Because Trump can’t cut Meals on Wheels and Big Bird without a little help from his friends along the way.
1) A #JewishResistance against AIPAC: Shout out to the 200 Jewish activists — including the seven who were arrested — who protested in front of the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee’s office in LA on this past Sunday. The action was in response to the nomination of David Friedman as the new US Ambassador to Israel, a nationwide rise in anti-Semitism and the overall intolerant rhetoric the Trump administration. The protest, led by #JewishResistance and the left-wing, anti-occupation Jewish organization IfNotNow, took on the theatrical themes and costumes of Purim, the Jewish holiday that criticizes those who cozy up to power for their own gain.
For those who let Friedman’s appointment fly under the radar, the ironic parallels are strong. He’s a bankruptcy lawyer and a longtime buddy of Trump who suddenly now gets to have a say in hot-button political issues, like the continued occupation of the West Bank and the American embassy’s move from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Friedman, who has a reputation for being shockingly offensive, once called Jews against occupation “worse than kapos.”
According to Penina Eilberg-Schwartz, who runs the communications for IfNotNow and was influential in recruiting 100 activists from the Bay Area alone to go to LA, Trump and AIPAC are two sides of the same corrupt and hateful coin. She says current events have positioned California’s Jewish community at a crossroads: “It’s a moment when our community will be forced to look at that irony and decide, am I for hatred or for freedom and justice for all people?” she says. The group will head to DC next week to continue their protest against Friedman and AIPAC at the National Policy Conference.
2) Construction Divestment: Can we finally congratulate San Francisco for putting its abundant money where its mouth is? City supervisors in San Francisco followed those in Oakland, Berkeley and Sacramento by introducing legislation that prohibits contracting any construction company also bidding to work on the border wall. Berkeley City Council member Ben Bartlett summed the tactic up nicely by saying, “It’s important that our values are reflected in our budgets and in our partnerships.”
3) Because Divestment Worked on Uber: That whole three minutes it took to delete Uber and download Lyft was totally worth it. The pressure building against the ride-sharing app over the past few scandal-ridden months has come to a five-star finale — after sexual-harassment charges, a verbally abusive CEO and a picket-line-cross-turned-hashtag phenomenon. In just this past week, Uber’s president, Jeff Jones, resigned because he stated that he disagreed with the company’s “professional values,” and the company revealed that it’s drastically slowing down its move to Oakland.
4) Now to Take on Ivanka: The White House announced that Trump is giving Ivanka her own office in the White House and security clearance. She does seem to have some admittedly admirable goals, including helping women in the workplace with maternity leave and childcare. Still, though, how much can a woman who wears $10,000 bracelets to work really relate to the realities of America’s moms?
5) The contentious new Snoop Dogg music video — which depicts the mock execution of a familiar-looking orange clown — inspired our president to lash out on Twitter against the rap star’s “failing career.” If you haven’t seen his video yet, which depicts an alternate universe in which everyone is a clown, watch it now — it feels eerily close to documentary.
