I’m neither sorry nor surprised that Facebook — the evil empire I sometimes refer to as Spacenook to avoid attracting its unwelcome attention — took a beating on Wall Street today, with its stock dropping 19% . That’s a well-deserved loss of $119 billion in market capitalization, which is the biggest-ever one-day loss of value for…
politics
Independence Day
For your 4th of July reading pleasure. The Declaration of Independence; the way ignorant people react to the Declaration of Independence; a smart Twitter thread about the ideals of the Declaration of Independence. As a bonus, here’s a great illustration by Monica Martino. I think I need to get the Lady Liberty button. It will…
Protestors Turned Up, Chuck Schumer Did Not
On Saturday, I shepherded a group of Indivisible Upper East Side members downtown to the Families Belong Together march to protest the separation of refugee children from their parents. Signs of the times #familiesbelongtogether #familiesbelongtogethermarch #indivisible #indivisibleues #resist #bethechangeyouwanttosee … signs in photo 1 designed by @rowlandpictures A post shared by Wendy Brandes (@wendybrandes) on…
Wednesday’s Videos: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
In case you need a pick-me-up today — as so many do — I find that nothing has been able to dent the pleasure I get from this gif of first-time candidate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez reacting to winning the Democratic primary in New York’s 14th congressional district last night. The video of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez realizing she…
Wednesday’s Videos: A Sampling of Politics 101
I was planning to share a fun, style-related video today, but considering the news, I decided to go with a few clips from the Politics 101 presentation given at my Indivisible Upper East Side meeting last week. Our guest speaker, Ben Yee of You Matter, actually did make this workshop super entertaining. The playlist represents…
In New York and Worried About the Children?
If you’re in New York and you’re disgusted by the fact that crying and screaming immigrant children are being taken from their parents — while Border Patrol agents joke about it — and kept in cages, check out the action alert I sent to my Indivisible Upper East Side group. STILL HAPPENING RIGHT NOW Tuesday,…
Get Informed and Inspired With Politics 101
If you’re in New York this Thursday, you’re invited to come to my Indivisible Upper East Side activist meeting (regardless of where you live!) for what I expect will be a lively Politics 101 workshop, presented by Ben Yee of You Matter. I heard Ben speak at a different meeting months ago, and he was…
Good News in Ireland & the Weeks in Review
This week — while the right wing in the U.S. worked on making abortion harder to obtain — Ireland went the other way. A large majority voted to repeal the Eighth Amendment to the Irish Constitution, which was one of the most restrictive abortion bans in the developed world. Embed from Getty Images The 1983…
Resist the Gag Rule
The failed businessman currently occupying the White House is back to attacking women this week. In a move worthy of a George Orwell novel, he announced an abortion-related gag rule for health clinics that he says isn’t really a gag rule because he says it’s not a gag rule. The rule applies to clinics that…
You’ve Got One More Day to File Your Taxes
I was going to wish you a “happy” tax day, but a miracle has happened: You’ve got one more day to file your taxes. The Internal Revenue Service had such bad technical problems today that it extended the filing deadline through tomorrow — Wednesday, April 18. What did go on as scheduled: The Trump Tax…