Free Julian Assange! APRIL 15—Last Thursday, Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, was dragged out of the Ecuadorean Embassy in London by British cops and arrested.

Workers Vanguard No. 1153	19 April 2019

Free Julian Assange!

APRIL 15—Last Thursday, Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, was dragged out of the Ecuadorean Embassy in London by British cops and arrested. He is now being held in the maximum security Belmarsh prison on an extradition request from Washington. Assange, an Australian citizen, has been in the crosshairs of U.S. imperialism for years. Both Democrats and Republicans have been howling for his head ever since 2010 when WikiLeaks released a trove of documents provided by Chelsea Manning, then an intelligence analyst in the U.S. Army, that exposed U.S. war crimes in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere. No extradition! Free Julian Assange now! For unobstructed passage to any country that grants him asylum!

Assange resided in the embassy for seven years, having been granted political asylum by Ecuador’s then president Rafael Correa. At the time, he was facing deportation to Sweden on bogus allegations of “sexual molestation” and “rape,” which was simply a step toward handing him over to U.S. authorities. Correa’s successor, the U.S. imperialist lackey Lenín Moreno, revoked Assange’s asylum (as well as the Ecuadorean citizenship he had acquired). Trampling on the sovereignty of his country, Moreno threw open the embassy doors to the British cops.

Workers in the U.S. and Britain must fight to keep Assange from falling into the clutches of the U.S. imperialist butchers. The Partisan Defence Committee, a legal and social defense organization associated with the Spartacist League/Britain, wrote to the British Home Secretary to denounce the vendetta against Assange and demand “the immediate and unconditional release of Julian Assange and an end to all extradition proceedings. This includes the possibility of extradition to Sweden on cooked-up ‘rape’ charges, which were never anything more than a flimsy cover for handing Assange over to the vengeful US rulers.”

Washington’s extradition request is based on the accusation that Assange conspired with Manning to crack a Department of Defense computer password. An extradition hearing is scheduled for May 2. If sent to the U.S., Assange will likely find himself facing far more serious charges, and could disappear into one of the bourgeoisie’s dungeons.

A taste of what is in store for Assange is shown by the Obama administration’s treatment of Manning, who was convicted for violating the Espionage Act and held in torturous prison conditions for seven years. Since last month, she has been back behind bars for courageously refusing to testify before the grand jury that indicted Assange. The U.S. imperialists and their British junior partners want to send a message that anyone who tries to reveal imperialist atrocities will be severely punished. Free Chelsea Manning!

Democrats hold particular animus toward Assange because in 2016 WikiLeaks released a cache of Hillary Clinton emails, including some pointing to her role in the 2011 invasion of Libya, as well as the machinations of her presidential campaign (see “WikiLeaks Reveals Truths,” WV No. 1099, 4 November 2016). Democratic Party pols and the liberal press claim, without any evidence, that Assange is a Russian agent and blame him for the election of Trump. As part of the smear campaign, the Guardian last November ran a now-debunked story that Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort met with Assange inside the Ecuadorean Embassy in advance of the 2016 elections.

A number of leading bourgeois newspapers, including the New York Times and the Guardian, published (and profited from) material made available by WikiLeaks, only to turn on Assange and help lead the witchhunt against him. Their editorial boards heaved a collective sigh of relief that the indictment did not include any charges related to publishing leaked material, which could set a precedent for going after these news outlets. Even so, by treating news gathering processes—communicating via encrypted messages, cultivating sources and encouraging them to provide more information—as parts of a criminal conspiracy, the indictment is an attack on freedom of the press.

The New York Times, the U.S. bourgeoisie’s paper of record, praised Assange’s arrest. An 11 April editorial declared: “The administration has begun well by charging Mr. Assange with an indisputable crime.” The Times editors, who are crusaders for the anti-Trump “resistance,” then wring their hands that “there is always a risk with this administration” that his prosecution “could become an assault on the First Amendment and whistle-blowers.” In fact, an all-out war on whistle-blowers, not least WikiLeaks, predates the Trump administration. Obama used the 1917 Espionage Act to prosecute more people for leaking secrets than all of his predecessors combined, and his Justice Department laid the groundwork for Assange’s indictment.

Even before Obama was in the White House, the Pentagon aimed to destroy WikiLeaks and Assange. In a CounterPunch article (18 June 2018), award-winning Australian journalist John Pilger reported on a secret Pentagon document from 2008 that outlined a plan replete “with threats of ‘exposure [and] criminal prosecution’ and a unrelenting assault on reputation. The aim was to silence and criminalise WikiLeaks and its editor and publisher.”

Central to the assault on Assange’s reputation were the manufactured Swedish rape allegations. The two women involved, by their own accounts, had consensual sex with him. Neither claimed at the time that she had been the victim of rape or sexual assault. Never formally charged, Assange repeatedly offered to be interviewed by Swedish authorities in London or by video link, but the Swedes refused. They also refused to rule out his extradition to the U.S. if he went to Sweden for questioning. In May 2017, Swedish prosecutors dropped the investigation. However, now that he is in British custody, authorities are reviewing one of the cases and might reopen it.

In Britain, a whole raft of liberals, Labour Party Members of Parliament and reformists like the Socialist Workers Party are calling for Assange to be dispatched to Sweden to answer the allegations, if demanded by Stockholm. Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn claims to oppose Assange’s extradition to the U.S. However, in response to a reporter’s question as to whether he would support extradition to Sweden, Corbyn stated: “I do think he should answer those questions, so yes.” For Assange, Sweden would be nothing more than a layover on a journey to U.S. prison hell.

It is in the interests of the working class and all the oppressed to oppose the witchhunt of Julian Assange. We Marxists seek to imbue the working class with the understanding that imperialist war, with all its savagery, is inherent to capitalist class rule. The brave acts of truth-tellers like Assange and Manning have lifted the lid, even if slightly, on imperialist barbarities. Ridding the world of imperialist war and pillage requires a series of socialist revolutions internationally to shatter the capitalist order.

Lost In The Rain In Tombstone On The Road To Desolation Row -With Bob Dylan’s Highway 61 Revisited In Mind

Lost In The Rain In Tombstone On The Road To Desolation Row -With Bob Dylan’s Highway 61 Revisited In Mind

By Jack Callahan

“I’ve met Einstein disguised as Robin Hood complete with his greedy band of lumpen brethren, wine swill drinkers, upper-class whores down on the low while the court was in exile, tavern wenches who are always with us, Tokay tokens breathers smelling of rat’s assess, gumweed, advance men setting up the next armed robbery of some dolt who dared against all reason to traverse Sherwood Forests when the boyos where in  high dudgeon, unpaid advertisers (this before printing presses so unpaid), free-lance press agents ready like all of their kind to lay a ton of bullshit on a candid world, gabacho defrocked friars listening to penny-whistles and sordid confessions, deflowered our lady of the flowers nun escapees, rough trade cock and bull wharf rats (loved to pieces later by one Jean Genet after he got out of the high sheriff’s Nottingham prisons or what passed from such), all banished when the Lion-hearted hit town and laid so much land on Robin for keeping some simple faith, not even Christian faith that most of the brethren serfed the lord’s manor or blew smoke rings of desire in some clammy Robin bed.”  “I’ve been in the tower of pizza, excuse me, Pisa with Ezra Pound pounding out tunes for Benny and the Jets  pretending against all Harvard Square reason that he beat some joker’s ass and with T.S. Eliot in an adjoining cell looking for straw men, absolution, that self-same Pound, Ezra first name, some modern coffee cup dreams with ancient junkie hooded eyes blinking the tunes that dear Ezra played out in three-forth time to while away the captivity,” declared dizzy in the night Robert South to no one in particular although Jake Devine was the only one in the room at the time. Jake a blind lady from the circus which left town some hours ago with some jealous monk, maybe that fucking defrocked friar who passed paper about one Robin Hood who took his manhood and rolled it in a copper-etched cup (nice that manhood bit after that defrocked friar played freely with the carriage trade after Cinderella balled the jack with old Robin and his crowd.)  

With those words Jake, Jake known as Jake since childhood to distinguish him or her who knows once the circus leaves town with some extra baggage from John Devine, Senior although that father a genial Irishman addicted to sports betting and drinking whiskey not always in that order was more the slap on the back Jake type while Jake in the throes of his high hippie moments was trying to shed that moniker for Be-Bop Benny but old habits die hard and his old high school friends called him Jake and when he went on the hitchhike road west with them in 1965,1966 the name stuck whether he liked it or not, knew that Robert was two things-one, high as a kite on either speed or LSD just then the drug of choice among the “hip” (not always the same as Hippie but Jake did not want to argue the fine points on that one since he himself had been on a two-day speed high-low) on the mind-expanding conscious West Coast cohort of the brethren and two, Robert had been listening to the whole of Bob Dylan’s Desolation Row at least once, probably more than once if he was high since he would not have had the stamina to switch the sound system off that Captain Crunch had installed in their “digs” now that they were off the road for the winter and settled into Diego’s high on the hill mansion.

By the way in compensation  for being called Jake by one and all on the bus, of which more in a minute, he had gathered some sense of respect because his latest flame, a serious “hippie chick” met on the road at Big Sur as they were heading south, Frilly Jilly, called him Be-Bop Benny,  called him a few other things once they high on grass, you know marijuana,  got down to the “do the do,” a term the guys still carried with them from the corner days in Riverdale after they had heard the Chicago bluesman Howlin’ Wolf do a song with those words in it, those words meaning hitting the sheets, having sex, what she called him in her high hormonal moments was left to them.              

 Yeah, Robert, Jimmy Jenkins, Frank Riley, and a guy named Josh Breslin they met from a mill town in Maine, from French-Canadian come down from Quebec farms to work the fetid textile mills along the Saco River a couple of generations before on Russian Hill in San Francisco where they were camped out in a small park when he stopped by the bus and asked for a joint had been on quite a ride since coming West to see what it was all about and were learning quickly it was all about “drugs, sex and rock and roll” at its core but also about getting out from under the old ways of thinking and living. So when they hit Frisco they headed like lemmings to the sea to Golden Gate Park where all the hell was breaking loose met a few guys who “turned them on,” got them invited to a few parties, including one Captain Crunch was throwing around the new yellow brick road bus that he had just purchased (allegedly in a trade for a big sack of dope but all the time they were on the bus they never had that rumor confirmed by the Captain or anybody else and mainly it didn’t matter by then). This bus was nothing but an old school bus that had been turned into a moving commune after the seats had been torn out, mattresses thrown down, a storage area for family living material like utensils, dishes, and pots and pans, the thing had been repainted in every day-glo  psychedelic color under the sun and best of all hooked up with a great sound system Dippy Mike, the guy who did the sound system for Fillmore West and the Dead, put together for any trips they would take. (Another rumor had it that Dippy did that set-up for a sack of dope from the Captain, later confirmed by his companion Mustang Sally, which got its way into a Dead concert and caused the freaking place to smell like Saint James’ Infirmary except everybody was getting well, was getting fixed up under the new dispensation rules.)

And almost from the start at Golden Gate Park the trips began once Captain had selected the Riverdale boys as part of his crew to head south with him. The reason for that heading south, the reason Robert was holding forth those lines from Desolation Row was to “house-sit” here in La Jolla at this mansion that belonged to Pablo Rios, who everybody called Diego since that was his alleged place of birth but who knew where anybody came from really or who was using, or not using their birth names, a friend of the Captain’s and a serious south of the border drug dealer who was in Mexico for the winter and the Captain had agreed to doing the sitting as we got into “winter quarters.” Now that the bus was not being used, was being refitted with a new engine and so not useable, the sound system had been transferred to the house for the weekly parties the Captain threw for his friends (and whoever happened to hear about the event and knew where to find the place, not as easy as it sounds when stoned in hideaway between the cliffs away from prying highways in La Jolla.                     

Robert, once settled in, once he got his own room with his lady-friend, Lavender Minnie, got heavily into the dope, got heavily into listening to the amped up music and Jake thought he had begun, like they had all heard about with kids who did too much dope, to go over the edge. To head to edge city where the flowers do not bloom and madness stands tall at the doorstep.       

Just as Jake thought that thought Robert rag out again with “they’re selling postcards of the hanging, they’re painting the passports brown,” and Jake knew that Robert had gone for the next something like eleven plus minutes to his own world. Eleven plus minutes if he was lucky, since more than once Robert had decided that he needed to give his own take on what the whole thing meant, what the various references meant to him. For example, that business with Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot, the two exile poets who almost single-handedly broke from the old forms and created modern poetry and were treated like gods among the hip at one point was Dylan throwing down the gauntlet, was sending these festering bum to the glue factory, telling those guys a new sheriff was in town. Well, maybe, if you think Dylan was a lyric poet rather than a song-writer, or maybe put the two together. For example that “postcards of the hanging” stuff was his political moment like Billie Holiday had with Strange Fruit about the scandalous open lynching of mostly black men in the South put together with a new sense of masculinity turned in on itself with sailor boys caught out on the seven seas who transformed themselves in boy-girls with those all male crews. For example, that stuff about Ophelia, you know Hamlet’s chick and how she was giving up the ghost (committing suicide) not because of some lost love but because she was pregnant and was not sure who the father was. Maybe Robin Hood for all Robert knew. I left the comfort of the old home yellow bus before long knowing that I already knew a million Robert “takes” on the deep meaning of the lyrics and even if he gave a few new twists who could reasonably sit by and take it all in.          

In Honor Of The 100th Anniversary Of The Founding of The Communist International-From The Archives- *From The Pages Of “Workers Vanguard”-In Memory of Polish Socialist Ludwik Hass-1918-2008

Click on the headline to link to the article from “Workers Vanguard” described in the title.


Markin comment:

As almost always these historical articles and polemics are purposefully helpful to clarify the issues in the struggle against world imperialism, particularly the “monster” here in America.

An Encore Presentation-When Film Noir Private Detectives Lit Up The Slumming Streets Of Whatever Town Could Take Their Weight- Turnabout Is Fair Play-With The Detective Fiction Writer Dashiell Hammett in Mind

An Encore Presentation-When Film Noir Private Detectives Lit Up The Slumming Streets Of Whatever Town Could Take Their Weight- Turnabout Is Fair Play-With The Detective Fiction Writer Dashiell Hammett in Mind

With A New Introduction By Sam Lowell

[Every guy who dug the gold of film noir and reviewed the material and it was mostly guys in the old days cut his eye-teeth on the film noir detective-guys like Philo Vance, Phil Larkin, Phillip Marlowe, Sam Spade, Jeff Culver, and Jack Dunne. Including one Allan Jackson, who out of respect for a fallen comrade used the moniker Peter Paul Markin for many years although I am not sure what he is using now, maybe Mitt Romney or Madame La Rue, who knows. Allan, formerly the head honcho at this publication and in the interest of transparency an old high school friend of mine, got the big boot, got “retired” a while back partially with my help. Others have written to eternity on this basically “inside the Beltway-type” stuff about his demise, and about where he landed after falling down so I don’t need to repeat that material here. Except the son of bitch is trying to resurrect himself by stealth or by sucking up to current site manager and his replacement Greg Green or both by portraying himself, partially through me I admit, as the indispensable guy to introduce encore presentations of various series produced under his leadership. (I will admit that Allan sweated, perspired bullets editing, cajoling and squeezing every last writerly effort out of those series, especially the hallmark The Roots Is The Toots rock and roll series.)

I guess Greg has only himself to blame for the Allan creep. (I will take my share as well insisting that Allan was the only one who could do justice to the rock and roll series and dragging him back from exile out who knows wherever he was, Utah with Mitt Romney, San Francisco with his old honey Madame La Rue helping run her high -end whorehouse or slumming with Miss Judy Garland, aka Timmy Riley our old high school friend now the doyen of the drag queens in that same town. I will address my part in the publication shake-up below as the decisive vote for his ouster below in passing.) Greg, maybe insecure in his new position  anointed by only that single decisive vote of no confidence in Allan and saddled with an Editorial Board which Allan would never have put up with but which we insisted on to guard against a return of one-person, one-man rule, had the bright idea that to appeal to the younger crowd that the writers here should abandon their serious pursuits like in-depth political, cultural and social analysis via books, art, cinema and music and go full bore reviewing cinematic comic book character-derived films, video games and tech gadgetry. Christ, for a guy who spent many years as the chief over at American Film Gazette what the hell was he thinking. I won’t even mention that the thing was a total bust since the kids don’t give a fuck about “high- brow,” middle brow,” any brow reviews from a literary publication. They don’t read this kind of stuff however you doll it up and get their tastes from social media-end of story. 

What is not the end of the story although almost sank this publication was the real demographic that reads this material-the so-called baby-boomer generation and what Allan specifically called the Generation of ’68 to ground the audience he was gearing things to rebelled at comic book cinema, video games and tech garbage. Aided by the writers, young and old, who had to write the swill and who threatened murder and mayhem if that continued. So Greg did a “dixie,” did an about face and decided to revive some of Allan’s series from the archives which he thought were pretty good to retain the base. His first attempt at the rock and roll series was to get Frank Jackman to do the introductions. Frank is a good reporter, a crack journalist but knew nothing about the inner workings of that series. I got fed up and after hearing that Allan was back East, back in Maine, after being abandoned by Mitt Romney, getting tired of whorehouse management or when doyen Timmy tired of him take your pick I contacted him with an olive branch to come back to do the encore introductions. He did a bang- up job and while Greg stated that he was worried about Allan hanging around he consented to let him do the very popular Sam and Ralph Stories about a couple of lifelong friends who met via the anti-Vietnam War struggles and have kept the faith all these years. He is at work on that series now.            

Here is where the Allan creep plays out. Greg at my suggestion (I am right now doing my turn as the rotating chair of the Ed Board) has decided to renew, to do an encore presentation on film noir private detectives which a number of readers have asked for in the wake of these other encore presentations. Alan approached Greg telling him that he, Allan, was the only one who could do justice to the encore introductions. WTF. I am the guy who put film noir private detection on the map, wrote the still definitive volume on film noir The Life and Times of Film Noir: 1940-1960. Yes, WTF. After I settled down, after I mentioned to Greg that Allan might know maybe that Humphrey Bogart played Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon that was probably the real extent of his knowledge whatever he tried to con Greg with. So that battle won I am here to introduce the various sketches which several writers have worked on over the years. Enough for now though except to say that Zack James’ take on real-life private detection is kind of interesting although not my cup of tea.  Once we get rolling I will expand on that idea.]    

**********

By Zack James

Fred Sims’ tales of his life as a real live private investigator, P.I., gumshoe, shamus, private dick, or whatever you call it in your neighborhood depending on whether you had been in thrall to the old time black and white detective films like The Maltese Falcon and The Big Sleep and picked the lingo there or just heard it on the streets, could only be taken in small doses. So said Alexander Slater, Alex, who for many years ran a print shop on the first floor of the Tappan Building in Carver where Fred had his office on the fifth floor. Many times the pair would run into one another at Dolly’s Diner across the street from the Tappan and they would sit and have their coffee and crullers together. Usually though the talk was on weather, of Alex’s children and grandchildren, Fred’s troubles with his latest girlfriend usually picked up from one of his cases since that was one of the few places where he would run into women who might be interested in him, or how the town of Carver, once the world famous hub of the cranberry industry, had gone to hell in a handbasket over the past few decades who with the place turning into a vanilla no problems need apply “bedroom community” for the young who had flowed to the high tech industry on Interstate 495 about fifteen miles away. If Alex wanted to hear some tale of Fred’s, maybe he had read some story in the Gazette or the Globe from Boston and wondered if Fred had run up against that kind of situation, he would go up to Fred’s office, plunk himself down in one of Fred’s drastically mismatched chairs (old-timer Fred did not believe in putting up a front and so his office did look like old Sam Slade’s cinematic one including the crooked coat rack), Fred would pull out a bottle of Johnny Walker Red, and Fred would answer his question with a story, or if he had no story that would match up with Alex’s inquiry then something from his files.                 

The story about the Malone brothers was just such a story, one that Fred told Alex even before he began to spin the thing was a prima facie case of turnabout is fair place, although he would admit that something about not being your brother’s keeper could have worked too. For this one Fred reached back into the 1950s when he was first starting out in the business, first had gotten himself the office in the Tappan Building and put up his sign, after he had gotten out of the Army where he had served as an MP in Germany during those Cold War days. Chester and Arthur Malone were financiers, or that is what they called themselves, guys who bought and sold stock for various clients’ accounts or for themselves if they saw a tidy profit in some hot stock. Strictly small potatoes around the Boston stock exchange and going nowhere fast until Chester hit upon the idea that he had read about that he, they could use one or more clients’ stock (or bonds although that was dicey) to buy high risk stock but which if it panned out would move them up the stock exchange food chain and into maybe some merger with a larger firm. Who knows what they would have finally wound up doing. This whole stock transfer idea aside from the questionable legal, moral and smart questions was essentially a Ponzi scheme, a scheme that has been around one way or another as long there have been suckers who have looked for high returns for little risk, so they, the suckers, think.

Well the long and short of it was that something went wrong, a few clients wanted their assets cashed in, something like that, and the Malones couldn’t cover fast enough. The clients squawked to the SEC and the boys went on the carpet, were going to jail for a nickel anyway. All the paper transfers though were in Arthur’s name and so they decided that since Arthur’s goose was cooked he wound take the fall, he would cop a plea saying that the whole operation had been his and Chester had nothing to do with his dealings. So he won the fiver, went down for the nickel. Arthur did his time, most of it anyway, but something happened in prison, who knows, maybe he became somebody’s “girl,” maybe he thought he had gotten a raw deal from his brother, maybe he didn’t like that his brother stole his wife away, stole her after she had divorced him when he went to prison. Whatever it was something had been eating at him by the time he got out.

Arthur though had his own game plan, kept his own consul, and when he got out he played the game so that Chester believed they were on good terms. Then Chester started getting threatening telephone calls, calls telling him that the party on the other line, a woman, but Chester though that was just a guy using a dame as a front that they knew he had been watering stock all the time that Arthur was in jail and that unless he forked up dough his life was worthless. Chester was no fool though, had not been scamming for all those years to just fold up when some caller called. That’s when he called me, called me to his office saying that he had been getting threatening phone calls and wanted to know who was behind it.  I told him that would be a hard nut to crack but he insisted he needed help, wanted me to pursue the matter.

Here’s where everything got squirrelly though. Arthur, as part of his plan worked in the office after he got out, did his own hustling for accounts. While he had been away Chester had hired a secretary, what they now call administrative assistants but still are really secretaries with computer skills, Ms. Wyman, Bess, a looker about thirty. Arthur made a big play for her, which she tumbled too especially when he started dangling marriage in front of her. Of course, aside from the fact that after prison he could use a few off-hand tumbles which he considered a bonus, Arthur was using Bess to find out everything about Chester’s operations since he had been gone.

It turned out that Chester had been up to his old tricks, another Ponzi scheme of sorts. So one day after he thought he had enough information on his brother he called some of Chester’s clients and made them, a few anyway, believe that their accounts would be in trouble if they didn’t pull out fast. They did and as you might expect Chester couldn’t cover fast enough before the clients complained to the SEC. And so in his turn Chester did his nickel since al the transfers had his signature on them. It turned out that he had been the one who had sold Arthur out to the SEC on the previous scheme to save his own neck. So turnabout was fair play. As for me well I got paid off once the accounts were settled for basically doing nothing except cover Chester from a fall which I couldn’t do. Oh yeah, I got paid off too with a few tumbles with that Bess once she gave Arthur the heave-ho when she figured out he was playing her for a patsy. People are strange, right.

Social media smackdown! Amy Schumer, Alyssa Milano blast Wendy’s on Instagram, Twitter! Coalition of Immokalee Workers

Social media smackdown! Amy Schumer, Alyssa Milano blast Wendy’s on Instagram, Twitter!

Coalition of Immokalee Workers<workers@ciw-online.org>

5/6/2019 9:32 AM

To  alfredjohnson34@comcast.net  

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Social media smackdown! Amy Schumer, Alyssa Milano blast Wendy’s on Instagram, Twitter! Wendy’s attempt to leverage pop culture and social media goes terribly awry, as comedian/actor/activist Amy Schumer leverages her own much-anticipated baby gender reveal with a heartfelt call to Boycott Wendy’s! Alyssa Milano followed suit, and it was game over… Within hours, #BoycottWendys was trending on Twitter and Instagram, and millions of consumers were learning of the nationwide boycott, as news of the campaign spread across USA Today, People Magazine, E! News Online, Fox News, PerezHilton.com and more! From the Live by the sword/Die by the sword Department… In order to fully understand today’s story, it is necessary first to learn a tidbit of internet trivia. It is a fact of the ever-evolving world of social media that hamburger giant Wendy’s once briefly held the title for the most retweeted tweet ever – beating out Ellen DeGeneres’ famous Oscar selfie when a customer’s tweeted request for a year’s supply of free nuggets garnered nearly 3.5 million re-tweets in 2017 (in response to a challenge by the company to collect 18 million retweets). The feat won kudos for Wendy’s PR shop and established Wendy’s as the cheekiest fast-food presence on social media, a status the company has been working hard to maintain ever since. And so it came as no surprise when, yesterday morning, Wendy’s reached to catch that sweet viral lightning in a bottle a second time, jumping on a tweet by popular hip hop artist Chance the Rapper in which he asked the company to bring back its spicy chicken nuggets. In response, Wendy’s promised to bring back the nuggets if Chance the Rapper could come up with 2 million likes. Their hope was to repeat the magic of the 2017 retweet gambit and generate positive social media buzz.  But what the internet giveth, it can brutally taketh away. Instead of a flood of retweets and the heady dopamine rush of free publicity, the move brought the full fury of the internet down on Wendy’s and resulted in perhaps the single biggest day of publicity for the Wendy’s Boycott – thanks to a brilliant play by comedian, actor, and Fair Food ally Amy Schumer... Get all the details on yesterday's social media smackdown over at the CIW website! Coalition of Immokalee Workers (239) 657 8311 | workers@ciw-online.org | www.ciw-online.org Connect with us  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌ A copy of the CIW's official registration and financial information may be obtained from the Florida Division of Consumer Services by calling toll-free 1-800-HELP-FLA (435-7352). Registration does not imply endorsement, approval, or recommendation by the state. The website for the Florida Division of Consumer Services is  https://www.freshfromflorida.com

Coalition of Immokalee Workers | 110 S 2nd St, Immokalee, FL 34142 Unsubscribe alfredjohnson34@comcast.net About our service provider Sent by workers@ciw-online.org in collaboration with Try email marketing for free today!

I am writing to ask you to make a $3 contribution to our campaign. A group called the “Partnership for America’s Health Care Future” is running ads trying to stop us and our ideas. And I need your help to fight back. Bernie Sanders

I am writing to ask you to make a $3 contribution to our campaign. A group called the “Partnership for America’s Health Care Future” is running ads trying to stop us and our ideas. And I need your help to fight back.

Bernie Sanders<info@berniesanders.com>

5/6/2019 11:26 AM

To  alfred Johnson  

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Alfred -

In just a moment, I am going to ask you to make a donation to our campaign. I hope you’ll give me a chance to explain why this request is so important — especially in light of some recent news.

The truth is, in this campaign we are not only taking on Donald Trump, his super PAC, and the huge fundraising head start he has amassed.

We are taking on very powerful corporate forces, like the insurance and pharmaceutical industries and their well-financed front-groups like the “Partnership for America’s Health Care Future.”

This group’s members aren’t patients or consumers or people impacted by our current health care system — they are insurance companies and the pharmaceutical industry’s lobbying group.

And they are already running very large advertising campaigns all over the country attacking us and the ideas that power our campaign – specifically, ideas like Medicare for All.

But let us be absolutely clear: These frantic attempts to derail our progress are a sign that we are winning. And that means we cannot rest, we cannot back down, and we cannot accept any substitute.

But I cannot do that alone. If we are going to overcome Trump’s big fundraising advantage and the insurance and drug industry fighting to stop us, I need your help.

So here is the part where I ask:

Can you make a donation to our campaign today? I need your help fighting back against the insurance and drug companies spending big to defeat us, and to defeat our ideas.

If you've saved payment info with ActBlue Express, your donation will go through immediately:

EXPRESS DONATE: $100

EXPRESS DONATE: $200

EXPRESS DONATE: $350

EXPRESS DONATE: $500

EXPRESS DONATE: $1000

OR DONATE ANOTHER AMOUNT

But if we are in this together, we are going to win.

In solidarity,

Bernie Sanders

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