theintercept--2020-09-09--The Sunrise Movement, a Growing Electoral Force, Faces "Painful Moment"

Massachusetts Sen. Ed Markey found himself 14 points behind his primary challenger , Rep. Joe Kennedy .
Kennedy , more than three decades younger than Markey , positioned himself as a fresh voice for the Senate , representing a diverse coalition .
Markey , the co-sponsor of the Green New Deal in the Senate , saw his political career was on the line and took a chance .
He rebranded himself from inoffensive Democratic incumbent to a champion of progressive causes , particularly on climate .
“ It ’ s not your age , it ’ s the age of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Markey told The Intercept .
“ And in terms of the age of my ideas , I ’ m the youngest person in this race.
” It worked — and Markey easily fended off Kennedy ’ s challenge — but without the help of thousands of texts and phone calls from youth-led climate group , the Sunrise Movement , the moment for the 74-year-old Markey to out-maneuver his 39-year-old opponent into becoming the first of his name to lose an election in Massachusetts might never have come .
Sunrise has risen in stature @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in April 2017 , as the climate emergency has worsened beyond belief — with record highs and toxic air in California and the Greenland ice sheet past the point of no return .
Sunrisers have played a critical role in a string of recent progressive primary victories , leading texting and phone banking operations for candidates like Jamaal Bowman , the middle school principal who defeated 31-year incumbent Eliot Engel in New York , and Cori Bush , who knocked off 10-term incumbent Lacy Clay in Missouri .
Sunrise ’ s decision to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ transformed the race , as most national progressive groups and left-leaning elected officials , with the exception of Sen. Bernie Sanders , shied away from the contest .
In the final weeks of the race , Sunrise volunteers made calls to over 150,000 voters in the district .
Bush ended up winning by about 3 points .
“ For me , Sunrise was incredible , ” Bowman told The Intercept .
“ We made 1.2 million phone calls during our campaign and Sunrise made 865,000 of them so they were a true leader @ @ @ @ @ @ @ also a true leader in the overall framing around environmental justice and continuing to center racial justice within environmental justice , so just as a thought partner , someone we consistently communicated with via social media , as well as behind the scenes.
” “ I see them and Justice Democrats as the two leading organizations who are not afraid to go against the establishment , ” Bowman added .
In addition to investing effort in massive phone-banking operations , the young activists also push candidates and lawmakers to sign voting pledges , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ shape campaign messages on social media .
And today , in Rhode Island ’ s primary , Sunrise is backing a slate of progressive candidates .
Emma Bouton , co-director of Sunrise Rhode Island ’ s summer field program , said the group endorsed 26 primary candidates at the state and city councilor level .
Canvassers reached 1,800 voters in the last two weeks of August alone , she said , and she saw at least one undecided voter at the polls Tuesday who told her he was backing the Sunrise-endorsed candidate .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ explained Bouton , “ to get candidates into office to pass the Green New Deal at the state level as soon as next year and to do longer-term movement building.
” Polls closed at 8 p.m. , and while Bouton hopes the group ’ s full slate is elected , no matter what the results are , the work continues .
Sunrise Rhode Island will keep organizing in the state for the general election and to keep building momentum for a statewide Green New Deal , she said .
Markey ’ s reelection @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a month before Kennedy joined the race .
The group was the first national organization to back Markey , said campaign manager John Walsh , and “ the campaign welcomed the organization into high-level strategy decisions , and both Ed Markey and Sunrise worked to make sure this race would be about a mandate for the Green New Deal and the progressive agenda more broadly.
” In a clever twist , Sunrise was able to cast the veteran lawmaker not as a stale incumbent , but rather as a longtime ally in developing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
As Sunrise Political Director Evan Weber and Creative Director Alex O ’ Keefe recently told The Intercept , it began when Markey posted a photo of himself standing outside his home , wearing an original pair of Nike Air Revolutions .
“ And this just kind of created a new persona for him that is almost inexplicable , similar to Bernie Sanders , as this progressive grandpa that has been around the block for so long and is tough as nails and is not really going to allow anyone to tell them @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Keefe said .
Not long after the group ’ s 2018 sit-in at House Speaker Nancy Pelosi ’ s office , which was joined by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez , who was weeks away from being sworn into office , Markey reached out to Sunrise and the freshman lawmaker to figure out a way to work together on the issue .
It was actually Markey ’ s idea to turn Sunrise ’ s demand for a climate committee into a bill that could be introduced in both chambers , to give the young activists something @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Campaign manager Walsh described the relationship between the incumbent and the youth group as mutually beneficial .
“ Ed Markey helped Sunrise enter the national spotlight when they backed the Green New Deal , and , in turn , we used our platform and popularity amongst young progressives to show and highlight who Ed Markey has been throughout his career and make this race important to young progressives , ” Walsh said .
“ Sunrise helped frame the importance of Ed Markey being elected in 2021 to fight for the Green New Deal.
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ candidates , including 16 progressives for Congress and Sanders for the presidential nomination .
According to its national endorsement process guide , Sunrise prioritizes grassroots-backed campaigns that have taken its Green New Deal pledge and have a clear path to victory .
To win an endorsement , candidates have to fill out a questionnaire and if their answers align , they go on to an interview with the national political team .
Local Sunrise hubs , which are legally unaffiliated entities , are also encouraged to make their own endorsements .
Though the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ numbers , it touts thousands of active volunteers across the country .
Sunrise ’ s approach to the Markey race was to run ads focused on his role in creating the Green New Deal .
O ’ Keefe told The Intercept that the potential for attack ads against incumbents or other Democrats vying for primary wins is giving Sunrise a greater stake in campaigns .
“ If you show them that we can produce better political ads than the other side can , like the Green New Deal-maker ad that we produced , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ you to a whole new audience , then that ’ s going to make you a lot more willing to support the Green New Deal , ” he explained .
Sunrise also organized “ stan ” accounts spreading campaign messages through memes .
“ Because Markey made a decision that he was not going to canvass door to door , we thought we need to have a whole new style of digital organizing , ” O ’ Keefe said .
“ So there became many meme accounts and offshoot , spinoff accounts of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Ed Markey — and all this stuff does not necessarily persuade voters by 20 percentage points and swing elections , but what they do is they give people hope that there ’ s other people out there that believe Ed Markey can win.
” Last year , the group launched a “ Road to a Green New Deal ” tour across the United States , visiting 250 cities with politicians and activists to build support for the ambitious resolution and during the tour ’ s final stops , to pressure the 2020 Democratic @ @ @ @ @ @ @ referendum on climate change .
Markey , Ocasio-Cortez , and Rep. Ayanna Pressley , D-Mass.
, were among the headliners at the tour ’ s major stops .
Though a sizable portion of Sunrise ’ s funding comes from individual donations , the organization is powered by several large grants and big outside donors .
in another Massachusetts primary have raised concerns among the rank and file about how the organization is involved in campaigns .
On September 2 , the day after Holyoke Mayor Alex Morse ’ s primary challenge to incumbent @ @ @ @ @ @ @ represent Massachusetts ’ 1st District ended in defeat , Sunrise Movement ’ s regional organizer for Massachusetts Sam Dreyfus assured the organization ’ s demoralized members that they had done all that they could .
“ You all did incredible work , ” Dreyfus wrote in the group ’ s internal Slack chat , “ and you passed through an extremely painful moment.
” That “ extremely painful moment ” was three weeks of the group ’ s handling of a scandal based on allegations of sexual misconduct by Morse released publicly on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ hard-fought primary election .
The claims sparked internal discussion within local and national Sunrise groups about how to respond to the vague , but troubling , accusations from another youth group , the College Democrats of Massachusetts .
Morse was banned from CDMA meetings because of undefined claims that he had made some students uncomfortable and because the 31-year-old mayor had dated men in the Pioneer Valley , including some students at the schools in the area — including at University of Massachusetts Amherst , where the mayor occasionally lectured .
“ Nobody @ @ @ @ @ @ @ process in March , ” said Destiny Treloar , an organizer for Sunrise ’ s South Hadley hub .
That process , Treloar told The Intercept , began in November 2019 and involved Morse meeting with national and then the group ’ s local hubs meeting to decide on whether to back the mayor .
While the groups had the final say , national needed to sign off on the candidate first .
Sunrise quickly met with the group ’ s western Massachusetts hub to decide on next steps .
That process took @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Weber , wherein members were asked to share their thoughts and feelings about the still unclear but nonetheless concerning claims .
Members would then work with the group ’ s leadership to find “ the right move for Sunrise , ethically and strategically , ” Dreyfus wrote on Slack .
During the call , Weber was twice asked if Morse had had sex with one of his students rather than just students at the schools in the area .
Weber deflected the first question but the second time answered in the affirmative , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ from another source , according to people on the call .
“ If I ’ m being completely honest , ” Weber told The Intercept on Tuesday , “ one of the learning things about this experience for me is like — if I were to go back and do it again — my orientation at the time was to kind of like , overshare all of the different information we were getting and all the rumors that we were hearing , so our local chapters could best assess what kind of risk @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and so on .
But if I were to go back and do it again , I would not have shared unsubstantiated rumors that I was not hearing firsthand , in a situation like this especially.
” Dreyfus told The Intercept that Weber ’ s comments were part of an effort by Sunrise to be fully transparent with its members in the coalition .
“ We wanted the Sunrise Western Mass Coalition to have all the information that our national team was hearing from a wide variety of sources at that time @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the same information that we were hearing about what the vague public allegations might entail , ” Dreyfus said .
“ One of the things we were hearing from second-hand sources was that Morse had had sex with a student of his ; we later heard directly from the campaign that this wasn ’ t true , and we shared that correction with coalition leaders immediately.
” The national chapter of Sunrise issued a statement on the race on August 11 , suspending its campaigning for Morse “ until further notice to give @ @ @ @ @ @ @ but did not unendorse the mayor .
The regional coalition took a more aggressive posture , however , with four members composing an internal statement for the group revoking its endorsement completely .
Other allied groups , like Justice Democrats , Working Families Party , and the national Sunrise Movement , were critical , admitting that they were still looking into the allegations and waiting for additional information , but didn ’ t unendorse .
LGBT Victory Fund , Massachusetts Nurses Association , and the progressive dark-money group Fight Corporate Monopolies , on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
“ We stand with those who brought forward their concerns about Alex ’ s improper and harmful conduct through the College Democrats of MA , ” the Western Mass Coalition said in a hastily released statement .
“ As a movement that stands for justice and a livable future , we know that rape culture runs deep in our society .
We believe the students that came forward about the inappropriate nature of Alex ’ s actions — as we believe all survivors.
” Sources close to the matter told The Intercept @ @ @ @ @ @ @ meant to be kept private pending a group-wide discussion .
But one of the lead writers , an organizer named Elias Seeland , released the document publicly without consulting anyone else in the western Massachusetts hub .
Seeland declined to talk to The Intercept .
followed the statement ’ s release and the lack of internal communication that led to its publication hint at deeper issues facing Sunrise , as the group becomes more powerful and prominent in American politics .
Sources told The Intercept that they saw the Morse endorsement and fallout @ @ @ @ @ @ @ group ’ s national leadership and local coalitions — and an issue that needs to get solved sooner rather than later .
Dreyfus , the Sunrise coordinator , told the organization ’ s members that the group ’ s suspension of campaigning and resulting statements did not have an effect on the race , citing Neal ’ s incumbency , how much the congressman won by , and the surge in support for Morse that came after The Intercept ’ s revelations of the scheme were published as factors explaining the loss and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the group to help Morse were useful .
“ The pandemic made this year a very steep hill for challengers , who could not use the power of individual connection or the energy of big events to win over voters in a time of extraordinary hardship and anxiety for so many , ” wrote Dreyfus .
“ This factor almost certainly deepened the incumbent advantage that we saw across the state last night.
” Missing in those comments , however , is any acknowledgement of the coalition ’ s own hasty statement on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ activists aligned with Sunrise told The Intercept that Morse ’ s campaign has given fresh energy to the progressive movement in the region .
South Hadley ’ s Treloar said that the Morse run should be seen as part of an ongoing struggle by the movement and “ another exposure of the corporate power ” behind powerful establishment Democrats like Neal whose views on climate and health care run counter to those of the party ’ s base supporters .
“ It will be disheartening because it will feel like defeat , ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ grassroots campaign , but money can win you a lot of things.
” “ This election has forced us to up our game , and we ’ ve been strengthening relationships with neighboring DSA chapters in Pioneer Valley , Troy , the Capital Region , and across the state of Massachusetts , as well as with National DSA to organize better and be more impactful , ” said Amillie Coster , spokesperson for Berkshires Democratic Socialists of America .
“ We ’ ve sharpened our focus on local electoral politics in order to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ work on a range of pressing issues , from housing justice to defunding the police.
” “ I have to believe that a lot of the loss of progressive voters in Mass this year is from the smear campaign and the local media ’ s lack of coverage — but also the national climate around race and fear , ” added Coster .
“ White voters are voting safer in areas that were previously very progressive .
”

In September 2019, Massachusetts Sen. Ed Markey found himself 14 points behind his primary challenger, Rep. Joe Kennedy. Kennedy, more than three decades younger than Markey, positioned himself as a fresh voice for the Senate, representing a diverse coalition. Markey, the co-sponsor of the Green New Deal in the Senate, saw his political career was on the line and took a chance. He rebranded himself from inoffensive Democratic incumbent to a champion of progressive causes, particularly on climate. “It’s not your age, it’s the age of your ideas that are important,” Markey told The Intercept. “And in terms of the age of my ideas, I’m the youngest person in this race.”
It worked — and Markey easily fended off Kennedy’s challenge — but without the help of thousands of texts and phone calls from youth-led climate group, the Sunrise Movement, the moment for the 74-year-old Markey to out-maneuver his 39-year-old opponent into becoming the first of his name to lose an election in Massachusetts might never have come.
Sunrise has risen in stature in the political-organizing world since its formation in April 2017, as the climate emergency has worsened beyond belief — with record highs and toxic air in California and the Greenland ice sheet past the point of no return. Sunrisers have played a critical role in a string of recent progressive primary victories, leading texting and phone banking operations for candidates like Jamaal Bowman, the middle school principal who defeated 31-year incumbent Eliot Engel in New York, and Cori Bush, who knocked off 10-term incumbent Lacy Clay in Missouri.
Sunrise’s decision to make Bush’s campaign a priority transformed the race, as most national progressive groups and left-leaning elected officials, with the exception of Justice Democrats and Sen. Bernie Sanders, shied away from the contest. In the final weeks of the race, Sunrise volunteers made calls to over 150,000 voters in the district. Bush ended up winning by about 3 points.
“For me, Sunrise was incredible,” Bowman told The Intercept. “We made 1.2 million phone calls during our campaign and Sunrise made 865,000 of them so they were a true leader in our phone-banking operations. They were also a true leader in the overall framing around environmental justice and continuing to center racial justice within environmental justice, so just as a thought partner, someone we consistently communicated with via social media, as well as behind the scenes.”
“I see them and Justice Democrats as the two leading organizations who are not afraid to go against the establishment,” Bowman added. In addition to investing effort in massive phone-banking operations, the young activists also push candidates and lawmakers to sign voting pledges, work on climate education projects, and shape campaign messages on social media.
And today, in Rhode Island’s primary, Sunrise is backing a slate of progressive candidates. Emma Bouton, co-director of Sunrise Rhode Island’s summer field program, said the group endorsed 26 primary candidates at the state and city councilor level. Canvassers reached 1,800 voters in the last two weeks of August alone, she said, and she saw at least one undecided voter at the polls Tuesday who told her he was backing the Sunrise-endorsed candidate. “Our goals are twofold,” explained Bouton, “to get candidates into office to pass the Green New Deal at the state level as soon as next year and to do longer-term movement building.”
Polls closed at 8 p.m., and while Bouton hopes the group’s full slate is elected, no matter what the results are, the work continues. Sunrise Rhode Island will keep organizing in the state for the general election and to keep building momentum for a statewide Green New Deal, she said.
Sunrise endorsed Markey’s reelection campaign on August 22, 2019, a month before Kennedy joined the race. The group was the first national organization to back Markey, said campaign manager John Walsh, and “the campaign welcomed the organization into high-level strategy decisions, and both Ed Markey and Sunrise worked to make sure this race would be about a mandate for the Green New Deal and the progressive agenda more broadly.”
In a clever twist, Sunrise was able to cast the veteran lawmaker not as a stale incumbent, but rather as a longtime ally in developing and fighting for the Green New Deal. As Sunrise Political Director Evan Weber and Creative Director Alex O’Keefe recently told The Intercept, it began when Markey posted a photo of himself standing outside his home, wearing an original pair of Nike Air Revolutions. “And this just kind of created a new persona for him that is almost inexplicable, similar to Bernie Sanders, as this progressive grandpa that has been around the block for so long and is tough as nails and is not really going to allow anyone to tell them where to stand,” O’Keefe said.
Not long after the group’s 2018 sit-in at House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office, which was joined by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who was weeks away from being sworn into office, Markey reached out to Sunrise and the freshman lawmaker to figure out a way to work together on the issue. It was actually Markey’s idea to turn Sunrise’s demand for a climate committee into a bill that could be introduced in both chambers, to give the young activists something to organize around, Weber said.
Photo: Michael Brochstein/SOPA Images/LightRocket/Getty Images
Campaign manager Walsh described the relationship between the incumbent and the youth group as mutually beneficial. “Ed Markey helped Sunrise enter the national spotlight when they backed the Green New Deal, and, in turn, we used our platform and popularity amongst young progressives to show and highlight who Ed Markey has been throughout his career and make this race important to young progressives,” Walsh said. “Sunrise helped frame the importance of Ed Markey being elected in 2021 to fight for the Green New Deal.”
This cycle, Sunrise endorsed 17 candidates, including 16 progressives for Congress and Sanders for the presidential nomination. According to its national endorsement process guide, Sunrise prioritizes grassroots-backed campaigns that have taken its Green New Deal pledge and have a clear path to victory. To win an endorsement, candidates have to fill out a questionnaire and if their answers align, they go on to an interview with the national political team. Local Sunrise hubs, which are legally unaffiliated entities, are also encouraged to make their own endorsements. Though the group doesn’t have official membership numbers, it touts thousands of active volunteers across the country.
Sunrise was able to cast the veteran lawmaker not as a stale incumbent, but rather as a longtime ally in developing and fighting for the Green New Deal.
Sunrise’s approach to the Markey race was to run ads focused on his role in creating the Green New Deal. O’Keefe told The Intercept that the potential for attack ads against incumbents or other Democrats vying for primary wins is giving Sunrise a greater stake in campaigns. “If you show them that we can produce better political ads than the other side can, like the Green New Deal-maker ad that we produced, we can reinvent your character and sell you to a whole new audience, then that’s going to make you a lot more willing to support the Green New Deal,” he explained.
Young volunteers from Sunrise and other groups also created “stan” accounts spreading campaign messages through memes. “Because Markey made a decision that he was not going to canvass door to door, we thought we need to have a whole new style of digital organizing,” O’Keefe said. “So there became many meme accounts and offshoot, spinoff accounts of Shrek for Ed Markey, doggos for Ed Markey — and all this stuff does not necessarily persuade voters by 20 percentage points and swing elections, but what they do is they give people hope that there’s other people out there that believe Ed Markey can win.”
Last year, the group launched a “Road to a Green New Deal” tour across the United States, visiting 250 cities with politicians and activists to build support for the ambitious resolution and during the tour’s final stops, to pressure the 2020 Democratic presidential candidates to make the election a referendum on climate change. Markey, Ocasio-Cortez, and Rep. Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass., were among the headliners at the tour’s major stops. Though a sizable portion of Sunrise’s funding comes from individual donations, the organization is powered by several large grants and big outside donors.
The group’s moves in another Massachusetts primary have raised concerns among the rank and file about how the organization is involved in campaigns. On September 2, the day after Holyoke Mayor Alex Morse’s primary challenge to incumbent Richard Neal for the Democratic nomination to represent Massachusetts’ 1st District ended in defeat, Sunrise Movement’s regional organizer for Massachusetts Sam Dreyfus assured the organization’s demoralized members that they had done all that they could.
“You all did incredible work,” Dreyfus wrote in the group’s internal Slack chat, “and you passed through an extremely painful moment.”
That “extremely painful moment” was three weeks of the group’s handling of a scandal based on allegations of sexual misconduct by Morse released publicly on August 7 in the midst of a hard-fought primary election. The claims sparked internal discussion within local and national Sunrise groups about how to respond to the vague, but troubling, accusations from another youth group, the College Democrats of Massachusetts. Morse was banned from CDMA meetings because of undefined claims that he had made some students uncomfortable and because the 31-year-old mayor had dated men in the Pioneer Valley, including some students at the schools in the area — including at University of Massachusetts Amherst, where the mayor occasionally lectured.
“Nobody ever brought this up during the endorsement process in March,” said Destiny Treloar, an organizer for Sunrise’s South Hadley hub. That process, Treloar told The Intercept, began in November 2019 and involved Morse meeting with national and then the group’s local hubs meeting to decide on whether to back the mayor. While the groups had the final say, national needed to sign off on the candidate first.
Sunrise quickly met with the group’s western Massachusetts hub to decide on next steps. That process took place via Zoom call with Dreyfus and Weber, wherein members were asked to share their thoughts and feelings about the still unclear but nonetheless concerning claims. Members would then work with the group’s leadership to find “the right move for Sunrise, ethically and strategically,” Dreyfus wrote on Slack.
During the call, Weber was twice asked if Morse had had sex with one of his students rather than just students at the schools in the area. Weber deflected the first question but the second time answered in the affirmative, claiming that he had received the information from another source, according to people on the call.
“If I’m being completely honest,” Weber told The Intercept on Tuesday, “one of the learning things about this experience for me is like — if I were to go back and do it again — my orientation at the time was to kind of like, overshare all of the different information we were getting and all the rumors that we were hearing, so our local chapters could best assess what kind of risk there was to them, getting involved, and so on. But if I were to go back and do it again, I would not have shared unsubstantiated rumors that I was not hearing firsthand, in a situation like this especially.”
“If I were to go back and do it again, I would not have shared unsubstantiated rumors that I was not hearing firsthand, in a situation like this especially.”
Dreyfus told The Intercept that Weber’s comments were part of an effort by Sunrise to be fully transparent with its members in the coalition. “We wanted the Sunrise Western Mass Coalition to have all the information that our national team was hearing from a wide variety of sources at that time, so the coalition could operate with the same information that we were hearing about what the vague public allegations might entail,” Dreyfus said. “One of the things we were hearing from second-hand sources was that Morse had had sex with a student of his; we later heard directly from the campaign that this wasn’t true, and we shared that correction with coalition leaders immediately.”
The national chapter of Sunrise issued a statement on the race on August 11, suspending its campaigning for Morse “until further notice to give us time to learn more,” but did not unendorse the mayor. The regional coalition took a more aggressive posture, however, with four members composing an internal statement for the group revoking its endorsement completely.
Other allied groups, like Justice Democrats, Working Families Party, and the national Sunrise Movement, were critical, admitting that they were still looking into the allegations and waiting for additional information, but didn’t unendorse. LGBT Victory Fund, Massachusetts Nurses Association, and the progressive dark-money group Fight Corporate Monopolies, on the other hand, reaffirmed their support.
“We stand with those who brought forward their concerns about Alex’s improper and harmful conduct through the College Democrats of MA,” the Western Mass Coalition said in a hastily released statement. “As a movement that stands for justice and a livable future, we know that rape culture runs deep in our society. We believe the students that came forward about the inappropriate nature of Alex’s actions — as we believe all survivors.”
Sources close to the matter told The Intercept that the coalition’s statement was meant to be kept private pending a group-wide discussion. But one of the lead writers, an organizer named Elias Seeland, released the document publicly without consulting anyone else in the western Massachusetts hub. Seeland declined to talk to The Intercept.
Photo: Scott Heins/Getty Images
The uproar that followed the statement’s release and the lack of internal communication that led to its publication hint at deeper issues facing Sunrise, as the group becomes more powerful and prominent in American politics. Sources told The Intercept that they saw the Morse endorsement and fallout as indicative of a disconnect between the group’s national leadership and local coalitions — and an issue that needs to get solved sooner rather than later.
Dreyfus, the Sunrise coordinator, told the organization’s members that the group’s suspension of campaigning and resulting statements did not have an effect on the race, citing Neal’s incumbency, how much the congressman won by, and the surge in support for Morse that came after The Intercept’s revelations of the scheme were published as factors explaining the loss and reinforcing the claim that the efforts of the group to help Morse were useful.
“We’ve sharpened our focus on local electoral politics in order to establish a lasting basis for our ongoing work on a range of pressing issues, from housing justice to defunding the police.”
“The pandemic made this year a very steep hill for challengers, who could not use the power of individual connection or the energy of big events to win over voters in a time of extraordinary hardship and anxiety for so many,” wrote Dreyfus. “This factor almost certainly deepened the incumbent advantage that we saw across the state last night.” Missing in those comments, however, is any acknowledgement of the coalition’s own hasty statement on Morse.
Despite the defeat, local activists aligned with Sunrise told The Intercept that Morse’s campaign has given fresh energy to the progressive movement in the region. South Hadley’s Treloar said that the Morse run should be seen as part of an ongoing struggle by the movement and “another exposure of the corporate power” behind powerful establishment Democrats like Neal whose views on climate and health care run counter to those of the party’s base supporters. “It will be disheartening because it will feel like defeat,” she said. “We ran a grassroots campaign, but money can win you a lot of things.”
“This election has forced us to up our game, and we’ve been strengthening relationships with neighboring DSA chapters in Pioneer Valley, Troy, the Capital Region, and across the state of Massachusetts, as well as with National DSA to organize better and be more impactful,” said Amillie Coster, spokesperson for Berkshires Democratic Socialists of America. “We’ve sharpened our focus on local electoral politics in order to establish a lasting basis for our ongoing work on a range of pressing issues, from housing justice to defunding the police.”
“I have to believe that a lot of the loss of progressive voters in Mass this year is from the smear campaign and the local media’s lack of coverage — but also the national climate around race and fear,” added Coster. “White voters are voting safer in areas that were previously very progressive.”
Update: September 8, 2020, 10:25 p.m.
This article has been updated to clarify that the creation of meme accounts was not an explicit strategy of Sunrise, but was undertaken by volunteers from Sunrise and other groups independently.


theintercept--2020-09-09--Trump's Execution Spree Continues at Federal Killing Ground in Indiana

entered the death chamber and walked toward Keith Nelson as he lay strapped down to the gurney .
Wearing an N95 mask and a light blue T-shirt , she carried anointing oil , a book of psalms , and tucked inside it , a handbill labeled Execution Prayer Service .
The room was small and sterile , lined with pale green tile .
A warden stood a few feet away , along with a U.S .
Marshal and another man in a suit — the executioner .
The man gestured toward a piece of blue tape on the floor , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ stand .
He then gave her permission to speak .
“ Hi Keith , I ’ m here , ” Battista remembers saying .
Nelson briefly lifted his head .
He wore a blue surgical mask .
His large , pale arms were stretched outward , a sheet covering his body up to his neck .
Battista knew he did not want a prayer .
“ I just said I ’ m here with you , I ’ m here for you.
” Across from the prison , next to the Dollar General @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s fellow Sisters of Providence from St. Mary of the Woods Catholic Church stood alongside anti-death penalty demonstrators .
At 4 p.m. , the scheduled time of execution , activists took turns tolling a large bell , then stood in silent prayer .
Battista could not hear the bell .
But she told Nelson the protesters were out there .
As his minister of record , Battista had been briefed on what to expect .
But once inside the death chamber , she found a number of things unnerving .
“ Even though @ @ @ @ @ @ @ touch him , it was difficult to be that close and not have any physical contact , ” she said .
Even more disturbing was seeing the tubes that would deliver the lethal dose of pentobarbital through an IV in Nelson ’ s arm .
They snaked from the gurney toward the back of the execution chamber , where they disappeared through the wall .
Battista had been inside the United States Penitentiary at Terre Haute , Indiana , twice before .
The first time was in 1996 , the year after the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ physician ’ s assistant , she had considered taking a job at the prison .
But in a meeting with the medical director , she had been told she would have to be trained in the U.S. Bureau of Prisons firearms protocol , to be used in the event of a disturbance .
“ And I ’ m like , so you want me to take care of these guys .
But then if an incident happens , you ’ re going to position me at some strategic location with a gun in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ towards them ?
” She knew she could never take the job .
The same perverse contradiction loomed over the lethal injection , which used healing drugs in order to kill .
To Battista , there was something particularly grotesque in the way the IV tubes vanished through the wall , concealing the person — or people — who would take Nelson ’ s life .
“ It was like they were saying , ‘ We ’ re gon na do this , but nobody gets to see it , not even the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ no movement , there ’ s no sound , there ’ s no anything .
And to me , that just seems deceitful.
” After Battista finished speaking to Nelson , three sets of shades opened simultaneously .
Looking into the execution chamber were several witnesses — six reporters in one room , Nelson ’ s lawyers in another room , and the family of his victim , 10-year-old Pamela Butler , in a third .
The executioner asked if Nelson had any last words but received no response .
It was not @ @ @ @ @ @ @ flow .
News reports would later say that it took nine minutes for Nelson to die .
“ I noticed Nelson ’ s stomach quickly moving up and down , which , to me , seemed like nervousness , ” one media witness wrote .
“ Within minutes , his breaths became more shallow , slower and eventually just pulsations in his stomach … then , nothing at all .
From what I could see , Nelson kept his gaze up to the ceiling for the procedure .
His fingernails went from a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ end.
” In the meantime , Battista prayed .
After a man with a stethoscope entered to confirm that Nelson was gone , the executioner announced the time of death : 4:32 p.m. Only then was Battista allowed to approach his body .
“ I anointed his forehead , his hand .
… I asked them to pull the sheet down so I could anoint his chest near his heart .
And they did that.
” Afterward , Battista was taken back to her car , which was parked at the Dollar General @ @ @ @ @ @ @ addressed the crowd .
Reflecting on the experience the next morning , she spoke slowly and deliberately , articulating the surreal reality of what had happened .
“ We were standing there — four human beings , standing there .
… And this man was just given a lethal dose of medication against his will .
… And we ’ re just watching him die.
” Battista and I met on the day after the execution , just after 8 a.m .
In her yard drinking coffee , she wore a sundress and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 29 ; the Republican National Convention had ended the night before .
I had picked up the weekend edition of the local Tribune-Star , which tracked the latest Covid-19 numbers in Vigo County alongside its front-page headline : “ U.S .
executes fifth inmate in past month.
” The article quoted Battista as well as veteran abolitionist Abe Bonowitz , who had helped organize the protests under the banner of the Terre Haute Death Penalty Resistance .
He reiterated what he had been saying for months : The executions had been set with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
With two more scheduled for late September — and new dates rumored to be on their way — Trump was poised to carry out more executions than any U.S. president in 40 years .
“ If he gets two more , he ’ ll exceed Eisenhower ’ s eight , ” Bonowitz said .
“ [ Franklin D. ] Roosevelt had 17 .
I wouldn ’ t be surprised if he tries to exceed that , because for Trump , it is always about being the most , the biggest , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ no mention of the executions during Trump ’ s speech at the White House the night before .
In fact , despite a week replete with fearmongering calls for “ law and order , ” there were no hints throughout the convention that an execution spree was underway — one unprecedented in modern death penalty history .
There was a certain logic to keeping the issue below the radar .
For all the dystopian rhetoric of violent crime and burning cities , Americans are increasingly turning away from capital punishment .
In late @ @ @ @ @ @ @ round of executions , a Gallup poll found that a “ record-low 54 percent of Americans consider the death penalty to be morally acceptable , marking a six-percentage-point decrease since last year.
” Trump ’ s executions ran against longtime trends showing both executions and new death sentences on a precipitous decline .
Local news outlets had covered the executions extensively — the reporter for Tribune Star had witnessed all five — but the issue was not necessarily at the forefront of people ’ s mind in Terre Haute .
Outside the Dollar @ @ @ @ @ @ @ shoppers expressed a mix of irritation and indifference to my questions .
One man told me he was sick of the protests and just wanted to go to work .
Another , wearing a Trump/Pence face mask , said he figured the condemned deserved to die , but he had not been paying too much attention .
But one woman said she was against the death penalty ; it was up to God to decide people ’ s fate .
In the rest of the country , national attention had once again turned @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , with protests breaking out over the shooting of Jacob Blake by police in Kenosha , Wisconsin .
On the eve of the week ’ s first execution , 17-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse had shot two protesters dead .
The executions faded into the background .
Still , sitting seven miles away from the federal killing ground on that Saturday morning , the disconnect between what had happened that week in Terre Haute and the RNC felt a little bizarre .
Lawyers for the Trump administration had fought hard to push through the executions @ @ @ @ @ @ @ health warnings and beating back lawsuits by victims ’ families and spiritual advisers who argued that the plans put their health at risk .
The first two men to die — Daniel Lee and Wesley Purkey — had been killed following all-night legal ordeals , with the U.S. Supreme Court waving the executions forward in the dead of night .
It was hard to imagine that Trump would not take vocal credit at some point for such hard-won triumphs in the name of law and order .
In any event , the executions @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s larger agenda .
“ To me , it ’ s all of a piece , ” Battista said .
“ It ’ s the disregard for our common humanity.
” In 2019 , she was one of 70 Catholic protesters arrested in Washington , D.C. , during an act of civil disobedience to protest the administration ’ s treatment of children in immigration detention .
On her blue Nissan Versa , a faded bumper sticker reads “ RACISM : OUR NATIONAL DISEASE.
” It was her activism that had led her to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The third man executed by the Trump administration , Dustin Honken , who died July 17 , had told his own longtime spiritual adviser that Nelson had seen Battista on the news .
He passed along word that Nelson hoped she might accompany him when it was his turn to die .
“ I could not say no , ” she said .
Like all of the men executed in the federal death chamber this summer , Nelson had been convicted of a horrific crime : the rape and murder of a 10-year-old @ @ @ @ @ @ @ grief in her hometown of Kansas City , Kansas , which continues to commemorate her death .
Nelson pleaded guilty and was sentenced to die in 2001 .
His appellate lawyers argued that his sentencing trial was riddled with errors by his attorneys , who failed to present mitigating evidence that might have prompted jurors to spare his life .
Case records documented significant revelations at a post-conviction hearing , which showed that Nelson had “ brain damage , severe mental illness , and impaired psychological , emotional , and neurobiological development from @ @ @ @ @ @ @ raped as a child.
” That hearing also revealed profound differences between Nelson and his twin brother , Kenneth , who grew up to work as a satellite communications maintenance operator in the U.S. Army .
The two were born premature to a teenage mother who was brutally abused during her pregnancy .
According to one witness , a pediatrician specializing in neonatal-perinatal medicine , their father “ stomped on her abdomen ” just days before she gave birth .
Hospital records showed that Keith Nelson stopped breathing multiple times after birth ; @ @ @ @ @ @ @ home without complications , he was hospitalized for severe respiratory distress , which had serious implications for his brain development .
But federal prosecutors dismissed this testimony , arguing that Nelson ’ s twin brother had grown up in the same fraught environment and had turned out just fine .
By the time Battista met Nelson in person on August 18 , he seemed resigned to his fate .
He spoke about his mother , who was in poor health but had come to see him one last time .
He talked about @ @ @ @ @ @ @ who was strapped down to the gurney for four hours waiting to die .
And he talked about the politics surrounding the executions .
Battista recalled being struck by one thing he said : “ You know , pretty soon they ’ re gon na run out of us white dudes.
” From the moment Attorney General William Barr first announced the federal execution dates , it was clear that the case had been carefully chosen .
Most of the condemned were white men , which struck many people as no accident .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ list of the condemned as “ curated in a really cynical way , ” to conceal the federal system ’ s stark racial disparities .
If executions moved forward , she said at the time , eventually “ it ’ s going to be black person after black person after black person.
” Lezmond Mitchell , the only Native American man on federal death row , was among the first men originally scheduled to die .
But his execution date was paused a few months later .
In June , however , a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , two days before Keith Nelson .
Like Nelson , Mitchell ’ s crimes were shocking .
With a teenage co-defendant , he was convicted of brutally murdering a 63-year-old woman named Alyce Slim and her 9-year-old grandchild Tiffany Lee , then beheading and dismembering their bodies .
Both the victims and their killers were Navajo — and the murders were committed on Navajo land .
Mitchell denied carrying out the murders .
Unlike his co-defendant , he had no history of violence .
But more controversial were the maneuvers undertaken by the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in the case .
Not only did the Department of Justice exploit a legal loophole to seek the death penalty — in violation of the express wishes of the victims ’ family and the Navajo Nation — his trial was moved to Phoenix , where Mitchell was tried before 11 white jurors and one Navajo juror .
In a petition for a writ of certiorari before the U.S. Supreme Court , Mitchell ’ s lawyers argued that , due to the rules governing federal jurisdictions , they had been denied a chance to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ played in their client ’ s death sentence .
But the petition was denied .
On August 25 , the eve of Mitchell ’ s execution , attorney Michael O ’ Connor , who handled his direct appeal , wrote a statement that would be released after his client ’ s death .
“ I had not intended to write or say anything about Lezmond ’ s execution for selfish reasons , ” he wrote.
“ Loyalty and love , however , compel me to raise my voice in protest.
” In the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ death penalty cases , he said , no case had revealed the racism of the system more clearly than Mitchell ’ s .
“ In Lezmond ’ s case , more than 400 Native Americans ( out of a total of approximately 2000 prospective jurors ) were summoned for possible service on his trial , ” O ’ Connor went on .
“ More than 99 % of those Native Americans summoned were excused or disqualified as unfit for jury service .
No other racial group was dismissed at even half that rate @ @ @ @ @ @ @ committed on the Navajo reservation , jurors were excluded if they spoke only Navajo .
Before being dismissed for ‘ cause , ’ Navajo jurors were badgered by the judge with questions such as ‘ You ’ re Navajo and he ’ s Navajo .
Could you possibly be fair ?
’ ” That same day , I spoke to the juror who served as the foreperson in Mitchell ’ s trial , Kerrie Snyder .
She had been startled to hear from me .
Although she thought about the case from time @ @ @ @ @ @ @ he had been set for execution .
“ Honestly , ” she said , “ if somebody had walked up to me and said ‘ Lezmond Mitchell , ’ I ’ d have had no clue what they were talking about.
” What she did remember was being deeply horrified by the crime .
“ Brutal , ” she said .
“ Brutal , brutal.
” She remembered driving home to Clarkdale , about an hour and a half north of Phoenix ; “ I would just be crying in my car.
” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ size of the jury pool and the lengthy process during which prospective jurors were narrowed down and selected .
When it came to deliberations , it was not a hard call .
The evidence against Mitchell was overwhelming , she said — and defense attorneys didn ’ t present much evidence at all .
Snyder and her fellow jurors took their task very seriously .
“ We were present .
… We were focused.
” And , she added , “ it was people from all over … from around the state .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ all kinds of backgrounds .
And I thought , Wow , this is really , you know , a jury of your peers.
” She remembers thinking the system worked .
I told her about Mitchell ’ s challenge before the Supreme Court , which argued that the opposite was true , and which sought to investigate possible racial bias .
“ Can I tell you what the race or nationality was of everybody in that room ?
Absolutely not right now , ” she replied .
“ I don ’ t recall @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , for instance .
… I couldn ’ t tell you if there were Hispanics in that room or not .
I don ’ t believe there were any Native Americans in that room — I ’ m pretty sure that would have stuck with me , but again , I wouldn ’ t swear to that.
” Still , she took no satisfaction in the looming execution .
“ You don ’ t want to be involved in anybody ’ s death , whether legally or violently , you know .
It @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
This will hang with me for a few days.
” Mitchell ’ s execution took place right on schedule .
“ Two government officials stood nearby as execution procedures began at 6:03 p.m. , ” according to the Indianapolis Star .
“ They read a list of Mitchell ’ s convicted charges before administering a lethal injection.
” Mitchell did not have a spiritual adviser accompanying or any witnesses on his behalf .
Asked if he had any last words , he said , “ No , I ’ m good.
” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Public Radio , was one of two journalists who had witnessed all four executions to date .
Speaking to Bonowitz and the activists next to the Dollar Store after Mitchell ’ s execution , he said that the first execution had been hard to shake .
“ It runs through your mind , like when you ’ re at the grocery store , when you ’ re watching TV , ” he said .
But after seeing the additional executions , he felt himself getting more desensitized , which unnerved him .
Nelson @ @ @ @ @ @ @ be the last one he planned to witness .
Pinsker said Mitchell ’ s execution had taken longer than the others .
About seven minutes in , he estimated , he noticed “ very labored breathing .
… I didn ’ t really notice that in the last three of them.
” Even under the sheet , it was possible to see his abdomen protracting in and out , he said .
But there was no way to see Mitchell ’ s facial expressions .
It was covered with a mask .
Although @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was happening beneath the surface , lawyers and medical experts had challenged the execution protocols , based on the risk that it would lead to a tortuous death .
A preliminary autopsy report for Wesley Purkey , executed in July , showed that his lungs “ were filled with fluid to the extent of nearly doubling their normal weight , and frothy pulmonary edema fluid filled his main airways all the way up in the trachea.
” Medical experts have repeatedly warned that autopsies of people executed by lethal injection reveal pulmonary edema @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
But legal challenges based on such evidence have been mostly rejected .
Although the Eighth Amendment prohibits cruel or unusual punishment , the possibility that the condemned may suffer tends to be easily dismissed by those who support the executions .
Murder victims , after all , are not generally granted much consideration when it comes to their pain or suffering .
Though the Navajo Nation had decried Mitchell ’ s death sentence for years , the victims ’ families had come out in support for Mitchell ’ s execution before he @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Training Center north of the prison , where prison officials had set up a media center , the father of Tiffany Lee came to face reporters following Mitchell ’ s execution .
He wore jeans , a baseball cap , and a blue surgical mask , standing silently as a lawyer delivered a statement on his behalf .
“ I have waited 19 years to get justice for my daughter , Tiffany , ” it read .
“ I will never get Tiffany back , but I hope that this will bring some @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for carrying out the execution .
A similar scene followed Nelson ’ s execution two days later .
While Battista went to reunite with her sisters and fellow activists at the Dollar General , the mother of Pamela Butler , Cherri West , addressed reporters next to her daughter and niece .
They wore white T-shirts bearing a picture of Butler against angel ’ s wings and reading “ Rest In Peace Pammy.
” West took Nelson ’ s silence as proof that he had no remorse for what he did to her @ @ @ @ @ @ @ no remorse for him , ” she said .
She believed that her daughter had been guiding her over the years to keep fighting for his execution .
“ I ’ m gon na have to start a new hobby because I ’ ve focused so much on doing this for the last 20 years , ” she said .
While other victims ’ families had been angered that the federal government forced them to risk exposure to the pandemic in order to witness the execution , West was grateful to the Trump @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Haute .
“ They made us feel like family.
” In an email , I asked the Bureau of Prisons whether loved ones or representatives of people who were executed were offered a chance to speak to reporters .
“ Family members of the condemned , lawyers , and spiritual advisors may certainly address the media , ” BOP spokesperson Kristie Breshears replied .
“ However , the Bureau of Prisons will not facilitate these interactions , or permit them on government property.
” Battista discovered this firsthand that day .
She had @ @ @ @ @ @ @ County Sheriff ’ s Department before Nelson ’ s execution but left when BOP staffers did not show up on time to pick her up .
Battista drove to the training center , where she knew she could find BOP officials .
But she was quickly ushered away .
After I left her house the day after the execution , Battista got a message through the St. Mary of the Woods website .
It was from Nelson ’ s twin brother , Kenneth .
It was not particularly easy to contact her through @ @ @ @ @ @ @ He worked hard to find me.
” He thanked her for accompanying his brother as he died .

Sister Barbara Battista entered the death chamber and walked toward Keith Nelson as he lay strapped down to the gurney. Wearing an N95 mask and a light blue T-shirt, she carried anointing oil, a book of psalms, and tucked inside it, a handbill labeled Execution Prayer Service. The room was small and sterile, lined with pale green tile. A warden stood a few feet away, along with a U.S. Marshal and another man in a suit — the executioner. The man gestured toward a piece of blue tape on the floor, marking the spot where she was to stand. He then gave her permission to speak.
“Hi Keith, I’m here,” Battista remembers saying. Nelson briefly lifted his head. He wore a blue surgical mask. His large, pale arms were stretched outward, a sheet covering his body up to his neck. Battista knew he did not want a prayer. “I just said I’m here with you, I’m here for you.”
Across from the prison, next to the Dollar General on State Road 63, Battista’s fellow Sisters of Providence from St. Mary of the Woods Catholic Church stood alongside anti-death penalty demonstrators. At 4 p.m., the scheduled time of execution, activists took turns tolling a large bell, then stood in silent prayer. Battista could not hear the bell. But she told Nelson the protesters were out there.
As his minister of record, Battista had been briefed on what to expect. But once inside the death chamber, she found a number of things unnerving. “Even though I was told I couldn’t touch him, it was difficult to be that close and not have any physical contact,” she said. Even more disturbing was seeing the tubes that would deliver the lethal dose of pentobarbital through an IV in Nelson’s arm. They snaked from the gurney toward the back of the execution chamber, where they disappeared through the wall.
Battista had been inside the United States Penitentiary at Terre Haute, Indiana, twice before. The first time was in 1996, the year after the death chamber was completed. As a physician’s assistant, she had considered taking a job at the prison. But in a meeting with the medical director, she had been told she would have to be trained in the U.S. Bureau of Prisons firearms protocol, to be used in the event of a disturbance. “And I’m like, so you want me to take care of these guys. But then if an incident happens, you’re going to position me at some strategic location with a gun in my hand that I have to point towards them?” She knew she could never take the job.
The same perverse contradiction loomed over the lethal injection, which used healing drugs in order to kill. To Battista, there was something particularly grotesque in the way the IV tubes vanished through the wall, concealing the person — or people — who would take Nelson’s life. “It was like they were saying, ‘We’re gonna do this, but nobody gets to see it, not even the person being executed.’ There’s no movement, there’s no sound, there’s no anything. And to me, that just seems deceitful.”
Photo: Michael Conroy/AP
After Battista finished speaking to Nelson, three sets of shades opened simultaneously. Looking into the execution chamber were several witnesses — six reporters in one room, Nelson’s lawyers in another room, and the family of his victim, 10-year-old Pamela Butler, in a third. The executioner asked if Nelson had any last words but received no response.
It was not clear exactly when the pentobarbital began to flow. News reports would later say that it took nine minutes for Nelson to die. “I noticed Nelson’s stomach quickly moving up and down, which, to me, seemed like nervousness,” one media witness wrote. “Within minutes, his breaths became more shallow, slower and eventually just pulsations in his stomach … then, nothing at all. From what I could see, Nelson kept his gaze up to the ceiling for the procedure. His fingernails went from a hint of pink to blue by the end.”
In the meantime, Battista prayed. After a man with a stethoscope entered to confirm that Nelson was gone, the executioner announced the time of death: 4:32 p.m. Only then was Battista allowed to approach his body. “I anointed his forehead, his hand. … I asked them to pull the sheet down so I could anoint his chest near his heart. And they did that.”
Afterward, Battista was taken back to her car, which was parked at the Dollar General. She took off her mask and addressed the crowd. Reflecting on the experience the next morning, she spoke slowly and deliberately, articulating the surreal reality of what had happened. “We were standing there — four human beings, standing there. … And this man was just given a lethal dose of medication against his will. … And we’re just watching him die.”
Trump’s Executions
Battista and I met on the day after the execution, just after 8 a.m. In her yard drinking coffee, she wore a sundress and sandals. It was Saturday, August 29; the Republican National Convention had ended the night before. I had picked up the weekend edition of the local Tribune-Star, which tracked the latest Covid-19 numbers in Vigo County alongside its front-page headline: “U.S. executes fifth inmate in past month.”
Abe Bonowitz of Death Penalty Action, an execution abolitionist group, protests near the Terre Haute Federal Correctional Complex where death row inmate Wesley Ira Purkey was scheduled to be executed by lethal injection on July 15, 2020. Photo: Jeremy Hogan/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
The article quoted Battista as well as veteran abolitionist Abe Bonowitz, who had helped organize the protests under the banner of the Terre Haute Death Penalty Resistance. He reiterated what he had been saying for months: The executions had been set with Donald Trump’s reelection in mind. With two more scheduled for late September — and new dates rumored to be on their way — Trump had already carried out more federal executions in 2020 than his predecessors had in the previous 57 years combined. “[Franklin D.] Roosevelt had 17,” Bonowitz said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if he tries to exceed that, because for Trump, it is always about being the most, the biggest, and the best.”
Yet there had been no mention of the executions during Trump’s speech at the White House the night before. In fact, despite a week replete with fearmongering calls for “law and order,” there were no hints throughout the convention that an execution spree was underway — one unprecedented in modern death penalty history.
There was a certain logic to keeping the issue below the radar. For all the dystopian rhetoric of violent crime and burning cities, Americans are increasingly turning away from capital punishment. In late June, just weeks before the first round of executions, a Gallup poll found that a “record-low 54 percent of Americans consider the death penalty to be morally acceptable, marking a six-percentage-point decrease since last year.” Trump’s executions ran against longtime trends showing both executions and new death sentences on a precipitous decline.
Local news outlets had covered the executions extensively — the reporter for Tribune Star had witnessed all five — but the issue was not necessarily at the forefront of people’s mind in Terre Haute. Outside the Dollar General during Nelson’s execution, shoppers expressed a mix of irritation and indifference to my questions. One man told me he was sick of the protests and just wanted to go to work. Another, wearing a Trump/Pence face mask, said he figured the condemned deserved to die, but he had not been paying too much attention. But one woman said she was against the death penalty; it was up to God to decide people’s fate.
In the rest of the country, national attention had once again turned to a different kind of state violence, with protests breaking out over the shooting of Jacob Blake by police in Kenosha, Wisconsin. On the eve of the week’s first execution, 17-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse had shot two protesters dead. The executions faded into the background.
Still, sitting seven miles away from the federal killing ground on that Saturday morning, the disconnect between what had happened that week in Terre Haute and the RNC felt a little bizarre. Lawyers for the Trump administration had fought hard to push through the executions despite the coronavirus pandemic, ignoring public health warnings and beating back lawsuits by victims’ families and spiritual advisers who argued that the plans put their health at risk. The first two men to die — Daniel Lee and Wesley Purkey — had been killed following all-night legal ordeals, with the U.S. Supreme Court waving the executions forward in the dead of night. It was hard to imagine that Trump would not take vocal credit at some point for such hard-won triumphs in the name of law and order.
In any event, the executions were unquestionably in line with Trump’s larger agenda. “To me, it’s all of a piece,” Battista said. “It’s the disregard for our common humanity.” In 2019, she was one of 70 Catholic protesters arrested in Washington, D.C., during an act of civil disobedience to protest the administration’s treatment of children in immigration detention. On her blue Nissan Versa, a faded bumper sticker reads “RACISM: OUR NATIONAL DISEASE.”
It was her activism that had led her to the death chamber the day before. The third man executed by the Trump administration, Dustin Honken, who died July 17, had told his own longtime spiritual adviser that Nelson had seen Battista on the news. He passed along word that Nelson hoped she might accompany him when it was his turn to die. “I could not say no,” she said.
Like all of the men executed in the federal death chamber this summer, Nelson had been convicted of a horrific crime: the rape and murder of a 10-year-old girl. There was an outpouring of grief in her hometown of Kansas City, Kansas, which continues to commemorate her death. Nelson pleaded guilty and was sentenced to die in 2001. His appellate lawyers argued that his sentencing trial was riddled with errors by his attorneys, who failed to present mitigating evidence that might have prompted jurors to spare his life. Case records documented significant revelations at a post-conviction hearing, which showed that Nelson had “brain damage, severe mental illness, and impaired psychological, emotional, and neurobiological development from chronic exposure to trauma, including being raped as a child.”
That hearing also revealed profound differences between Nelson and his twin brother, Kenneth, who grew up to work as a satellite communications maintenance operator in the U.S. Army. The two were born premature to a teenage mother who was brutally abused during her pregnancy. According to one witness, a pediatrician specializing in neonatal-perinatal medicine, their father “stomped on her abdomen” just days before she gave birth. Hospital records showed that Keith Nelson stopped breathing multiple times after birth; in contrast to Kenneth, who went home without complications, he was hospitalized for severe respiratory distress, which had serious implications for his brain development. But federal prosecutors dismissed this testimony, arguing that Nelson’s twin brother had grown up in the same fraught environment and had turned out just fine.
By the time Battista met Nelson in person on August 18, he seemed resigned to his fate. He spoke about his mother, who was in poor health but had come to see him one last time. He talked about the harrowing execution of Daniel Lee, who was strapped down to the gurney for four hours waiting to die. And he talked about the politics surrounding the executions. Battista recalled being struck by one thing he said: “You know, pretty soon they’re gonna run out of us white dudes.”
Cynically Curated Killings
From the moment Attorney General William Barr first announced the federal execution dates, it was clear that the case had been carefully chosen. Most of the condemned were white men, which struck many people as no accident. One Indiana death penalty lawyer described the list of the condemned as “curated in a really cynical way,” to conceal the federal system’s stark racial disparities. If executions moved forward, she said at the time, eventually “it’s going to be black person after black person after black person.”
Photo: Jonathan J. Cooper/AP
Lezmond Mitchell, the only Native American man on federal death row, was among the first men originally scheduled to die. But his execution date was paused a few months later. In June, however, a new date was set: August 26, two days before Keith Nelson.
Like Nelson, Mitchell’s crimes were shocking. With a teenage co-defendant, he was convicted of brutally murdering a 63-year-old woman named Alyce Slim and her 9-year-old grandchild Tiffany Lee, then beheading and dismembering their bodies. Both the victims and their killers were Navajo — and the murders were committed on Navajo land.
Mitchell denied carrying out the murders. Unlike his co-defendant, he had no history of violence. But more controversial were the maneuvers undertaken by the federal government to win a death sentence in the case. Not only did the Department of Justice exploit a legal loophole to seek the death penalty — in violation of the express wishes of the victims’ family and the Navajo Nation — his trial was moved to Phoenix, where Mitchell was tried before 11 white jurors and one Navajo juror. In a petition for a writ of certiorari before the U.S. Supreme Court, Mitchell’s lawyers argued that, due to the rules governing federal jurisdictions, they had been denied a chance to investigate the role racial bias may have played in their client’s death sentence. But the petition was denied.
On August 25, the eve of Mitchell’s execution, attorney Michael O’Connor, who handled his direct appeal, wrote a statement that would be released after his client’s death. “I had not intended to write or say anything about Lezmond’s execution for selfish reasons,” he wrote. “Loyalty and love, however, compel me to raise my voice in protest.” In the two decades he spent representing people in death penalty cases, he said, no case had revealed the racism of the system more clearly than Mitchell’s.
“In Lezmond’s case, more than 400 Native Americans (out of a total of approximately 2000 prospective jurors) were summoned for possible service on his trial,” O’Connor went on. “More than 99% of those Native Americans summoned were excused or disqualified as unfit for jury service. No other racial group was dismissed at even half that rate. In a Navajo on Navajo crime committed on the Navajo reservation, jurors were excluded if they spoke only Navajo. Before being dismissed for ‘cause,’ Navajo jurors were badgered by the judge with questions such as ‘You’re Navajo and he’s Navajo. Could you possibly be fair?’”
That same day, I spoke to the juror who served as the foreperson in Mitchell’s trial, Kerrie Snyder. She had been startled to hear from me. Although she thought about the case from time to time, she had no idea he had been set for execution. “Honestly,” she said, “if somebody had walked up to me and said ‘Lezmond Mitchell,’ I’d have had no clue what they were talking about.”
What she did remember was being deeply horrified by the crime. “Brutal,” she said. “Brutal, brutal.” She remembered driving home to Clarkdale, about an hour and a half north of Phoenix; “I would just be crying in my car.” She also remembered being awed by the size of the jury pool and the lengthy process during which prospective jurors were narrowed down and selected. When it came to deliberations, it was not a hard call. The evidence against Mitchell was overwhelming, she said — and defense attorneys didn’t present much evidence at all.
Snyder and her fellow jurors took their task very seriously. “We were present. … We were focused.” And, she added, “it was people from all over … from around the state. From all walks of life, from all kinds of backgrounds. And I thought, Wow, this is really, you know, a jury of your peers.” She remembers thinking the system worked.
I told her about Mitchell’s challenge before the Supreme Court, which argued that the opposite was true, and which sought to investigate possible racial bias. “Can I tell you what the race or nationality was of everybody in that room? Absolutely not right now,” she replied. “I don’t recall any black people being on that jury, for instance. … I couldn’t tell you if there were Hispanics in that room or not. I don’t believe there were any Native Americans in that room — I’m pretty sure that would have stuck with me, but again, I wouldn’t swear to that.”
Still, she took no satisfaction in the looming execution. “You don’t want to be involved in anybody’s death, whether legally or violently, you know. It’s kind of a weird thing. This will hang with me for a few days.”
Risk of Torturous Death
Mitchell’s execution took place right on schedule. “Two government officials stood nearby as execution procedures began at 6:03 p.m.,” according to the Indianapolis Star. “They read a list of Mitchell’s convicted charges before administering a lethal injection.” Mitchell did not have a spiritual adviser accompanying or any witnesses on his behalf. Asked if he had any last words, he said, “No, I’m good.”
Adam Pinsker, a reporter with Indiana Public Radio, was one of two journalists who had witnessed all four executions to date. Speaking to Bonowitz and the activists next to the Dollar Store after Mitchell’s execution, he said that the first execution had been hard to shake. “It runs through your mind, like when you’re at the grocery store, when you’re watching TV,” he said. But after seeing the additional executions, he felt himself getting more desensitized, which unnerved him. Nelson’s execution two days later would be the last one he planned to witness.
Pinsker said Mitchell’s execution had taken longer than the others. About seven minutes in, he estimated, he noticed “very labored breathing. … I didn’t really notice that in the last three of them.” Even under the sheet, it was possible to see his abdomen protracting in and out, he said. But there was no way to see Mitchell’s facial expressions. It was covered with a mask.
Although it was impossible to tell precisely what was happening beneath the surface, lawyers had long challenged the execution protocols, based on the risk that it would lead to a tortuous death. A preliminary autopsy report for Wesley Purkey, executed in July, showed that his lungs “were filled with fluid to the extent of nearly doubling their normal weight, and frothy pulmonary edema fluid filled his main airways all the way up in the trachea.” Medical experts have repeatedly warned that autopsies of people executed by lethal injection reveal pulmonary edema, an excruciating sensation akin to drowning. But legal challenges based on such evidence have been mostly rejected.
Although the Eighth Amendment prohibits cruel or unusual punishment, the prospect of pain for the condemned tends to be easily dismissed. Murder victims, after all, are not generally granted much consideration when it comes to their own suffering. Though the Navajo Nation had decried Mitchell’s death sentence for years, the victims’ families had come out in support for Mitchell’s execution before he died.
At the FCC Terre Haute Training Center north of the prison, where prison officials had set up a media center, the father of Tiffany Lee came to face reporters following Mitchell’s execution. He wore jeans, a baseball cap, and a blue surgical mask, standing silently as a lawyer delivered a statement on his behalf. “I have waited 19 years to get justice for my daughter, Tiffany,” it read. “I will never get Tiffany back, but I hope that this will bring some closure.” He thanked the Trump administration for carrying out the execution.
A similar scene followed Nelson’s execution two days later. While Battista went to reunite with her sisters and fellow activists at the Dollar General, the mother of Pamela Butler, Cherri West, addressed reporters next to her daughter and niece. They wore white T-shirts bearing a picture of Butler against angel’s wings and reading “Rest In Peace Pammy.”
West took Nelson’s silence as proof that he had no remorse for what he did to her daughter. “So therefore I have no remorse for him,” she said. She believed that her daughter had been guiding her over the years to keep fighting for his execution. “I’m gonna have to start a new hobby because I’ve focused so much on doing this for the last 20 years,” she said. While other victims’ families had been angered that the federal government forced them to risk exposure to the pandemic in order to witness the execution, West was grateful to the Trump administration for paying her way to Terre Haute. “They made us feel like family.”
In an email, I asked the Bureau of Prisons whether loved ones or representatives of people who were executed were offered a chance to speak to reporters. “Family members of the condemned, lawyers, and spiritual advisors may certainly address the media,” BOP spokesperson Kristie Breshears replied. “However, the Bureau of Prisons will not facilitate these interactions, or permit them on government property.”
Battista discovered this firsthand. She had been instructed to park at the Vigo County Sheriff’s Department before Nelson’s execution but left when BOP staffers did not show up on time to pick her up. Battista drove to the training center, where she knew she could find BOP officials. But she was quickly ushered away.
After I left her house the next morning, Battista got a message through the St. Mary of the Woods website. It was from Nelson’s twin brother, Kenneth. It was not particularly easy to contact her through the site, she explained. “He worked hard to find me.” He thanked her for accompanying his brother as he died.


theintercept--2020-09-09--Bill Barr Says Insulting a Rape Accuser Was Part of Trump's Official Duties

the Department of Justice moved to replace President Donald Trump ’ s private legal team to defend the accused rapist in a defamation suit brought by author E. Jean Carroll .
Last year , Carroll credibly accused Trump of raping her in a Manhattan department store in the mid-1990s .
In a predictably putrid response , Trump denied the assault , claimed ( falsely ) to have never met Carroll and — as grounds for why he could not have raped her — said that she wasn ’ t his “ type.
” These comments spurred the defamation suit , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ attempted to intervene .
According to the Justice Department , government lawyers must take over Trump ’ s defense because he made the allegedly defamatory comments while “ acting within the scope of his office as President of the United States.
” That is , they state it was within the scope of official duties to lie about and insult a credible rape accuser .
Public money will now underwrite Trump ’ s defense , and the intervention could move the case out of New York state court and into federal court .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ rapist Trump , would effectively become the defendant in the case .
Indeed , on Wednesday morning , the government opened a federal docket titled “ E .
Jean Carroll v. United States of America ” ; the state lawsuit had been “ E .
Jean Carroll v. Donald J. Trump.
” A federal court will decide whether to grant the government lawyers ’ motion .
The New York Times described the Justice Department ’ s intervention as “ highly unusual ” ; CNN called it an “ extraordinary move.
” But it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ General William Barr ’ s Justice Department .
It feels redundant , at this point , to stress the unprecedented ways Barr has transformed the Justice Department into Trump ’ s private law firm .
This latest , unambiguous obstruction of justice is yet another chilling affirmation of federal law enforcement ’ s unwavering loyalty to the president and willingness to decimate all who would challenge his path to reelection .
Neither is Barr ’ s intervention without historic precedent : Within past frameworks of fascist-state regimes , such moves are not , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Carroll responded on Twitter to the Justice Department ’ s motion .
She noted that it came at the moment in her civil case when the president was “ required to produce documents and DNA in discovery.
” The author ’ s lawyers requested that Trump provide a DNA sample to compare to that of a semen stain on the dress she says she wore on the day of the assault .
“ Trump ’ s effort to wield the power of the U.S. government to evade responsibility for his private misconduct is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ lawyer , Roberta Kaplan , said in a statement , “ and shows even more starkly how far he is willing to go to prevent the truth from coming out.
” Department ’ s move , if successful , could put an end to Carroll ’ s case entirely .
As University of Texas law professor Steve Vladeck noted on Twitter , the “ argument that Trump was acting ‘ within the scope of his employment ’ when he defamed E. Jean Carroll is not an effort to take over defense of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to have the suit dismissed—because the government itself can ’ t be sued for defamation.
” The motion to move the lawsuit from state to federal court comes one month after Trump unsuccessfully attempted to have the case delayed in New York State Supreme Court .
The judge rejected his bid and stressed that the president does not enjoy immunity from state criminal investigations .
At the very least , the Justice Department ’ s legal maneuver will now see the case delayed , avoiding potentially damaging revelations about the abusive , misogynistic @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Although , to be sure , claims and evidence of past sexual assaults by both Trump and his opponent Joe Biden have done little to hinder their campaigns in the past .
The attorney general has again and again proven himself willing to deploy the U.S. law enforcement apparatus in service of every aspect of the Trumpian agenda .
From the undermining of the federal probe into Russian election interference ; to the paranoiac demonizing and criminalization of anti-racist , anti-fascist movements ; to anti-immigration extremism ; to the refusal to condemn and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to casting baseless doubt on voting by mail — the list goes on .
Now the Justice Department is in effect asserting that , if this president rapes and lies about you , it is also the state that has raped and lied about you .
And there is an intolerable truth in that .

Photo: Eva Deitch/The Washington Post/Getty Images
On Tuesday, the Department of Justice moved to replace President Donald Trump’s private legal team to defend the accused rapist in a defamation suit brought by author E. Jean Carroll. Last year, Carroll credibly accused Trump of raping her in a Manhattan department store in the mid-1990s.
In a predictably putrid response, Trump denied the assault, claimed (falsely) to have never met Carroll and — as grounds for why he could not have raped her — said that she wasn’t his “type.” These comments spurred the defamation suit, in which the Justice Department has now attempted to intervene.
According to the Justice Department, government lawyers must take over Trump’s defense because he made the allegedly defamatory comments while “acting within the scope of his office as President of the United States.” That is, they state it was within the scope of official duties to lie about and insult a credible rape accuser. Public money will now underwrite Trump’s defense, and the intervention could move the case out of New York state court and into federal court.
The U.S. government, rather than accused rapist Trump, would effectively become the defendant in the case. Indeed, on Wednesday morning, the government opened a federal docket titled “E. Jean Carroll v. United States of America”; the state lawsuit had been “E. Jean Carroll v. Donald J. Trump.” A federal court will decide whether to grant the government lawyers’ motion.
The New York Times described the Justice Department’s intervention as “highly unusual”; CNN called it an “extraordinary move.” But it was not out of character for Attorney General William Barr’s Justice Department.
It feels redundant, at this point, to stress the unprecedented ways Barr has transformed the Justice Department into Trump’s private law firm. This latest, unambiguous obstruction of justice is yet another chilling affirmation of federal law enforcement’s unwavering loyalty to the president and willingness to decimate all who would challenge his path to reelection.
The move was not, in fact, out of character for Attorney General William Barr’s Justice Department.
Neither is Barr’s intervention without historic precedent: Within past frameworks of fascist-state regimes, such moves are not, in fact, extraordinary or unusual.
Carroll responded on Twitter to the Justice Department’s motion. She noted that it came at the moment in her civil case when the president was “required to produce documents and DNA in discovery.” The author’s lawyers requested that Trump provide a DNA sample to compare to that of a semen stain on the dress she says she wore on the day of the assault.
“Trump’s effort to wield the power of the U.S. government to evade responsibility for his private misconduct is without precedent,” Carroll’s lawyer, Roberta Kaplan, said in a statement, “and shows even more starkly how far he is willing to go to prevent the truth from coming out.”
The Justice Department’s move, if successful, could put an end to Carroll’s case entirely. As University of Texas law professor Steve Vladeck noted on Twitter, the “argument that Trump was acting ‘within the scope of his employment’ when he defamed E. Jean Carroll is not an effort to take over defense of the suit; it’s an effort to have the suit dismissed—because the government itself can’t be sued for defamation.”
The motion to move the lawsuit from state to federal court comes one month after Trump unsuccessfully attempted to have the case delayed in New York State Supreme Court. The judge rejected his bid and stressed that the president does not enjoy immunity from state criminal investigations. At the very least, the Justice Department’s legal maneuver will now see the case delayed, avoiding potentially damaging revelations about the abusive, misogynistic president prior to the November election. Although, to be sure, claims and evidence of past sexual assaults by both Trump and his opponent Joe Biden have done little to hinder their campaigns in the past.
The attorney general has again and again proven himself willing to deploy the U.S. law enforcement apparatus in service of every aspect of the Trumpian agenda. From the undermining of the federal probe into Russian election interference; to the paranoiac demonizing and criminalization of anti-racist, anti-fascist movements; to anti-immigration extremism; to the refusal to condemn and focus on deadly white supremacist organizations; to casting baseless doubt on voting by mail — the list goes on.
Now the Justice Department is in effect asserting that, if this president rapes and lies about you, it is also the state that has raped and lied about you. And there is an intolerable truth in that.