Blog Posts

Dear Senator,

What are you doing today to end the slaughter, starvation and genocide in Gaza?

Here are some thoughts for actions:

• Like Bernie Sanders, speak on the Senate floor detailing the facts
• Support the ICC in its findings and demands for the blockade and bombing to stop
• Organize a delegation and go to Gaza
• Pass legislation to stop funding from the US until the blockade ends and there is a permanent ceasefire.
• Don’t pass the “antisemitism” law which equates criticism of Israel with antisemitism
• Write to your constituents in detail about why US funding must stop and explain ethnic cleansing and genocide.

Everyday is an opportunity to end the madness of war and vengeance. Every day.

So many issues, so little time. Rising to the top nearly every day, however, is the continued genocide and obliteration of Gaza and the Palestinian people. The bombing continues, the complete blockade continues, the targeting of journalists and medical workers, the destruction of any infrastructure. I’m left speechless as the world’s attention fades and moves on.
I review your press releases often and still do not hear you speaking out about what’s happening in Gaza, all of which can only go on with US weapons, aid and support and the silence or complicity of our leaders. These crimes are on all of us but particularly on those in power who do nothing – on you.

The revocation of immigration status and subsequent arrests of students and professors for their views and participation in legal activities is an astonishing turn in our country. The mass rendition of immigrants to El Salvador without due process to a notorious prison condemned for its human rights abuses is a criminal, sadistic and telling act. The administration seems to be enjoying making as much of a spectacle of these injustices as possible. Fear is the hoped for result.

So, is this who we’ve become?

I so admired Senator Van Hollen’s trip to El Salvador to try to meet with and bring home his wrongfully deported constituent. I wish that you had been with him. It’s time to stand up, friend. At every turn now, we verge into the unthinkable, cruel and immoral.

Dear Senator King,

I’m so disappointed that you didn’t vote for Senator Sanders’ bill to limit aid to Israel.

“My concern was that a positive vote from the Senate today would actually prolong the conflict and the suffering of the Palestinian people in Gaza by encouraging Hamas to resist the negotiations that are essential to bringing an end to this awful war and the release of the remaining hostages.
Today’s resolutions were especially troubling in their timing. At this moment, active negotiations are underway in the region and my judgement was that the resolutions, if passed, could and probably would derail those critical discussions."

Your statement basically seems to endorse or at least accept Israel’s position that it can bomb and starve the Palestinians into negotiation. Watching Netanyahu and the Israeli right take Israel off the moral cliff into genocide and the displacement of Palestinians is a slow motion atrocity that we must not support. Starvation and genocide cannot be a negotiating tool. Of course, the situation is complex but these efforts to destroy the Palestinians must be opposed.

The death count goes on and on in Gaza. Israel is illegally blockading all food and humanitarian assistance and has been for weeks. Israel continues to destroy homes in the West Bank and draws up plans for annexing new areas. Gaza is still being pummeled by American bombs. What are you doing to stop the genocide - what else can it be called at this point?

Town Hall with Jared Golden

“The fundamental weakness is empathy,” Elon Musk recently told radio podcast host Joe Rogan. “There is a bug, which is the empathy response.”

Sums up a lot, doesn’t it. Between that and The Art of the Deal where the objective is to win, to get your way, to dominate…

In the human sphere, these are not successful strategies. Humans, at root, are relational, empathetic, starting with fierce mama love and the extraordinary power of birth, giving life to another. Communities work because of mutuality, respect, and care beyond one’s own immediate boundary. Society, on a wider scale, needs government, civic groups, churches and other community groups to build that out further. Empathy is the gift and practice of being able to see ourselves in the other, the other in ourselves. In reality, even for Elon and Donald, the truth is that we depend on each other to live.

     The resumption of Israeli attacks on Gaza is inhuman, inexcusable, immoral, and illegal. The four I’s. And yes, sadly, we continue to be complicit by our aid and by the encouragement of our president and administration and by their flagrant disregard of international law, the Geneva conventions and every scrap of basic moral decency.
    Simultaneously, the administration is attacking dissent to Israel’s outrages, conflating anti-aggression and anti-war speech with anti-semitism. How low can you go. And the cruelty and scope of our in-country attacks on freedom of speech is breath-taking, breath-taking.
    I’m expecting you to speak out, to speak up, to stand against Israel’s illegal and immoral attacks on the Palestinian people. I expect you, as my representative, as the people’s voice in Congress, to lead the criticism or these aberrant and loathsome foreign and domestic policies, to be present at free-speech rallies, to work with your colleagues to stop our government's attacks on free speech and to demand an end to aid for Israel so long as their attacks continue.

It’s so telling in President Trump’s executive orders and Musk’s actions what their values are. The utter disregard, hostility and contempt they have to civil servants is stunning. These are the people we’ve hired to do the work that Congress over many different administrations has mandated. Have they taken time to hear what that work is, who the workers are - many of whom have devoted much of their working lives to the work Congress has legislated? No, just dispose of them like so much trash – the people that we hired to do our work.

Dear Senator Collins,

So many issues...but let's just focus on the CFPB for a moment, the agency Musk has wanted to delete, the one that you voted to establish but have also expressed concerns about.

It’s a really a David and Goliath story. The U.S. financial industry controls 22.3 trillion dollars (2022 figures) in assets and puts huge investments into lobbying Congress and the president, developing new “products’, and squelching resistance through fine print agreements and forced mediation. After the financial collapse of 2007-2008, millions of Americans lost their homes. Let me say that again, millions of Americans lost their homes.

The government gave multi-billion dollar bailouts to some of the largest financial institutions. Consumer advocates pushed for some relief for homeowners with some minor success but were able to push Congress and the President to create the CFPB to protect consumers going forward and to impose stricter regulation on the finance industry.

The CFPB has been remarkably effective in protecting consumers from fraud and unfair lending practices, returning more than $21 billion to consumers since its founding in late 2010. Follow the money in both directions. Consumers have been protected from fraud on so many level. Banks have been forced to comply with fair lending practices. Just look at the lobbying and political contributions of the financial industry to Congress and you’ll see how effective the CFPB has been.