| From the Villa ge of Brook ly n |
OUR TIME PRESS THE L OCAL PAPER WITH THE G LOBAL VIEW
| VOL. 22 NO. 45
November 08 – 14, 2018 |
Since 1996
Record Turnout as Voters Demand Change
Deb Halland
Sharice Davids
Rashida Tlaib
Ilhan Omar
Public Advocate Letitia James celebrates her historic election to statewide office as NYS Attorney General. Photo: Lem Peterkin
View From Here
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By David Mark Greaves
hank you, President Trump, for this much-needed “slap in the face” to wake the citizenry out of its complacent slumber. We’ve come to realize that attention really does have to be paid to elections because they matter more than was thought. Having allowed a narcissistic, demagogic crime boss to be installed as President of the United States right under our noses is a national embarrassment and a wake-up call to how young and fragile this fledgling democracy is. With institutions shaken and co-opted, there is new understanding that freedom is not a given, it can be fleeting and there is nothing common about good sense. Young people have learned that the fate of the world they will grow up in is in the hands of climate-change deniers. The election of Muslims, Native-, Africanand Hispanic-Americans, as well as a record number of women demonstrates the move to diversity, loosening the white male grip on power and confirming to Trump’s base of voters that they are right to be afraid, making them cling even closer to their champion.
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All the appropriate committees of the House of Representatives with their nowDemocratic chairs are locked and loaded with subpoenas for sworn public testimony from Trump Administration officials and all those persons the Republicans didn’t want to hear from when they held the gavels. There will be tax returns and phone records. There will be hours of must-watch programming, and that’s before Special Counsel Robert Mueller starts dropping more shoes from his investigation, which so far, has made public the indictments of, or gotten guilty pleas from, 32 people and three companies. With the midterm elections behind us, we can expect more to be announced in the coming weeks. The Republicans still have the Senate and the ability to continue the conservative remake of the federal judiciary that will last more than a generation. Their hope is that it will serve as the last outpost of white male power and the final arbiter of questions of gerrymandering, voter suppression, and presidential and corporate power. Holding at bay as long as they can, the inevitable rise of the masses.
Four Winners Bring a New Level of Diversity to Congress
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Comments from their victory speeches
harice Davids, Native American, Kansas: “We have a chance to reset expectations when people look at Kansas. I knew we could do better and we just did.” Rashida Tlaib, Muslim, Michigan: “Not one person asked me about my faith. Not one person. They kept asking, ‘You gonna sell us out? Are you gonna sell us out? .. That’s what’s amazing about this 13th Congressional district!” Ilhan Omar, Former Somali Refugee, Minnesota: “… The first woman of
color to represent our state in Congress, the first woman to wear a hijab, the first refugee ever elected to Congress and one of the first Muslim women elected to Congress... Here in Minnesota we don’t only welcome immigrants, we send them to Washington.” Deb Haaland, Native American, New Mexico: “Our win is a victory for working people, for women, a victory for Indian country, and a victory for everyone who’s been sidelined by the millionaire class.”
Democrats Win the New York State Senate
emocrats take the state Senate and Sen. Andrea Stewart-Cousins will become the first female Majority Leader in the state Legislature in January when
the Democrats will hold all three branches of state government. City & State reports: “Now that the party has control of the state Senate, they are poised to pass many pieces of legislation that
Republicans have, until this point, blocked from even coming to a vote. These includes singlepayer health care, which has repeatedly passed the Assembly, and the Reproductive Health Act,
which would codify Roe v. Wade into state law. Other items on the agenda include strengthening rent regulations, criminal justice reforms and changes to voting laws.”
Cyber Voter Fraud Suspected in Gillum Race. Page 7