Get out your May Pole
and dance for truth and freedom
Today is both MayDay and the Full Moon.
Today, May 1st — International Worker’s Day — is a holiday in much of the world that commemorates the long struggle to gain worker’s rights. This day of worker solidarity was connected to a May Day here in the US in 1886 but has been sidelined in our collective memory due to fears of its radical roots. As this article argues, it’s an act of resistance to learn more about it. So check it out!
What are you going to do to mark this day of truth and freedom — no work, no school, no shopping? I’d love to know.
In their participation guide, Indivisible talks about how this type of venture is new to them, but flexing this way today could show us a way forward, say in the case of manipulations of our elections. They have based this action on the one orchestrated in Minnesota back on January 23th, just a week and a half after Renee Good had been killed and the day before Alex Pretti was shot. That winter day dawned with temperatures well below zero. The clergy were at Minneapolis St. Paul International Airport taking a stand for our neighbors, demanding our corporations speak out objections to this attack on their communities, on our freedom and way of life. The ICE surge that was in no small part made possible by the so-called “One Big Beautiful Bill Act.”
It gave $4.5 billion in tax cuts to the wealthiest individuals and corporations, cut $1.1 trillion in programs for families, made it possible for ICE to terrorize us and other cities by tripling its budget to $170 billion and added $4.1 trillion in national deficit spending— before the war with Iran, that is.
This appalling law was just the most recent cherry on top of decades of disinvestment in our public spending. Below is an illustration of what has happened to public spending here since the 1990s and the cycle it creates. This is a photo capture from a handout Vivian Ihekoronye made for us on Tax Day.
Heather Cox Richardson had a discussion with Vanessa Williams in her American Conversations series where I encountered an American history with taxes that I hadn’t known of before. (Because of this discussion, Williams’s book the Price of Democracy made it into the updated shortlist or readings and watchings, which I have completely revamped and just published, in case you are interested.)
It might surprise you that the Boston Tea Party wasn’t just angry about paying taxes and the high cost of tea, but was protesting the corporate tax cuts that the British Empire was giving to the East Indian Company when Parliament gave them their special access and a cash bailout. Colonists actually believed that paying taxes was part of a citizen’s contribution to democracy, a way to participate and have a say. In fact, the colonists continued paying taxes, just not to the British Empire. They switched to paying taxes to their local magistrate. In that day and age, when the roads required upkeep, everyone came to work on them, unless they were wealthy enough to pay someone to do the work for them.
As Vanessa Williams says in the interview, taxation is a way that we donate to public goods through our own labor and it grounds our right to participate in our own governance. Taxes build the ties between leaders and taxpayers. She goes on to say autocrats hate taxes and find other ways to build wealth - for example through foreign spoils (as they note in their conversation “like Venezuelan oil”), through large gifts that will stay off the books (“like the donations toward the building of the ballroom”), through fees and fines (“Jim Crow era”), through extractions and bribes (they mention the resource curse of countries with some kind of “gold mine,” those countries tend to be poor, even though it doesn’t make sense with their wealth in resources, and they tent to be autocracies) and through running debts like our huge (and getting huger) deficit.
To break this cycle of disinvestment and distrust we will have to raise revenue and produce some meaningful public spending for the greater good.
Last week on Tax Day, ISAIAH folk gathered at the capital to speak with their representatives about the revenue we will need to raise in order to save HCMC.
But we were also there to talk about the future. The formula for defeating authoritarian regimes is: first — slow the authoritarian down (like we did here in MN); second, stop the authoritarian (like at the ballot box next November); and third — actually deliver on something people need.
And there are oh so many needs right now.
ISAIAH is putting their might behind universal childcare in 2027, in the form of their initiative called Kids Count on Us. Having affordable childcare available to everyone would make a big difference for our workforce, give parents the ability to pursue more education, and would support the healthy development of our children while helping our businesses and communities get back to thriving.
Below this line is the Updates Section.
Epstein Files. The day after the correspondents dinner and the alleged assassination attempt, I saw a post sharing memes about how this is yet another distraction from the Epstein Files. Whether or not it is true, it feels true. It is sad when your attention has been manipulated so much that we no longer feel horror at what is horrible. Do they remember what happened to the boy who cried wolf? Violence is so destructive, it even erodes our sensitivity to it. Thank you for not forgetting about the Epstein Files.
DHS funding shutdown - The House took a voice vote yesterday and finally passed the legislation that the Senate had sent over nearly a month ago to fund all of DHS except for ICE. So finally TSA will be paid again (some were being paid through the administrations shifting around of other existing funds). This could have been resolved weeks ago, but Mike Johnson and the far right wing of the House “threw a fit” as he said himself.
Here is the Republican plan for how to fund ICE through the rest of Trump’s term without Democratic votes as reported by Letters from an American:
As Charles Tiefer of Talking Points Memo reported today, Senate majority leader John Thune (R-SD) has proposed funding Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the parent agency for Border Patrol, through budget reconciliation, a process that cannot be filibustered in the Senate. Because Republicans control both the House and the Senate, this means things tucked into a budget reconciliation measure can pass without any Democratic votes.
Senate Democrats refused to fund ICE and CBP for 2026 until Republicans agreed to reform the rules for the agents’ behavior, including requiring them to get a warrant from a judge before breaking into someone’s home—as courts have always required before this administration—and to take off their masks.
But Republicans have refused to agree to those reforms and are turning to funding through budget reconciliation so they don’t have to negotiate. And rather than funding ICE and CBP for the year, as the rest of the appropriations bills do, Thune is proposing to fund them for the next three years, taking away Congress’s power to reform ICE and CBP by withholding funds not just for 2026, but for 2027 and for 2028. Even if Democrats take control of the House or Senate after 2026, they could not reform ICE or CBP, which would remain a growing force under the president’s control.
The New Moon rolls around on May 16th.
songs for these times
here’s some song solace for you:
“The Voyager” by Jenny Lewis — YouTube or Spotify
“The Temptation of Adam” by Josh Ritter — YouTube (this version was recorded at a show we went to 14 years ago) or Spotify