Two Important FREE Resources For Activists
Given the oily, evil institutional, governmental and financial forces oppressing the people of the world, we all need to unite and draw upon the skills and awareness of each other.
By Mark Taylor
DeMOCKracy.ink (8/12/25)
A commentator on Sunday’s RESIST! Six Minutes On The Origin Of Modern American Resistance post included a link to an excellent resources for organizers of protests and actions against the criminally obscene US/Israel genocide in Gaza and the West Bank: notmytaxdollars.org
As 60 percent of Americans struggle to meet their monthly expenses, medical debt is the number one cause of bankruptcy in the nation and Republican leaders in Missouri just upended a state referendum that passed by 58 percent mandating worker sick leave (see article below), literally billions of dollars worth of American weapons, logistics, intel and financial support is shipped off — along with our morality — to Israel. As American suffer, Israelis enjoy medical care and affordable college education. All on our dime.
Not My Tax Dollars breaks it down for us; shows state-by-state and even community-by-community what our tax dollars for genocide could be used for here at home, in our communities and states, to make life better — more affordable — for Americans.
An example…
Every dime of our hard-earned tax money stolen away by Zionist lobbies and politicians to enrich Israel makes life tougher for us and our neighbors in our communities.
The interactive Not My Tax Dollars website can show you how our tax money stolen for Israel could be used in your state and community. They break it down into such day-to-day real world challenges like the cost of rent, groceries, student loan cancellation and healthcare. You know, the basics families need to survive that are sacrificed for Israel’s genocide of the Palestinian people.
Victimizing Americans to victimize the people of Palestine … Lebanon … Syria … Yemen and other people across the Middle East being devastated by the US and Israel war for resources and world hegemony has real, devastating and crippling effects on our communities.
As the website notes:
“Mobilize your community to fund care not killing. Our U.S. government should be funding care for our communities instead of arming Israel to kill Palestinian families.”
The website has an excellent Resources Page with a variety of handouts, pamphlets and other informational material free to download and distribute at protests or other informational activities you may be involved in. They also have download material for local organizing, education and campaigns to resist US participation in the genocide.
Please, check out Not My Tax Dollars and pass along this amazing free resource.
UPDATED! More DeMOCKracy.ink Free-Use Art For Activists
Dozens of new cartoons, illustrations and photos added to 34 folders of original free-use cartoons, illustrations and photos.
By Mark Taylor
DeMOCKracy.ink (8/12/25)
With the help of activist friend Fanny Behrens, a much-needed update has finally been done to the DeMOCKracy.ink website stocked with my free-use cartoons, illustrations and photos offered as a resource for activists. The artwork can be used for newsletters, flyers, handouts, websites, petitions, posters or in any way that can be helpful to bringing about political reform and some measure of humanity to our increasingly brutal government of, by and for the obscenely rich and undeservedly entitled.
On the website you can scroll down through an archive of 34 topical folders of artwork available for use. The artwork is a collection of imagery from two previous news sites and some work going back to my earlier time as a newspaper and freelance political cartoonist.
I occasionally donate original work to progressive and activist websites, such as this recent image for an article on the anti-nuclear peace site Nukewatch. Contact me if you have something you need original artwork for.
There are a few terms of use for the artwork, which are outlined here. The main thing is that I ask that no changes be made to the art imagery or wording without my permission and that a credit and link be provided to DeMOCKracy.ink. If you would like to modify an image for a specific need please contact me to see if we can come to a solution that works for both of us.
As noted in the link, if you have any questions, send me a note through Substack or mark@demockracy.ink .
If you have need for artwork outside what is available on the website, email me and I may be able to help you out. If you want to learn more about my editorial cartooning career, how I approach my work and how I got myself banned, check the Power Of The Political Cartoon page on the website.
In this time of fascist suppression and abuse, words and imagery can be a powerful combination for political communication and reform. See the example in the story below.
For references on how best to frame and communicate political messaging, I urge you to check out the resources provided in the Psych Of Change page on the DeMOCKracy.ink website.
Given the oily, evil institutional, governmental and financial forces oppressing the people of the world, we all need to unite and draw upon the skills and awareness of each other. We need to contribute to the opposition in any way we can. Making my work on DeMOCKracy.ink available to others for free is one way I do so.
In the meantime, feel free to add some gutsy imagery to your calls for unity and change in our world afire.
Resist
Persist
Don’t be complicit!
‘A literal gut punch’
Missouri Workers Devastated By Republican Repeal Of Paid Sick Leave
Voters approved sick leave mandate by 58%, but lawmakers are caving to lobbying by the state’s chamber of commerce.
By Michael Sainato
The Guardian (8/12/25)
Being sick is a costly business for Bill Thompson, who worked in the fast-food industry in Independence, Missouri, for more than 30 years, and recently worked at Guitar Center until early July, when he was laid off as.
“As an older worker, I have health issues from working on my feet and with my hands for many years with no breaks for eight to 10 hours a day. I have done it for 38 years now, living paycheck to paycheck,” 54-year-old Thompson said, noting in Missouri, workers are not mandated breaks of any kind during work.
So when Republicans in Missouri repealed a paid sick leave mandate that the state’s voters approved by 58% after an aggressive lobbying campaign by the Missouri chamber of commerce and industry and other business industry groups, he said, “It was a literal gut punch.”
“If you’re not paid for missed days, it literally means food off your table, bills unpaid, rent unpaid, then that can lead towards homelessness. Some of the people I know in the movement are currently homeless but still are fighting back against this,” said Thompson. “I was very disappointed and disgusted that hard-working taxpayers this would have helped matters so little to them.”Thompson helped gather signatures for the paid-sick-leave and minimum-wage-increase ballot initiative because of his experiences of working through illnesses and losing income when he had to take off to care for his ailing mother.
Workers and labor groups in Missouri strongly criticized the repeal, arguing elected officials chose to side with “greed” over workers, as efforts to re-enact the law and prevent legislators from overturning voter ballot initiatives in Missouri are under way.
The state’s house and senate passed HB567, signed into law on 10 July by the governor, Mike Kehoe, which repealed the paid sick leave mandate and annual minimum wage increases tied to the consumer price index beyond the increase to $15 an hour in 2016 that voters also approved.
Voters in Nebraska, by more than 74.5%, and Alaska, with nearly 57% approval, also passed paid sick leave mandates in November 2024. As of December 2024, 18 states and Washington DC had enacted paid sick leave laws covering private employers.
Greed over worker health
“They chose to side with greed over the health of Missouri workers,” said Richard Eiker, a McDonald’s worker in the Kansas City, Missouri, area for more than 20 years who supported the paid sick leave mandate. “But we’re not going anywhere, we’re going to stay in this and keep fighting until we win better treatment for Missouri workers.”
Eiker said the issue of paid sick leave is a public health issue, especially for food service workers, and that he has often had to go into work sick or injured because he couldn’t afford to take the unpaid time off from work.
“Whether it’s been an injury I’ve sustained at work or been an illness I’ve had, I’ve often found myself having to go into work regardless of whether I recovered fully or not, simply because I can’t afford to take the time off of work in order to take care of my bills and everything,” Eiker said.
For 10 years, Eiker was the primary caregiver for his mother and he recounted that on a day that she wasn’t feeling well, he had to go to work. He came home to find her unconscious and unresponsive after she suffered a stroke.
“At the time I was caring for her, her expenses, my expenses, and we were trying to keep the apartment we were in, all these pressures on me, if I had paid sick time off and I had been able to stay with her that day, I wonder if things could have been different,” Eiker added.
Though voters all approved paid sick leave in states where Republicans have dominated in statewide elections, only Republicans in Missouri have pushed to entirely repeal paid sick leave approved by voters.
The repeal law in Missouri goes into effect on 28 August, just weeks after the paid sick leave mandate took effect in May 2025.
Proponents of paid sick leave criticized the repeal given the strong support for it and that negotiations were under way to reach a compromise.
Missouri brand deMOCKracy
“I think we were 95% of the way on a negotiated agreement, one that I wouldn’t have been happy with, because it would have been different than what the voters had passed. But at the end of the day, elected officials, I think, weren’t so much concerned with paid sick days. I think they were more concerned with the idea that working people have power over our lives,” said Richard von Glahn, policy director at Missouri Jobs With Justice, a worker advocacy group based in St Louis that worked on the paid sick leave ballot initiative.
“I think that was the more important issue for the chamber of commerce and elected officials to try to push back on, because I think they’re really terrified that working people have a sense of our own agency in a state like this.”
He argued the paid sick leave campaign to gather signatures and speak with voters “were easy because paid sick days are such common sense to most people”.
“Even on a day where Missourians sort of overwhelmingly voted for Donald Trump, Josh Hawley and Governor Kehoe, they also overwhelmingly voted for an increase in paid sick days,” von Glahn said. “Any notion that there’s really a Republican party, that is a party of workers, Missouri shows just how much of a stranglehold corporate interests still have on the Republican establishment. I think that’s a cautionary tale for working-class people.”
Groups in Missouri are weighing a new ballot initiative to enshrine the law in the state’s constitution, and a 2026 ballot initiative has been filed to require at least 80% of the state legislature to repeal all or parts of a voter-approved measure.
The paid sick leave mandate was repealed as the Missouri chamber of commerce and industry called the bill to do so its “top priority” during the 2025 legislative session, though repealing the law through the legislature was initially seen as challenging given the strong public support for it.
“Some legislators may look at this and go, we don’t want to goof with it at all because the percentage was so high in support of it,” Ray McCarty, CEO of Associated Industries of Missouri, said in an interview with the Missouri Independent in November 2024.
Opponents of the paid sick leave bill claimed it was “a job killer”, a common refrain in opposition to paid sick leave policies for years, though data and research have shown paid sick leave improves workforce participation and lowers employee turnover, especially of women, in addition to adding health benefits.
The authors of the bill to repeal the paid sick leave mandate in the state house and senate did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
“The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became the truth.”
― George Orwell
Don’t let it happen, folks!
Here's another tax oriented movement that your readers might want to join and sign their petition: Taxpayers Against Genocide (TAG)
...Encourage your friends - through email, text, phone calls and social media posts - to support the IAHRC petition by joining Taxpayers Against Genocide here: https://www.taxpayersagainstgenocide.org/join . We aim to gain upwards of 15,000 members across the country by September 1, 2025. Please mention that TAG is not an organization; it is a national grassroots movement of US taxpayers committed to holding our government officials accountable for making us complicit in genocide, against our wishes and in violation of US and International law.