People Before Profit blog

Racist murders continue in Mississippi

Thu, 30 Jun 2016 14:39:00 +0000

PHILADELPHIA, NESHOBA COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI - Although the State of Mississippi now officially honors Civil Rights leaders killed in the state, the killings continue.

I was a Freedom Movement organizer in Mississippi from 1963 to '65. We were constantly plagued by fear, frustration and anger. Those feelings still permeate the African American and Native American communities of the state, especially in the rural areas.

With good reason.

Last week here in Neshoba County, I visited the grave of James Chaney, a young Civil Rights worker killed along with Freedom Fighters Andy Goodman and Mickey Schwerner by a racist Neshoba County sheriff and his deputies 52 years ago.

Hours later I visited the grave of Rexdale Henry, a Native American activist, killed while in the custody of the current Neshoba County sheriff. I also met with the grieving parents of Michael McDougle, a 29 year old African American who died while in the custody of that same sheriff and his deputies.

Furthermore, I spoke to the mother of Jonathan Sanders, an African American 39 years old, who was killed last year when he stood up to a Stonewall, Mississippi, police officer who was beating up Sanders' friend. The murder took place on a country road in Clarke County, not far from here.

Between 1961 and 1966, eight people (that we know of) were killed in Mississippi while fighting for equality: Herbert Lee, Medgar Evers, Louis Allen, Andy Goodman, Mickey Schwerner, James Chaney, Wayne Yancey and Vernon Dahmer.

Plaques everywhere

Today in Mississippi, everywhere you go there are plaques and monuments honoring those who were killed fighting for equality. There's at least one "Martin Luther King, Jr." highway in county after county. There are many streets and roads named for "Goodman, Schwerner and Chaney," as is the state's FBI building. Mississippi's largest airport is named for Medgar Evers and there are official state markers at almost all sites where Civil Rights activities took place.

There's a big highway sign directing tourists to the spot where Goodman, Schwerner and Chaney were killed.

There's no souvenir stand there (yet), but business leaders of Neshoba County and Philadelphia have figured out how to cash in on the killings. Every year they help sponsor a memorial service for the three martyrs.

Of course, the Chamber of Commerce types paper over the involvement of the Neshoba County sheriff and his deputies. In advertising the memorial service this year, the Neshoba County Democrat, the area's leading newspaper, said Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner "were ambushed and later shot by the Ku Klux Klan."

That's only part of the story, though.

When they were forced to re-open the case 30 years after the killings, state and federal government investigators found that the murders were well planned by conspirators that included men from the White Citizens' councils, the state police and the Neshoba County sheriff's office, as well as from the Ku Klux Klan.

Nobody was ever convicted on murder charges, but several of the conspirators received light jail sentences for violating the civil rights of the three young men through the act of killing them.

Pointing the spotlight elsewhere

The State of Mississippi recently closed the Chaney-Schwerner-Goodman case. Both Derrick Johnson, president of the Mississippi NAACP and John Steele, a civil rights activist, objected. They both believe the probe did not sufficiently uncover the complicity of state and local officials.

When Steele was a child growing up in Neshoba County, he and his family worked with Mickey Schwerner and James Chaney. He was among the last people to see the three civil rights workers alive.

Every year since the murder, Steele's family conducted activities to memorialize them. With the passing of his parents, Steele is now carrying on the tradition by organizing activities once a year to honor all civil rights martyrs. It was through participating in this year's events that I met the Henry, Sanders and McDougle families.

Steele believes that one reason the State of Mississippi closed the murder case was to try and hide the role of law enforcement agencies in order to take the spotlight off of today's sheriffs, deputies and city police officers.

If this is true, the plan is not working, at least not entirely.

Cops have free rein

A report presented to the United Nations Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent says "Three brutal murders in police custody have occurred in Mississippi ... [that are] eerily reminiscent of the events of June 21, 1964, when three civil rights activists seeking to register African Americans to vote were ... [murdered after being] arrested for speeding and taken to the Neshoba County jail in Philadelphia, Mississippi."

It says that Rexdale Henry, a leader of the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians, was arrested for "failure to pay a traffic fine" on July 14, 2015. A few days after his arrest, he was found dead in his cell.

The report was written by attorneys at the United States Human Rights Network (USHRN) and the Cold Case Justice Initiative of Syracuse University.

Henry, 53, had been an active advocate for Native American rights.

About nine months prior to Henry's death, Michael McDougle an African-American 29 years old, had died in the same Neshoba County jail.

According to the USHRN, "Attorney Carlos Moore, who filed a lawsuit on behalf of McDougle's wife stated that 'McDougle was beaten and tasered by officers of the Philadelphia Police Department on the evening of Nov. 1, 2014 while in handcuffs.'"

He was found dead in his cell early the next morning.

"Although an autopsy was conducted by the state, the contents of the autopsy, including cause and manner of death, have not been provided to the family," the USHRN report states.

The report also describes the murder of an unarmed black man, Jonathan Sanders, by Kevin Herrington, an officer of the Stonewall, Mississippi, police department.

The report states, "Sanders, who trained horses ... was at a gas station with one of his animals at about 10 p.m. Wednesday, July 8, 2015, when he saw an altercation between Herrington and another white man, whom Sanders knew. ... Sanders approached them and asked Herrington to leave the other man alone. ... after Sanders left, Herrington ... said, 'I'm gonna get that n****r.'

" ... Herrington then got in his car and drove after Sanders, who was [driving a buggy pulled by his horse]. The officer turned on his police lights when he was just behind Sanders. The lights startled the horse, which took off at a sprint, throwing Sanders off his buggy. Jonathan immediately began to run after his horse, unaware of what was going on behind him. Herrington proceeded to chase Jonathan, yanking him to the ground. Herrington then wrapped his arms around [Sanders'] neck, placing him a chokehold for more than 20 minutes.

"One of the witnesses, who works as a correctional officer in Stonewall, came out to confront Herrington, asking the officer to let Sanders go ... so that the correctional officer could perform CPR on him, but Herrington declined. ... Sanders was dead by the time help arrived ... ."

Neither the family nor their attorneys have been provided with autopsy results.

Herrington was exonerated by the Stonewall police department.

Attorney C.J. Lawrence, who represents the Henry family, said [Stonewall] is a town where "the cops have free rein."

Murder has been legalized

When I worked in Mississippi in the 1960s, murder was considered illegal. To beat the rap, police officers had to claim they didn't do it.

Today, murder by police officers such as Kevin Herrington is perfectly legal.

The USHRN report says: "Extra-judicial killings by the police, the all-too-common practice that ignited today's Civil Rights movement, now number more than 1,100 per year."

The report concludes that the "three brutal murders in police custody [that] have occurred in Mississippi ... are representative of the most egregious failure of the United States Government to respond in good faith" to police procedure reforms recommended by the United Nations Working Group of experts on People of African Descent.

At a graveside service for Rexdale Henry that I attended last week, Diane Nash, a leading organizer of the lunch counter sit-ins in the '60s, said "I knew Rexdale. He was a wonderful person, a person of substance, a wonderful father and grandfather.

"We will not rest until those who murdered him get the justice they deserve."

Photo: Gathering of family and friends for Rexdale Henry, a beloved leader of a band of Choctaw Indians who was murdered by Mississippi cops. | Justice for Rexdale W. Henry Facebook page

Trump tries to drive a wedge between Democrats on trade

Thu, 30 Jun 2016 12:32:00 +0000

Donald Trump gallops, once again, to the defense of the American worker, this time on the matter of free trade treaties, specifically the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the proposed Transpacific Partnership (TPP).

There will be people who will swallow this hokum, in spite of the improbable fact that it is being promoted by a billionaire with worldwide financial investments and often abusive corporate practices. But with friends like Trump, U.S. workers don't need enemies.

Trump correctly states that NAFTA and the TPP are problems, and that Democratic Party administrations and politicians have promoted them (he forgets to mention that many Democratic Party politicians have opposed them very strongly, and almost all Republicans have promoted them to the hilt). But where Trump really shows his true colors is on how he characterizes the relationships among countries that exist in NAFTA and would exist in the TPP. True to form, Trump twists the facts about these treaties to support his xenophobic narrative about crafty foreigners taking advantage of the United States, and weak U.S. leaders (mostly Democrats) passively or treacherously allowing them to do so. This reverses the real power relationships.

Take NAFTA, for starters. Mexico agreed to NAFTA at a point when the Mexican government was in the hands of particularly corrupt people, and when the Mexican model of stimulating the growth of domestic industry by import substitution had run into difficulties, in part because government overestimates of revenues from the country's main export product, oil. NAFTA was then pushed on Mexico by international monopoly capital and also by the United States, during the government of George H.W. Bush, and subsequently signed by Bush, Mexican President Carlos Salinas de Gortari, and Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulrony. This deal was also made possible because organized labor in Mexico had been tamed by years of repression, and because Mexico's economic and political elites saw an opportunity to make a fortune by positioning themselves as intermediaries between U.S. based monopoly capital and the Mexican economy. Labor in the United States and Canada opposed the deal, as did the left and independent unions and farmers' organizations in Mexico. NAFTA required, permitted and encouraged the privatization of many state sector entities in Mexico. This made a handful of Mexican entrepreneurs very rich. For example, Carlos Slim Helu became the richest man in the world by buying up telecommunications systems at fire sale prices. Mexico got more billionaires, overnight, than it ever had in its whole history.

But people like Carlos Slim are less than one percent of the Mexican one percent. What about the other 99.9 percent of Mexicans (out of a population of 122 million today)?

There were a few sectors that could be classed as winners, but many more losers.

The plan of NAFTA for Mexico was to drive millions of grain-producing small farmers off the land by flooding Mexico's markets with U.S. agricultural produce. To achieve that, Mexico had to reduce, to the point of actual elimination, its tariffs on imports of wheat, maize, and other agricultural products from the United States and Canada.

Does Trump want to talk about dumping? In many cases, the agricultural products with which the United States flooded Mexico were generously subsidized by U.S. taxpayers. There was no way Mexican farmers could compete with this tsunami of imports. So some were driven off the land completely and went looking for jobs in the cities. This was part of the plan; so many job seekers in the cities were supposed to drive down wages, making Mexico more attractive for Foreign Direct Investment, or FDI. This had already been tried with the "maquiladora" (assembly plant) zones along the U.S. Mexico border, now Mexico became one large maquiladora zone. Not only basic agriculture but also other industries in Mexico could not compete with all this, and in the end, there were not enough jobs in industry to absorb the work force that had been pushed off the land.

Another feature of NAFTA was the idea that grain farmers pushed off the land could become prosperous by cultivating specialty fruits and vegetables for the U.S. and Canadian markets. Indeed, many impoverished indigenous farmers from Southern Mexico have ended up working in fruit and vegetable production for export, but not as owners of their own farms but as superexploited and maltreated farm laborers. Last year, the horrible conditions on such farms in Baja California led to a massive, militant rebellion and strike (one result of which is the ongoing boycott against Driscoll brand berries).

So NAFTA made a few Mexicans rich, made some very big U.S. and multinational corporations even richer than before, and harmed workers in all three participating countries, but more than anything harmed Mexican small farmers and workers. NAFTA and related policies are at the root of massive increases in Mexican undocumented immigration to the United States (undocumented, because the United States does not give visas to displaced and impoverished Mexican farmers) and also stimulated the problem of drug cartels, as poor farmers found they could no longer support themselves growing food crops and began to grow marijuana and other supply-chain crops for the drug trade instead.

NAFTA typifies the way the rich capitalist countries relate economically to the poor countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America. Who benefits is monopoly capital and especially the rich elites of the wealthy capitalist countries such as the United States. The mass of the people of countries like Mexico do not benefit.

And the TPP would be another NAFTA on a massive scale, but the chief losers would be poor people in countries that are already poor and getting poorer.

It is indeed the case that multinational corporations keep down wages in the U.S. by outsourcing production to poorer countries in the certainty that by doing so, they can pay radically lower wages and worry much less about labor, environmental and regulatory laws. This is why such corporations are terrified by phenomena like labor union militancy and movements toward socialism in the poor countries whose people they exploit. And international working class unity scares them most of all.

One of the best things that could happen for U.S. workers would be if this imperialistic corporate game were broken up, which can only happen when workers and other regular folks in all countries form a united front of solidarity against the corporate elites. To disparage foreigners and accuse them, in effect, of being malicious job-thieves impedes the creation of this unity, which is probably the reason people like Trump engage in the practice.

There are other things wrong with Trump's demagogy on the subject of free trade. Trump carefully conceals other evidence that indicates other real reasons, and real culprits, in the suppression of wages of U.S. workers. In a response to Trump's speech, Lawrence Mishel of the Economic Policy Institute, the organization from which he borrowed much of the data he used to make his case, points out some of the deceptions. "Missing from his tale is the role that corporations and their allies have played in pushing this agenda, and the role the party he leads has played in implementing it," writes Mishel. "After all, NAFTA never would have passed without GOP votes, as two-thirds of the House Democrats opposed it. Furthermore, Trump has heretofore ignored the many other intentional policies that businesses and the top one percent have pushed to suppress wages over the last four decades. Start with excessive unemployment due to Federal Reserve Board policies that were antagonistic to wage growth and friendly to the financial sector and bondholders.....Add in government austerity at the federal and state levels-which has mostly been pushed by GOP governors and legislators-that has impeded the recovery and stunted wage growth. There's also the decimation of collective bargaining, which is the single largest reason why middle-class wages have faltered." Mishel goes on to point out that Trump has taken wrong positions, or no position, on all of these issues, for example opposing the $15 minimum wage.

As usual, Donald Trump is a huckster of fool's gold. We should not let ourselves be fooled.

For more on this subject, readers may wish to check out the June 30, 2016 article by Mark Gruenberg on the Democratic platform and free trade.

Photo: AP

Democratic Party platform panel waffles on trade and health care

Thu, 30 Jun 2016 11:53:00 +0000

Michael Smith had a message for the Democratic Party: Stand up for U.S. workers who have lost jobs to so-called "free trade" pacts.

But the majority of the 15 Democrats writing the first draft of the party's platform for the 2016 presidential campaign didn't get the whole message. The platform apparently waffles on worker rights in "free trade" treaties.

Smith was one of 114 speakers at the drafting committee meeting in late June in St. Louis. The full 187-member platform committee will meet July 7-8 in Orlando, Fla., to finalize the platform, and then convention delegates must ratify it.

But if past is prologue, the combined forces of presumed Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and the party establishment will outvote supporters - including union supporters -- of Sen. Bernie Sanders, Ind.-Vt., on key issues such as the trade pacts and single-payer government-run national health care, also known as Medicare for all.

That's what happened in the St. Louis sessions.

The platform drafting committee's "majority substituted generic language that trade deals should protect workers' rights and the environment, and a misleading sentence that claimed that Democrats are divided on trade. A year ago, 85 percent of House Democrats voted against a fast track on the Trans-Pacific Partnership," said former Communications Workers President Larry Cohen, who is now a top labor advisor to the Sanders campaign.

The TPP, which President Obama and business interests are pushing, "is not only bad policy, it's bad politics," Cohen added. Democratic waffling, he explained, lets presumed Republican nominee Donald Trump step in with outright opposition.

The outvoting scenario is important. While party platforms are usually filed and forgotten, Sanders has made a point of influencing the platform. The ultimate outcome of that contest, at this year's party convention in Philadelphia, may influence how enthusiastically his legions - including members of several major unions - campaign for Clinton this year.

Smith, a leader of Bakery Confectionery and Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers Local 300 on Chicago's South Side, told the panelists how NAFTA ultimately cost him and hundreds of his unionized co-workers their jobs. He explained Mondelez, the owner of Nabisco, moved the South Side's Oreo cookie production line to Mexico, to gain for higher profits and more compensation for its CEO. She already earns 534 times what the median U.S. worker earns.

The U.S. "has given corporations the right to produce products across borders and overseas, and then return those products that were once produced by American workers for sale in the very communities suffering from the corporate decision to displace me, is failing me, my family, my co-workers, our communities and the very essence of America's future," Smith said. Workers and families are broken. I am not just a number and I am not just a statistic."

But the draft Democratic platform, Sanders says, won't help Smith and workers like him pick up the pieces.

"The challenge for us today is to take on the greed and power of Wall Street and corporate America, and create a government and an economy that works for all of us and not just the 1 percent," Sanders explained in a statement from his campaign after the St. Louis session. "In our anger and frustration, we must not succumb to the bigotry and divisiveness of Donald Trump and others like him.

"This is precisely what the struggle over the platform is about. We need to create a Democratic Party which fights for working families and not wealthy campaign contributors."

But while Sanders praised the platform drafters for tough language to break up the big banks, to expand Social Security, to rebuild U.S. infrastructure and to "end the outrageous tax loopholes that enable the very rich and large profitable corporations to avoid paying their fair share of taxes," he faulted them on what Smith talked about: trade treaties.

The "drafting committee voted down some very important provisions. Despite Secretary Clinton's opposition, as a candidate for president, to the Trans-Pacific Partnership, her sup-porters in St. Louis voted down a proposal to keep the trade deal from coming up for a vote in Congress," he said. As Obama's Secretary of State, Clinton backed the TPP, before changing.

Sanders backers also tried to get the platform to back single-payer government-run national health insurance. That's a top cause of the senator, NNU, the Steelworkers and 20 other unions. They lost 9-6, with one other delegate joining the five Sanders supporters for it.

"Every life matters. I want to see the political will of the Democratic Party to fight for single payer, period. I don't think we can piecemeal it," National Nurses United Executive Director RoseAnn DeMoro told platform drafters. "We have to have a commitment to provide the care people need and to not charge them for staying alive. That's our role in society."

The Democratic National Committee contingent, named by Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, D-Fla., the party chair, plus Clinton's representatives - including the sole union rep, top AFSCME official Paul Booth - outvoted Sanders supporters on single-payer. Sanders wanted to name DeMoro to the drafting committee, too, but Wasserman-Schultz vetoed her.

When the committee voted single-payer down, DeMoro said the Democratic panel "turned its back on tens of millions of Americans who continue to have no health coverage, or who are paying for health insurance they cannot use because of the prohibitive out of pocket costs." Instead, the committee endorsed health care "as a right." DeMoro called that "little more than empty rhetoric" without specifics on how to guarantee reasonably priced health care.

Not all the unionists were unhappy with the outcome. Rep. Keith Ellison, DFL-Minn., a Sanders delegate, argued strongly for a binding commitment to a $15 hourly minimum wage, with no exceptions. He says that lost, but Saru Jayaraman of Restaurant Workers United disagreed. "Victory for one fair wage is on the way!" she exulted.

"According to a statement by Clinton campaign senior policy advisor Maya Harris, the draft policy position reaffirms that 'Working people should earn at least $15 an hour, citing New York's minimum wage law and calling for raising and indexing the federal minimum wage. It also calls for the elimination of the 'tipped' wage and for the right of workers to form or join a union,'" Jayaraman explained.

"It means we're on the verge of correcting decades of injustice and improving the lives of millions of Americans, especially women and people of color trapped in poverty because the federal tipped minimum has remained frozen at $2.13/hour for 25 years and tipped workers are continually left behind in minimum wage increases. On the horizon, we can see a day when women are no longer forced to endure sexual harassment because of an irrational system that leaves them dependent on tips to pay the rent and feed their families."

Photo: The platform panel heard testimony about how NAFTA cost the jobs of the Nabisco workers seen demonstrating earlier this year on Chicago's South Side.

Civil disobedience actions demand an end to deportations

Wed, 29 Jun 2016 14:15:00 +0000

HARTFORD, Conn. -- Chanting "undocumented, unafraid," and carrying a banner with the message "No DAPA - No Deportations" immigrant rights activists blocked traffic on Main Street in front of the Hartford immigration office Monday in a civil disobedience action demanding a moratorium on deportations.

A similar action blocking the entrance to ICE headquarters in Atlanta was held earlier in the day by immigrant rights activists from the Georgia #Not1More Coalition. Civil disobedience actions are expected to spread to more cities around the country.

The protests follow the Supreme Court's split decision last week in U.S. v. Texas, effectively allowing 26 Republican governors to block implementation of President Obama's executive order deferring deportation of the parents of immigrant children (DAPA) and an expansion of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA).

The decision leaves five million in limbo and increases the daily fear within immigrant communities that their families will be separated and torn apart by deportations.

Nearly 200 undocumented immigrants and community leaders from across Connecticut marched with the Connecticut Immigrant Rights Alliance (CIRA) in downtown Hartford. When they reached the Federal Building, nine of the participants courageously sat in the street in civil disobedience with their banner stretching across Main Street. After issuing a warning, police began arrests as the rally continued on the sidewalk.

"We spent years struggling with fear and disrespect until acquiring citizenship," said Gabby Rodriguez, a Bridgeport resident and daughter of Costa Rican immigrants. "I am risking arrest today because I am willing to do anything to ensure that others do not have to face the indignity and insecurity that my parents faced," she said.

Lucas Codognolla said he was blocking the street "for the tens of thousands of people here in Connecticut whose freedom has been blocked by the Supreme Court split decision. I take action against the criminalization of immigrant communities of color, against this police state that terrorizes our communities, breaks up families, and deports people to their death. I demand an end to deportations now!"

A record number of 2.5 million people have been deported during the years of the Obama administration, often forced to return to dangerous conditions.

Earlier this year, word of a new wave of deportations targeting Central American families created fear so deep in Connecticut that children were afraid to go to school. In response, community leaders incorporated street theater and role playing into their protest actions.

"If ICE is going to be out in the streets than we will be on the streets too," said John Jairo Lugo who helped found Unidad Latina en Accion (ULA) in New Haven after surviving immigration prison and many years as an undocumented immigrant before becoming a citizen. "Our organizing has won municipal IDs, in-state tuition, and driver's licenses, and we won't stop until all our immigrant sisters and brothers are freed from prison and freed from deportation."

ULA is a part of the Connecticut Immigrant Rights Alliance (CIRA) which held a special meeting to organize the rally and civil disobedience after the Supreme Court split decision was announced.

They also joined with groups across the country to launch a national petition calling on President Obama to declare an immediate moratorium on deportations.

National immigrant rights organizations have vowed to bring out the biggest Latino vote ever in the 2016 elections, noting the extremist anti-immigrant positions of Donald Trump and the need to organize until comprehensive immigration reform is acted on by Congress.

United We Dream (UWD), representing immigrant children and youth, called on President Obama to end deportations and launched a national voter pledge campaign #HereToStay to "stop the hate and defend the immigrant community."

"We will remember this day and these conservative politicians when we turn out our allies to take to the polls in November. Enough is enough!" says UWD. "We are here to keep our communities safe, unified, and protect their full dignity. We can't stop and won't stop because we're home and here to stay!"

Photo: Unidad Latina en Accion

Humanists stress urgency of fighting racism, ending wars

Wed, 29 Jun 2016 10:31:00 +0000

CHICAGO - At what point did God start judging us to go to Heaven or Hell?

This year's 75th anniversary conference of the American Humanist Association (AHA) took place in Chicago May 26-29, attended by 460 people from around the country and abroad. Six honorees - including Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jared Diamond, who asked that impertinent question about God - gave intelligent, funny, and in many cases emotionally riveting remarks in their acceptance speeches.

The four-day conference featured panels, film screenings, lectures, luncheons and dinners, and informational talks. Working in a humanist vein within the Black and Latinx communities, as well as the LGBTQ community, was a major theme.

Maverick Nebraska State Senator Ernie Chambers won the AHA Lifetime Achievement Award. He grew up in north Omaha and early on as an African American felt the sting of racism. Beginning in 1976, Chambers led a crusade to get the death penalty abolished in Nebraska. He finally achieved this in 2015, by getting enough votes in the legislature to override the governor's veto. "I have no fear," he explains. "It took no courage on my part because I have no fear of anybody or anything. The ones who voted to override were fearful of the consequences. They were courageous."

First elected to the state legislature in 1970, he served for almost four decades until Nebraskans imposed term limits, then after a term away got reelected again. Mother Jones has described him as "left of San Francisco" and credited him, among other things, with legislation that abolished corporal punishment in schools, gave women equal status in the state pension systems, and created district elections in some local governments. For years he cut hair at the Spencer Street Barber Shop, but lists his occupation as "defender of the downtrodden."

Chambers doesn't campaign, not even authorizing yard signs for his reelection. "If you don't like what I've done," he says, "don't vote for me." Something else he has no fear of: "Heaven or hell." Normally, Chambers said, he rejects awards, but did agree to accept this one "because I believe in much of what AHA does."

Medea Benjamin, who received the Humanist Heroine award, is the founder of CODEPINK and Global Exchange, and a longtime advocate for social justice and human rights. Known for her opposition to militarism, she says, "I'm not at all against people in the military. I'm against killing" - and going abroad seeking monsters to kill and creating more enemies. She accurately named Saudi Arabia as "the #1 purchaser of U.S. weapons," a country where atheism is punished by death, beheadings are common, women may not drive, no other religion besides Islam is permitted, and which bombs its neighbor Yemen frequently with U.S. materiel.

President Obama, Benjamin says, has ordered the bombing of seven countries. Drones are employed not to capture but to kill, creating more blowback and hatred, and are used so people at home won't know what we are doing. "These deaths will come back to haunt us," she warns. Our country must apologize and make compensation.

At 16, Benjamin worked on an Israeli kibbutz. Only much later in life, she said, after Operation Cast Lead in 2008, did she really see what Israel had done in Gaza. She allied herself with the nonviolent BDS movement "out of love for Israel." When a woman saw her demonstrating as a Jew against the Occupation and doubted she could be Jewish, Benjamin responded in the most convincing manner she could think of. She told her, "Gey kakn afn yam!" (a colorful Yiddish expression meaning literally "Go shit in the ocean," or "Go screw yourself").

"We need nonviolent tactics," Benjamin affirms, "because the violent ones don't work."

In the Q&A following her talk, a questioner challenged Benjamin's and other protesters' "rude" penchant for interrupting speakers. She mentioned that once when the audience tried to shut her up at an appearance by Barack Obama, it was the president himself who said from the podium, "That woman's voice is worth listening to." The sad fact is that the U.S. media do not adequately cover protest; even mass demonstrations go unmentioned. Only the foreign media pay attention. So "the only way to get attention is to go to where the media are. Drones are rude. Iraq is rude. They can't be compared to interrupting a speech."

Jared Diamond, a professor of geography at UCLA and the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of five bestselling books, including Guns, Germs, and Steel, Collapse, Why Is Sex Fun, The Third Chimpanzee, and The World Until Yesterday, was the AHA's 63rd Humanist of the Year. He follows in the footsteps of such recent awardees as Stephen Jay Gould, Sherwin T. Wine, Joyce Carol Oates, Rep. Pete Stark, Gloria Steinem, Dan Savage, and Barney Frank.

About 7 million years ago, Diamond says, humans began separating from their ape relatives, but there never has been a sharp break in time between humans and animals. Only in the last 32,000 years has there been what we could call one human species, and we still carry 3 percent Neanderthal genes. Earlier there were contemporary populations more like us today and less like us. Religions have yet to incorporate these facts. At what point along these "presumed sharp distinctions" did God start judging us to go to heaven or hell?

With all the galaxies out there besides our own, it is improbable, Diamond suggests, that we are the only planet with life forms. There are many planets of other stars which could be capable of supporting life. Yet he completely dismisses the notion that we on Earth could be visited from outer space. There's the distance issue: It would take several light years to reach us, and it's "implausible that there would be flying saucers." And anyway, why aim for Earth? Ours is just one of an enormous number of possible targets.

In the Q&A Diamond was asked why he doesn't give the same talk to religious audiences, and cited death threats. "I'm cautious about what I say to whom." Another questioner asked about climate change: Diamond is "a cautious optimist" over the risk we're causing ourselves. But so far, he points out, we lack the political will to solve our problems.

John de Lancie, actor and writer perhaps most famous for his portrayal of the role of Q in Star Trek, won the Humanist Arts Award. De Lancie dates his secular identity back to the age of eight, when as a Cub Scout he was told, "No praying, no donut." He was kicked out of Sunday school in the 1950s because he found the Bible stories they were teaching not only untrue but threatening. It was the era of outer space "invader" movies, and he felt God "invading" him. He discovered the fulfilling career of acting, but only in recent years has he "come out" as an openly secular person.

"This is a wacky and dangerous time," de Lancie said, alluding to the current electoral season.

Elizabeth Loftus, distinguished professor of psychology and social behavior as well as criminology, law and society at the University of California, Irvine, spoke as the recipient of the AHA's Isaac Asimov Science Award. She is a specialist in eyewitness testimony and "recovered memory." Most people are probably aware that eyewitnesses to an event can vary widely in their recollections of what they saw. Eyewitness testimony in crime cases has to be carefully corroborated so as not to corrupt the justice system.

Another problem in the criminal field is false confessions. Under the pressure of such circumstances as sleep deprivation or torture - hardly unknown in the American justice system - a suspect is four times as likely to confess to something they haven't done.

In a less familiar area that has concerned her for years, Loftus cited experiments designed to test whether or not psychotherapists could "plant" false memories in their clients, even "memories" of bizarre crimes, sexual abuse, and animal sacrifice. Those studies produced a success rate of 70 percent. False memory, based on hypnosis, dream interpretation and other misinformation can lead to false accusations, false convictions, and jail time for the accused. For exposing this therapeutic abuse, Loftus has been subjected to threatening letters, violence, attempts to get her fired, and lawsuits. Conscientious scientists can face dire consequences if their conclusions contradict currently accepted wisdom.

Loftus is quick to affirm that eyewitness testimony, as well as confessions and recovered memory do have their place. But before anyone is convicted on the strength of such charges, she is compelled to ask, "What's your evidence?"

John Shelby Spong, Episcopal Bishop of Newark before his retirement in 2000, author of numerous books about contemporary religion, and one of the world's leading spokespeople for liberal Christianity, captured this year's Religious Liberty Award. Clearly well-schooled in the art of the sermon, Spong entranced his audience with his personal story and oft-rehearsed quips. On a talk show with Bill O'Reilly he once famously told the conservative pundit, "You're nothing but Rush Limbaugh with perfume."

Spong became best known for his early embrace of gays and lesbians in the Episcopal Church. In 1989, before it became commonplace, he ordained an openly gay priest and came before a church tribunal, a case which he lost narrowly. He criticizes church dogmatists who call homosexuality a "lifestyle." "I didn't choose to be heterosexual," the bishop says. So "why do we assume that gay and lesbian people choose their sexuality?"

"In the light of the church," Spong recalls of his early religious education, "a woman was considered defective," so couldn't serve as a pastor. The only essential difference between men and women is the penis, so apparently "that's the image of God!"

Because of his progressive outlook and his naming literal interpretation nothing short of "heresy," he has received to date some 16 death threats. "But never by an atheist," he says. "All by Christians." Spong was raised in Charlotte, N.C. "Most of my prejudices I learned in church," and he lists a few: hating other religions, racism, male supremacy, and homophobia. He reminds his listeners that apart from the "sin" of homosexuality that so many preachers love to harp on, there are hundreds of "abominations" for which you could be stoned to death. Were you aware of the death penalty for sex with your mother-in-law? "Be careful quoting the Bible to justify all of your prejudices!"

Photo: Retired Bishop John Shelby Spong

Women’s “State of the Union” and the 2016 elections

Tue, 28 Jun 2016 13:14:00 +0000

Donald Trump nailed his colors to the mast early on in the 2016 Republican primary. His coming was hailed as a joke by many observers of politics, and the media fueled his outrageous antics like spectators baiting a bear, laughing as it stumbled and bellowed. In the very first GOP primary debate, on August 6^th, conservative Fox News journalist Megyn Kelly asked Trump a question about his past characterizations of women, citing instances where he had called them pigs, dogs, or disgusting animals. His response during the debate was defensive, though he attempted to maintain his cool in the spin-room immediately after.

It was when he took to the media and to his infamous Twitter account that the misogynistic abuse flowed in retribution. In an interview with Don Lemon of CNN, Trump observed nastily that Kelly had "blood flowing out of her...whatever" in her supposed anger (although the journalist seemed composed in the interchange during the debate.) On Twitter, he rained abuse down on Kelly's professionalism for months, obsessed with the subject well into spring of this year. His theme was that she was crazy, off-balance, sick, and shouldn't have her job.

Along the way, he implied that his fellow GOP candidate Carly Fiorina was an ugly-faced and angry woman and attacked her repeatedly in statements to the press and on social media. As the year wore on and his rivals in the GOP were rapidly eliminated, he trained more of his venom on Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton, attacking her personal life. He accused her of playing the "woman card" and of being shrill and shouting. All of these instances are well-known as gendered attacks, making sure women know that their presence is considered an offense in traditionally male centers of power, and that only women who conform in looks and in tone are considered unthreatening to male ruling power, and therefore acceptable.

The Clinton camp turned adroitly to parry these attacks, issuing an actual plastic "woman card" to supporters, and also airing a TV ad that merely had women repeating exact quotes of Trump's sexist comments.

On the question of women's rights, Trump said that there should be some form of punishment for women who get an abortion. As President, he proclaimed, he would shut down the U.S. Government in order to stop federal funding for Planned Parenthood. He's attempted to walk back that answer, but he has also indicated his willingness to appoint Supreme Court Justices just like the recently deceased Antonin Scalia, which would basically produce the same results.

Signaling this intention to make right-wing judicial appointments was apparently deemed attractive enough to begin luring establishment conservatives into supporting Trump for President, despite their previous objections. They rather quickly began to fall in line and endorse the candidate.

The problem is a lot bigger than just Trump

Meanwhile, in the backdrop of this electoral performance, systemic attacks were being waged against women's rights, the organizations that they rely on, and on women themselves. While Trump's antics were capturing the media spotlight, other GOP candidates latched onto the right-wing attacks on Planned Parenthood via fraudulent videos that were produced which purported to show that Planned Parenthood was trafficking in abortion-harvested fetal organs. Carly Fiorina made inflammatory remarks in the September GOP debates, although later it was revealed that she hadn't even watched the videos in question.

The inflamed rhetoric that these attacks produced led directly to a terrorist attack on a Colorado Planned Parenthood, in which three people died and several were injured during a five-hour gun battle. The suspect was heard to mumble "no more baby parts" when he was apprehended.

Lest we think the attacks on Planned Parenthood and women's rights died down after the videos were debunked in the media, on June 8^th of this year it was reported that the GOP had, in the course of an ongoing House panel investigation into alleged wrong-doing by abortion rights organizations, leaked the personal information of biomedical researchers and Planned Parenthood staffers. House Democrats have called for an end to this panel, calling it a "unique form of congressional harassment."

The crisis in access to women's health has been acute. Reports show that hundreds of thousands of women in states with draconian abortion laws are considering or going through with self-induced abortions or are going without heath check-ups. Reuters recently reported that in 1982, there were nearly 3,000 abortion providers. As of 2011, only 1,720 remained. NARAL reports that only 13% of counties in the entire United States have an abortion provider.

This primary election was tragically bracketed by terror fueled by toxic masculinity. In June of 2015, there was the Charleston massacre by Dylann Roof, who claimed his killings in the church of innocent African-American churchgoers stemmed from his racist and paranoid beliefs that Black people raped white women. Nearly a year later, a homophobic wife-beater, Omar Mateen, committed horrific mass murder in a gay bar in Orlando, killing 49 and wounding 53, the majority of the victims being Latino/a.

These outbreaks of mass violence are often begun at home, with violence against women. 40 percent of mass shootings carried out between 2009 and 2012 started first with a shooter targeting his girlfriend, wife, or ex-wife. Three women are killed every day by their partners. Research by the advocacy group Everytown for Gun Safety has shown that when a gun is present in a domestic violence situation, it increases the risk of homicide for women by 500 percent.

The economics of sexism (and racism)

Economic fears and abuse often keep women in violent relationships. Despite an improving economy since 2008, the economic state of American women is still dire. 18 million women in the United States live in poverty. Two-thirds of all low-wage workers are women, and in two-thirds of all families, the primary breadwinner is a woman.

The United States has more elderly women living in poverty than any other industrialized country, a result of historically low-paying jobs that lead to small Social Security incomes. 13 percent of women over 75 are poor, while only 6 percent of men in that category are. Black women face a 16 percent higher likelihood of living in elder poverty than white men.

"Time poverty", a result of women assuming more work in the home and childcare, results in thousands of hours of uncompensated labor that adds up over a lifetime. Gender parity in wages is still a problem: white women make $0.79 on the dollar made by a white man. The gap for women of color is even wider, with Latina women making only $0.54 and Black women making just $0.64 for every dollar made by a white male.

By 2044, the majority of the United States' female workforce will be women of color. Today, women of color, especially Black women, account for the highest level of college degrees awarded in the United States. Despite this, young African-American women still experience the highest rate of severe punishments for school infractions. Department of Education data for the 2011-2012 school year demonstrated the disparity. Black males faced suspension more than three times as often as their white counterparts, but Black girls were suspended six times as often.

The over-policing of schools leads to more young women of color being exposed to the juvenile justice system, and having violent encounters with law enforcement. In many states, police are empowered to arrest children for being disruptive in class, with "disruptive" being a rather loose and open-ended category of behavior that includes even minor distractions. In October 2015, an African-American South Carolina teen was brutalized by a male police officer in her classroom, suffering many injuries. #BlackLivesMatter and the #SayHerName campaigns have highlighted the negative and sometimes lethal effect that law enforcement has on adult Black women.

Trans women also threatened

Sexist attacks and oppression extend also to trans women. The rush by GOP-led states to enact bathroom segregation bills against transgender people has a direct link to the 2016 elections. Transmisogyny as a result of these bigoted bias measures has resulted in attacks on transgender women as well as cis women who are not gender-conforming.

Hate preacher James Dobson reportedly attacked transgender women in early June by telling a congregation's men to shoot transgender women in the head if they are found in bathrooms, as a show of masculine strength. Studies have shown that the women actually in the most danger in public restrooms are transgender women. Biased hate laws elevate violence against transgender women, which has fallen especially heavily on transgender women of color.

Although Donald Trump has come out with lukewarm verbal statements of support for LGBTQ issues, his courting of the evangelical right wing for support, and also his intention to appoint right-wing Supreme Court Justices makes any verbal support moot. His material actions would lead to a stripping of rights for LGBTQ people. Numerous reports have sounded the warning that he is not a moderate on LGBTQ rights, and that supporting him on this basis is dangerous. His stance on deportation alone would create elevated dangers for transgender women, who already suffer terribly in ICE detention centers.

An ongoing rape crisis

The rape crisis has touched nearly every community where women are. Campus rape has been a topic of media attention during this election year, with the recent case of the Stanford rapist Brock Turner, managed to convince the judge that his violation of his victim, so brutal that gravel and pine needles were found inside her genitalia, was consensual. Even though the jury convicted him on all three felony counts, the judge handed down a sentence of 6 months in county jail, later commuted to 3 months. Reports from campus surveys suggest that between 20-27 percent of campus rapes are committed on cis & transgender women and gender-fluid people.

Native American women on reservations are the most at-risk population of women for rape, with 86 percent of rapes being committed by non-Native men. 1 in 3 Native American women are likely to be raped in her lifetime, and they are two and half times more likely to be raped than women of other races. Because of federal laws that prevent tribal courts from having jurisdiction over non-Native offenders, rapists know that they can offend in tribal communities with impunity and face no consequences, as federal U.S. courts often decline to take these cases as well.

These are just a few of the acute crises that prevent women from fully participating in public life in the US. There are several other issues, like media representation, internet harassment (which can silence by gender and race), gender inequity in children's toys, as well as "symbolic annihilation" and sexist advertising that reinforce stereotypes and keep women from imagining what they can be and should be able to achieve in a modern democracy.

Women will make the difference in 2016

Today, women make up over half of the electorate. Women, especially Black women voters, are a key demographic in putting victories against the ultra-right over the top. Black women voted at a higher rate than any other group - whether by gender, race, or ethnicity - in the 2012 election. Along with other women of color, they played a key role in Obama's re-election.

The key to defeating Trump and his coalition, a toxic stew of white male anxieties based on racism and xenophobia, will be to mobilize the largest and most diverse coalition possible. Only the total repudiation of the ultra-right and their "suicide squad" of reactionaries will keep the Supreme Court out of the hands of three more potential Scalias. Furthermore, if we can encourage the division found presently in the GOP, we could potentially flip Congress to put us on the road to a progressive agenda, as the unpopularity of Trump, especially with white women and Latinos, puts many down-ticket races in play.

President Obama quoted Marian Wright Edelman at the very first national State of Women summit recently, saying, "It's hard to be what you can't see." Representation in diversity and gender needs to be encouraged at every level, from those who teach our children, to our workplaces, to our unions, to our Congress, and yes, to our Presidency.

This article is based on a report delivered by the author to a meeting of the National Board of the Communist Party on June 15, 2016.

Supreme Court blocks Texas attempt to shut women’s health facilities

Mon, 27 Jun 2016 15:03:00 +0000

WASHINGTON - Although it ruled against the President's right to protect undocumented immigrants whose children are American citizens, in the last days of its current session, the Supreme Court took three actions that, for the time being at least, will help keep America on the path toward greater equity and toward full recognition that women have the right to control their own bodies.

The Court struck down a Texas law that would have shut down clinics offering abortions, upheld a university's right to use affirmative action and let stand a Labor Department decision that two million home health care workers must be covered by federal protections.

Today is the last day of the Court's 2015 term. It is still flying on one wing because the Senate is refusing to hold hearings on President's Obama's nominee to fill the seat vacated by the death of Justice Anton Scalia.

Right to abortions

In 2013, the Texas legislature, which is tightly controlled by right wingers, passed a law imposing extreme regulations on clinics where abortions are offered.

The law covered building features such as corridor width, the swinging motion of doors, floor tiles, parking spaces, elevator size, ventilation, electrical wiring, plumbing, floor tiling and the angle that water flows from drinking fountains.

Texas legislators said the purpose of the law was to protect women and a Texas appeals court upheld that rationale.

The Supreme Court ruled five to three that the purpose of the law was to force the closing down of clinics offering abortions.

The Court said that the law placed an "undue burden on women exercising their constitutional right to end a pregnancy."

Justice Stephen Breyer, writing for the Court, said that the appeals court that upheld the law was wrong. He noted that courts are required to "consider the burdens a law imposes on abortion access together with the benefits that those laws confer."

Breyer also wrote that deferring to state legislatures over "questions of medical uncertainty is inconsistent with [the Supreme Court's] case law."

Affirmative Action

In a four to three decision, the Supreme Court re-affirmed the educational value of a diverse student body and ruled that the University of Texas's affirmative action program can stand.

"A university is in large part defined by those intangible qualities which are incapable of objective measurement but which make for greatness," Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote for the majority. "Considerable deference is owed to a university in defining those intangible characteristics, like student body diversity, that are central to its identity and educational mission."

Justice Elena Kagan recused herself because of prior work on the issue while at the Department of Justice.

Affirmative action has been used for many years to address past inequities and to help students from disadvantaged minority groups - especially African-Americans and Latinos - to get a better opportunity to gain access to higher education.

The current case was brought on behalf of Abigail Fisher, a white student who alleged she was victimized because of her race when the University of Texas at Austin rejected her application for admission in 2008.

It was clear to the Supreme Court Justices that Fisher's race had little to do with her being rejected.

About 75 percent of university's freshmen openings are filled by the state's Top Ten plan, which guarantees admission to Texas high school students who finish in the top ten percent of their graduating classes. To fill the other 25 percent, the university uses an admissions process that takes race into account, among other things.

The year Fisher applied, 92 percent of the class was filled through the Top Ten program, so competition for the remaining eight percent of openings was particularly stiff. Moreover, Fisher's high school grade average was about a "C."

"Although admissions officers can consider race as a positive feature of a minority student's application, there is no dispute that race is but a 'factor of a factor' in the holistic-review calculus," Kennedy wrote.

This is the second time the Supreme Court has heard the Fisher case. In 2013, the Court ruled seven to one that lower courts should take another look at the University of Texas's affirmative action program.

The appeals court ruled against Fisher.

Despite the Supreme Court's ruling, eight states - Arizona, California, Florida, Michigan, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Oklahoma and Washington - have banned public colleges and universities from using affirmative action.

Rights of home health care workers

By refusing to hear a case brought against the Department of Labor (DOL), the Supreme Court has removed all barriers to extending legal protections to some two million home health care workers.

Two years ago, the DOL announced that home health care workers would be covered by federal laws and regulations that, among other things, require workers to be paid federal minimum wage and that they be compensated for overtime work.

At the time, Secretary of Labor Tom Perez told reporters that the long-awaited change "promotes the dignity of work" as well as "the dignity of aging in place." He added that it meant workers caring for elderly or disabled clients in the home would no longer be treated like "teenage baby sitters performing casual employment," but rather "treated with dignity, and their hard work is finally rewarded."

Photo: Activists demonstrate in front of the Supreme Court in Washington, Monday. The Supreme Court Monday struck down Texas' widely replicated regulation of abortion clinics in the court's biggest abortion case in nearly a quarter century. | J. Scott Applewhite/AP

This week in LGBTQ history: UN issues Free & Equal stamps

Mon, 27 Jun 2016 14:41:00 +0000

In February of this year, the United Nations Postal Administration (UNPA) issued a set of six stamps promoting the UN Free & Equal campaign for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) equality. The new stamps, which celebrate the diversity of the LGBT community, mark the first time that the UNPA has issued stamps with an LGBT theme.

Swedish statesman Dag Hammarskjöld served as secretary-general of the United Nations for eight years, from 1953 until his death in a controversial plane crash on September 18, 1961. He never married and was known to be a closeted homosexual whose effectiveness would have been severely compromised had his sexual orientation become public.

An initiative of the UN Human Rights Office, Free & Equal is a global public education campaign dedicated to raising awareness of homophobic and transphobic violence and discrimination globally. Since its launch, the campaign has generated a stream of popular content and engaged millions of people in an effort to promote the fair treatment of LGBT people and generate support for measures to protect their rights.

Equality is a fundamental principle of human rights. All human beings - whoever they are, wherever they live, whomever they love - are entitled to enjoy the same basic rights, free from arbitrary interference. In the eyes of the UN, all nations, regardless of their political, economic and cultural systems, have a legal duty to promote and protect the human rights of all. "LGBT people, like everyone else in the world, are entitled to live their lives free from fear, violence, discrimination and persecution," says the UN Human Rights Office, which is certainly well aware that gay sex is illegal in 73 countries, according to the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Assn. In 13, the punishment for homosexual activity is death.

The stamps were issued on February 5, 2016, and were created by artist Sergio Baradat. The denominations conform to countries where the UNPA has offices - in New York, Geneva and Vienna - and where people can use UN stamps for mailing purposes: US$ 0.49 (We are everywhere) and $1.20 (Transgender); 1,00 (Lesbians) and 1,50 (Gay families) in Swiss francs; and € 0,68 (Coming out) and € 0,80 (Gays).

UN Free & Equal recently celebrated two years of campaigning, in which the campaign's message of acceptance and equality reached some two billion people. To learn more about the Free & Equal campaign, visit www.unfe.org.

Decades later, Mississippi is still burning

Mon, 27 Jun 2016 11:08:00 +0000

JACKSON, Miss. -- In 1964, the brutal slayings of three civil rights workers, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, rocked the country. Their deaths cast a spotlight on the horrific violence and injustice already known by those who lived in the state of Mississippi.

In 1970, 18 members of Mississippi's Ku Klux Klan were federally indicted for violating Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner's civil rights. Of the 18 men indicted, only seven were found guilty, and none of those seven spent more than six years in prison. Despite the heinousness of the crime, the state of Mississippi chose not to pursue any murder charges.

What Mississippi did choose to do was create the very weapon that enabled the murders to happen. In 1956, the Legislature had created the State Sovereignty Commission "to prevent encroachment upon the rights of this and other states by the federal government."

The encroachments they were speaking of were the rights of equal protection under the law for African Americans - more specifically, the right of African-Americans to vote free of barriers and intimidation and the right to an equal and integrated education.

To achieve its goals, the Sovereignty Commission and its spies and agents told the Klansmen what road the civil rights trio would be traveling and when. In these gruesome slayings and others, a man may have pulled the trigger, but it was the state of Mississippi that provided the gun.

After nearly 30 years of indifference and silence, the case was reopened. Still, it took six years before the instigator of the murderous plot. Edgar Ray Killen, was charged with three counts of murder: however, he was only convicted of three counts of manslaughter.

Other known conspirators were alive at that time, but no others were indicted, and the state's collusion in the murders was never even considered.

Now, in 2016 Mississippi has chosen to close the case.

There will be no further investigation into the murders of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner. The reason given for this closing is that it is unlikely that further investigation would result in any other prosecutions.

But at least one known conspirator is still around today and has yet to be held accountable. That conspirator is the state of Mississippi.

The tragic and senseless murders of Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner were made more famous with the motion picture "Mississippi Burning." Although many civil rights veterans disagreed with the depictions of the hero, it was an appropriate title then and it has not lost its relevance today.

Because Mississippi still burns.

The fire did not begin in 1964. The sparks were born much earlier, and the embers have smoldered much longer than that. Even in 1817, at Mississippi's birth, the fire was there, and its flames have constantly been stoked with racial hatred, inequities and terrorism.

In the recent past, this fire has been fueled by burning crosses and firebombs, all under the Confederate symbol that still exists on the state flag today. While today's accelerants do not light up the night, they still serve the same purposes of evil.

Mississippi still burns.

The current flames of hate still burn brightly as Mississippi, in defiance of reason and even in defiance of the sister states who have in the past stood proudly in the well of racism, Mississippi chooses to keep a symbol of racial hatred on its flag.

Mississippi chooses to honor those who fought against the United States and fought for the right to own other human beings. Mississippi chooses to underfund education while teaching a, quite literally, white-washed history, according to which the white Citizens Councils weren't "all that bad" and in which Confederate history doesn't involve the mention of slavery or treats it as "no big deal."

Hatred still sears. Intolerance still singes. Discrimination still scalds. Racism still scorches, but now indifference feeds these flames and the blaze grows higher.

Indifference keeps the Confederate battle emblem on Mississippi's flag flying over this state. Indifference has closed the case on the Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner slayings. Indifference has caused over 50 years of inaction and injustice for the dozens, maybe hundreds of others who died by racist violence. Eight bodies of African-American men were found while the FBI searched for Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner, but where was their investigation? Where was the national outrage over their deaths? Where was their justice?

The State of Mississippi bears as much blood on its hands as any of the men who killed Chaney, Goodman, Schwerner, and the named and nameless others who fell victim to racist violence. Mississippi has closed this case, but the larger case will never be closed until the state is held accountable for its part in this crime.

Until that day, Mississippi will still burn.

James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner and the many, many others whose names are not known, whose faces are not pictured, whose full justice is still denied deserve more than just a nod of acknowledgment and a rueful shaking of a head. Their cases should not be closed, and their causes must not be forgotten because when we do that we fan the flames of this Mississippi burning.

Derrick Johnson, the author of this story, is the president of the Mississippi NAACP State Conference.

Photo: Wikipedia (CC)

LGBTQ-Latino leader, Carlos Guillermo Smith, fights for Florida’s future

Mon, 27 Jun 2016 10:21:00 +0000

ORLANDO - Carlos Guillermo Smith woke up at 6:30 a.m. to push-notifications lighting up his phone.

"I first reacted with fear. Pulse is a place where I go to often, where many of my friends go often. It's a popular place. I reached out to every one I could think of, everyone close to me."

As details unfolded through Sunday morning Carlos was already active, organizing among his fellow Orlandoans, and, as of our interview a week later, had yet to slow down.

Aiding the victims

Carlos Guillermo-Smith is the Government Affairs Manager for Equality Florida, an LGBTQ rights organization whose GoFundMe account for the victims and their families shattered online crowd funding records by raising over $6 million.

"Over 110,000 individual donors from around the world doing what they can to help the effected families navigate through this unthinkable hate crime massacre.

"For me, it's been personal."

An overwhelming majority of those killed and injured were LGBTQ and/or Latino, two groups Carlos identifies with.

"As a gay Latino in Orlando, I'm personally devastated that something like this would happen to my people. I'm doing everything I can, and we are doing everything we can at Equality Florida to get through this."

Equality Florida has partnered with the National Center for Victims of Crime to ensure that all the money raised gets to those who need it.

"We've set up an 800-number (800-855-4-victim) where people can call in to get access to the financial resources they need so they can begin to rebuild. 100 percent of the funds are going toward the victims and surviving families, ensuring there is no gap in coverage for necessary services."

Special effort has been made to ensure that the services that are being made available to these primarily Latino victims are "culturally competent."

"It's important for the Latino community to understand that even if they're undocumented, survivors of this horrific tragedy have the right to access these kinds of services, even ones provided by state and local governments."

In the hours after the shooting, rumors spread through "irresponsible reporting" that undocumented people who stepped forward to ask for help would be deported. "This is absolutely not the case," says Smith.

An eye on change at all levels

Carlos is a man who wears many hats. Aside from being a leader in the LGBTQ equality movement in Florida and a Latino leader, he is also the former head of the Orange County Democratic Party and a candidate for the 49^th District State Representative seat in Florida.

"The Democratic community is rightfully responding and holding Republican elected officials accountable for their past records. The reason this massacre happened is because a radical American homophobe had access to weapons of mass destruction, which is what those weapons are. There is no sensible use for a weapon of its kind other than to inflict the maximum amount of human casualties."

His hope is for the LGBTQ community to join with those disproportionately victimized by gun-violence in the Black and Latino communities, and in the case of Orlando, the business community as well.

"Orlando is known as a travel destination and the local tourism community here cares a lot about Orlando's image. If that's the case, I call on those in the theme park, hotel, and restaurant businesses to join us in this fight for gun safety reform in Florida."

Smith has also called on Republican Governor Rick Scott and Attorney General Pam Bondi to ban LGBTQ discrimination in public employment and housing, a move he says can send "a very powerful message that all types of discrimination and hate will not be tolerated in Florida."

Carlos hopes that this tragedy ignites and broadens the coalition required to make gun reform a reality come November.

"The response at the top of the ticket has been horrifying with Donald Trump specifically suggesting that guns should be allowed into bars. Even the NRA has rejected that as an extreme proposal, and that's coming from an extremist organization.

"It's got to be a part of the conversation in this election cycle. This tragedy has impacted the central Florida LGBTQ community so much that they will be casting their ballot in all races up and down the ticket based on who they think will be most supportive of gun safety measures in the light of this tragedy."

Photo: Orange Democrats 2016 Kennedy King Leadership Dinner. | Carlos Guillermo Smith Facebook page

Supreme Court in a split non-decision leaves millions in Limbo

Fri, 24 Jun 2016 10:40:00 +0000

On Thursday June 23, the United States Supreme Court finally "dropped the other shoe" and announced the results of its deliberations on the DAPA (Deferred Action for Parents of Americans) and extended DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) cases. Unfortunately, these results take us nowhere positive: The justices split four to four on a case originally brought against the Obama administration by 26 Republican state attorneys general who had asked the courts to block the implementation of Obama's 2014 executive order which would have given many undocumented immigrant parents of U.S. citizen and permanent legal resident children renewable three year deferments of deportation and work permits.

The executive order, now blocked, would also have expanded the number of people eligible for the earlier DACA (program). In total, the orders might have provided relief for between four and five million people, slightly fewer than half the undocumented immigrants in this country.

The Republican attorneys general, engaging in the all too common practice of venue-shopping (looking around for the friendliest court in which to file their suit), found Andrew Hanen a particularly eccentric federal district judge in Texas. Back in February, 2015 he agreed with them that the DAPA and extended DACA executive order was an unconstitutional overreach by the executive branch. He said it would have forced the state of Texas to expend money not appropriated by its own legislature to pay for drivers' licenses for the beneficiaries of this program.

The plaintiffs conceded that the government could give relief to individuals one by one, but asserted that only Congress could grant such relief to an entire category of people (ignoring the fact that for more than a decade, Congress has sat on its hands regarding immigration reform). The government replied that Texas did not have to provide drivers licenses if it did not want to.

Others pointed out that every study of the matter has shown that undocumented immigrants, once legalized, earn much more money and also pay much more in federal, state and local taxes - so Texas and the other 25 states would not lose money, but would benefit financially. This was an important item, because to file such a suit a plaintiff needs to demonstrate that he or she has "standing", i.e. a material interest in the outcome of the case. If the states could not show that they would be harmed by the Obama administration's actions, the courts might have thrown out the suit on the grounds of lack of standing. (story continues after video)

Video: Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights press conference in front of the Immigration control and enforcement detention center in Chicago, June 23. Earchiel Johnson | PW.

The Obama administration appealed Hanen's order, but lost at the appeals court level on a divided vote. The government then appealed the case to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court took the case and announced its non-decision today. The minimalist announcement did not explain which judges voted with the Obama administration and which with the Republican plaintiffs, nor did it publish any statements by the individual judges. But activists who have been following the case closely believe that in all probability, Justices Elena Kagan, Ruth Ginsburg, Steven Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor took the side of the Obama administration, while Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Clarence Thomas, Thomas Alito and Anthony Kennedy took the side of the Republican plaintiffs.

This would suggest a partisan and/or ideological split on the court. Had Justice Antonin Scalia not died unexpectedly, the case would probably have been decided 5 to 4 for the plaintiffs, which would have been precedent setting and therefore worse for the immigrants and their families. But as it is the situation is bad enough. Because of the impasse on the Supreme Court, the lower court ruling stands. The Supreme Court did send the case back to Judge Hanen for further consideration, but it is extremely unlikely that he will change his mind.

This means that the DAPA and extended DACA programs cannot be implemented, leaving millions of immigrants and their families in a bad situation, made worse by the fact that the Republican Party presidential candidate, Donald Trump, has decided to make the 2016 presidential election be about his demonized image of evil "illegal immigrants" who should be rounded up and deported en masse.

Though this result was expected, organizations of immigrants and their defenders reacted with disappointment, anger and defiance. Maria Elena Hincapie, executive director of the National immigration Law Center, said in a statement: "The stakes in United States versus Texas could not have been higher. Millions have watched and waited for the Supreme Court to affirm the president's authority to inject some common sense into our immigration system. Today, the eight justices failed to act, and countless families will suffer as a consequence."

However, Hincapie added, "[We] will not sit back. We urge the Department of Justice to seek a rehearing for when a ninth justice is named to the Supreme Court." Hincapie was referring to the fact that Republicans in the Senate have been blocking President Obama's nomination of Merrick Garland to replace Scalia.

The AFL-CIO also spoke out angrily. President Richard Trumka said: "Today's ruling is a setback for a more humane and rational enforcement of our immigration laws....we will redouble our organizing efforts to defeat the obstructionist, anti-immigrant forces behind this lawsuit and ensure that all working people can assert their rights on the job and in the community without fear of deportation".

President Obama himself expressed disappointment with the ruling, emphasizing his disgust with the failure of the Congressional Republicans to approve Garland's nomination to the court. Obama said that his administration would continue to prioritize deportations, concentrating on people who have been convicted of crimes and not every undocumented immigrant.

The blocking of the executive orders will harm many but will also spur the immigrants' rights movement to greater efforts in registering voters and getting out the vote in November so as to defeat Donald Trump and change the composition of Congress in a more immigrant friendly direction.

Republican candidate Donald Trump hailed the Supreme Court decision and said it showed the danger of Hillary Clinton whose stated support for the immigrants' aspirations is "tearing American families apart." He did not explain this strange statement; the only families being torn apart are those whose breadwinners are being deported.

Photo: Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights press conference in front of the Immigration control and enforcement detention center in Chicago, June 23. Earchiel Johnson | PW

Video: Earchiel Johnson/PW

Native Americans defy Andrew Jackson Day Dinner

Fri, 24 Jun 2016 10:19:00 +0000

NASHVILLE, Tenn. - On May 7, local Native Americans - Cherokee, Muscogee Creek and Choctaw - held a spirited demonstration in opposition to the annual Andrew Jackson Day Dinner sponsored by the local Democratic Party. The dinner was held at the newly minted Music City Center in Nashville.

Area local American Indians have long opposed any celebration of that arch architect of genocide, Andrew Jackson. A number of signs carried by demonstrators read "Indian Killer Jackson. He is considered in Native American circles as an early-day American Hitler. The demonstration was part of an ongoing campaign by the local Indian community to combat the legacy of Jackson.

Jackson was responsible for the agonizing deaths of thousands of Native Americans-men, women children, elderly- beginning with the Creek War of 1813-14. He enslaved Native children taken as war captives. That War, was "a massacre from beginning to end" according to historian William G. McLoughlin.

In the 1830's with the passage of Jackson's infamous Indian Removal Bill, he was responsible for the hideous deaths of tens of thousands more American Indians - Cherokees, Creeks, Choctaws, Chickasaws and Seminoles-on the Trail of Tears. The Cherokees alone suffered the loss of 4,000-8,000 lives.

As for the dinner, Democratic National Committee Chairman James Carville, was the featured speaker for the event. The demonstrators had leaflets denouncing the dinner and explaining why, which were distributed to the attendees as they entered the meeting ballroom.

The demonstrators were pleasantly surprised that many of the attendees voiced their support of the demonstrators' opposition to the celebration of the Jackson legacy. Many also explicitly expressed how glad they were at the demonstrators' presence.

The dinner is a yearly event held every May to garner public support for the Democratic Party locally and nationally. It has also been brought out that many within the local party opposed the Jackson Dinner to such an extent that the event passed muster by only a few votes last year.

The dinner was not without confrontation as event security tried to intimidate the demonstrators to move from the venue area. They maintained that the Democratic Party had rented the entire floor and all demonstrators had to stand outside the building on the curb to hand out leaflets to passers-by and passing motorists. The Music City Center is so huge that it looks surreal, occupying several city blocks and is three stories high with three levels underground. Security was in fact telling the demonstrators that the Democratic Party had rental rights to the entire gargantuan facility to the exclusion of all others. This writer, who was one of the organizers of the demonstration, at this point informed security of the legal rights of the demonstrators and to further "Call the police" if they disagreed. Nothing more was heard from security. The demonstrators held their ground.

When organizers asked the local Democratic Party Chairperson, Mary Mancini, about security trying to intimidate the demonstrators, the muted response was: "that didn't come from us." Readers can decide for themselves whether this is a believable statement.

Photo: Albert Bender and Melba Chechote protest the naming of the annual Andrew Jackson Day Dinner. | Chas Sisk/WPLN/Nashville Public Radio

Vigils for the murdered will never cease under capitalism

Thu, 23 Jun 2016 13:38:00 +0000

For many, many years the corporate elite - the 1 percent - has been selling us on the idea of trickle down economics, i.e., if the 1 percent made money they would reinvest it back into the cities and communities and we would all benefit. Well, does anyone still believe that? I don't think so.

But let's talk about what does trickle down - something never talked about by the corporate elite and something that has been missing from most if not all major media and the presidential debates - with a little exception on the part of Bernie Sanders. That something is the psychology of violence.

We witness yet another tragic mass murder by a person who really can't be understood completely regardless of all the speculation and assumptions. The understanding doesn't come because we are looking for answers in too narrow an area.

Yes, we must bring the NRA's corporate leaders to their knees and we must defeat the right. But unless we challenge the military-industrial complex - capitalist weapons manufacturers who render us captive to never ending wars - we will continue to have our vigils for the murdered and maimed and our president(s) will continue to pay respects to those murdered and maimed.

The capitalist system requires the psychology of violence to keep afloat. After all, isn't this how scores are settled, heads of state are removed, and dictators are supported? Isn't this how the corporate elite remove elected leaders overseas who carry out policies they don't like.

We are facing a huge humanitarian crisis in the Middle East and around the world due to war. United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) annual Global Trends Report: World at War, released on Thursday (June 18), said that worldwide displacement was at the highest level ever recorded. It said the number of people forcibly displaced at the end of 2014 had risen to a staggering 59.5 million compared to 51.2 million a year earlier and 37.5 million a decade ago. Half these numbers are children.

The capitalist system promotes the cycle of violence in many ways. It promotes violent video games that target boys, the "sport" of ultimate fighting which has taken boxing to new depths while girls are fed the princess principle. This preparation to become cannon fodder starts early in childhood.

The military has become the only option for anything that resembles a "secure job" for too many poor and working-class men and women today. We can trace the trajectory of the decline of living wage jobs and the rise of unemployment with the decline of unions in the U.S. and globalization (unions in private sector 6.7%). Since the early 80's the outsourcing of union jobs in auto, steel and many other manufactured goods has left millions locked out of living wage jobs.

The U.S. is the largest producer of weapons. Weapons are our chief export and we don't worry about to whom we sell these weapons - be they nations or gun distributors here in America.

The latest tragedy in Orlando is a classic example of the simplicity of purchasing a potentially dangerous weapon legally. It's way past time to change the gun laws in the U.S. but to do that, we must change the Congress, or perhaps this mass murder will force even this bankrupt intransigent Republican party to do the right thing.

We should do what Australia has done since the mass shooting there 20 years ago, the largest massacre in Australia's post-colonial history "so shocked the nation that within 12 days, comprehensive gun-control legislation was agreed upon." Although a variety of crimes have not been entirely reduced in number, there has not been another mass shooting in Australia since.

Even if we follow their example, the larger obstacle to a peaceful society is the psychology of violence that perpetuates wars abroad and violence at home. We must struggle to move to the next level for humanity - socialism and end perpetual wars of exploitation by the 1 percent. Socialism will not cure all of the social ills that plague us but it will set us on a strong foundation to build on and maybe, just maybe, we can break the cycle and psychology of violence.

"A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death" - Martin Luther King Jr.

Photo: Vigil held for Orlando shooting victims. | David Goldman/AP

Baptists, citing another tradition in the South, denounce Confederate flag

Thu, 23 Jun 2016 10:19:00 +0000

JACKSON, Miss. - Two recent, very different, actions illustrate that although those in power have tried to repress it, the tradition of fighting racism in the South runs as deep as the racism itself: the Mississippi NAACP is petitioning for a Union Army Appreciation Month and the Southern Baptist Convention has denounced the Confederate flag as a "symbol of hatred, bigotry and racism."

Mississippi's right wing government is probably the most recalcitrant in the South. For example, despite actions to the contrary throughout the South, Mississippi has kept the Confederate battle flag flying everywhere. In fact, it's part of the official state flag.

Moreover, there's a huge statue in front of the State Capitol honoring the white women of the Confederacy; none honoring enslaved persons who fought for freedom.

Mississippi's right wing governor, Phil Bryant, has been bleeding the state dry. He's given so many tax breaks to corporations, the state is broke. There's little money for public schools or Medicaid or infrastructure repair, or for any social welfare program.

When such situations have arisen in the past, Mississippi governors would explicitly invoke "white supremacy" to stop blacks and whites from organizing together for change.

But it's 2016. Today, right wingers like Bryant are more subtle than the racists of the past. Last April, Governor Bryant declared a "Confederate Heritage Month."

However, as has been true throughout Southern history, whenever racism has been used by the powerful, people have fought back. [See Freedom fighting: also a Southern tradition, People's World, July 6, 2015].

In this case, the Mississippi State Conference NAACP is circulating a petition to Gov. Bryant calling on him to declare a Union Army Heritage Month.

An NAACP statement says, " ... if it is heritage that should be honored by [a governor's] proclamation, then the history of soldiers from Mississippi who served in the Union Army deserve their recognition as well."

The statement continues, "These Mississippians were patriots who fought for the preservation of this great nation and we must preserve their history and legacy so that future generations can understand the sacrifice of our ancestors. To do otherwise would encourage a revisionist history that dishonors the memory of our families, friends, and neighbors who fought, bled, and died for freedom and for the nation.

"... tens of thousands of white and black soldiers from Mississippi fought for the United States in the war. Should not their lives be recognized ...?"

The petition lists examples of battles where black soldiers defeated better trained, better equipped units of the Confederate army.

It also cites two Mississippi counties, Jones and Jasper, that "voted 2 to 1 against secession from the Union and under the leadership of Newton Knight formed the Free State of Jones county and joined the Union in adherence to their Christian ideals and in the interest of the preservation of liberty and a unified nation." (A major Hollywood motion picture, "Free State of Jones," portrays this history.)

Meanwhile, at its annual meeting this past Tuesday at a site near Ferguson, Missouri, the very influential Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) passed a resolution denouncing the Confederate flag as a "symbol of hatred, bigotry and racism" that offends millions of people.

The proclamation grabbed headlines across the South and shows that the South's fighting, progressive tradition is alive and well.

The SBC is the world's largest Baptist denomination and the largest Protestant body in the United States, with nearly 16 million members as of 2012. Founded in 1845, it has been a bastion of racism.

But to survive, the SBC has had to become more inclusive.

The resolution against the Confederate flag was originally introduced by Pastor Dwight McKissic, who is an African American. The resolutions committee greatly watered it down and presented it for a vote. Their version called on Southern Baptists to "consider ... limiting" the display of the flag.

However, James Merritt, a white descendent of slave owners, could tell that version would not fly with the general body. He supported the original version, which said "We call on our brothers and sisters in Christ to discontinue the display of the Confederate Battle flag as a sign of solidarity of the whole Body of Christ, including our African American brothers and sisters."

Columnist Katie Eubanks wrote in the Jackson Clarion Ledger that "I've been attending Southern Baptist churches ... since before I could read - and I'm glad my denomination voted last week to 'repudiate' (reject, disown, condemn) the display of the Confederate flag."

"I'm familiar with the 'heritage, not hate argument,'" Eubanks wrote, "But by the time I was a young adult, I had a healthy disgust for the Confederate flag ... because I know right from wrong and because I know what the flag harkens back to.

"My parents set me straight when my 11th grade history teacher said the Civil War was not about slavery."

Across the South today, and throughout history, black and white Southerners have been struggling against the racism that the powers-that-be having been trying to pass off as the sole Southern tradition.

Photo: During the Civil War tens of thousands of people from Mississippi fought for the Union, not the Confederacy. A new Hollywood film ("Free State of Jones," pictured) depicts the struggles of white and black Mississippians against the Confederacy and how they pulled two counties in the state out of the Confederacy. | Free State of Jones Facebook page

Turning to hope: A weekend of healing and unity in Orlando

Tue, 21 Jun 2016 12:11:00 +0000

From one end of Orlando to the other, this weekend was filled with events and commemorations all aimed at healing the damage wrought by a lone gunman seven days ago at the Pulse nightclub. Emotions are riding high, but so is the resolve to stand united. It is a spirit that can be felt in the streets, in the stadiums, in the parks, and even in the skies.

Beginning with a resolute show of support at the funeral of a Pulse victim, continuing with the cheering rainbow flag-waving fans of the Orlando City Soccer Club, and culminating in a mass vigil attended by 50,000 people at central Orlando's Lake Eola, the past week of mourning has given way to a determination that hate will never split this city apart.

Saying farewell while blockading hate

One of the first victims laid to rest was Christopher "Drew" Leinonen, the 32-year-old man who lost his life along with his boyfriend, Juan Ramon Guerrero (22), at Pulse last week. Memorial services were held here Saturday morning at the Cathedral Church of St. Luke.

A friend of Leinonen and Guerrero, Brandon Wolf, was with them at the club that night and only managed to escape because he was in the bathroom at the moment the gunman began his rampage. "We all have those once-in-a-lifetime people, the kind of people who force you to think differently, speak differently, and love differently," he told those gathered at the church. "The kind of people who stroll into your life and quietly change the way you live it. Drew was my once-in-a-lifetime person."

Meanwhile on the other side of the cathedral doors, members of the Westboro Baptist Church (of "God Hates Fags" infamy) had arrived to protest. The so-called church is classified by the Southern Poverty Law Center as the "most obnoxious and rabid hate group in America." They had hoped to bombard the Leinonen family with their message of homophobia, hellfire, and brimstone. They should have picked another town for their roadshow of hate, however, because Orlando would have none of it.

Coming together to protect Drew's memorial was a rag-tag, ad-hoc coalition of unconventional nuns in drag, leather-clad bikers, and everyday Orlandoans. Setting off at 10:30 Saturday morning, hundreds marched to the site of the funeral under a bright sunny sky. The vivid stripes of the rainbow banner were hoisted aloft, while a congregation of angels led the way.

Artists from Orlando's Shakespeare Theater were dressed in robes of pure white, while on their backs beautiful flowing wings rose high into the air. These angels of hope stood side-by-side in front of the Westboro protestors, their wings joining together to create a solid white wall that completely blockaded the hatemongers. And to make sure that Drew's family didn't have to hear the Westboro chants, a team of bikers rolled in on their Harleys, revving the engines at full throttle. See no evil, hear no evil.

"I think the objective was attained," said Bill, a biker who came out to support the counter-protest. "They were out shouting, these hatemongers across the street over there." He said that his network of friends began organizing for the event online, adding, "The world's changed a lot since I was growing up. I have a lot of friends who are lesbian and gay. Nobody should live in fear for who they are."

"I didn't protect kids who were picked on in high school for it, but I'll damn sure do it now."

Sister Stryka Pose, of the Orlando Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, has been working with her organization since the morning of the tragedy. "We were here to show love. It's always about our community, we were ready," she said.

Sister Pose was thankful that so many of the 45 members of her Abbey came out during this time of crisis because it meant someone was always available to volunteer wherever help was needed.

"We have a meeting on Monday to decide what we're going to do next, but nothing beats just showing up. Everybody wants us to volunteer and that's easy."

Cheering the home team

On Saturday night, the Orlando City Lions faced the San Jose Quakes in what, from its start, was more than just a regular soccer game. Fans began organizing earlier in the week by assigning a different color to each section of seats in order to create a rainbow all the way around Camping World Stadium.

The largest, rowdiest section was behind the net on the southern end of the stadium, with everyone decked out in purple, the Lions' color. In addition to flying their usual Orlando City flags, hundreds of excited fans also waved the rainbow flag and dropped banners proclaiming "Hate won't break us apart," "Love will keep Orlando united," and "Not afraid."

Rodrigo Guillen, president of the fan organization Iron Lion Firm, spoke to People's World about their contribution to the night, his voice still hoarse from chanting. "Everyone's first reaction was shock, you never expect it to happen to you. Once that settled in, it was our due diligence to use the stadium to voice grief, to voice jubilation. Just to lay it out there that we are supporting the LGBT community," he said.

Guillen is from South America and it was important for him, when he and others created Iron Lion Firm, that they would never stop singing, chanting, and drumming. During the game, they never did. It was also important that everyone feel welcome. "Orlando City is for everyone: no racism, no sexism, no transphobia. You love soccer, come see the game."

Video screens played clips of the members and owners of every Orlando sports team giving their condolences and, just before the game, first responders, surgeons, nurses, county and city government, law enforcement, firefighters, FBI, and the owner/workers of Pulse took the stage for recognition for all they've done and been through.

During half-time, the Orlando Gay Chorus filled the stadium with affirming words of the song "True Colors." At the 49^th minute, play was stopped for a moment of silence to honor the Pulse 49.

Orlando City would go on to tie the Quakes, 2-2. Not the outcome many at the stadium wanted, but as equality was the theme of the night, it seemed appropriate.

A rainbow over Orlando

The culmination of a week of mourning came on Sunday evening as an estimated 50,000 Orlandoans packed into the park around Lake Eola for a sunset vigil. Roads leading into the area around the park were closed hours earlier by local police as people began flowing in from all parts of the city.

Dark clouds and a few drops of rain just a few minutes before the scheduled start time portended a soggy night, but the threat passed quickly and was replaced instead by a much more positive omen. Rather than a storm, a bright rainbow suddenly appeared. The crowd noticed immediately and roared with approval.

A few seconds later, a small propeller plane darted across the sky with a 3,000 square foot banner in tow. Depicting a handgun, it was emblazoned with a message: #EndGunViolence. Framed by the rainbow over Lake Eola, this call to action was the work of Australian artist CJ Hendry. At that exact moment, planes with identical banners were also circling in the skies above New York and Chicago in a coordinated campaign calling for new firearms regulation.

Back down below on stage, the evening's program began with remarks by a number of elected officials and community leaders. Orange County Mayor Teresa Jacobs, a Republican, spoke first to straight society, saying, "We cannot let our children live in fear of telling their parents what is in their hearts. We cannot allow them to be forced to live secret lives just so they can feel the love and acceptance of the people around them." Turning then to address the LGBTQ community directly, she said, "I tell you that you are not alone, not in your sorrow and not in this fight." She told those assembled that in the future the city will be able to look back and know that "Pulse 2016 was the moment in time when hearts were opened and minds were changed forever."

Patty Sheehan, Orlando's first openly-lesbian city commissioner, spoke of how the LGBT community responded to the attack. "In the face of despicable treatment, we showed that we are a people of love," she said. Pivoting to the policy implications of what has happened, she proclaimed the need for statewide legislation against employment discrimination and pointed to collaboration among different communities as the only way forward. "I want to be clear," she solemnly said, "Hating a Muslim person is the same thing as hating a gay person."

A number of other leaders followed Jacobs and Sheehan. Then, as a singer began the first lines of Andra Day's "Rise Up," a couple of people in the crowd lit their candles. Then a few more. Dozens. Hundreds. Quickly thousands of candles were illuminated, forming a ring of light circling the entire 4,493-foot perimeter of Lake Eola.

The survivors of the Pulse attack then appeared before the crowd and were met with an outpouring of love and sustained applause.

The week following the attack at Pulse has been a harrowing one for Orlando, and especially for its LGBTQ and Latino communities. The many events and commemorations that have been held were all aimed at healing the pain inflicted by the loss of 49 beautiful souls. But they also served as a spur to unity.

It is a unity that in the coming months will make itself felt even more as the struggle to stop homophobia and racism and the fight to end gun violence move into higher gear.

Photo: Sister Stryka Pose (center) and GLBT Center executive director Terry DeCarlo (right) salute those who blockaded the Westboro Baptist Church's message of hate at the funeral of Drew Leinonen in Orlando on June 18. Photo courtesy of Albert Harris.

Anxious Orlando Muslim community focused on healing

Mon, 20 Jun 2016 12:32:00 +0000

ORLANDO - As news of the carnage at Pulse nightclub broke last Sunday morning, June 12, Orlando's Muslim community was already at work.

"Our main concern was and still is the victims and their families and how to provide necessary services that they need; mobilizing blood drives, GoFundMe accounts, getting Spanish translators on the scene. We were on the scene the first day," said Rasha Mubarak, Orlando regional coordinator for the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).

Despite these efforts, the media narrative propagated in the hours after the attack, one of "radical Islamic terror," has left the local Muslim community on edge. Mosques and Islamic centers in the Orlando area have hired extra security in fear of retaliation for the attack, and by some accounts, attendance was down at the first Friday prayers held after the attack.

"Islamophobia is up 500 percent since Paris, then with San Bernardino... it's the highest it's been post-9/11," said Mubarak, "that's in the back of our minds, but our first main concern is for the victims and their families."

According to the FBI, in 2014 about 19 percent of hate crimes in the U.S. were motivated by religion. Of those, most were targeted at Jewish people (57 percent) and the second most against Muslims (16 percent). The overall amount of hate crimes committed in 2014 was down in all categories compared to previous years - all categories, that is, except for attacks against Muslims.

It didn't take long for backlash against the Muslim community to appear after Pulse. On June 13, the day following the attacks, a vandal with no sense of irony spray-painted "#StopTheHate" on Husseini Islamic Center in Sanford.

In the wake of the massacre, 200 American Muslim leaders signed onto a joint statement conveying their sympathies to the families of the slain while denouncing the concept of collective guilt.

"We feel compelled to state that it is an egregious offense against the culture and laws of America-as well as Islam's-to place collective guilt on an entire community for the sins of individuals. 'No soul bears the sins of another,' says the Quran."

"Can't fight homophobia with Islamophobia"

Rasha Mubarak told People's World that snapping into action with and for the LGBTQ community was a smooth process.

"Obviously, any kind of tragedy is going to make for new relationships but we were pretty swift in getting together because we already knew each other," said Mubarak.

"These are people that we've worked with before, colleagues, friends," she continued, "They're a part of our movement family that we've gone to legislative halls and battled against bigoted legislation [with]."

The initial story that the shooter was motivated by religious zealousness has deteriorated as details of his life come to the fore. Mubarak's illustration of her community's relationship with LGBTQ organizations goes to show there is no fundamental contradiction in LGBTQ people and Muslims working together.

Mateen's history of violence against his wife, his troubled upbringing, and his apparent struggle with sexuality have painted a picture of a sad and broken man - not the sort of spiritual warrior that he, the media, or ISIS might want the public to think.

Still, the tragedy highlights the importance of the work that still needs to be done to erase homophobia across communities.

"We all need to fight homophobia: Muslims, Christians, Jews, and atheists. The Muslim community is finding a balance between its religious beliefs and respecting equality. We all need to stand together and not be okay with any kind of phobia. Hillary Clinton used to be anti-gay marriage. People do evolve and I think the Muslim community will evolve without compromising its religious principles."

Fixing the problem starts at home

Over the week, U.S. politicians have cited the Orlando attack in various contexts in order to push their already-established political aims.

While Donald Trump has used it as evidence of the need for his ban on Muslim immigration domestically, both he and Hillary Clinton have invoked it to fan the flames for further military intervention against ISIS.

In the light of recently leaked State Department cables calling for military escalation, some have hypothesized that the leak was purposefully allowed in an attempt to shape the foreign policy of the next president. Neither of them look like they need much convincing, however.

"This is a time is to talk about gun control and not doubling down on the military. I hope that we as Americans, during our election process, take it back to authenticity and holding our candidates and elected officials accountable, not jumping the gun with talks of the military. This is not what the problem is here, the problem is access to guns," said Mubarak.

Republican officials have been hopelessly recalcitrant on the question of gun control and have used every parliamentary trick in their power to stop legislation that may offend the NRA.

This past week, however, statements from Hillary Clinton and top leading Democrats on this issue have seemed to move the needle, however slightly.

The most important statement came from Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy in the form of a 15-hour filibuster on the Senate floor.

As a result, a vote on banning people on the FBI terrorist watch list from purchasing weapons and expanding background checks could come up for a vote as soon as Monday.

As for the future here in Orlando, Rasha has seen the best parts of her community reinvigorated with love and is hopeful as a result.

"We're up against an often toxic climate, but there's also been so much love and compassion from our interfaith communities. We've been breaking bread together the last few days and there have been people reaching out saying they love their Muslim brothers and sisters.

"A lot of people from outside the city, outside the state have reached out as well, saying they're so proud of how fast Orlando has stood together. We're not going to let anything divide us here in Central Florida."

Photo: Muslim Orlandoans show their support at vigil on Sunday night. CJ. Atkins | PW

“People's Summit” maps plans to continue Bernie’s “political revolution”

Sun, 19 Jun 2016 19:18:00 +0000

CHICAGO - More than 3,000 progressive and community leaders and activists who backed Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders in the primaries gathered here this weekend at the People's Summit to affirm their intention to keep their movements going through and after the November elections.

The thrust of their argument was that although it is important that Donald Trump and the Republicans suffer a massive defeat it is equally critical that their movements continue to grow. Their approach was probably best summed up by Frances Fox Piven, professor of political science at the City University of New York Graduate Center, when she addressed a plenary session titled "Understanding Our Movement Moment."

"Yes, we have to elect Hillary Clinton to defeat Donald Trump, she said, "but we can't let electoral politics swallow up the movements. There are Democratic presidents who did great things - Johnson and Kennedy for civil rights, Franklin Roosevelt for workers rights, and this can happen again, but those presidents did those great things because of mass movements that made them do those things."

The kinds of movements she was talking about were among those represented at the conference, among them activists in the Fight for $15, Medicare for All, students fighting for relief of piled up debt, people fighting voter disenfranchisement, movements for criminal law and prison reform and many others. The conference was put together by many groups that had backed Sanders, including National Nurses United, Peoples Action, Presente, United Students Against Sweatshops, 350.org, Million Hoodies, Physicians for a National Health Program, Progressive Democrats of America, the United States Student Association and Democratic Socialists of Americas.

Conference goers also heard about the importance of fighting against the neo-liberal approach to foreign policy during remarks by Tulsi Gabbard, the Hawaii congresswoman who had quit her position on the Democratic National Committee so she could campaign for Sanders.

Gabbard, a veteran and Meritorious Service Medal awardee, demanded that the U.S. end what she called its "disastrous policy of going overseas to overthrow governments it does not like.

"By trying to overthrow the Syrian dictator Assad we have made things worse for the people of Syria and this has caused the deaths of more than 400,000 of them and the worst refugee crisis ever. Even if we ever succeeded," she added, Syria would be turned over to ISIS and then see extermination of all political opponents, of people of other faiths and of LGBTQ people.

"And for us here at home, we will never be able to realize healthcare for all, $15 an hour and the social and economic justice we fight for, as long as these military adventures like the ones in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria drain our federal budget. Stop the regime change, stop the wars and rebuild America," she declared, bringing the thousands gathered to their feet in sustained applause.

PW Video: Representative Tulsi Gabbard a Hawaii Democrat, told three thousand people gathered at the People's Summit in Chicago that the U.S. must end its policy of regime change in Syria. Earchiel Johnson | PW. Article continues after video.

"There is a movement of millions now," declared RoseAnne De Moro, executive director of National Nurses United, "that rejects neo-liberal foreign policy and austerity policy for the people here at home. We reject a society that has as its norm the idea that if it doesn't make money it has no value."

DeMoro's union was an early backer and major booster of the Sanders campaign for the presidency. "To us a free society and security means Medicare for All, $15 an hour, free college education, a government that takes climate change seriously and a Wall Street that pays its fair share, " De Moro declared. Although there were many union members in attendance, National Nurses United was the only major national union represented at the conference. The AFL-CIO announced this week that it is backing Hillary Clinton for the presidency.

Jesus "Chuy" Garcia, Commissioner from Cook County welcomed the gathering to Chicago, adding his voice to those who called for a continued movement to fight for what he called a "Peoples Agenda. "Garcia had backed Sanders in the primary. He brought the house to its feet with his declaration that "Illinois will never become a right to work (for less) state" and when he vowed to continue the fight against the policies of Chicago's current Mayor Rahm Emanuel who he described as a "champion of the rich and an opponent of the needs of this city's working people and poor people."

Garcia noted in his remarks that more work has to be done to bring minorities and their communities into the coalitions that were involved in the Sanders campaign. "Eventually, more and more Latinos and African Americans responded, especially when the Sanders campaign did more outreach, but this is an important goal for all our movements in the future," he said.

John Nichols, the well known pro-labor columnist for The Nation, brought the crowd to its feet when he said, "In addition to the economic struggle, given the horrific killing of 49 of our gay brothers and sisters in Orlando, we must double down and add to the economic struggle in these elections the struggle against hate. This election is about more than just economics. We cannot permit the election of Donald Trump, the hater," he said to the cheers of the crowd.

Nichols made a pitch for thinking big rather than small when it comes to the issues. "And we can't give up," he said. "Eugene V. Debs ran as a socialist for the presidency in 1900 and again in 1904, and in 1908, and in 1912 and in 1920. And he never won......... But by the 1930's you saw much of his platform in the campaign waged by Roosevelt, and he was elected and we got the New Deal which incorporated some of those big things the socialist candidate had pushed for."

John Bachtell, chair of the CPUSA, attended the conference. He noted that a gathering of thousands committed to build an ongoing progressive movement is a "positive development that we want to see," but added that, "there is no contradiction between building this movement and seeing to it that Clinton defeats Trump in a landslide. A victory for the Republicans would only make all the goals of the groups gathered here much more difficult to achieve. We need to build the movements, but in the immediate period, we must make sure Trump is defeated in a landslide."

Photo: Sheilah Garland-Olaniran/Facebook

Grief and restoration: Finding the path to justice in Orlando

Sun, 19 Jun 2016 19:12:00 +0000

ORLANDO - The offices of the Metropolitan Business Association (MBA), Orlando's LGBT chamber of commerce, are a beehive of activity. Couriers come and go, only minutes apart, dropping off packets full of gift cards from local restaurants, cafés, and grocery stores. Individuals arrive, knocking on the door with envelopes bulging with more vouchers. Upon arriving, all say the same thing, "Hi, I'm looking for Chris."

The one they're all looking for is Chris Stephenson, a vice president at MBA, and one of the many community leaders who have stepped up in the wake of the Pulse massacre. When People's World arrived at MBA headquarters for an interview, Stephenson and other volunteers were in the midst of a three-hour blitz of gift card collection. Earlier in the day, a message had arrived from the FBI's Victim Assistance unit saying that food and grocery vouchers were an immediate need among Pulse survivors and the victims' families at local hospitals.

Stephenson swung into action, blasting off an email to his network of contacts and colleagues. The response was immediate. Our interview with him was repeatedly interrupted as more deliveries kept arriving. $300 of burrito cards. $60 of coffee and drink vouchers. The generosity didn't stop flowing. As Stephenson says, it's symbolic of the new sense of unity that has emerged in the wake of tragedy. "It shows that, as a city, Orlando is growing up."

Anything but subdued

The gift card drive is just the latest relief activity that Stephenson's been involved in this week. In the first hours after the shooting, he was initially just desperate for information. Albert Harris, Stephenson's business partner and a volunteer here, contacted him at around 2:30am saying he had just driven past Pulse and saw people running out and jumping over fences as the sound of gunfire filled the air.

Beyond frantic text messages and scattered social media posts, news of what was going on inside had not yet broken. Stephenson turned on the television, but there was nothing. Local media did not begin covering the event until around 4:30 that morning. "Those two hours, not knowing what was going on, felt like two weeks."

Stephenson describes the events of that morning in a very calm and methodical way. Tab Bish, another volunteer, looks up from his counting and sorting of Chipotle gift cards and interjects, "Chris gives a subdued account of what it was like that day, but we were not subdued." For him, like so many others, the early hours of that Sunday were spent trying to account for friends. "I was going through my memory rolodex and started thinking of who might have been there. Then when you find that they are safe, what about the people they know? You just try to comfort them when they have nothing to do but wait."

Once he found out the early details of what was happening, Stephenson said his mind immediately switched to grief counselling. He sent messages to five grief counsellors he knew, as well as Tim Vargas, the president of Orlando's GLBT Center, and got them all en route to the center. "I was worried," he said, "whether we'd be able to get all five counsellors there in time to be ready for survivors and family members." By 11:00am, there was a line of 15 counsellors ready to offer their services. When it was all said and done, 530 counsellors had shown up.

Restoration

So what prompts the mind of a vice president of the LGBT chamber of commerce to turn to grief counselling? To answer that question, you have to look to Stephenson's life before he joined the MBA. For eleven years, he was a criminal defense attorney. It was not the best of experiences. Seeing his clients being dumped into a punitive system that neglected any efforts at rehabilitation, Stephenson focused much of his effort on connecting them to counselling services. "I understood there was nothing the system could do or was even interested in doing for defendants."

Even that wasn't enough though. Some clients would question him as to why they were paying him to find them counsellors, when what they wanted was to beat their convictions - a goal he knew was often simply not possible. Eventually he told them, "You're right. You shouldn't be paying me."

That's when he decided to take a step back from the legal profession. But he carried with him a new outlook on the law and criminal reform. "Restorative justice," he says, "is the only thing that works. Our entire legal system is off track." The failures of American criminal justice ended up driving him out. "I just couldn't be a lawyer any more because I had lost hope in the system."

Today, he runs a photography business with Harris and devotes his free time to the chamber and volunteers on the board of a mental health services agency. In his LinkedIn profile, he describes himself as a "former attorney following his passion for telling stories through the lens."

The story he is sharing us gets interrupted once again. A deliveryman arrives carrying a bag with another $2,400 of grocery store gift cards.

A new "hum" of collaboration

Stephenson says that beyond these immediate relief efforts, the focus in the LGBTQ community here - and in the wider Orlando community - has to be on keeping alive the unity forged this past week. "Long term, the focus is on collaboration," he says. "Often each organization has its own ego and wants to grab the spotlight."

The days that have passed since the Pulse massacre have shattered this silo approach.

"In the past, there have been bursts of collaboration, but nothing was sustained." He's optimistic that things might be different this time. "What's encouraging is that there is a real hum in the community. But we know that without effort to preserve this unity, it will dissipate."

"But there are leaders just as excited as I am about this." On Thursday last week, there was a call for a sustained coalition of LGTBQ, Latino, Afro-Caribbean, and other diversity organizations in Orlando. "This week, I've made great contacts because of this unity energy. They have all experienced the same thing, and we all know that we've got to keep this going."

Tab Bish feels it too: "Chris speaks as someone in the core, in the leadership, of these activities. As somebody on the ripple, I get chills. When I'm watching TV and I see inclusion... It is amazing to feel that. As a gay male, the people against us used to be so loud. Now, they are so faint."

After returning from accepting another gift card delivery, Stephenson once again reiterates his point on unity. "It only make sense that we all collaborate. It's got to be about how much stronger we all are when we work together."

The last three hours of working together have paid off. A little later in the day, after People's World departed from his office, we received a message from Chris. Over $10,000 of immediate help was raised for the Pulse survivors and victims' families in this one afternoon.

The gift card effort was just one episode of many this week. Each of them a step toward overcoming grief, toward restoring this community, and toward finding a path to justice together.

Photo: Chris Stephenson, a vice president of MBA, unloads a fresh delivery of grocery gift cards while being interviewed by People's World on June 17, 2016. | C.J. Atkins/PW

Today in history: Juneteenth celebrates 1865 freedom for slaves

Fri, 17 Jun 2016 13:51:00 +0000

The original Juneteenth took place 151 years ago, on June 19, 1865. This still popularly observed African American celebration honors the day when slaves in Texas heard they had been freed by President Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation. It is sometimes referred to as Freedom Day or Emancipation Day.

Major General Gordon Granger landed at Galveston, Texas, with a regiment of Union soldiers two months after the end of the Civil War, and announced the order that the slaves had been freed. This was two and a half years after the Proclamation had taken effect (January 1, 1863). It stated, "that all persons held as slaves" within the rebellious states "are, and henceforward shall be free." The information was kept from the slaves possibly so the slaveowners could reap another harvest, or because there weren't enough Union soldiers to enforce the order until Granger arrived, but Juneteenth is the celebration of that day.

One of General Granger's first orders of business was to read to the people of Texas, General Order Number 3, which began most significantly:

"The people of Texas are informed that in accordance with a Proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and free laborer."

The reactions to this profound news ranged from pure shock to immediate jubilation. While many lingered to learn the terms of this new employer to employee relationship, many left before these offers were completely off the lips of their former masters - attesting to the varying conditions on the plantations and the realization of freedom. Even with nowhere to go, many felt that leaving the plantation would be their first grasp of freedom. North was a logical destination and for many it represented true freedom, while the desire to reach family members in neighboring states drove some into Louisiana, Arkansas and Oklahoma.

Settling into these new areas as free men and women brought on new realities and the challenges of establishing a heretofore non-existent status for black people in America. Recounting the memories of that great day in June of 1865 and its festivities would serve as motivation as well as a release from the growing pressures encountered in their new territory. The celebration of June 19^th was coined "Juneteenth" and grew with more participation from descendants. The Juneteenth celebration was a time for community affirmation and family gathering, and often for prayer.

Juneteenth continued to be highly revered in Texas for decades: Many former slaves and descendants would make an annual pilgrimage back to Galveston on this date.

For a long period, from the end of Reconstruction through Jim Crow, the Depression, and migration north for jobs, celebration of Juneteenth fell into decline. But with the civil rights movement, it exerted new appeal. In 1968, Juneteenth experienced a strong resurgence through the Poor Peoples March to Washington, D.C., Rev. Ralph Abernathy's call for people of all races, creeds, economic levels and professions to come to the nation's capital to show support for the poor. That demonstration took place in the wake of the April 4th assassination of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. Many of these attendees returned home and initiated Juneteenth celebrations in areas previously absent such activity. In fact, two of the largest Juneteenth celebrations founded after this march are now held in Milwaukee and Minneapolis.

On January 1, 1980, Juneteenth became an official Texas state holiday through the efforts of Albert (Al) Edwards, an African American state legislator. The successful passage of this bill marked Juneteenth as the first emancipation celebration granted official state recognition. Edwards has since actively sought to spread the observance of Juneteenth all across America.

The Juneteenth website cited below carries information on local and worldwide celebrations you may be able to attend.

Adapted from Peace History Index and http://www.juneteenth.com/history.htm.

Photo: Wikimedia (CC)

Sanders: Main job now is to defeat Trump

Fri, 17 Jun 2016 10:27:00 +0000

In a live, online address streamed across the nation, Bernie Sanders said tonight that the main goal of the "political revolution" being built through his presidential campaign "has never been about any single candidate." It's been about building a "grassroots movement to transform America."

He said that the new grassroots movement aims to make sure the government of the U.S. serves all the people of the U.S. and not just "the top one percent."

"The movement will be here tomorrow," Sanders said, "and next year, and in the years to come." It will work within the Democratic Party and more broadly across the nation.

Sanders said that the main job facing the movement immediately is to defeat Donald Trump.

"We do not need a candidate who has bigotry as the cornerstone of his campaign," Sanders said, "who believes climate change is a hoax" and who would give "more and more tax breaks to the very, very rich."

Political observers in the commercial media had been discussing for many days whether or not Sanders would endorse Hillary Clinton, who at present has the support of enough delegates to win the nomination at the Democratic National Convention next month.

Sanders did not answer that question, but said he is looking forward to working with Clinton to pass the "most progressive platform in history" at the convention and to make the platform a living document.

"It's no secret," he said, "that Secretary Clinton and I have real disagreements. But we are also very close on some issues."

He said the Democratic Party "needs leaders who will open the party to working people and students."

He criticized the party for ignoring political races "in some of the poorest parts of our country" where winning might be difficult. He said that as a result many state legislatures and many governorships have been lost to Republicans.

"The Democratic Party needs a 50 state strategy," he said.

In his speech, Sanders reiterated the components of a progressive platform, including campaign finance reform, making healthcare a right, raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour, requiring corporations to pay their fair share of taxes and reigning in Wall Street and pharmaceutical companies. He also listed making public colleges and universities tuition-free and adopting major reforms in our criminal justice system.

"It's a disgrace," he said, "that more people are in jail in the U.S. than in any other nation on earth."

He also called for passing laws that would give all immigrants pathways to citizenship and for adopting policies that would encourage the use sustainable energy sources.

In recent days, MoveOn.org, which had endorsed Sanders switched to Clinton, as did U.S. representative Raúl Grijalva (D., Ariz) co chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. The AFL-CIO, which had been neutral, also endorsed Clinton yesterday.

However, Sanders stressed that the political revolution is broader than electoral politics, although he urged progressive people to "run for office at the local and state level."

Sanders said that "real change has never come from the top down; always from the bottom up." He cited as examples the labor movement, the civil rights movement, the women's rights movement and the environmental movement.

This coming weekend, a "Peoples' Summit" is scheduled to be held in Chicago. Led by many Sanders campaign volunteers, the meeting will aim to map out the future of the "political revolution."

"When historians look back," Sanders said, "they will say that reversing the drift toward oligarchy began with the political revolution of 2016."

Photo: Sanders' online address. | video snapshot