It is a move that many, including former President of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev, believe has ignited a new nuclear arms race. This is because the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, signed by Gorbachev and former US President Ronald Reagan, banned all short and mid-range nuclear and non-nuclear missiles, and helped eliminate thousands of land-based missiles.

The situation is exacerbated by the fact that Trump has already promised to build new nuclear weapons, in addition to having withdrawn from the Iran nuclear deal, heightening tensions further after having previously threatened the use of nuclear weapons against North Korea. Trump has also promised to build new nuclear weapons.

While these deeply concerning issues, which are clear existential threats to the entire planet, often fly under the radar, a large and diverse coalition of groups across Washington State has formed with the aim of reviving the anti-nuclear movement.

"Kitsap Bangor Naval Base is the single largest collection of nuclear weapons in the US, and each of those warheads is many times more powerful than the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki," Estela Ortega, the executive director of El Centro de la Raza, told me. El Centro de la Raza is a Seattle-based civil rights, human services, educational, cultural and economic development organization.

Ortega explained that the mission of her organization is "to struggle for a clean, safe, and nuclear waste-free environment for our people and future generations. To work for a rational use of natural resources in the interests of the preservation of Mother Earth and the peaceful development of humankind."

She added, "Our commitment to a nuclear free world and preserving Mother Earth has been with us since the beginning of our organization."

Ortega's organization is now part of Washington Physicians for Social Responsibility's (WPSR) effort to revive anti-nuclear awareness across the state by developing what has become a broad, socially diverse coalition of dozens of partners who share the same goal.

WPSR, which is the Washington State chapter of Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR), reached out to Ortega and her organization after she gave a speech at Hiroshima to Hope's annual remembrance event.

"Their mission and goals were similar to ours in that nuclear weapons should be eliminated and those dollars then used to end poverty," she said. "In addition, the dollars should be used to strengthen our nation by funding education, housing, health care, rebuilding our country, creating jobs and now we need funds to combat climate change for clean air, water, a green economy and healthy forests."

Lilly Adams is the security program organizer for WPSR, as well as the co-chair of the group's Nuclear Weapons Abolition Task Force. Adams coordinates WPSR's statewide coalition, Washington Against Nuclear Weapons.

"The primary aim of our work is to reduce our nuclear weapons arsenal and spending on nuclear weapons, and working towards a world without nuclear weapons," Adams told Truthout. "Every nuclear weapon that is dismantled makes us a little bit safer. These weapons threaten our society simply by existing, because there is always the risk of intentional use, unintentional use or accidents."

The coalition includes Earthcare Not Warfare, South Seattle Climate Action Network, Spokane Veterans for Peace, Social Equity Educators, the Seattle Education Association, a student group at the University of Washington called Beyond the Bomb, and more.

The aim of WPSR's statewide coalition is to mobilize leaders and their organization's members in each congressional district to apply consistent pressure to each member of Congress, with the eventual aim of abolishing nuclear weapons altogether. It is working in tandem with the national PSR organization, which has been advocating for more than half a century to create what its website states is "a healthy, just and peaceful world for both the present and future generations." PSR is the US affiliate of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War.

Adams aims to reverse the trends that have been laid out in the Trump administration's Nuclear Posture Review.

"This review lays out the administration's view of the role of nuclear weapons," she said. "It calls for more usable nuclear weapons, expands the situations in which we might use nuclear weapons, and sidelines disarmament and diplomacy. In the short term, we have to work to oppose these dangerous policies."

Washington as Ground Zero

Laura Skelton, the executive director of WPSR, told Truthout she knew building a coalition like this would be challenging in Washington. This is because the Boeing company (which builds nuclear missiles), uranium mining, nuclear weapons storage and the Hanford nuclear waste site have all played a significant role in the state's economy. Additionally, the US military's standing presence in the state is highlighted by this statement on Washington Gov. Jay Inslee's website: "The Military and Defense sector is Washington's second largest direct public employer. This key industry cuts across many sectors in Washington, helps create the backbone for a strong economy through our diverse defense missions and military installations, our pioneering companies, and our military friendly communities."

Governor Inslee, the so-called greenest governor, also convened the Washington Military Alliance to ensure military spending continues to flow into the state.

"It's also delicate to bring up Boeing's role in nuclear weapons systems production," Skelton said. "I doubt most residents are aware of their role in the military economy, and in the nuclear weapons industry in particular."

Bangor, Washington, is one of the largest depots of nuclear weapons in the US, and coupled with the other aforementioned nuclear-related presences, Washington State is a sort of "ground zero"for anti-nuclear organizing for the nation.

Bruce Amundson, WPSR's vice president and co-chair of our Nuclear Weapons Abolition Task Force, is a former family physician, and was the catalyst for WPSR's anti-nuclear weapons coalition.

"Some of the old-guard anti-nuclear leaders back then [during the 1980s] were early responders to our requests to join a statewide coalition and have been some of the most engaged folks," Amundson told Truthout. "So, like the Trump phenomenon, our Washington history has been a boon to organizing."

On the other hand, the massive presence of the military in Washington, coupled with the influence of Boeing and the defense industries, have a grip on the state government that, Amundson said, "is hard to break."

However, according to Amundson, several members of WPSR's growing coalition are now linked to members of Congress in each district of the state and are making "aggressive asks." He said the results have been notable.

Since the campaign began two years ago, WPSR has seen members of Congress who were formerly absent on nuclear issues now speaking out or supporting legislative initiatives for the first time. Additionally, Amundson said two-thirds of Washington's congressional delegation have "moved"along the spectrum to a better position on the issue.

"Our requests have been supported by strong arguments, by the humanitarian perspective of human carnage and by a clear message that something is happening in Washington around nuclear issues and we are not going away," Amundson said.

Adams pointed out that although Boeing's presence makes Washington a challenging place to form an anti-nuclear coalition, many people simply don't realize Boeing is one of the largest nuclear weapons systems producers in the country. If they did, they might not be so excited about its presence.

"Producers of other weapons of mass destruction, like chemical weapons, are often condemned by the public, but somehow this is still not true for producers of nuclear weapons and nuclear weapons systems," Adams said. "But often people simply don't know this other side of Boeing. Boeing is a big contributor to the Democratic and Republican parties and individual elected officials in Washington State, and they spend a massive amount of money lobbying Congress."

According to Adams, all that power and money being invested in the continued production of nuclear weapons by Boeing points to a more general corporate nightmare: Much of the US nuclear weapons production is carried out by private companies. These companies stand to profit from the continued existence and reliance on nuclear weapons, regardless of the negative impacts on communities.

The Kitsap Bangor naval base is home to the largest collection of deployed (or ready-to-use) nuclear weapons in the country, according to Adams.

"This is on Hood Canal, just 20 miles from Seattle," she said. "In fact, if Washington were its own country, it would be the third-largest nuclear weapons country in the world."

Therefore, it's an uphill battle to convince people in her state government to work towards disarmament and to stop investing in nuclear weapons.

"This is especially true in the 6th District, which includes Kitsap Bangor naval base, and where the military is a major employer," Adams said. "This makes this a challenging topic not just for members of Congress, but also the people living there, who may see this as their livelihood. To be clear, we do not advocate for closing the base itself." Nevertheless, Adams thinks the movement is having impact, pointing to how positions of many members of state Congress have shifted regarding nuclear weapons issues.

"We've seen some members of Congress become strong and outspoken advocates for safer nuclear weapons policies and reductions in US the arsenal and spending," Adams said. "Some members of Congress who previously had not engaged on this issue at all have taken significant actions in the last couple of years, like co-sponsoring bills or voting against new warheads, at our urging." Public opinion is ripe for change, too. Skelton acknowledges that nuclear weapons policy is far outside most people's daily concerns, but added, "I imagine that most people would prefer to spend the majority of our nuclear weapons budget on other things that would improve their daily lives."

Stopping the Nuclear Spending Spree

Under the Obama administration, the US and Russia signed the New START Treaty, which requires both countries to decrease their nuclear arsenals. In order to pass the treaty, the Obama administration made a compromise allowing the remaining nuclear arsenal to be "modernized."

According to Adams, this kicked off what is now a $1.7 trillion spending spree on nuclear weapons over the next 30 years, which comes out to $4.6 million every single hour.

This includes not only upgrading existing weapons, but actually replacing every part of the nuclear triad (submarines, ground-based missiles, bombers and air-launched missiles) and making new nuclear weapons, like the heavily debated low-yield weapons that came up this year.

Therefore, Adams urges people to engage in a variety of forms of anti-nuclear advocacy, such as writing op-eds, attending public forums and demonstrations, passing resolutions, or undertaking civil disobedience and direct action in order to "favorably impact policy makers and policies."

Delegations including WPSR members and staff, alongside representatives from the statewide coalition they've formed, have been meeting with members of Congress in Washington in most districts.

The meetings involve reinforcing policy steps and pronouncements that the member has already made, coupled with specific policy "asks"and explorations of areas of potential collaboration. The coalition also works to influence Congress members on impending legislation.

"Mobilizing hundreds of individual contacts to a member of Congress within a few days on a specific piece of legislation has been both possible and effective, a strategy for eliciting public pressure and visibility not seen on nuclear issues in Washington for years," Adams said.

Skelton explained that WPSR took the lead in forming this coalition at this particular time because no one else was doing it."While we were still raising awareness of nuclear issues and talking with elected representatives about them, we recognized that we would make a much better case in doing so alongside others," Skelton said. "Whether or not a person chooses to think about it, nuclear weapons (including military spending and the risks posed by nearby weapons) affect us all."

Skelton believes that by raising a chorus of diverse voices and concerns - and showing policy makers that this is an issue that many people care about - they are once again putting a spotlight on nuclear concerns in Washington State and demanding that their lawmakers support better and safer nuclear policies.

Her hope is that if the majority of members of Congress in Washington State call for nuclear weapons to be taken off high alert and urged on a path toward disarmament, this could inspire similar efforts elsewhere.

"If we had enough people nationally saying these things, my dream would be for the US to ratify the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons," she said.

Adams is also concerned about other nuclear issues, such as working to ensure peace and diplomacy with North Korea - and the fact that President Trump has the sole authority to launch nuclear weapons.

Amundson, who has been a member of PSR for more than 35 years, believes one of the best policy outcomes from WPSR's latest effort would be "to stop most - or all - of the proposed legislation to rebuild the entire nuclear triad."

Amundson thinks this is a critical time for doing so, given the cost is clearly unsustainable in addition to it eclipsing other public needs. Two-thirds of the rest of the world's nations have already signed on to abolish nuclear weapons.

"Our position is that if these policies succeed, and the US has a newly built arsenal, the die is cast for the next 30-40 years," he said. "Once in place, we know the power of the military/corporate/congressional complex."

Time to Bring Back the Anti-Nuclear Movement

Skelton again acknowledged that nuclear issues aren't currently one of the top concerns for most progressive groups, but asks why, given the potential (and actual) consequences.

"Why are we not talking about the massive spending earmarked for these weapons, or the unthinkable destruction and destabilization they represent?" she asked. "For me, another desirable outcome of our campaign would be that people are regularly asking these questions, talking with candidates about them and demanding more progress on nuclear policies."

Although the Cold War has long been officially over, few people are actively calling for changing Cold War-era policies and making serious reductions in US nuclear arsenals.

Amundson believes that, via WPSR's work across the country with other PSR chapters and affiliated organizations that oppose nuclear weapons, Washington now has the most extensive and professionally organized anti-nuclear movement of any state.

"It's a sad commentary on the atrophy of anti-nuclear advocacy over the 30 years since the collapse of the USSR, when everyone went to sleep on these threats," he said.

However, there's hope: Amundson believes the work they are doing now serves as a model for other organizations across the US. Meanwhile, what keeps Adams's eyes on the proverbial ball is continuing to work directly with communities across Washington State that have been directly affected by the nuclear weapons industry.

"The entire process of creating nuclear weapons harms those involved and the surrounding environment, and historically, the communities most affected are communities of color, Indigenous people and low-income communities," she said. "This is clear around the world, but also very clear right here in Washington, where many of our communities have been devastated by the nuclear weapons industry."

While the potential deaths due to a nuclear catastrophe are what are usually considered when the topic of nuclear weapons arises, people in the communities Adams mentioned are already dying from the effects of nuclear weapons production.

"Their stories are not often told, and in debates about nuclear policy, their voices are not often heard," Adams said. "As we work towards a world without nuclear weapons and try to change policy, it's crucial that we build relationships with these communities and, hopefully, make it easier for them to be at the center of these debates and help lead these efforts."

(c) 2018 Dahr Jamail, a Truthout staff reporter, is the author of The Will to Resist: Soldiers Who Refuse to Fight in Iraq and Afghanistan (Haymarket Books, 2009), and Beyond the Green Zone: Dispatches From an Unembedded Journalist in Occupied Iraq (Haymarket Books, 2007). Jamail reported from Iraq for more than a year, as well as from Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Turkey over the last 10 years, and has won the Martha Gellhorn Award for Investigative Journalism, among other awards.

Fifty years ago, in my twenties, I often hitchhiked the Pacific Coast Highway through Southern California. I slept on pristine beaches, swam in the ocean, and spent endless hours watching seals and dolphins ride the waves just a few yards offshore.

A favorite spot was in Santa Monica, where Sunset Boulevard meets the sea at Will Rogers State Park. This gorgeous stretch of white sand, framed by the Santa Monica pier to the south and the Malibu Hills to the north, seemed like paradise.

Today, fulfilling a lifelong dream, I live in the San Fernando Valley, a forty-minute drive from the Pacific, half of which is through beautiful Topanga Canyon.

This evening there was something else-an unwelcome terror.

This past Friday, I set off for my weekly bike ride along the beach. As usual, I parked at Will Rogers and rode my bike south down the concrete path about six miles to the Venice Pier. The final stretch, through Venice Beach, featured a constant cloud of the cannabis smoke that now flows free and easy in the land of legal pot.

At the end of a peaceful afternoon, I rode north back up to Will Rogers (always into the wind) to watch the sunset and take a dip in the ocean, which was, as expected this time of year, warmer than the air.

But this evening there was something else-an unwelcome terror. Over the ridge, in Malibu and Calabasas, fires were raging, engulfing the entire range of hills and valleys to the north in smoke. The flames were clearly visible as I rode along, all too aware that at that moment, fellow humans were dying, homes and livelihoods were being consumed, and for many people not much different from me, the world was ending.

Earlier in the week, in nearby Thousand Oaks, yet another crazed gunman shot up yet another bar, killing eleven people. Some of the victims were survivors of the Las Vegas shooting a year ago, where more than fifty people died. Now they died here.

I thought about the ocean waves, once so pure, now laced with unseen traces of Fukushima. The March 11, 2011, earthquake there caused three meltdowns and four hydrogen explosions that blew radiation into the air and water far in excess of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The three melted cores still seeth underground. A constant flow of liquid carries untold isotopes into the Pacific as Tokyo Electric has failed for nearly a decade to permanently cool them.

That witches brew of some of the world's most lethal substances has long since arrived here. Years ago tuna caught off the coast of California were found to be carrying significant doses of identifiable Fukushima contaminants.

I swim anyway. I don't know how much radiation is in those waves. But it's there, as are the twin nuclear reactors just four hours drive north at Diablo Canyon near San Luis Obispo. Thousands of us have been arrested protesting those reactors, capable of making this entire region a dead zone, especially once hit by the "Big One"earthquake we all know will eventually come.

The awful glow of the deadly fires shine through massive clouds of soot and smoke. It's like nothing I've ever seen, a hellish reality in a paradise I once took for granted.

The following afternoon, I find solace in a few blessed hours with my darling grandchildren, playing in an idyllic suburban backyard under pristine blue skies.

The awful glow of the deadly fires is like nothing I've ever seen, a hellish reality in a paradise I once took for granted.

And then it arrives. The soot and smoke of the Woolsey fire smacks us in the face. The flames have already torn through Santa Susana, a toxic wasteland whose lethal pollutants-including radioactive isotopes from ten small reactors-may be pouring over Los Angeles. At least twenty-five people have already died in the inferno, several of them roasted to death in their cars, caught by the rapidly moving flames. Many more are still missing.

Fallout from the fires cover us with a filthy, acrid fallout.

Only fate has thus far protected me and my family from the poisonous contamination and the killings-the sudden death that seems poised to strike at random anywhere we live, work, and play. In today's America, random mass murder has merged with ecological devastation.

There is much we can do about both of these sources of terror. Meaningful gun control. Limiting fossil fuel and nuclear emissions. Finally switching totally to renewable energy.

But the path to security is narrowing. Breathe the air, look at your kids, think about being in a crowded public room, and know that the need for meaningful, powerful, and effective citizen action is more immediate than ever.

The White House press corps, like the corporate media in general, are foot soldiers in a wider conflict between sections of the ruling oligarchy: Trump versus anti-Trump.

The herd of corporate operatives that calls itself a White House press corps is up in arms over the Trump administration's cancellation of CNN correspondent Jim Acosta's press pass, last week. Acosta's bosses at CNN, owned by AT&T's WarnerMedia conglomerate, have filed suit, charging White House staffers and an unnamed Secret Service agent with violating Acosta's rights to freedom of the press and due process of law. Acosta had persisted in pressing Trump with questions after the president several times proclaimed, "That's enough!"

CNN called the press pass revocation "unprecedented" and "a threat to our democracy."

Two days later, Trump suggested that more press passes might be pulled. "It could be others also," he said.

Despite CNN's claim that Acosta's punishment was unprecedented, the Cuban-American wasn't treated nearly as peremptorily as Jorge Ramos, the Mexican-born anchor for the Spanish-language Univision network. Presidential candidate Trump kicked Ramos out of an Iowa press conference, in August of 2015, when Ramos objected to Trump's characterization of Mexican immigrants as "rapists." Ramos was allowed back in the room after other reporters lobbied on his behalf, according to Richard Prince's Journalisms, which has been keeping track of minorities in journalism since 2002.

While he was ranting at Acosta, Trump turned on another favorite target, April Ryan, the American Urban Radio Networks correspondent. "You talk about somebody that's a loser,' Trump said of Ryan, "She doesn't know what the hell she's doing." Then he zoomed in on another Black woman, CNN's Abby Phillip, who had asked if newly appointed Attorney General Matt Whitaker would "'rein in [Special Counsel Robert] Mueller." "'What a stupid question that is. What a stupid question,' said the president.

Trump is a habitual abuser of reporters of color, said Abby Phillip:

"While the president insults many journalists, these critics say his barbs targeting women and people of color feel especially sharp, and hit at the reporter's basic intelligence and competence as a person. It's a tone that black reporters and scholars of African-American history say particularly stings, given that [African American] journalists were not allowed into the White House until 1947 - and that the White House press corps remains overwhelmingly white to this day."

It is both more, and less, complicated than that. There is no doubt that Trump is a reflexive racist, but his outbursts are deliberate, timed and calibrated to show that he doesn't take "disrespect" from reporters, in general, or uppity non-white journalists, in particular. Trump's anti-Blackness is an essential element of his political brand, which has propelled him to the White House as the champion of a national white supremacist voting bloc that is more confident and coherent than at any time since the collapse of the Dixiecrats into Richard Nixon's Republican Party. (See "Midterm Elections: Corporate Democrats Versus the Monster They Created," Glen Ford, BAR, Nov. 7, '18.)

In that sense, Trump is different only in degree from Bill Clinton, who during the 1992 campaign travelled to Rev. Jesse Jackson's Operation Push/Rainbow Coalition annual conference to single out activist Sistah Soulja as the Black equivalent of Ku Klux Klansman David Duke. Sistah Souljah hit back, blasting Clinton as a "draft dodger" turned warmonger, a "reefer smoker," abuser of women, and a racist who "lacks integrity." Clinton's "race stand" was no less cynical and deliberate than Trump's. White voters got the message: that Clinton would defy Jackson and his recent intra-Democratic Party insurgency and resist all pressures from progressives and the dark side of the nation. Upon election, the Man from Hope (Arkansas) followed through on his implicit racial promises, abolishing welfare "as we knew it" and reinforcing the Mass Black Incarceration State with 100,000 additional police officers and a whole new set of draconian laws crafted to condemn millions more Blacks to prison.

Clinton's acolytes -- his wife and Barack Obama -- still dominate the Democratic Party apparatus on behalf of corporate and Silicon Valley oligarchs. The Democrat-oriented section of the U.S. ruling class was heavily reinforced when Donald Trump captured the GOP in 2016, defeating the entire menagerie of established corporate Republicans and sending whole sectors of the ruling class and its "Deep State" protectors fleeing to asylum in Hillary Clinton's "Big Tent," from whence they plotted the destruction of his unpredictable presidency. Most of the White House press corps are anti-Trump partisans in this intra-ruling class war.

What is "unprecedented" is the split in the U.S. ruling class, a contest of capitalist titans that has been playing out in the electronic and print corporate media for the past two years. Corporate media operatives, including the White House press corps, are foot soldiers in this war. The bulk of them oppose Trump because that is corporate policy; professional ethics have nothing to do with it -- indeed, such ethics no longer exist in U.S. corporate journalism, if they ever did.

No Press Pass for Glen

Just as Acosta had his press pass pulled, I was denied standard White House accreditation while assigned to that beat in the mid-Seventies as correspondent for the Mutual Black Network, one of two Black-oriented radio news networks in the nation. (April Ryan's American Urban Radio Networks is the result of a merger of the Mutual Black Network and its former competition, the National Black Network.) Unlike the other denizens of the White House press briefing room who casually waved their press passes at the gate, I had to present myself for search each morning by uniformed Secret Service agents -- a professionally humiliating process. After enduring nearly a year of being singled out for pat-downs, I demanded that the White House explain the hold-up in issuing my press pass. After all, correspondents for the Soviet news agency Tass and the newspapers Izvestia and Pravda, as well as the Cuban press, were all accredited. What was the problem with me?

After a few weeks, I was summoned to a White House office where one of the few Black Secret Service agents informed me that I was considered "a danger to the president." How so, I asked? As owner and host of the first nationally syndicated news interview program on commercial television, "America's Black Forum," whose Washington broadcasts routinely beat the network Sunday morning shows in the ratings, I had interviewed most of the President Jimmy Carter's cabinet and all of the then 16-member Congressional Black Caucus. I'd already traveled with Carter and hobnobbed at White House functions, and was also the network's State Department reporter, roaming its Foggy Bottom headquarters in the afternoon and occasionally interviewing the Secretary of State. How was I a threat to the president? Could it have something to do with my activities in the Black Panther Party, seven years before?

"Yeah, that's the reason," said the Secret Service agent, clearly agitated. "It's the Black Panther history." I protested that denial of the press pass was a violation of my First Amendment rights and my right to fully pursue my profession as a journalist. "You can say whatever you like, but our job is to protect the president and we consider you to be a danger," the agent shot back. "Go ahead and sue, if you like."

I assured the agent that I would, indeed, take legal action, but it was an empty threat. The Mutual Black Network had recently been purchased by a Black business outfit, headquartered in Pittsburgh, that was effectively even more conservative than its previous owner, C. Edward Little, a Florida redneck who didn't care what editorial policies the Black news crews pursued as long as the business made money. As Washington Bureau chief (another of my titles), I mandated that all correspondents refer to the South African government as a "racist regime" and that the armed opposition to white rule in Africa be described as "freedom fighters." C. Edward Little had no problem with that, but his Black successors questioned the objectivity of such language. Their idea of a big "Black" story was when (Republican) President Gerald Ford's Black Secretary of Transportation, William T. Coleman, traveled to London to check out the city's subway -- a high-ranking Black face in an important foreign place. I knew that my bourgeois Black bosses would be more likely to find cause to fire me for my Black Panther connection, than to defend my - and their own - First Amendment rights. So I continued to submit to the daily pat-downs at the White House gate.

A Jobs Bill Deferred

I thought the biggest story of my White House tenure under Carter was the arrival of the Humphrey Hawkins Full Employment Act on the president's desk, in January of 1977 - the month that "Roots" debuted on ABC and my TV news show went national. Humphrey Hawkins was the legislative crown jewel of the mid-Seventies Congressional Black Caucus, the long awaited answer to the Black community's perennial demand for comprehensive jobs legislation. Named for Black Los Angeles Congressman Augustus Hawkins and Senator and former vice president Hubert Humphrey, the early iterations of the Act mandated that the Federal Reserve Board give as much priority to fighting unemployment, the bane of workers, as to curbing inflation, which is the curse of capital. The bill, as originally passed in 1974 and 1975, included firm goals for full employment, pegged at no more than 4 percent joblessness, and tools for achieving it. But there was no chance of the Act becoming law under a Republican president.

The version that emerged in 1977 and landed on newly-elected Democratic President Carter's desk, was much weaker, with full employment as a goal but no jobs programs to achieve it. But that was still too strong for the man from Plains, Georgia, at the dawn of what we would come to know in hindsight as the neoliberal age.

Jody Powell, the supremely arrogant White House spokesperson, a fellow Georgian, assured the press that his boss's signature would soon be affixed to the Act, but negotiations stretched on and on. Every day at press briefings I asked Powell about the status of the bill. And every day he would claim that agreement was imminent, his face twisting in greater disgust with each utterance. Much of the press shared Powell's contempt for my insistence on daily updates on the status of the jobs bill, which was the top priority of the Black Caucus, but of little interest to the overwhelmingly white corporate press.

My daily reports from the White House began, "This is the tenth day that White House spokesperson Jody Powell has promised that President Carter will soon sign the long-awaited Humphrey-Hawkins Full Employment Act...."

I kept this up for close to a month before accepting that the peanut farmer and his boys were determined not to give an inch to Black demands for jobs, even when reduced to largely ceremonial legislation. It was also clear that the Black Caucus was not prepared to exact a penalty from their fellow Democrat for his disloyalty to his base.

Carter finally signed an even further watered-down version of Hawkins-Humphrey the next year, 1978. It has proven worthless ever since. However, Detroit Black Congressman John Conyers continued to introduce amendments, strengthening the Act, until 2015. And now, California Congressman Ro Khanna has introduced the "Coretta Scott King Full Employment Federal Reserve Act of 2018" - a 21st century upgrade of the original Hawkins-Humphrey bill that "requires wages to rise with productivity - i.e. how much value a worker produces per hour of work - pretty much by definition," according to Khanna.

The corporate media, however, will pay little or no attention to the fortunes of this bill, despite their jubilation over the Democratic "Blue Wave" that has captured the U.S. House. The current conflict is between two factions of the ruling class: Trump or anti-Trump. Legislation is only important as a test of wills and strength of the opposing oligarchs -- Wall Street and Silicon Valley versus the Koch brothers and Big Coal, with jockeying back and forth among the various One Percenters. The people have no voice, no party - and no presence in the White House press corps.

Atlanta - "I was blocked from voting for Stacey Abrams." Yasmin Bakhtiari is upset, horrified and determined. Her family had fled Iran for American democracy. But New York-born Yasmin found democracy disappeared now that she's located down in Brian Kemp's Dixie.

Kemp, until Thursday, was Georgia's secretary of state in charge of voting - and in charge of "maintaining"the voter rolls to make them more accurate. But he used that power to cancel more than half a million Georgian voter registrations without notice.

Bakhtiari, who planned to vote for Kemp's Democratic opponent Abrams, said poll workers told her, "Your name has been purged [from voter rolls] because you haven't voted in two election cycles."

Yet, according to rights attorney Jeanne Mirer of Mirer, Mazzocchi and Julien, New York, "The National Voter Registration Act is crystal clear that you cannot lose your vote for not voting."

Federal law doesn't mean a whole lot to Kemp. The GOP candidate aired commercials in which he boasted, "I'm so conservative I blow up government regulations" - followed by dynamite exploding in the background.

Kemp blew up a second federal law, the Help America Vote Act (HAVA). Bakhtiari said, "Not only could I not vote, but they didn't even let me do the provisional ballot."

Provisional ballots are required by HAVA specifically to allow voters wrongly purged to cast a ballot so the voter or candidates like Abrams can fight to have it counted by county officials or by court order.

Bakhtiari knew she was entitled to the provisional ballot. She tried to get one in three attempts taking over two hours.

"The whole process was designed to use any excuse to not have you vote," Bakhtiari said. "This was a strategy from Kemp to discourage people from voting."

Of course, Kemp had already ruled that counties cannot tally the ballots of voters he purged, no matter whether he purged them rightly or wrongly.

Abrams' legal team is fighting to count every ballot - including those provisionals, as well as the piles of absentee ballots rejected under Kemp's rules - to force Kemp into a run-off.

The fact that Kemp is blocking legitimate requests for provisional ballots will make the push for a re-run that much harder. But if Abrams succeeds, Bakhtiari will re-register in time for the run-off.

She, and thousands of voters like her, will be a problem for Kemp. Because, Bakhtiari warns Kemp, "Nothing will stop me now... and I dare you to tell me that I can't vote."