Tell it, Bernie

These barbarians are destroying everything that makes society work. Kids can't go to school, patients can't go to the hospital. We are, in effect, paying them to wreck the basic infrastructure of the country

The most powerful force in American politics today is anti-establishment fury at a rigged economic system. To counter Trump’s fake populism and his culture wars, progressives should mount a real battle against economic elites who have shafted America’s middle and working classes.

..that warm, happy feeling when you’ve written a poem 😁😁😁

Reminder: ICE has a budget bigger than most militaries around the world. It has increased its spending on weapons by 700% since Trump took office. Trump is building his own personal military to terrorize American cities, trample on civil rights, and intimidate his opponents.

Wordle in three. Yes I still play. Happy new year all 💫💚

My walk today, Dec 1, World AIDS Day.

So glad this is recorded & on YouTube to watch. BK puts it succinctly when he says “poetry and prayer are similar acts”, and talks about ars poetica. Happy to hear the newer poems as well as the ones from books. Love that there’s time for discussion after the reading. THANK YOU!

What do these corporations have in common? Netflix Ford Tesla T-Mobile Duke Energy DISH Network Metlife Dominion Energy United States Steel In recent years, they all paid their execs more than they paid in taxes. This is what a corporate-rigged system looks like.

I’m starting to get the sense that it was a bad idea to put a deeply insecure, sexual assaulting Fox News host with a drinking problem and a crusader tattoo who said he was into war crimes in charge of the military.

It’s clear that the primary interest of the US in “peace negotiations” is to create opportunities for Trump, Witkoff, their family members, business partners and cronies to make billions from business deals with Russia, and Ukraine is just the annoying nuisance in the way.

“In days after Alaska, a European intel agency distributed a hard-copy report in an envelope to some of the continent’s most senior national security officials, who were shocked by the contents: Inside were details of the commercial and economic plans the Trump admin had been pursuing with Russia.”

Harvard gets its research funding back through defiance and lawsuits.

Meaning every vote would finally come down to accountability, not automatic party-line rubber-stamping. Please vote and spread the word. Flipping this seat won’t be easy.

My first chapbook, photographed in Panama! So cool to see one’s books out&about in the world 😎💕✍🏼

It's driving me batty that nobody except Heather Cox Richardson, the Washington Monthly, and myself is covering Trump's race to sell off (for likely demolition) "the Sistine Chapel of the New Deal," w/ murals by Ben Shahn, Philip Guston, etc. I've furnish links below to help reporters get started.

Wow poet Patricia Smith rocks it at Smith College poetry center this evening. Way to amaze , and keep it real 💕 So grateful for the live-streaming!!!

NEW: Last night, a federal judge issued a permanent block on the Trump administration's deployment of National Guard troops to Oregon. This is a win for the rule of law. No troops on our streets – anywhere.

Remember: There is nothing natural or inevitable about extreme inequality; it’s the result of an economic system that values wealth and power over human dignity and justice. It doesn't have to be this way.

It was a good evening of poetry sharing & discussion.

Mañana!

Six month pub bday for Into the Thrum 🥳✍🏼💕

Time for simply a nice picture of autumn

Pinch me

I’ll do this too, what the hey

Always a thrill waking up to email w/poetry acceptance. I’ll have a poem in the lovely Amethyst Review in November. 💕✍🏼

Thrilled to see my latest poetry collection, out this past April, front&center featured with other local authors. Thank you, Norwich Bookstore 💕✍🏼📚

High point of the weekend: hearing poet Matthew Olzmann read his work (new as well as published) at a VT state park, for VT Humanities’ Words in the Woods series.

Trump once called COVID vaccines “one of the greatest miracles in the history of modern-day medicine.” Now, his health secretary RFK Jr. cancelled $500 million in promising vaccine research. Trump was right. RFK Jr is wrong. Vaccines save lives.

Revlimid has its origin in a pill that cost patients $7.50 each. Decades later, the cancer drug costs more than $18,000 for a month’s supply — even though it still only costs about 25 cents to manufacture. (Published May) By @davidarmstrongx.bsky.social

Lee Zeldin, Trump’s EPA chief, plans to revoke the 2009 “endangerment finding”, the EPA’s legal basis for regulating climate pollution. This isn’t rollback. It’s sabotage. Without it, the EPA can’t limit emissions from cars, power plants, or industry. Decades of progress gone.

While Trump played a round at his coastal golf course, thousands across Scotland took to the streets in protest. Bagpipes blared, signs waved, and the message was clear: he’s not welcome here. Love you, Scotland! 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 💚

The Big Beautiful Bill gives Meta a $15 billion check. That’s more than our federal government spends on child care in an entire year. If we invested that much in child care & early childhood education, we’d create stronger futures for everyone, not just Mark Zuckerberg.

Thought bubble

This is a horrific abdication of their responsibilities to students, alums, faculty, staff, to themselves, their peers.

I’ve donated archival material for Nuyorican artist Jorge Soto Sanchez (1947-1987) to the Archives of American Art. It will help people to learn about him.

Americans’ electricity bills are predicted to rise by as much as 18% over the next decade, thanks to cuts to clean energy production in Trump’s big, ugly bill. Red states are likely to see the biggest increases. Trump put his Big Oil donors over his own voters.

1985 Jorge Soto Sanchez. Typed&collaged page was part of El Paquete (look it up!). Painting was on paper bag. 💙

Will you join me and sign the petition to Etsy CEO Josh Silverman, demanding his company take down all merchandise glorifying the Alligator Alcatraz concentration camp in South Florida? act.weareultraviolet.org/sign/no_hate...

I lived with an artist in the 80s, until his death in 1987. A beautiful soul.

Etsy refuses to remove Alligator Alcatraz merch from their website. Flood them with emails and social media posts. Demand they take down the listings. The disappearing, kidnapping and torturing of others is not a merchandising opportunity. This is life and death.

New York City had free college tuition at all CUNY schools for 130 years

For every millionaire household that would get a tax break from Republicans’ big, ugly bill, 19 Americans would be stripped of their health coverage. Their priorities couldn’t be clearer. We must stop this devastating bill.

There really is something special about what Zohran and Brad are showing the rest of the world what it still means to be a New Yorker and an American. A Jew and a Muslim modeling a politics of mutual respect, rejecting cynicism. Human decency has been taking a beating but she's not out just yet!

and for that matter, Los Angeles. but 100% co-sign this, so much of media's power bias is in letting those in power name and rebrand actions/ ideas rather than calling things what they are. See also: "free" speech, CRT, woke, "culture wars" (when it's really about civil & human rights).

If you took the $1.1 trillion earned by just 100 billionaires last year and mailed every household a check, it'd be $8,700 each. The thing is most billionaires don't actually pay taxes anymore. What the GOP bill is really doing is selling off public lands and cutting Medicare to pay off oligarchs.