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DESCRIPTION:National Call to Action\n\nStay Mobilized Until Kavanaugh is Defeated: No 
 “Business As Usual”\n\nEveryone Who Can Possibly Go to Washington, DC 
 Between Now and When Kavanaugh is Defeated—Get There NOW\n\nNo Reliance 
 on the Politicians \nThe Hands of the FBI Must Not Be Tied, the FBI Must Be 
 Free to Conduct a Full Investigation of All the Charges Against 
 Kavanaugh\nMass Direct Action Now to Defend Democracy and Defend Women’s 
 Rights\n\nConfirming Kavanaugh sends a message to women across the country 
 that victims of sexual assault should stay silent. Defeating Kavanaugh 
 sends a message that victims should speak out, stand up, and fight.\n\nStop 
 Rape and Sexual Assault\nTrump, the Abuser-In-Chief, Must Resign or Be 
 Removed\n\nConfirming Kavanaugh sends a message to women across the country 
 that victims of sexual assault should stay silent. Defeating Kavanaugh 
 sends a message that victims should speak out, stand up, and fight.\n\nStop 
 Rape and Sexual Assault\nTrump, the Abuser-In-Chief, Must Resign or Be 
 Removed\n\nProtest and March \nWed. Oct. 3 at 6pm, Sproul Plaza UC 
 Berkely\n\n\nResist. Confront. Disrupt. Fight to win (AND WE CAN 
 WIN)!\n\nOver the past week, the protests and confrontations in Washington, 
 DC, by the Resistance, the mass movement against Trump, have been pivotal 
 in reversing the impending catastrophe of Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court 
 nomination. Above all, the courageous determination and action of women who 
 are survivors of sexual assault and abuse have been decisive in making it 
 possible to defeat Trump and the Republicans’ rush to put a sexual abuser 
 on the US Supreme Court. The indelible courage of Christine Blasey Ford’s 
 disclosure of Brett Kavanaugh’s sexual assault and her testimony last 
 Thursday showed the nation a real hero. Other women have answered her call, 
 and have since come forward with their own searing accounts of 
 Kavanaugh’s sexual assaults: Deborah Ramirez, Julie Swetnick, and 
 Elizabeth Rasor. Our support for Dr. Ford and all these women is 
 unequivocal and categorical. The stand they have taken has dragged this 
 nation from the precipice of a national and international disgrace to the 
 genuine possibility of saving American democracy. \n\nDespite Professor 
 Blasey Ford’s courageous and obviously true testimony Thursday, 
 afterwards, on Thursday afternoon and Friday morning, the Republican 
 politicians were still attempting to jam Kavanaugh’s nomination through 
 the US Senate Judiciary Committee, filling the Senate hearing room with the 
 gross male rage of a bunch of crude sexist bullies, repeating one after the 
 other the long-discredited arguments misogynists have used to silence women 
 trying to fight against sexual assault. The Democratic politicians on the 
 other side who supposedly opposed Kavanaugh and rightly claimed to support 
 Dr. Blasey Ford’s testimony, behaved far too much as if they had been 
 abused into passivity themselves by the Republicans’ abusive ranting and 
 raving, rather than finding the courage to really defend Blasey Ford’s 
 heroic stand and actually fight to win.\n\nUnder these circumstances, two 
 young women, Ana Maria Archila and Maria Gallagher had to join Blasey Ford 
 and the other Kavanaugh accusers as the real heroes of this struggle. On 
 Friday morning, after the supposed open-minded Republican Senator Jeff 
 Flake announced that he would actually vote with the other Republicans to 
 send the Kavanaugh nomination to the full Senate for a vote for 
 confirmation, these two women caught the cowardly Senator Flake in an 
 elevator. They genuinely and passionately spoke truth to power. They 
 expressed the indignation and determination of millions of women across the 
 nation and the Resistance fighting for the future of democracy in America 
 to break the suffocating silence imposed on the victims of sexual assault 
 and abuse by American society for far too long. Their confrontation with 
 the timid Senator Flake communicated the reality that for the rest of his 
 life, wherever he goes, he will be held accountable for his role in 
 accepting or rejecting sexual predator Brett Kavanaugh on the US Supreme 
 Court. They demanded, “Look at me when I’m talking to you,” when 
 Flake tried to avoid hearing their own declarations of their histories of 
 sexual assault. Their bold and decisive action, not the passive, boring, 
 and half-stepping speeches of politicians inside the committee, forced 
 Flake, after the elevator confrontation, to change his position and demand 
 an independent FBI investigation of the sexual abuse charges against 
 Kavanaugh before a vote could take place in the full Senate. The audacity 
 of Archila and Gallagher is a model for how our movement can and must carry 
 through on the fight we need to make now.\n\nWith MORE of this kind of bold 
 and determined direct action in DC between now and the final vote on 
 Kavanaugh, our movement can win. We must make the most of this opportunity. 
 With the Senate confirmation vote officially postponed only by a week, we 
 must act and we must act fast. Hundreds of people have been protesting 
 inside and outside of the Capitol. Throughout the course of this entire 
 process, fresh Resistance forces need to flood the capital. We need a mass 
 confrontation of the movement with the politicians, especially the 
 ever-so-timid waverers Jeff Flake (R), Susan Collins (R), Lisa Murkowski 
 (R), Paul Manchin (D), and Heidi Heitkamp (D), and demand that they oppose 
 Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation. This entire fight over Kavanaugh’s 
 nomination makes clear Rule #1 of the movement: do NOT rely on the 
 politicians to fight; rely on ourselves and each other to win. \n\n“Never 
 again” begins now. It is obvious the confirmation of Kavanaugh will send 
 a message that in America, people who are sexually assaulted or abused 
 should keep silent. That message must be defeated, and the message sent by 
 Christine Blasey Ford and the other heroic survivors who have been speaking 
 out must prevail. Kavanaugh has also clearly, throughout his career, been 
 an enemy of the legal and political gains of the women’s movement, in 
 particular an enemy of the right of women to control over their own bodies 
 secured in 1973 in the Roe v Wade decision. Despite the statements to the 
 contrary of certain cowardly waverers, it is obvious that Kavanaugh will 
 take advantage of the first opportunity he could get to overturn Roe all 
 together, and until he can accomplish that, vote to render Roe v Wade a 
 dead letter in practice as much as possible. Trump would not have nominated 
 him if that were not the case.\n\nIn addition to the message aimed at 
 silencing the struggle against sexual abuse and the attack on the 
 fundamental rights of women, the threat of Kavanaugh’s confirmation 
 places democracy at stake in yet another way, which is completely bound up 
 with Donald Trump’s aspiration to create an authoritarian presidency. 
 Even among Trump’s short list of reactionary candidates to nominate to 
 the Supreme Court, Brett Kavanaugh stood out as holding absolutely extreme 
 positions in favor of presidential power and against presidential 
 accountability. In particular, Kavanaugh has publicly argued repeatedly 
 that presidents should not be subject at all to investigations like the 
 Mueller investigation. For the past year, the Mueller investigation has 
 been the only governmental process aimed at determining the role the Trump 
 campaign may have played in conspiring with Putin’s attempt to distort 
 and determine the results of the 2016 presidential elections. Only the 
 Mueller investigation can make possible holding Trump accountable for his 
 numerous efforts to obstruct justice and turn the FBI, the Justice Dept. as 
 a whole, and the nation’s intelligence agencies into his own personal 
 state police. Given that there are already four judges on the Court ready 
 to uphold a very expansive view of presidential power, Kavanaugh’s 
 confirmation would create a long-term majority prepared to uphold the 
 emergence of a reactionary, authoritarian presidential dictatorship over 
 the next period of American history, beginning with an imminent set of 
 decisions pertaining to the Mueller investigation. \n\nThe future of 
 democracy is at stake. We are being called by history to meet the challenge 
 of this extraordinary moment. \n\n	To all supporters of the movement to 
 defeat Kavanaugh and Trump: get to DC this week, however you can. Brett 
 Kavanaugh’s nomination to the US Supreme Court must be defeated. While 
 Dr. Ford’s forthright courage was celebrated across the nation, anyone 
 watching last Thursday’s performance by Brett Kavanaugh shuddered in 
 disgust at his debauched rage. His performance was, from the beginning to 
 end, the behavior of a guilty man. His testimony left no doubt that he is a 
 dangerous misogynist and sexual predator. He presented an appalling display 
 of exactly the kind of judge who should never receive a lifetime 
 appointment to the most powerful court in the world. His testimony made 
 utterly clear that Kavanaugh on the Court would be the closest equivalent 
 to giving Donald Trump a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court. 
 \n\nUntil Dr. Ford came forward, Kavanaugh’s nomination seemed all but 
 secured. Today, the opposite is true. Today, Kavanaugh’s nomination 
 presents a test of the #Metoo movement that has come forward against 
 Trump’s misogyny, his promotion and defense of sexual assault that has 
 been central to his political platform. As long as Donald Trump, as 
 Abuser-in-Chief, remains in office, misogynist men like Kavanaugh will feel 
 they have a greenlight to attack, harass, objectify and abuse women. By 
 defeating the nomination of Kavanaugh we will be dealing a blow to 
 Trump’s attacks on democracy and his movement of reactionary supporters 
 who have been emboldened to carry out misogynist, immigrant-bashing, and 
 racist attacks. \n\nNow more than ever, as our nation stands at a 
 crossroads, the Resistance must rise to our historic challenge. This is no 
 time for “business as usual” or to rely on the promises and maneuvers 
 of cynical politicians or the FBI. BAMN calls on all anti-Trump and 
 pro-democracy Resistance fighters to join us in action to defeat the 
 nomination of Justice Brett Kavanaugh to the U.S. Supreme Court, and to 
 force Trump to resign or be removed. The future of freedom and democracy is 
 in our hands.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n 
 https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2018/10/01/18817928.php
SUMMARY:Rally and March at UC Berkeley! Keeping Mobilized Until Kavanaugh is Defeated
LOCATION:UC Berkeley, Sproul Plaza
URL:https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2018/10/01/18817928.php
DTSTART:20181004T010000Z
DTEND:20181004T030000Z
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