The truth as I understand it regarding my not being allowed to finish my speech today at the @M4M4ALL rally in Los Angeles:
I was confirmed as a speaker 6+ weeks ago, thanks to the advocacy of @bigclasstraitor. I was allotted 6-7 min, and I immediately wrote my speech.
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About 3 weeks ago, Savage Joy (we don’t get along *because* I criticize Bernie and the Squad—you can search our last interaction on Twitter as proof) had me removed from the docket. Then I had a lot of people fight for me to get me back on the docket, but organizers resisted.
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One reason they gave was that there was already too many white men speaking and they wanted more diverse speakers. When @bigclasstraitor told me that, I asked him to please, in the next meeting, tell them how sorry I am for the circumstances of my birth.
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Eventually, they put me back on the event, but then they told me I had to tell a “personal healthcare story” and gave me 3 min.
3 Minutes. Nobody else had less than 5.
All I did was my original speech that I’d already written.
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So they cut me off. I was literally giving a speech about how we need to be willing to fight everyone, including people who claim to be our allies in our fight for universal, single-payer healthcare. It takes more than words.
Then the organizers immediately proved my point.
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So I set up on some stairs just a few doors down to finish my speech with a bullhorn I’d brought with me, and the @M4M4ALL organizers in their flatbed truck tried to drown me out with music after I captured the audience’s attention the second time.
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They didn’t want my actual message to get out. It’s that simple.
But you may have noticed that I don’t back down from *any* fights. And I believe we *need* people who don’t back down from fights representing us in congress.
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We’re fighting a behemoth on the people’s behalf. Not because we want to, but because we have to.
I know times are tough, but if you can help, we need all the help we can get.
Neither party wants to address the root causes of any problem we face because they rely on these problems to campaign against each other. The best you’ll get from either party are ineffective laws that they’ll try to sell afterward as “helping”.
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But the goal isn’t to help us. The goal is to garner and maintain power for their party and its big-money backers.
To appeal to voters, they pass ineffective laws and then launch PR campaigns, while the problem they’re supposedly addressing remains unchanged.
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Example:
The Affordable Care Act was a handout to health-insurers, providers and Big Pharma, but the Democrats tried to present it as the greatest healthcare reform in history in order to garner voter support.
Quick explainer:
I’m a left-wing libertarian.
Right-wing libertarians typically only care about negative liberty, which is about *preventing* (thus, “negative”) the government from interfering in your life. But on the left side of that...
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On the left side of libertarianism (which is actually the root of the libertarian concept), we care about negative liberty but also *positive* liberty, which is not just about preventing interference in your life, but actually empowering people to be *able* to live freely.
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Conceptually, think about the right to travel wherever you want. Negative liberty would just prevent the government from stopping you. Positive liberty builds the interstate highways, airports, railroads, etc, that enable you to actually travel.
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Thread:
The most difficult thing for our campaign has always been fundraising. The services that provide donor contacts usually cost thousands up front so you have to raise money before you get the contacts to raise money. #Paradox
About a year and a half ago, a campaign volunteer asked a service that supposedly only supports “left wing” candidates, and does it with no money up front, Grassroots Analytics (@grassrootsmath), working with our campaign. They said no because I’m not a Democrat.
A few weeks ago, I decided to ask them myself. They charge no money up front, but charge 3% of what your campaign raises (with or without using their contacts). They set up a phone meeting and then sent over a contract after that meeting!