book, Future Jihad. Phares, according to the lawsuit, is an "Islamophobe" and should not be taught. "Within this mandatory reading assignment," the lawsuit states, "Phares explains that jihad is not a 'spiritual phenomenon that would be and was abused by extremist ideologies,' but rather a call for physical action. Damask failed to articulate that other more acceptable, and in fact 'mainstream' views of jihad have nothing to do with violence, but instead he improperly urged students to accept his personal opinions." Phares, however, pointed out that "the [Muslim] Brotherhood scholars read terrorism differently than the U.S. The Brotherhood and CAIR [are] trying to impose a vision of their own on all Muslims in America." In fact, numerous Islamist scholars and leaders, including Muslim Brotherhood founder Hassan al Banna, Osama bin Laden mentor Abdallah Azzam, and 13th century scholar Ibn Taymiyya have insisted that there is only one meaning to jihad – "fighting" to impose Islam. According to al Banna: "In [Muslim] Tradition, there is a clear indication of the obligation to fight the People of the Book [that is, Jews and Christians], and of the fact that God doubles the reward of those who fight them. Jihad is not against polytheists alone, but against all who do not embrace Islam." "It has become an individual obligation, which there is no evading, on every Muslim to prepare his equipment, to make up his mind to engage in jihad, and to get ready for it until the opportunity is ripe and God decrees a matter which is sure to be accomplished." Ibn Taymiyya (1263-1328) directed that "since lawful warfare is essentially jihad and since its aim is that the religion is God's entirely and God's word is uppermost, therefore according to all Muslims, those who stand in the way of this aim must be fought." During a visit to Brooklyn in the late 1980s, the leader and founder of the Afghan Jihad Abdallah Azzam stated, "The word jihad has a special meaning, every time it is mentioned in the Quran and Sunna. That meaning is fighting." CAIR's lawsuit failed. On Aug. 18, UCLA Law Professor Eugene Volokh broke the news about U.S. District Court Judge Susan M. Brnovich's ruling, which Volokh hailed as "an important victory for academic freedom; professors, including those at public colleges, have to be able to speak freely about religious belief systems (whether Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, or anything else), no less than other belief systems." The College Fix, which had provided excellent coverage of the entire controversy from the beginning, reported that Brnovich "used the Lemon test to determine the course did not violate First Amendment provisions on free exercise or the establishment of religion. The test states that government actions toward religion are only lawful if they have a secular purpose, do not advance or inhibit a religion, and do not become excessively entangled with religion in any way." In her ruling, Brnovich observed that "this case tests the limits of the First Amendment's Religion Clauses." It is hard to understand CAIR's claim that this course had anything to do with the First Amendment at all: that amendment does not specify the content of any religious belief. But CAIR and Sabra claimed that Damask's course crossed a Constitutional line by saying that Islam "'mandates' terrorism and the killing of non-Muslims." Because of that, Sabra claimed that Damask's course forced him to choose between giving the answer Damask considered correct, and thereby denouncing his own religion, or getting a lower grade. No Coercion But Brnovich found that Sabra only had to "demonstrate an understanding of the material taught." She said that it was "simply not correct" that Sabra would have gotten a lower grade for affirming his Islamic faith. Neither was Sabra required to agree with the authors whom Damask cited. All Sabra had to do, Brnovich wrote, was "demonstrate an understanding of the material taught." The judge also concluded that Damask's course didn't prevent Sabra from exercising his religion. All it did was expose Sabra to "attitudes and outlooks at odds" with his own understanding of Islam. That is not a violation of the First Amendment. Brnovich also pointed out that CAIR and Sabra had misstated the function of Phares's work in Damask's course. CAIR and Sabra had claimed that students were forced to adopt Phares's view of Islam. But the work "merely asks students to identify the opinion of Walid Phares regarding Islam," Brnovich found, "not to adopt his position on Islam." This case marks the latest in a long line of CAIR efforts to remove material it considers derogatory against Islam. It entered into a formal partnership in 2010 with the 57-nation global Organization of Islamic Cooperation's (OIC) Islamic Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (ISESCO) to "redress the image of Islam and Muslims in textbooks." Like CAIR, the OIC condemns connecting Islamic doctrine and terrorism in the minds of Westerners, claiming that such a connection is "unfair" and that it has "created an unfair misinterpretation of the Islamic message in the Western and Non Muslim worlds." "Education and engagement are key to challenging the growing phenomenon of Islamophobia," CAIR co-founder and Executive Director Nihad Awad said at the 2010 OIC conference. The SCC lawsuit, however, demonstrates the baseless foundations of these Islamophobia claims: apparently Awad and his cohorts see any material they find objectionable as "Islamophobic" and demand their removal from curricula. The fact that CAIR is taken seriously as a Muslim "human rights " or "civil rights" group by such media outlets as the New York Times and the Washington Post as well as the ACLU and many Democratic lawmakers is a slap in the face to authentic human rights groups. CAIR was created in 1994 to be a part of a Muslim Brotherhood-run Hamas support network, and it was named an un-indicted co-conspirator in the Hamas money laundering trials of the top officials of the Holy Land Foundation. It has a long record of supporting and rationalizing Islamic terrorism as well as making anti-Semitic comments. Those who value academic freedom can only hope that Brnovich's ruling in Sabra v. Maricopa County Comm. College Dist. becomes an important and oft-cited precedent. -------------- TELL CONGRESS DO NOT SUPPORT MAIL-IN VOTING Note From PF:  Police Factor does not necessarily endorse ACT For America (a few small donations to say thank you for the information they have sent) - keep your objectivity.  They have sent information which seems informative, timely and there have been times they sent material that would have gone missing or been delayed without them. This is what they say about themselves:  ACT For America is a 501c3 nonprofit organization. We do not receive any government funding or grants so that we are not muzzled from speaking the truth. We rely on the generosity of patriots who believe in the importance of our work so we can continue exposing America's enemies foreign or domestic and mobilizing Americans to stand up and defend freedom. We would be so grateful for your support. ---------------- DEFEND THE POLICE, DON’T DEFUND THEM! What happened to George Floyd is horrible and should have never happened. The 4 police officers on the scene should be brought to justice and punished accordingly to the law -- no exceptions. However, the recent calls from the left to DEFUND the police would throw our country into chaos! We should absolutely be looking at policies that can be enacted to prevent any form of police brutality against anyone, but defunding the people who are the first and last line of defense is not the solution. The radical Left is turning our communities and cities into smoke, ashes and rubble. We need law and order now more than ever and our police need the support of the American people to keep our communities safe. To send an email to your local elected officials, letting them know you DO NOT support defunding the police, fill out the required fields below and click continue. -------------- [Note From PF:  Police Factor agrees with Act for America and others:  Mail-In Voting is indeed a security risk.  We cannot trust the federal posting system in current times.  It has been largely compromised.] Due to the CoronaVirus pandemic sweeping the globe, Members of Congress have been clamoring for Mail-In-Voting policies this November 2020. In order to protect the integrity of our elections, the United States cannot have national Mail-In-Voting -- it's a recipe for ballot harvesting and voter fraud! It's our job as active and engaged American citizens to let our elected officials know we DO NOT support the idea of national mail-in voting. If we can practice social distancing at the grocery store, we can practice social distancing at the polls. ---------------------------------- AGENDA OF BLACK LIVES MATTER IS FAR DIFFERENT FROM SLOGAN 2020/09/14-15 email sent from ACT: The Agenda of Black Lives Matter Is Far Different From the Slogan Commentary by Mike Gonzalez and Andrew Olivastro The Heritage Foundation Many see the slogan Black Lives Matter as a plea to secure the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for all Americans, especially historically wronged African Americans. They add the BLM hashtag to their social-media profiles, carry BLM signs at protests, and make financial donations. Tragically, when they do donate, they are likely to bankroll a number of radical organizations, founded by committed Marxists whose goals aren’t to make the American Dream a reality for everyone—but to transform America completely. This might be unknown to some of the world’s best-known companies, which have jumped on the BLM bandwagon. Brands like Airbnb and Spanx have promised direct donations. True, others like Nike and Netflix have shrewdly channeled their donations elsewhere, like the NAACP and other organizations that have led the struggle for civil rights for decades. These companies are likely aware of BLM’s ­extreme agenda and recoil from bankrolling destructive ideas. But it requires sleuthing to learn this. Companies that don’t do this hard work are providing air cover for a destructive movement and compelling their employees, shareowners and customers to endorse the same. Just ask BLM leaders Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors and Opal Tometi. In a revealing 2015 interview, Cullors said, “Myself and Alicia in particular are trained organizers. We are trained Marxists.” That same year, Tometi was hobnobbing with Venezuela’s Marxist dictator Nicolás Maduro, of whose regime she wrote: “In these last 17 years, we have witnessed the Bolivarian Revolution champion participatory democracy and construct a fair, transparent election system recognized as among the best in the world.” Millions of Venezuelans suffering under Maduro’s murderous misrule presumably couldn’t be reached for comment. Visit the Black Lives Matter website, and the first frame you get is a large crowd with fists raised and the slogan “Now We Transform.” Read the list of demands, and you get a sense of how deep a transformation they seek. One proclaims: “We disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear-family-structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and ‘villages’ that collectively care for one another.” A partner organization, the Movement for Black Lives, or M4BL, calls for abolishing all police and all prisons. It also calls for a “progressive restructuring of tax codes at the local, state and federal levels to ensure a radical and sustainable redistribution of wealth.” Another M4BL demand is “the retroactive decriminalization, immediate release and record ­expungement of all drug- related offenses and prostitution and reparations for the devastating impact of the ‘war on drugs’ and criminalization of prostitution.” This agenda isn’t what most people signed up for when they bought their Spanx or registered for Airbnb. Nor is it what most people understood when they ­expressed sympathy with the slogan that Black Lives Matter. Garza first coined the phrase in a July 14, 2013, Facebook post the day George Zimmerman was acquitted of murdering Trayvon Martin. Her friend Cullors put the hashtag in front and joined the words, so it could travel through social media. Tometi thought of creating an ­actual digital platform, BlackLivesMatter.com. The group became a self-styled global network in 2014 and a “fiscally sponsored project” of a separate progressive nonprofit in 2016, according to Robert Stilson of the Capital Research Center. This evolution has helped embolden an agenda vastly more ambitious than just #DefundthePolice. The goals of the Black Lives Matter organization go far beyond what most people think. But they are hiding in plain sight, there for the world to see, if only we read beyond the slogans and the innocuous-sounding media accounts of the movement. The group’s radical Marxist agenda would supplant the basic building block of society—the family—with the state and destroy the economic system that has lifted more people from poverty than any other. Black lives, and all lives, would be harmed. Theirs is a blueprint for misery, not justice. It must be rejected. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Updates 2020/09/18