March, 29 2021, 12:00am EDT
Center for Popular Democracy's Statement on the Extension of Eviction Moratorium
Statement issued by Jennifer Epps-Addison, Co-Executive Director of Center for Popular DemocracyÂ
WASHINGTON
"The Center for Popular Democracy commends the Biden administration for extending the CDC eviction moratorium through June. This critical public health measure is life-changing for millions of families on the brink of eviction. While those facing housing insecurity are breathing a sigh of relief today, it is vital to acknowledge that the moratorium does not do nearly enough to ensure that tenants are protected from evictions during a pandemic -- the people deserve more.
Right now, nearly ten million people are behind on rent. In order to curb the spread of COVID-19, keep families together and support those most vulnerable during this crisis, we cannot continue this piecemeal strategy. Congress must take action to enact real policy changes that will get renters the relief and protection they need for the duration of this pandemic and beyond. This includes canceling rent and rental debt, ensuring just cause evictions for tenants, and enacting a universal moratorium on evictions that will never allow landlords to evict tenants through the duration of the pandemic or due to rental debt incurred during the pandemic.
We will continue working with our elected officials to finally fix our broken housing system and make these proposed policies a reality."
The Center for Popular Democracy works to create equity, opportunity and a dynamic democracy in partnership with high-impact base-building organizations, organizing alliances, and progressive unions. CPD strengthens our collective capacity to envision and win an innovative pro-worker, pro-immigrant, racial and economic justice agenda.
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To End 'Failed Approach,' Biden DOJ Formally Moves to Reclassify Marijuana
The decision "validates the experiences of tens of millions of Americans, as well as tens of thousands of physicians, who have long recognized that cannabis possesses legitimate medical utility," said one advocate.
May 16, 2024
As Democratic lawmakers push for the federal decriminalization of marijuana, U.S. President Joe Biden on Thursday announced the Department of Justice was formalizing a proposal to remove the substance from Schedule I—the legal classification which for decades has placed marijuana in the same category as heroin.
The Drug Enforcement Administration's (DEA) proposal to reschedule marijuana under Schedule III—which would place it alongside substances like testosterone and steroids—was submitted as a Notice of Formal Rulemaking in the Federal Register, commencing a 60-day public comment period.
After the comment period and any public hearings that are requested by interested parties, the DEA is expected to issue a final order on reclassifying marijuana.
In a video message posted to social media, Biden called the step his administration has taken "monumental" and said marijuana's current classification suggests it is more dangerous than "fentanyl and methamphetamine—the two drugs driving America's overdose epidemic."
"That just doesn't add up," said the president. "Today's announcement builds on the work we've done to pardon a record number of federal offenses for simple possession of marijuana, and it adds to the action we've taken to lift barriers to housing, employment, small business loans, and so much more for tens of thousands of Americans."
"Far too many lives have been upended because of a failed approach to marijuana and I'm committed to righting those wrongs," added Biden.
With marijuana classified under Schedule III, the federal government would for the first time officially acknowledge the medical benefits of the substance, which is approved for medical use in 43 U.S. states and territories as well as the District of Columbia.
Federal scientists will be able to research the medical benefits of the drug for the first time since 1971, when the Controlled Substances Act placed marijuana under Schedule I.
The new classification could also eliminate tax burdens for legal cannabis businesses.
Paul Armentano, deputy director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), said Biden's decision "validates the experiences of tens of millions of Americans, as well as tens of thousands of physicians, who have long recognized that cannabis possesses legitimate medical utility."
"As a first step forward, this policy change dramatically shifts the political debate surrounding cannabis," Armentano added. "Specifically, it delegitimizes many of the tropes historically exploited by opponents of marijuana policy reform. Claims that cannabis poses unique harms to health, or that it's not useful for treating chronic pain and other ailments, have now been rejected by the very federal agencies that formerly perpetuated them. Going forward, these specious allegations should be absent from any serious conversations surrounding cannabis and how to best regulate its use."
Biden's announcement came a week after Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) was joined by 17 other Democratic senators in reintroducing S. 4226, the Cannabis Administration and Opportunity Act (CAOA), which would remove marijuana from the Controlled Substances Act and allow states to regulate the substance.
Schumer applauded the White House for "recognizing that draconian cannabis laws need to change to catch up to science and the majority of Americans," but said marijuana must now be decriminalized at the federal level.
"The proposed change fails to harmonize federal marijuana policy with the cannabis laws of most U.S. states," said Armentano, "particularly the 24 states that have legalized its use and sale to adults."
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'Dark Times': Israeli Historian Ilan Pappé Detained, Interrogated by FBI
"The good news is—actions like this by the USA or European countries taken under pressure from the pro-Israeli lobby or Israel itself smell of sheer panic and desperation," the renowned author said.
May 16, 2024
In what one observer called "a whole new level of insanity and paranoia," renowned Israeli historian and professor Ilan Pappé—a staunch critic of Zionism—was detained and interrogated this week by Federal Bureau of Investigation agents as he entered the United States at Detroit's airport.
In a Wednesday Facebook post, Pappé said that he was questioned by FBI agents for two hours after arriving at Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport on Monday.
He wrote:
The two-men team were not abusive or rude, I should say, but their questions were really out of the world! Am I a Hamas supporter? Do I regard the Israeli actions in Gaza a genocide? What is the solution to the "conflict" (seriously this what they asked!) Who are my Arab and Muslim friends in America... What kind of relationship [do] I have with them?
"They had [a] long phone conversation with someone, the Israelis?" he added, "and after copying everything on my phone allowed me to enter."
"I know many of you have fared far worse," Pappé wrote, referring to Dr. Ghassan Abu-Sittah, a British Palestinian plastic surgeon and rector of Glasgow University in Scotland who last month was denied entry to Germany—and by extension all 29 Schengen Area nations—before the ban was overturned earlier this week.
"The good news is—actions like this by the USA or European countries taken under pressure from the pro-Israeli lobby or Israel itself smell of sheer panic and desperation in reaction to Israel's becoming very soon a pariah state, with all the implications of such a status," he added.
Pappé's treatment sparked outrage among Palestine defenders.
"The detention and interrogation of internationally renowned Israeli anti-Zionist historian Ilan Pappé at Detroit airport by the FBI is latest in the long list of episodes of intimidation and bullying across the West to defend the indefensible—the Israeli genocide of Palestinians," University of California, Berkeley history professor Ussama Makdisi said on social media Wednesday.
Entrepreneur and geopolitical commentator Arnaud Bertrand said, "We've reached a whole new level of insanity and paranoia."
Pappé, 69, is a scholar of Palestinian history at the University of Exeter in England. He's published over 20 books including The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, an examination of the Nakba expulsion of more than 750,000 Arabs from Palestine by Zionist militants—who sometimes massacred Palestinians to sow terror among them—during the establishment of the modern state of Israel in the late 1940s.
He has also been a leading Israeli critic of Israel's ongoing assault on Gaza, which according to Palestinian officials has killed, maimed, or left missing more than 125,000 people since the October 7 attacks. During a Wednesday interview with Al Jazeera marking the 76th anniversary of the Nakba, Pappé asserted that Israel's current onslaught is "even worse" than the 1948-49 ethnic cleansing in many ways.
"What we see now are massacres which are part of the genocidal impulse, namely to kill people in order to downsize the number of people living in Gaza," he said. "Ethnic cleansing is a terrible crime against humanity but genocide is even worse."
Pappé's latest title, Lobbying for Zionism on Both Sides of the Atlantic, details "how pro-Israel lobbying groups influence the Middle East policies of Britain, the U.S., and others."
Reacting to the author's detention, ACLU human rights lawyer and New York University professor Jamil Dakwar said, "One wonders if this 'VIP welcome' related to his anti-genocide activism and his new book."
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Don't Say 'Climate': DeSantis Signs Bill Removing References From State Law
"This purposeful act of cognitive dissonance is proof that the governor and state Legislature are not acting in the best interests of Floridians, but rather to protect profits for the fossil fuel industry," one climate advocate said.
May 16, 2024
Forida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Wednesday signed a bill that erases most references to climate change in state law, deprioritizes it in policy decisions, and eases regulations for natural gas pipelines while banning offshore wind installations in state waters.
DeSantis signed the bill despite the fact that Florida is one of the most vulnerable regions in the world to the climate crisis—both from sea-level rise and extreme weather such as heatwaves and hurricanes. Indeed, on the day of the signing, Key West tied for its highest heat index on record at 115°C, heat that was made at least five times more likely because of the burning of fossil fuels.
"This purposeful act of cognitive dissonance is proof that the governor and state Legislature are not acting in the best interests of Floridians, but rather to protect profits for the fossil fuel industry," Yoca Arditi-Rocha, executive director of climate education nonprofit the Cleo Institute, toldThe Associated Press.
The bill's opponents told AP that it exes out nine references to climate currently on the books. It also takes steps to promote fossil gas—which already provides nearly three-quarters of Florida's electricity—and makes it harder to ban gas stoves and other appliances.
Further, AP reported:
The legislation also eliminates requirements that government agencies hold conferences and meetings in hotels certified by the state's environmental agency as "green lodging" and that government agencies make fuel efficiency the top priority in buying new vehicles. It also ends a requirement that Florida state agencies look at a list of "climate-friendly" products before making purchases.
The law, which goes into effect July 1, "is very much out of line with public opinion," Greg Knecht, director of the Nature Conservancy in Florida, toldThe Washington Post. A full 90% of Floridians believe climate change is occurring, 69% of them want the state government to act on it, a Florida Atlantic University survey found.
Florida is already seeing the impacts of the climate crisis from Wednesday's high heat and humidity in the Keys to last year's Hurricane Idalia. Moving forward, Florida was ranked 10th in a list of states or provinces with the most physical infrastructure at risk from climate impacts by 2050.
"This feels like Act 1 of a Greek tragedy," the Environmental Voter Project wrote on social media in response to the signing.
Knecht told the Post that DeSantis and Florida's Republican-controlled Legislature were willing to address the effects of the climate crisis—the governor earmarked more than $28 million to study flooding vulnerability in each county last year—but would not acknowledge the cause of the problem or discuss solutions that involved reducing emissions.
"On one hand, we recognize that we're seeing flooding and we're seeing property damage and we're seeing hurricanes, and we're conveying to the public that we can build our way out of these problems," Knecht said. "And then on the other hand, we're turning around and saying, 'Yeah, but climate change isn't really real, and we don't need to do anything about it.'"
This may partly be because, as green advocates told Post, the climate crisis has become a culture war issue that DeSantis can use to attract media attention and right-wing voters, as he has done with high-profile attacks on abortion rights and LGBTQ+ rights.
Others blamed the influence of the fossil fuel industry.
"Fossil fuel companies don't like competing with clean energy," Democratic Florida Senate candidate Carlos Guillermo Smith wrote on social media. "So they donated to Ron DeSantis who signed a law that bans offshore wind, eliminates energy efficiency grant programs, and deletes any reference to 'climate change' from state statute."
"GOP = Profits over people always," Smith said.
Progress Florida wrote: "While Gov. Ron DeSantis does the dirty work of corporate polluters, Floridians are left to suffer as the state becomes more unaffordable and the natural treasures of the people who have farmed, hunted, and worshipped here for generations are destroyed."
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