Green Party VP candidate Cheri Honkala visited Detroit this past Sunday, giving a multi-platform speech that called for movement building, whatever the outcome on Nov. 6. She raised, amongst other issues, the missing links in the Democrat and Republican presidential campaigns: the war on youth, the war on the poor, the wealth inequality, the environmental crisis, and the exclusion of alternative voices in the official debates. “We don’t have to participate in that box anymore,” she said. “There’s enough to go around for everybody—they just don’t mean us.” She also described being arrested and shackled for 8 hours with party nominee Jill Stein while attempting to enter the 2nd presidential debate at Hofstra University.
The event began as a potluck, hosted at the International Institute of Metro Detroit by the Green Party of Michigan, and coalesced into a night of stump speeches from several local Green Party candidates before Honkala took the stage.
Before driving back to Philadelphia, Honkala spent a few minutes talking to Truthout on her Detroit background as a welfare mother. “When you’re poor,” she said, “about the only thing that you have is your morale. And once you lose that, you’re done.” She also spoke on developing an international class identity, resisting the non-profit industrial complex, and building the inter-generational youth struggle for a dignified future, concluding: “It’s young people’s future that’s at stake, and so at the end of the day only the people inside the boxing ring should determine how to throw the punches.”
Truthout Is Preparing to Meet Trump’s Agenda With Resistance at Every Turn
Dear Truthout Community,
If you feel rage, despondency, confusion and deep fear today, you are not alone. We’re feeling it too. We are heartsick. Facing down Trump’s fascist agenda, we are desperately worried about the most vulnerable people among us, including our loved ones and everyone in the Truthout community, and our minds are racing a million miles a minute to try to map out all that needs to be done.
We must give ourselves space to grieve and feel our fear, feel our rage, and keep in the forefront of our mind the stark truth that millions of real human lives are on the line. And simultaneously, we’ve got to get to work, take stock of our resources, and prepare to throw ourselves full force into the movement.
Journalism is a linchpin of that movement. Even as we are reeling, we’re summoning up all the energy we can to face down what’s coming, because we know that one of the sharpest weapons against fascism is publishing the truth.
There are many terrifying planks to the Trump agenda, and we plan to devote ourselves to reporting thoroughly on each one and, crucially, covering the movements resisting them. We also recognize that Trump is a dire threat to journalism itself, and that we must take this seriously from the outset.
After the election, the four of us sat down to have some hard but necessary conversations about Truthout under a Trump presidency. How would we defend our publication from an avalanche of far right lawsuits that seek to bankrupt us? How would we keep our reporters safe if they need to cover outbreaks of political violence, or if they are targeted by authorities? How will we urgently produce the practical analysis, tools and movement coverage that you need right now — breaking through our normal routines to meet a terrifying moment in ways that best serve you?
It will be a tough, scary four years to produce social justice-driven journalism. We need to deliver news, strategy, liberatory ideas, tools and movement-sparking solutions with a force that we never have had to before. And at the same time, we desperately need to protect our ability to do so.
We know this is such a painful moment and donations may understandably be the last thing on your mind. But we must ask for your support, which is needed in a new and urgent way.
We promise we will kick into an even higher gear to give you truthful news that cuts against the disinformation and vitriol and hate and violence. We promise to publish analyses that will serve the needs of the movements we all rely on to survive the next four years, and even build for the future. We promise to be responsive, to recognize you as members of our community with a vital stake and voice in this work.
Please dig deep if you can, but a donation of any amount will be a truly meaningful and tangible action in this cataclysmic historical moment.
We’re with you. Let’s do all we can to move forward together.
With love, rage, and solidarity,
Maya, Negin, Saima, and Ziggy