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From the GNR Newsroom: Its the Monday Good News Roundup [1]

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Date: 2022-09-12

Welcome back friends to the Monday Good News Roundup, where we bring you the good news stories that will make your day a little bit better. Things have been going pretty well these last few weeks: Biden is getting stuff done, Trump is in trouble, Putin is in big trouble. Hopefully these trends continue and we get a blue November this year. Fingers crossed!

But that’s a ways away. for now, we got good news to get to.

The new multi-billion-dollar Midwest Carbon Express pipeline — proposed last fall to carry ethanol refinery waste from Iowa to underground injection sites in North Dakota — has generated a wave of resistance over the threat of eminent domain, or the seizure of land for “public good.” The unlikely alliance of farmers, ranchers, Indigenous tribes, scientists and environmentalists that has arisen has hung banners off of freeway overpasses, rallied in front of the Iowa State Capitol and held meetings in communities all along the proposed route. This campaign offers yet another example of the potential of working across lines of deep-seated traditional enmity to accomplish shared goals. They hearken back to the Cowboy and Indian alliance campaign against the Keystone XL pipeline in 2013. Native people and ranchers from the deeply red states of Nebraska and South Dakota riding their horses together into Washington, D.C. in full regalia, to set up camp near the White House and send a message as one to President Obama was a striking image of unity. They had come together, somewhat uneasily, to act in the face of a common external threat, but through that process they began to appreciate each other in different ways.

Remember, however they try and divide us, the battle has always been the haves against the have nots, and the have nots have the numbers advantage.

There’s a growing disconnect between the energy and enthusiasm, especially among young workers, generated by the inspiring campaigns at Starbucks and Amazon and the long-term trends of declining union membership. Moreover, at the national level, the labor establishment appears (with a few notable exceptions) increasingly out of touch with, and irrelevant to, the unconventional organizing campaigns at places like Starbucks, Amazon, and Trader Joe’s. And while dynamism in the labor movement has rarely come from the national leadership of the AFL-CIO, and is unlikely to do so anytime soon, there’s a much broader problem of timidity and lethargy in established unions throughout the country right now. How can the labor movement harness the dynamism of this wave of organizing and use it to rebuild union strength over the long term? Starbucks Workers United offers the most promising model for several reasons. Here are five of them:

Unions are important, but we need to make them relevant to the young people. And also introduce them into industries without unions.

In early March, Vladimir Putin told French President Emmanuel Macron that his invasion of Ukraine was “going according to plan,” and that its goals would be “fulfilled.” He has never backtracked on that claim. In fact, he has only doubled down and has been forced to continue in a war—that he refuses to call a war—that has drained manpower and materiel in pursuit of an uncertain goal. But if Putin stoutly maintains both the strategy and the outcome, increasing numbers of both soldiers and civilians beg to differ. The critics within the military are using a variety of tactics—from online campaigns to desertion—to make their voices heard. And although Russia has tried very hard to hush up refuseniks in the army, news has leaked out.

Once again, things not going well for Putin on his war front. This was the year that really exposed him as a massive loser and not the James Bond villain he always pretended to be.

This opinion about humanity’s overwhelming badness isn’t confined to high school classrooms. We’re not here to convince you one way or the other—maybe when the final history on humanity’s run gets written, the outcome will be “bad” after all. But there is a lot more evidence for the “good” than is commonly recognized. Like? Well, most recently, there have been studies showing that cooperation among strangers in the United States has increased for the past 60 years; that children who missed out on early child-mother bonding can still develop critical social skills from relationships with trusted neighbors; and that we underestimate how great it feels to be on both the giving and receiving ends of random acts of kindness. (My favorite tidbit from the last link: if the impulse to do something kind arises, pull a Nike and just do it!) In many cases, though, the kind of mindset that raises its hand for “humans are bad” isn’t formed from our everyday interactions with people but from the barrage of the 24-hour news cycle. It won’t surprise TPN readers that yet another study has come out that says doomscrolling is literally bad for your health. The study’s lead author, an associate professor at Texas Tech University, told The Guardian that overattention to the news “could bring about a ‘constant state of high alert’” that makes “the world seem like a ‘dark and dangerous place.’” Research shows that teaching your kids that the world is dark and dangerous is not helpful to them, TPN Member Arthur Brooks writes in The Atlantic. And if the Texas Tech study is any indication, it’s not helpful to us adults, either.

I know things can seem bad, but you can be surprised how nice people can actually turn out to be. Cynicism and hopelessnes are as much our enemies as anyone.

Europe’s swift transition to a sustainable, low-carbon future will not happen without the engagement and involvement of citizens producing and consuming energy locally, experts say – and across the continent, there are signs it is happening. A summer of wildfires, drought and record heatwaves fuelled by climate breakdown has combined with soaring gas and electricity prices, following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, to inject a new urgency into the switch to alternative, renewable sources. From solar panels in the Netherlands to biomass burners in Spain, communities across Europe are increasingly making, consuming and selling their own energy, a trend the EU sees as vital if the bloc is to meet its climate targets.

All over Europe people are transitioning to more green forms of energy, you love to see it.

The move toward reusable rockets could be good for all of us down on Earth, too, since the space industry is notoriously wasteful. For instance, many mission launch vehicles contain parts that are dumped into the sky. These barrel down toward Earth and can plop anywhere from the Indian Ocean to an Australian sheep farm. Each new discarded satellite or rocket component left up in orbit quickly becomes a hazard that other spacecraft need to avoid. There are more than 27,000 such objects being tracked by the Department of Defense.

I mean, I’m not sold on private space companies, but making space travel more green and less dangerous is a good idea.

Following the huge interest of our readers in the article we published on how well-being indicators show overwhelming progress, we decided to give the figures another look; this time we looked into the hard data of the world of work, another key factor for our happiness. We will be looking at figures from Our World in Data, a respected and transparent scientific online publication based at the University of Oxford that focuses on quantifying and analysing data about global problems.

Again, things seem bad, but in a million little ways life is getting better all the time.

At Brigham Young University, a dozen counter-protesters dressed as angels to shield queer community members from hundreds of anti-LGBTQ protesters during a back to school pride night in Provo, Utah. Maddison Tenney — a senior at BYU and founder of the Raynbow Collective, which supports LGBTQ students at the university — came up with the idea for the angel counter-protests after watching a TikTok video of the ‘angels’ who showed up against anti-LGBTQ protesters during the trials of Matthew Shepard’s killers. “I knew this was what we had to do — this is how we show that there are more people with us than against us,” Tenney said. “And, to make a statement about the power of religion and the queer community, and to show that it can’t be weaponized to hurt us anymore.” Jaliah Jambalaya, a local student and drag queen who organized and performed at the event, was touched by the outpouring of support from other community members and allies. Drag performers at the event were the primary targets of the far-right protesters, as part of a broader series of attacks and protests against drag across the country. “I’ve only been out of the closet for a year and a half, so seeing those people put themselves between me and the people that hate me meant a lot to me,” Jambalaya said. “I never thought somebody would do that for me growing up.”

We wont be silenced, we wont be forced into obscurity, we’re not gonna take this crap.

The Biden administration has officially undone a Trump-era rule that barred immigrants from gaining legal residency if they had utilized certain government benefits, allowing for a return to a previous policy with a narrower scope. The Department of Homeland Security on Thursday said a new regulation for the “public charge” rule would go into effect in late December, although the Biden administration had already stopped applying the previous version last year.

Another day another terrible Trump policy reversed. Lets keep it going until every trace is erased. Lets keep that trend going please.

A number of recent polls have suggested the Democrats are now leading Republicans in generic ballots for the upcoming midterm elections, with just two months to go before ballots are cast. According to FiveThirtyEight's collection of surveys, Democrats beat Republicans in three of the four most recent polls asking the public which party they will back in the upcoming races. On September 6, a Yahoo News/YouGov poll found that 45 percent of registered voters said they would back a Democratic congressional candidate in their district if the election were held today, compared to 40 percent who would vote Republican.

Things are looking good, but don’t let your guard down, none of this matters if we don’t get out and vote like our lives and freedom depend on it (and they do).

Friday, the Michigan Board of State Canvassers, acting under an order from the Michigan Supreme Court, put a question before voters this November on whether to protect abortion rights in the state constitution. Last week, the question was sent to the state Supreme Court after Republican canvassers argued the amendment's spacing and formatting would confuse voters. The group behind the amendment, Reproductive Freedom for All, appealed the decision to the state's highest court. Thursday, the court decided to move it along.

Good. Let the people decide, and remind the small minded idiots once again they are outnumbered,

And that does it for another week. Always a good time with the good news, see you guys next week.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/9/12/2122293/-From-the-GNR-Newsroom-Its-the-Monday-Good-News-Roundup

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