People Before Profit blog

The police story of this murder was a lie

Wed, 25 Nov 2015 13:56:00 +0000

Last night, November 24, 2015, the police video of the murder of Laquan McDonald was released to the public. Hundreds of young Black people took to the streets to express their outrage and to demand that Superintendent of the Chicago Police Department Garry McCarthy be fired. Lucretia Birtz from Black Youth Project (BYP100) but also representing four other Black youth organizations, said: "The institutions that are in place to hold police accountable do just the opposite. The police have impunity. As a step toward police accountability, we demand that Mayor Emanuel fire Superintendent McCarthy."

The edited police video that was released last night reveals that the police story of this murder was a lie. Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Cook County state's attorney Anita Alvarez knew it was a lie yet they sat on it for a year and allowed this killer cop to continue on the City payroll as a desk cop. In other words they violated their oaths of office and had to be forced by court order to release the video. Moreover, the Mayor made a multi-million dollar settlement to the McDonald family and part of the settlement was to keep the video recording of the murder from public view.

Officer Jason Van Dyke has now been charged with first-degree murder as he should have been a year ago. But we maintain that Mayor Emanuel, Prosecutor Alvarez, Superintendent of the CPD McCarthy, the Police Board, the Independent Police Review Authority and the Internal Affairs Department of CPD are all guilty! We need a system change here and it's not going to happen unless we, the people make it happen.

In the coming days of action, we will be heightening the campaign in the neighborhoods for an all-elected Civilian Police Accountability Council and building for a protest rally at Federal Plaza on December 10. Join us! Call: Chicago Alliance Against and Political Repression 312-939-2750 or 312-513-3795.

Photo: Protesters link hands Nov. 24, in Chicago. White Officer Jason Van Dyke who shot Laquan McDonald 16 times last year was charged with first-degree murder Tuesday, hours before the city released a video of the killing. Chris Sweda | Chicago Tribune via AP

Thanksgiving now is a lot better than it was then

Wed, 25 Nov 2015 12:14:00 +0000

The holidays, once more, are upon us. I know, I know, let's hear the cynical comments about how everyone is so thankful on Thursday and then killing each other 24 hours later on Black Friday. But I think that at least some people celebrate the actual spirit of Thanksgiving; I certainly do. No one wants to be "that guy" who sits at the table and urges everyone to say what they're thankful for, but I'll still embody that cliché on a personal level, because there's plenty that I'm thankful for.

Just a little over nine years ago, I was homeless. But it still seems like yesterday to me. It was only for four days, but I didn't know that at the time. I had to sit on the curb beside this little Chinese place in Jersey at 3:00 in the morning, shivering and getting stares from passersby, with a hoodie and a shopping bag full of personal effects the only items I had to my name after being kicked out of my apartment (I was later able to retrieve more of my stuff and put it in storage until a later time). My own family had told me I didn't have a place to sit at their table, or to sleep upon their floors, for that matter. (Specifically, my cousin, who lived in Garfield and told me and my mother, after letting us stay for one night, to not contact her anymore.) I went to stay at a shelter soon after, and endured long periods of poverty and starvation (literally speaking) before, in between, and after.

I remember going to the store for the senior citizens in the neighboring building during my pre-teen years in Garfield, so that they would give me a tip, which I would use to feed myself and my mother (usually a bag of plain pasta was the cheapest, or a loaf of Italian bread). I always found ways to manage, but it was always just barely.

I remember very clearly the Thanksgiving of 2005, when I shook bodily from not eating for seven days, and my mother was shut up in her bedroom crying because she had reached her breaking point. There was no turkey, nothing to drink but tap water, and nothing to eat unless I wanted to have a packet of salt for a small burst of energy. It was cold because the heat was off (I don't even remember why at this point), we had no TV and no furniture except for beds and a single couch in the living room, there would be no Xmas tree that year, and I couldn't see any way out of the life I was living. I was definitely at my all-time low that year. Everyone else was with their families, everyone else seemed to have more, and I just felt empty.

But it just goes to show you that things change, because now I have a good job, I support myself, I live with a roommate who's a good cook and has made turkey and duck alike for Thanksgiving in past years, and I'm literally going to Paris two days after the holiday, on Nov. 28. Things have changed in a major way, and I think, really, if I can take anything away from that, it's that no one should ever give up. There were times when I had seriously dark thoughts and was starting to question existence, but I'm glad certain things - my friends, my writing and artistic talents - tethered me to some form of happiness, because I wore it like armor and carried it with me through all the hard times.

I will admit that my life has so far been book-ended by good times, with a really bad time in between. My childhood, for example, was fantastic. I had great Thanksgivings; I had turkey, I watched the parade in New York, I even went to New York one Thanksgiving with my parents and visited the Statue of Liberty. The poverty, hunger, etc. came during my teen years. And then I overcame all that. So I'm proud of myself for carving out a better life (to use a turkey analogy) for myself. Don't ever call it quits, because then you'll never know what could have been. Soldier on through all of it, and be thankful for what little good you do have in your life during those dark times. If I didn't have my friends in Garfield during that period, I probably would not be here now. So even though my family rejected and disowned me, as it turns out, I got a very different family, and I would not trade them for the world. You all know who you are.

So while it is a cliché to state what you're thankful for, I have done just that. I'm thankful for what I have today and for the way things turned out. Now I have a wisdom that I might not have had if things happened differently. I appreciate the comfort of a warm bed to sleep in and don't take it for granted. I look around in my bedroom, at my books, and laptops, and other possessions, and realize that these things, these material goods, are a luxury that many around the world do not have. That's why I'm against the digitization of books, for example. When I open a novel, it's so much more to me now than it ever was before I went through what I went through. It's a piece of art; it's something that people took the time to put together - the cover art, the editing, the paper, the ink, the story itself. It's something to be admired and valued.

And in mere days from now, when I look out of a hotel window and see that Eiffel Tower in the distance, or when I'm covering the climate conference while standing on European soil for the first time in my life, I'm going to be thankful for that, too. Nothing in life should be taken for granted. Everything is precious, and that's something I will forever remember. The hard times taught me that.

Note: Blake Deppe will be traveling to Paris with Teresa Albano to cover the 2015 United Nations Climate Conference. You can support that by donating to our campaign on Indiegogo.

This article was reposted from Blake Deppe's official blog.

Photo: Blake Deppe/PW

PW in the streets: People weigh in on defeating ISIS and Syrian refugee crisis

Tue, 24 Nov 2015 12:10:00 +0000

The Paris attacks of Nov. 13^th shook the world. They put the question of ISIS and global security back on the front pages and affected the upcoming presidential elections as the debates gave the candidates a chance to comment on the tragedy and the road forward. Both Republicans and Democrats debated how to respond to the attacks and if we should welcome Syrian refugees to the U.S.

At the recent G20 summit President Obama said that he wanted to see the U.S leading a coalition including Muslim nations in the Middle East that will have to fight against terrorism. He also said that we should open our borders to Syrian refugees, a proposal met with furious opposition: A GOP-run House recently approved legislation requiring new screening requirements on refugees from Syria and Iraq before they can enter the U.S., which would slow down the process for those seeking safety. Obama has planned to allow 10,000 Syrian refugees to enter the country.

Republican Speaker Paul Ryan said, "If our law enforcement and our intelligence community cannot verify that each and every person is not a security threat, then they shouldn't be allowed in.... We cannot and we should not wait to act. Not when our national security is at stake." New York representative and Democrat Jerrold Nadler stated in response to the House-approved legislation, "The United States has always been and should always be a place of refuge. We might as well take down the Statue of Liberty."

People's World took it to the streets to ask the people what they thought about President Obama's strategy going forward, and allowing Syrian refugees into the U.S. Check out the video to see what they had to say!

It’s time to exonerate the Groveland Four

Mon, 23 Nov 2015 14:33:00 +0000

As a native Floridian and lifelong resident, I have often heard people say "Florida isn't really the South." Oddly enough, this statement usually comes from those new to Florida who are unaware of the state's Jim Crow past and terrifying racist history. But the story of the Groveland Four and the murder of Harry and Harriette Moore, tell another side of the Sunshine State.

For many soldiers returning from World War II, their homecoming was the beginning of new era in American life, with access to good union jobs and housing opportunities for them and their families. But for black soldiers, coming home after taking part in changing world history for the better was a return to a home that had not changed for them. And in rural areas like Groveland, Florida, (45 minutes west of Orlando) the citrus industry was king and the black residents were expected to work in the fields, particularly at harvest time.

Lake County Sheriff Willis McCall

Despite Groveland becoming a beacon of light and culture for black residents of Lake County, local law enforcement, headed by Lake County Sheriff Willis McCall, had become known for their brutality toward the black community. It should also be mentioned that Sheriff McCall's main job in Lake County was to run off union organizers and terrorize locals if they showed any support for the fruit pickers, all to keep a steady supply of workers who would work for 1940's poverty wages. And this is the Groveland that Sammy Shepherd and Walter Irvin, two of the Groveland Four, returned to after serving in the U.S. Army.

Upon their return, Irvin and Shepherd immediately caught the eye of Sheriff McCall by continuing to don their Army uniforms and their refusal to work in the citrus fields. Also, the parents of both men had been exercising independence from the white community and white-owned orange groves, with Shepherd's father Henry owning his own family farm and becoming a local icon for black independence and empowerment. Their success was seen as threat to the local power structure and a symbol of what could happen if black residents continued to prosper and not be willing to work for whites in the citrus groves.

At the same time, Harry T. Moore (Executive Director of the Florida NAACP) was on a mission to register black voters in Florida and endorse political candidates, forming the Progressive Voters League. By 1950, Harry T. Moore and the Progressive Voters League had more than doubled the number of black voters in Florida to 116,000.

On the early morning of July 16, 1949, that progress was brought to an abrupt halt. Two young white residents of Groveland, Willie and Norma Padgett (according the story they told police) experienced car trouble on their way home from a local social and ended up stranded on the side of the road. Now, what happened next varies according to who tells the story. According to the Padgetts, four young black men, Irvin, Shepherd, Charles Greenlee and Ernest Thomas, had attacked Willie leaving him in a ditch and left with Norma Padgett in their car. Norma Padgett later reported to the police that she had been raped by the four men and within a few hours, Irvin, Shepherd and Greenlee were arrested and in jail. Ernest Thomas however, quickly fled Lake County only to be shot and killed by a posse headed up by Sheriff McCall 200 miles north.

After hearing of the arrests, a crowd of around 600 gathered at the county jail demanding that Sheriff McCall hand over the three young men so "justice could be done." A writer from the Orlando Morning Sentinel reported that McCall had hid the suspects in an adjacent orange grove, telling the crowd that they had been moved to the state prison and tried to persuade the angry mob to let the law handle the incident.

Racist mob, rigged trial

Ignoring Sheriff McCalls' advice, the mob turned their attention to the black community of Groveland, shooting into homes and setting them on fire. Luckily, many of the black residents were warned of the coming mob and fled for their own safety. Many black owned homes were severely damaged and the home of Henry Shepherd was completely destroyed. The mob continued their terror by setting up road blocks in the highways to intercept returning black residents and on July 18, then Florida Governor Fuller Warren called in the National Guard at the request of the NAACP, restoring order.

The Orlando president of the NAACP requested legal assistance, and NAACP attorney Franklin Williams came to represent the three young men. As Williams began gathering details about the case, it became clear that the evidence was extremely dubious. When meeting with the three men, Williams noted they were covered in bruises and cuts. According to a statement given by Walter Irvin, the three were beaten by deputies to force confessions: strung from pipes, their feet on broken glass, clubbed to submission.

NAACP attorney Williams had initial doubts that the rape had even occurred. A local white restaurant owner who gave Norma Padgett a ride after the purported rape stated that Norma did not seem upset nor mention the rape. Only after talking with her husband Willie did Norma claim to have been raped. Willie Padgett had previously been warned by Norma's parents against abusing her, leading attorney Williams to suspect Willie Padgett of beating his wife and concocting the story of his attack and Norma's rape to cover up his abuse.

Shepherd, Irvin and Greenlee were quickly indicted by a grand jury and despite a request for a change of venue, the trial went forward. Disregarding evidence that both Irvin and Shepherd were out of town in Orlando and Greenlee was nineteen miles away at the time of the alleged incident, the jury convicted the young men within ninety minutes with Shepherd and Irvin given the death penalty and Greenlee, only 16 years old, sentenced to prison.

NAACP organizes support, Shepherd and Irvin shot

The NAACP pushed forward after the conviction, gaining nationwide support, and published a pamphlet named "Groveland USA" which helped in raising funds for the defense of the young men and greatly publicizing the Groveland Four. Soon, U.S. Attorney General J. Howard McGrath ordered an investigation and the assignment was given to U.S. District Attorney Herbert Phillips of Tampa, FL. In spite of McGrath's good intentions on wanting a just investigation, Phillips was known for his regressive stance on race and his views about the guilt of the Groveland Four were not far from the Groveland mob that burned black homes and terrorized a community. U.S. District Attorney Phillips' refusal to acknowledge conflicting evidence and to hear key witnesses, lead the Florida Supreme Court to uphold the convictions.

Citing a cartoon published in the Orlando Morning Sentinel picturing three electric chairs, the United States Supreme Court unanimously overturned the sentences of Irvin and Shepherd. Charles Greenlee, who did not appeal, remained in prison until 1960.

Shepherd and Irvin were picked up at Raiford State Prison by Lake County Sheriff McCall to be transported back to Lake County for a retrial. Yet again, what happened next varies as to who tells the story. Sheriff McCall stated that he had stopped his car to check a low tire and the two young men had attempted to escape and he had no choice but to shoot the two men. Samuel Shepherd was killed at the scene, but Walter Irvin survived the incident though being shot twice. Walter Irvin, having lived through the ordeal, went on to tell a very different account.

Irvin told an account of Sheriff McCall stopping his car on the side of the road in the darkness of night, then ordering the two young men to exit the car, then shooting both in the chest. Fearing for his life, Irvin said that he remained still pretending to be dead. He then overheard the Sheriff say "I got rid of them; killed the sons of bitches," on the police radio. An arriving Deputy discovered that Irvin was still alive and attempted to shoot him again. The Deputy's pistol jammed and after looking over his gun, fired again striking Irvin in the neck. Walter Irvin survived the second shooting and received medical care upon returning to Lake County.

NAACP's Harry Moore began calling for McCall's suspension and indictment for murder. Only six weeks later, on Christmas Day 1951, Moore himself was killed when a bomb was placed beneath the floor joists directly under his bed. Moore died on the way to the hospital; his wife, Harriette, died nine days later.

The protests over the Moores' deaths rocked the nation, with dozens of rallies and memorial meetings around the country. President Truman and Florida Governor Fuller Warren were inundated with telegrams and protest letters.

For Walter Irvin's second trial, the future U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall was brought in to replace NAACP attorney Franklin Williams. A change of venue was allowed for the second trial, moving it to nearby Marion County, which like Lake County was known for its fair treatment of black residents. Attracting more national and international attention, the second trial became known around the globe and Irvin even found support from activists in the U.S.S.R., and other countries in Europe, Africa and Latin America. Papers in the Soviet Union reported on the trial heavily and helped to boost international solidarity with Irvin's fight for justice.

Yet again, despite new evidence that shined doubt on the case against Irvin, a jury found him guilty after only ninety minutes of deliberation. In 1954, his case was appealed and the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear Irvin's appeal. Walter Irvin then appealed for clemency and was denied by then Governor Charlie Johns with the Governor then scheduling Irvin's execution. During the Florida Governor's election of 1954, Irvin was given a stay of execution. Governor Elect LeRoy Collins, a moderate politician by Florida standards, reviewed Irvin's case and citing inconsistencies in evidence, removed Irvin from death row and sentencing him to life in prison. Many citizens of Lake County immediately rebuked the actions of Governor Collins and criticisms of Collins by U. S. Attorney General McGrath were published across the state of Florida.

Charles Greenlee, having been in state prison since the age of 16, was paroled in 1962 when he then moved to Tennessee, never returning home to Florida. Walter Irvin moved to Miami after his release in 1968, but on a visit back to Lake County in 1970, he passed away from a heart attack.

In spite of continuing instances of abuse and charges of corruption, Sheriff Willis McCall continued to get re-elected by Lake County voters. Then Governor Reubin Askew removed McCall from office after a black prisoner in Sheriff custody was kicked to death, forcing McCall to resign in 1973.

Unsealed FBI files raise new possibilities for justice

But the story continues. FBI files that were unsealed in 2012 could clear the four men of the charges they faced. The released documents include an interview with the doctor who examined Norma Padgett immediately after the alleged incident showing that the doctor found no evidence of a sexual assault.

After the release of the FBI files, a new movement has begun among Florida State Legislators to clear the names of the Groveland Four. Several Representatives have filed and supported such a resolution that would exonerate the four men and give a public to their families. The resolution specifically requests that Gov. Scott and his Cabinet pardon the men.

A citizen lead petition to Gov. Scott to exonerate the Groveland Four has been initiated by Josh Venkataraman, a student of the University of Florida, and Carol Greenlee, daughter of Charles Greenlee, and you can sign it here. Please take a minute to tell Gov. Scott it's time to exonerate the Groveland Four.

An excellent book on this case is the 2013 Pulitzer Prize winner, "Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America," by Gilbert King.

Photo: From left to right: Lake County Sheriff Willis McCall, Jailer Reuben Hatcher, Samuel Shepherd, Walter Irvin, Charles Greenlee. (As shown on petition sight.)

Dear Gov. Snyder: Syrian refugees are welcome in my home

Mon, 23 Nov 2015 10:31:00 +0000

Dear Gov. Snyder:

I just wanted to let you know that, contrary to your declaration of denying Syrian refugees a home in our state of Michigan, I myself am going to defy your ban and will offer MY home in Traverse City, Michigan, to those very Syrian refugees you've decided to keep out. I will contact the State Department to let them know I am happy to provide a safe haven to any Syrian refugee couple approved by the Obama administration's vetting procedures in which I have full faith and trust.

Your action is not only disgraceful, it is, as you know, unconstitutional (only the President has the legal right to decide things like this).

What you've done is anti-American. This is not who we are supposed to be. We are, for better and for worse, a nation of descendants of three groups: slaves from Africa who were brought here in chains and then forced to provide trillions of dollars of free labor to build this country; native peoples who were mostly exterminated by white Christians through acts of mass genocide; and immigrants from EVERYWHERE around the globe. In Michigan we are fortunate to count amongst us tens of thousands of Arab and Muslim Americans.

I'm disappointed in you, Governor Snyder, for your heartless and un-Christian actions, and for joining in with at least 25 other governors (all but one a Republican) who've decided to block legal Syrian refugees from coming into their states. Fortunately I'm an American and not a Republican.

Governor, count me out of whatever you think it means to be a Michigander. I look forward to welcoming Syrians to my home and I wholeheartedly encourage other Americans to do the same.

Michael Moore

P.S. By the way, my 700-sq. ft. apartment in northern Michigan is a little small, but it's got cable, Wi-Fi, and a new dishwasher! Also, no haters live on my floor! Stop by any time for a hot chocolate this winter.

The above letter appeared on Michael Moore's Facebook page.

Photo: AP

Love, hate, and Islamophobia

Wed, 18 Nov 2015 15:07:00 +0000

This article is reposted with permission from the blog of Becky Sarwate, president of the Illinois Woman's Press Association.

Sarwate writes, Nov. 17: I'm exceedingly proud to introduce my first guest blogger since the launch of the website earlier this year - my eminently talented and thoughtful younger sister, Jennifer. I will not be posting this week because nothing I have to say is nearly as urgent, and this deserves our collective attention. Please read and share.

In 2001, I met a man at work who intrigued me. We began dating shortly after the tragic 9/11 terrorist attacks. In 2003, I married this man, and in 2007 we had our first child together - a beautiful little girl to join my older daughter from a previous marriage.

In 2016, we will celebrate our 13th wedding anniversary with our children at Disney World - our favorite place on Earth. Max loves me more than seems justified, but he's exactly the father my kids deserve, the kind of man I wish I'd been able to look up to as a child. Everyone he works, prays, plays or engages with loves and respects him. He's one of those rare people who doesn't seem to have any enemies. But there's just one little thing. Max is a Muslim.

The sad fact is, despite the qualities listed above, and the other terrific nuances that make Max a better man than most, some people that don't know him at all hate him because of his religious beliefs. Oh, and they hate my eight year-old daughter too. Facebook taught me that yesterday. In fact, Facebook has been educating me about the inherent disgust for my family for years now. However after last Friday's senseless tragedy in Paris, the rejection of my loved ones reached a fever pitch.

It was a former aunt by marriage who posted a "fact" sheet (which I have not yet vetted) that delivered the blow that led to this post. The data in the meme purported to reflect Japanese restrictions on Muslims in their country. Said aunt (who has, it must be owned, recognized her prejudicial error, removed the post and apologized) added the editorial comment, "And so should the US," in reference to Japan's alleged closed door policy to Islamic people.

It's not like I haven't experienced different forms of hate or racism by proxy over the course of my relationship with Max. Quite the contrary. I've had my luggage contents dumped on the floor for all to see in an airport in Omaha. You know, because I was traveling with a bearded brown man. A hateful employee at O'Hare, the world's largest as well as one of the most diverse travel hubs, attempted to prevent my husband and I from flying on the same plane to our honeymoon destination.

More recently, I was waved through a security checkpoint at the 9/11 Memorial in New York City even though my bracelets were tripping the metal detectors. However my cousin by marriage, wearing a hijab, was harassed about a blue dolphin statue that I purchased for my daughter at the Museum of Natural History. My cousin had been kind enough to tote the item for me on her stroller, and her kindness turned into an ugly memory.

I've asked these questions a million times. Does every Christian (or even an atheist gun owner) pay the price every time a rogue member of the flock shoots up an abortion clinic? Did every white American male have to apologize for or denounce the Unabomber? How about Timothy McVeigh? Did we close the borders to white Protestants after the evils perpetrated by the Klu Klux Klan? The obvious answer to all of these queries is "No." Why obvious? Because it's absurd to expect every American or Christian to denounce the distorted beliefs of a crazy person in order to stave off personal suspicion. As a culture, we do not afford the Muslim community that same courtesy.

You know those people that spout racist speech but then take cover under dubious claims when caught? They'll say "Oh, I have black friends" after making pointedly ignorant statements about African-American culture. This phenomenon exists in discussions about the Islamic faith too. When I'm frustrated and emboldened enough to call someone out for their hate speech, and this has happened a few times, some are very quick to tell me they have Muslim friends who are "good people." All better then, right?

1) No. I don't believe you have Muslim friends. Because if you did, they would tell you that your gross, painful generalizations are unfounded.

2) I don't think a Muslim - or any religious/ethnic minority - would befriend you knowing your opinions.

3) The second you protest that you have a ____ friend and are not a prejudiced against ______s as a result, you have lost the argument.

Max is a man of seemingly limitless tolerance and patience. But I'm not. Those security disasters I mentioned? My husband waits for them to end with humility. He does what he's told and asks me to remain quiet so we can get through it and not draw extra attention to ourselves. He accepts that additional layers of mistrust and scrutiny are his lot in life - that he has to deal with being unnecessarily harassed for the good of the country. I sit there incensed and mortified. He just endures. I've learned to internalize my anger because if Max is willing to undergo racial profiling so we can board our plane to Disney World, who am I to presume greater entitlement to respect? Who am I to disrupt the peace he so desperately wants? But instead of getting used to the repetition of these indignities, they fester inside.

This is the world my daughters will inherit, the youngest of whom is being proudly raised in the Islamic faith. That's what hurts and scares me the most. My husband is a big boy who can take care of himself. He was an adult with excellent coping skills before, during and after the horrible events of 9/11 that changed our country. But my baby girl is sweet and innocent, thinks the best of everyone. I dread the day she realizes that some will reject her based on one part of who she is. How will she react the first time she's on the receiving end of a racist remark or hate speech about the only religion she knows? How will I react? My nearest and dearest should start saving bail money.

I spent part of yesterday morning watching President Obama's speech at the G20 Summit in Turkey. I mentally applauded a particular quote as it was uttered, but in light of this recent, personal emotional roller coaster it bears repeating:

"I had a lot of disagreements with George W. Bush on policy, but I was very proud after 9/11 when he was adamant and clear about the fact that this is not a war on Islam. And the notion that some of those who have taken on leadership in his party would ignore all of that, that's not who we are. On this, they should follow his example. It was the right one. It was the right impulse. It's our better impulse. We don't discriminate against people because of their faith. We don't kill people because they're different than us. That's what separates us from them."

Photo: beckysarwate.com

Paris is bleeding: enough is enough

Tue, 17 Nov 2015 13:13:00 +0000

Americans have long had a love affair with France, and especially Paris - its culture, its cuisine (croissants!), its joie de vivre, and yes its revolutionary traditions - liberté, egalité, fraternité. So it is that last week's terrorist attacks in Paris which killed at least 129 people and wounded some 350 others have struck a chord with Americans in a way that similar or worse attacks have not. We stand with all the people of France - its increasingly multiethnic mix - in sympathy and solidarity in the face of vicious terrorism. We stand with the families of the 224 killed by the terrorist bombing of a Russian plane over Egypt's Sinai Peninsula on Oct. 31. So too, we stand with so many others around the world - Iraqi, Syrian, Lebanese, Nigerian, Afghani and more, many long-suffering victims of reactionary terror cloaked in pseudo-religious garb. And we stand with the sea of migrants fleeing terror and chaos in the Middle East - people of all faiths and none, seeking safe harbor in Europe and our own country.

Enough is enough.

Many, many people, Americans included, recognize that U.S. actions over the decades have, unfortunately, fueled and in fact abetted the rise of backward, violent terrorism. As a recent New York Times overview makes clear, the so-called Islamic State - variously known as ISIS, ISIL or Daesh - came out of three U.S. actions: the invasion/occupation of Iraq; aiding/abetting "rebels" in Syria; and regime change intervention in Libya. We have a terrible history of this: remember we created Osama bin-Laden and his al-Qaeda. Why? To advance the dominance of U.S. corporate interests across the globe.

Sen. Bernie Sanders pointed to this history during Saturday's Democratic presidential candidate debate. "I would argue that the disastrous invasion of Iraq, something that I strongly opposed, has unraveled the region completely and led to the rise of Al-Qaeda and to ISIS," Sanders said. "Now, in fact, what we have got to do - and I think there is widespread agreement here - is the United States cannot do it alone. What we need to do is lead an international coalition which includes very significantly the Muslim nations in that region who are going to have to fight and defend their way of life."

But we cannot have a re-do of the fake "coalitions of the willing" that cloaked the disastrous U.S. military adventures that created these problems. President Obama in his news conference in Turkey yesterday was right when he said that defeating ISIS/ISIL "is going to require ... an ending of the Syrian civil war." And, he emphasized, "a political solution is the only way to end the war in Syria and unite the Syrian people and the world against ISIL." He noted the importance of talks now under way with Russia and Iran to try to bring this about.

But he is under a lot of pressure, both from ignorant Republican warhawks, and from some within the Democratic Party who back a discredited "tough" unilateral military approach.

Americans who want to see an end to terror and global social injustice have to speak out now: To end terror, we must change our tune. We must say to Russia, now: "We need you. We want to cooperate to get peace in Syria." We must include others too - not only Iran, but, along with France, Germany and the UK, also important countries like China and South Africa. We must stop "aiding" those shadowy shifting "rebels." We must stop insisting on ousting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad as a precondition. We must stop enabling and aiding the reactionary Saudi monarchy that fuels so much of the violence.

Let your senators know. Let the White House know. Let the presidential candidates know. This is the only way forward.

Enough, enough, enough.

Photo: Paris at night. Wikimedia Commons

After Paris, what happens here?

Tue, 17 Nov 2015 10:44:00 +0000

ISIL's crusade is reaching out to inflict the horrors of war on civilian populations wherever possible. It has to be defeated - in the Middle East and anywhere it tries to strike.

That can only happen if there is a major shift in policies that contributed much to the horrendous chaos that opened up Iraq and Syria to ISIL. But as we have seen before, acts of terrorism can be exploited to fuel fear, nativist hatreds, and a clamor to unleash U.S. military might. That is exactly what we're getting from the GOP presidential aspirants. The Democratic candidates have said little so far. Bernie Sanders properly points out he's "no fan of 'regime change'" and cites his vote against the disastrous Iraq war. Hillary Clinton hasn't said much beyond asserting her toughness.

Obama and Kerry seem to be considering a shift away from stubborn policies that have failed. Obama's press conference after the G20 Summit in Turkey is essential reading. With patience and clarity, he repeatedly counters the gang-up of hawkish reporters. There's a departure from the long-standing ultimatum that Assad must go before any negotiated effort to end the Syrian civil war; he pulls back from the refusal to have anything to do with Russia and Iran in negotiations concerning the Syrian tragedy or the fight against ISIL. Obama insists that there must not be a return to a U.S. invasion and war that misfired in Iraq with such devastating consequences. He suggests the need for collective strategies involving the UN, recognizing the primacy of the people and nations of the Middle East both on the relatively short-run challenges and the long-range progress of the region.

Culling the positives out of Obama's press conference and summarizing them here may make the outlook seem brighter than it is. There are enormous obstacles, some of them based on the reality of extensive U.S. military intervention and imperial interests that continue to drive our foreign policy. For that matter, competing economic interests and power rivalries characterize all the "players" in the drama. Progress and peace require a degree of cooperation among nations that have selfishly wrought havoc in the Middle East since the First World War. Even harder, it requires encouragement and faith that the people of the Middle East can overcome the legacy of imperialism, tyranny and religious fanaticism. That outlook flickered briefly, but brilliantly, in the Arab Spring.

My focus is on the extreme importance of what happens in the United States in the wake of the ISIL assaults in Paris and the likelihood of more to come. Obama's apparent opening toward a new approach deserves support. Its model is the recently negotiated P+1 agreement with Iran. This situation is more difficult because it requires not only a collaborative agreement to end the Syrian war, but developing a common strategy to defeat ISIL. Beyond that, any degree of success depends on serious efforts to cope with the appalling human misery overwhelming millions throughout the Middle East.

Americans can't let the hawks stampede us back into panic and illusions that U.S. military supremacy can remake the world. Obama's effort to change course (at least to some degree) is still fragile, far from an accomplished fact. It demands support from the majority of Americans who have had enough of endless wars. We should insist that the Democratic candidates support inclusive diplomacy and the United Nations. Hillary might benefit from reading Obama's press conference comment on "no fly zones," a proposal with which she continues to curry favor among the neocons.

There is a nightmare, I must admit, that haunts me. It is that Obama's tentative move away from a divisive, war-oriented foreign policy gets aborted. An America headed by Cruz or Rubio or Fiorina (or even by a Democrat who doesn't commit to a new vision in foreign policy) would be inviting again the worst catastrophes of the 20th century. The nightmare gets worse if Netanyahu is our closest ally.

But, in today's very complicated and dangerous world, I like a lot of what Obama had to say in his Ankara press conference. I believe it reflects the better judgment of the majority of Americans. If we organize and speak out, the nightmare may fade.

Leon Wofsy is a retired biology professor and long-time political activist.

This article originally appeared at Leon Wofsy's blog, Leon's OpEd.

Image: Peace symbol superimposed on the Eiffel Tower, an image being circulated on Facebook in the wake of last week's Paris attacks.

John Reid, 68: 1199SEIU champion for workers and social justice

Fri, 13 Nov 2015 14:17:00 +0000

John Robert Reid, Jr., retired 1199SEIU Executive Vice President, died of heart disease and complications from diabetes on August 31 in Baltimore. He was 68.

A strong and deeply respected leader in the labor movement, Reid will be remembered as a champion for working people and social justice. Hundreds of people came to Baltimore on September 19 from New York, Philadelphia and all over the Mid-Atlantic region not only to mourn his loss, but also to celebrate his life and legacy.

Reid was drafted into the US Army in 1965 and served in Vietnam. He was wounded, honorably discharged and awarded a Purple Heart. In 1975, he was hired as a Psychiatric Technician at Philadelphia's Thomas Jefferson University. His talent for healthcare and passion for civil rights led him to become a union organizer for Philadelphia-area hospitals in 1979. For the next 26 years, he served as a Vice President and then Executive Vice President in various areas throughout 1199. In 2005, Reid relocated from New York City to Baltimore, Maryland, to take on the challenge of reorganizing 1199SEIU.

Reid worked tirelessly to expand 1199SEIU's spirit of partnership and political action to help solve the problems brought on by our nation's economic and healthcare crises. He oversaw the union's efforts to expand healthcare access for thousands of Maryland residents, raise wages and improve benefits for hardworking families, and bring good jobs to the Maryland-D.C. region. For example, he led the fight for an historic union contract at Johns Hopkins Hospital, raising standards for healthcare workers in Baltimore and throughout the state. In December 2014, Reid retired from 1199SEIU after 39 years advocating for workers in the labor movement.

"He was a true gentleman, a great leader and just a wonderful person to be around," said SEIU 32BJ Capital Area Director Jaime Contreras. Many times speaking before a crowd of workers, he was known to survey the gathering before him, pause thoughtfully, and declare "Standing tall, lookin' good, you oughta be in Hollywood!"

Reid was memorialized in the late-October conventions of the Maryland/DC AFL-CIO and the Maryland/DC Alliance for Retired Americans, and earlier by the 1199SEIU Retirees Chapter, of which he was a new member.

John Reid is survived by his mother, his partner, his two daughters, a son-in-law, two sisters, four grandchildren, two great-grandchildren and many other family members and friends.

Photo: 1199SEIU.

Remembering Sequim’s perennial Postmaster, Mary Brown

Fri, 13 Nov 2015 12:48:00 +0000

SEQUIM, Wash. - An item in the Port Angeles Evening News reports that as of 1968, Mary Brown had served as Postmaster of Sequim for 32 years having been appointed to the post on Nov. 16, 1936.

How many more years she served in that position I do not know. Perhaps she reached 40 years in that post before retiring.

It made her one of the most visible people in our little town, presiding over the cramped Post Office next door to Sequim Drugs on Washington Avenue. She drove to the Post Office from her charming cottage in downtown Sequim every day in an Isetta, a tiny little Italian single cylinder vehicle.

Doubtless she was appointed postmaster as a reward for her outspoken advocacy of President Franklin Roosevelt's reelection in 1936. The Evening News of Nov. 7, 1936 reports that Mrs. Brown, at that time serving as Sequim City Clerk, had made bets with 30 or more of her Republican friends that Roosevelt would win.

Too cash-strapped to cover their bets in currency, these Republicans, most of them farmers, wagered their cabbage, carrots, beets, potatoes, milk and cream, and a smoked ham shank or two betting on Republican, Alf Landon. If she could collect her winnings, Mrs. Brown would provide a wholesome diet for herself and her children, that winter, the Evening News reported.

Often, she posted notices in the local media like this one in the June 10, 1965 Evening News: "Will the party who dropped the live rat in our street mail box last week come forth, claim his property, pay the cost of upkeep and also the fee for the cardiograph it necessitated for the postmaster."

I knew Mary Brown in my childhood and youth. She was a tall, handsome, woman with shrewd, intelligent eyes. She was a native of County Cork, Ireland, and conversed with a droll, witty, Irish accent. She was turning gray when I knew her but there was a tinge in her hair that suggested that as a young woman she had been a flaming redhead with a fiery temper to go with it.

Either my brothers, sisters or I went to the Post Office every afternoon on our way home from school to pick up our mail in one of the little postal boxes with the combination locks in the lobby. There would be Mrs. Brown or one of the clerks to hand us packages too big to fit in our mail box.

We had moved here in 1948 after buying the Steve Tripp farm up on Bell Hill, a steep, rocky, place with 25 cows, a barn, a dog named Trixie and the tall, stately clapboard farmhouse built by Sequim pioneer, John Bell.

My father had been blacklisted, a victim of Joe McCarthy repression. Unable to find work elsewhere, my folks decided to try farming, the only pursuit that is sure.

They didn't subscribe to many periodicals but among them was "China Reconstructs," a publication that covered --- and celebrated ---- the victory of the Chinese communists in 1949. The magazine was on the Attorney General's list of "subversive" literature. My Mom or Dad were required to go into Sequim and sign a waiver that they wanted to receive this seditious publication in our home.
Mary Brown made no secret of her outrage that she was required to enforce this federal Cold War censorship. Even though she was committed to the democratic rights of free speech and privacy, Mary Brown and the others in the Post Office surely observed unusual mail coming from our home and addressed to it. There were the post cards addressed to President Eisenhower that my entire family filled out one evening as we sat around the dining room table. Those post cards pleaded for clemency for Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, the similar post cards asking that Willy McGee not be executed. There was the National Guardian and the People's World both leftwing newsweeklies opposed to the Korean War and upholding union rights. They came in the mail wrapped against prying eyes but some were ripped open, spilling the truth for all to see.

In the years that followed, Mrs. Brown befriended my parents. She came to dinner at our home. She was a "mover and shaker" in a group called the World Affairs Discussion Group (WADG) that met at the Clyde Rhodefor Library. WADG was closely linked to the U.S. State Department and sponsored a series called "Great Decisions." One of the topics was "Should the U.S. Open Trade With Red China?"

Mary Brown invited my parents to participate in the WADG. She knew my father was a Rhodes Scholar, an economist who had served in the Treasury Department, who wrote speeches on monetary affairs for New York Senator Robert Wagner. He had served as a researcher for the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) during World War II.

I was there at the discussion that evening, listening as prominent Cold War elements in the community raved against any form of recognition of the People's Republic of China.

"Well," said my father quietly, "You certainly don't have Sen. Magnuson on your side on this issue. He says --- and this is his word --- that it is 'stupid' for the U.S. to refuse to recognize China, acting as if 700 million people don't exist. We here in the Pacific Northwest need trade with China. They are a great market for our apples."

The rightwing elements turned ashen white at this flagrant heresy. But Mary Brown's eyes twinkled.

She made a trip home to visit the family she left in County Cork in 1959. She was felled by illness and stayed two weeks in Ireland. Then she traveled to Poland and on to Czechoslovakia where, as I recall, she visited my uncle and aunt, George and Eleanor Wheeler, who had settled in Prague. Then she traveled on to the Soviet Union where she visited for a week.

Mary Brown was the living embodiment of the "fighting Irish," a "never give up, never give in" spirit of independence and progressivism. No wonder the business community of Sequim elected her as the first woman President of the Sequim Chamber of Commerce. They were Democrats, Republicans, and independents who knew a quality candidate when they saw one and voted for her.

Photo: Mary Brown, Sequim Postmaster, sitting at the dining room table with my family in Nov.1959. She is the woman in the dark dress, on the right. The others in the photo from left are my sister, Marion Melissa Wheeler (now Marion Wheeler Burns), my late sister Susan Elizabeth Wheeler, my father, Donald N. Wheeler, Mary Brown and my late brother, Nat Wheeler. This was taken after Mary Brown traveled home to Ireland and then made a trip to Poland, Prague, Czechoslovakia (where she visited my aunt and uncle, Eleanor and George Wheeler), and Moscow for a week. | Courtesy Wheeler family.

Bernie Sanders, socialism, and the 2016 elections

Thu, 12 Nov 2015 09:49:00 +0000

Little surprises me these days - I don't know if it's age, or what. But the long quote below from a recent post in Jacobin has me shaking my head.

"We need to understand this point well if we want to make the most of the opportunities presented by the Sanders campaign, especially if Bernie follows through on his plans to give a "major speech" about socialism. [This] will be a great occasion for the Left to debate our own meanings of socialism - but only if we silence our inner Anderson Coopers and discuss Bernie's ideas on their own terms without worrying about how they impact his electability."

"Here's a piece of blasphemy," the author continues: "there are bigger political stakes this year than the winner of the next presidential election. We have a rare opportunity to redefine and revitalize socialism for a new generation and set the terms for an opposition movement that can really change the world."

Bigger stakes?

I find it hard to buy the idea that one potential outcome of next year's elections - the right wing gaining control of all three branches of government - is less significant than the opportunity of the left to debate its understanding of socialism.

To make such a claim isn't "blasphemy" - it's stupidity.

If the Republicans win the presidency and retain their majority in the Senate and House, politics will quickly become really nasty. After all, consensus and civility aren't their governing style. Breaking heads and using power ruthlessly is. And it's no mystery what will be in their crosshairs: the democratic rights and living standards of the American people and the organizations that defend and fight for them.

Thus, the idea that the main mission of socialists next year is to tweak their vision of socialism given these "stakes" and while everyone else is beating the bushes to defeat the right strikes me as a modern day version of Nero fiddling as Rome burned. It is In fundamentally misguided.

This may seem a bit harsh, but only someone very detached from the everyday lives of working people, only someone camping out in the world of political abstractions, only someone who fails to understand that politics is more like algebra and physics than simple math, and only someone who is clueless about the role of the left would suggest that the outcome of the presidential election and the elections in general isn't of paramount importance.

Fortunately, this sort of thinking isn't representative of many people on the left, starting with Bernie Sanders himself. Here's a self-identified 'democratic socialist' drawing huge crowds, speaking to millions of people, and polling very well, but his main message isn't his socialist pedigree.

While Sanders doesn't run away from his socialist identity, it isn't the first thing out of his mouth on the campaign trail, or even the last thing. Instead, his main pitch is his relentless opposition to inequality, austerity, unemployment, and the declining living standards of working people.

When he walks into an auditorium, his thunder against the right wing and the billionaire class is accompanied by proposals for reforms, many of which are far-reaching and bold. He offers a powerful challenge to the reigning orthodoxy of the past thirty years of both parties - neoliberalism, at the core of which is wealth redistribution upward, privatization, financialization, and deregulation.

Sanders, in other words, isn't stumping for socialism in the first or last place. He knows that social transformation isn't on the agenda of the American people at this moment. But he also knows what is: a message that locates their plight in the corporate pillaging of our economy and government and offers solutions that go beyond what either party has proposed up to now.

Moreover, Sanders, shrewd as he is, also knows well that his vision of change requires the dislodging of the right wing from its perch in the nation's capital first of all. The ultra-right isn't the only debris on the road to progress, not the only political grouping supported by, and giving support to, the billionaire class, but he knows from his own experience that defeating the right is an absolutely necessary task on our way towards securing substantive political, economic, and, not least, social equality.

His candidacy then isn't a story of socialism, but a tale of taking down the right wing, challenging the billionaire class, making a passionate case for justice and equality, and appealing to ordinary people to become the authors of their own democracy and lives. But in doing this, Sanders is giving the socialist brand a new legitimacy in the minds of tens of millions of Americans and thus making an inestimable contribution to a socialist future.

Luckily, most people on the left appreciate this. They understand that it can only help the process of socialist transformation as he argues for radical anti-corporate reforms and asks the American people to join him in reclaiming their democracy and economy.

Which brings me to my final point. If there is a rift between Bernie and the left it pivots around his assertion that Hillary, who is now embracing many of his campaign themes, isn't an enemy, but an ally when it comes to overriding imperative of defeating the Republican right and reigning in some of the worst excesses of corporate practices. Everyone has to make up his or her mind on this matter, but my hope is that the left will sooner rather than later take its lead from Bernie.

This article was reposted from Sam Webb's official blog page.

Photo: Charlie Riedel/AP

Racist ideology moves more than just people who fly Confederate flags

Tue, 10 Nov 2015 12:39:00 +0000

This is part 1 of a 3-part series on the "racial conversation." You can find here part 2 and part 3.

Earlier this month a man Occupy Democrats identified as a "right-wing domestic terrorist" bombed a Mississippi Wal-Mart in protest over the retailer giant's decision to no longer sell Confederate flags.

While those who struggle in this nation for a racially just society experienced a victory last summer when the Confederate Flag ceased to fly over South Carolina's capitol dome, the media continues to report inflammatory incidents of racist violence or celebration in which the Confederate flag appears with prominent symbolism. Thus, while the flag no longer waves in its official space, it continues to live in the hearts and minds of many U.S. citizens adhering to racist beliefs and thinking.

Indeed, last August 1, supporters of the Confederate Flag rallied with their rifles in Stone Mountain Park, Georgia, forming a sea of motorcycles and trucks waving their revered symbol of the heritage--and on-going practices--of white supremacy.

While certainly these events merit media coverage, the risk in such coverage is that it fosters the narrativethat racism in our nation resides in this "other" extreme America, a culture apart, even distant from, mainstream or dominant U.S. culture, rather than being deeply rooted in the very foundation and center of U.S. culture and society since their inceptions. This distancing effect seems especially true given the sparse coverage of the seven burnings of predominantly African American churches in the St. Louis area over a two-week span in October that were generally regarded as linked to the aftermath of the racist violence in Ferguson.

Racism at the heart

Ta-Nehisi Coates explains this tendency of thought in a New York Times op-ed, writing, "In modern America we believe racism to be the property of the uniquely villainous and morally deformed, the ideology of trolls, gorgons and orcs. We believe this even when we are actually being racist." This belief nefariously works to perpetuate racism, masking the way it already informs cultural norms and social structures, giving us comfort that our democratic society is free from racism and need only be vigilant to protect itself from racist invasions from the margins.

"The idea," Coates writes, "that racism lives in the heart of particularly evil individuals, as opposed to the heart of a democratic society, is reinforcing to anyone who might, from time to time, find their tongue sprinting ahead of their discretion."

Certainly, many in our culture tend to see this vociferous advocacy for the Confederate flag and the values it represents as extremism, residing on the margins of and apart from the mainstream American sensibility. In fact, coverage of the Stone Mountain Park event dismissed and mocked the supporters as the 3%, underscoring the attitude that the values associated with the Confederate flag belong only to the extremist fringe rather than pervasively informing relationships in the American social system.

This attitude constitutes a smug and dangerous evasion of the pervasiveness in American culture of the values and ways of social thought associated with the Confederate flag. It is worth noting that at this rally American flags could often be seen flying alongside the Confederate flag, suggesting perhaps that we need to reflect on the relationship between the values represented by the Confederate flag and our nation's flag.

Two flags, one economy, one conversation

This need was brought home to me in full force last July 4 when I drove north from Chicago to Kenosha, Wisconsin to enjoy some fireworks with my two sons. I was struck at one point to see parked on the street amid the crowds a hulking pick-up truck brashly displaying a Confederate flag license plate while also proudly flying the Stars and Stripes from its roof.

So much of last summer's discussions of the Confederate flag's meaning focused on interrogating the South and its heritage; yet this manifestation up North highlighted that racism and racial exploitation are neither long-standing cultural traditions and practices unique to the South nor isolated to any particular region of the United States. Rather, we need to remember that racial discrimination and its accompanying labor exploitation, among other forms of discrimination and exploitation, are deeply rooted in U.S. culture as a whole and central features of the foundation and historical formation and development of the U.S. nation-state and political economy.

That we need to root our understanding of race in the history of labor exploitation undergirding the development of the U.S. political economy should seem obvious. After all, even discussions of the Confederate flag often focus on the flag's symbolic connect ion to, indeed endorsement of, slavery, which was above all a system of labor exploitation.

Yet, as historian Barbara Jeanne Fields has noted, "Probably a majority of American historians think of slavery as primarily a system of race relations-as though the chief business of slavery were the production of white supremacy rather the production of cotton, sugar, rice, and tobacco."

We constantly hear calls that we in the U.S. need to have a national conversation about race. It is a mantra, and yet this conversation while summoned time and time again,usually after murder upon murder of people of color,rarely seems to occur in any kind of effective way. The repeated short-circuitingof this discussion may very well be caused by the failure to understand the functioning of race within the larger context of the U.S. socio-economic system which, Fields' quote suggests, we need to do.

Indeed, if we follow Fields, we should recognize we cannot fully have this racial conversation without discussing labor and, additionally, without discussing the function of "race" within the larger U.S. socio-economic system historically and today. I want to suggest we see "race" as part of a larger cultural tendency and insistence on establishing relationships of superiority and inferiority, domination and subordination-in other words, as part of a broader tendency of supremacist thought.

Race and labor exploitation

I am not suggesting that we submerge or subordinate the discussion of race to matters of political economy, labor exploitation, and class inequality, such that matters of race become secondary. Rather, I am asserting that race in the United States is in itself a category that organizes our political economy, that is used to target people of color for labor exploitation, and that it functions as a principle for the unequal distribution of social resources.

Thus, I am suggesting that the language in which we talk about race in America needs to encompass these issues and that a broader conversation about race should indeed lead us into, or at the same time be, a discussion that brings us to the heart of American society-that is, to return to Fields, a discussion about how (in)effective and (in)humane our system of social relationships is in enabling us to take care of each other, meaning to produce and distribute the goods and services to meet the basic needs of all people and to take advantage of the creative resources of all people, as opposed to generating mass unemployment, to meet those needs.

The Confederate flag and its idolaters have become an easy target in U.S. culture because of their overt abhorrence and inhumanity, allowing pundits and others to denounce these Southern traditionalists in self-satisfied ways that effectively deflect the complicity of the rest of American society in advancing a gross system of structured inequality. Last summer's media fervor over the Confederate flag, it seems to me, projectedonto the flag the whole history of racial violence and injustice that has long informed and continues to inform to this day-quite obviously-the dominant values and culture of U.S. society at large. In so doing, we risk, then, making the Confederate flag a scapegoat for our national neuroses and the violent crimes they have engendered from the initial European encroachment on the territory now known as the U.S. to the present.

Progressives are perhaps a less easy and certainly more substantial target, which is why the Black Lives Matter movement's notorious disruption of Bernie Sanders' speech at an event celebrating Social Security and Medicare last summer hopefully stands a chance of moving forward our national conversation on race in the ways I've suggested. Sanders already talks about income inequality and economic injustice more generally. Perhaps Sanders' issuing of a statement on racial inequality and injustice in America the night of the disruption signals a move that he and other white progressives will foreground race not simply in the discussion of these other issues but as the discussion itself encompassing these other issues.

How might a more layered conversation about race in the U.S. lead us into a discussion that brings us to the heart of American society? Well, let's return to theissue of the relation between the values of white supremacy embodied in the Confederate flag and those represented in the American flag. Seeing these flags juxtaposed made me think the Confederate flag and its values cannot be separated from American society as a whole but rather need to be understood as part and parcel of the larger American culture which shares a deep commitment to and insistence on determining relations of superiority and inferiority and allocating resources on the basis of those often fictitious distinctions.

Meritocracy

In its most ingrained form, we see this commitment in the deeply entrenched cultural value of meritocracy. The meritocratric ideal holds at its heart the idea that some people are more skilled, intellectually gifted, or endowed with physical abilities and thus deserve more access to social resources, supposedly because these superior people somehow contribute more to the world. Those who are less gifted in these ways deserve less, even to the point that they may go hungry, be without housing, or have no access to health care. The meritocratic idea sees these outcomes as just, as deserved. We tend, as a culture, to accept and live by this creed as a matter of common sense. While there are efforts to raise the minimum wage or narrow the wealth gap, we don't hear many complaints that the doctor, lawyer, software engineer, or senator earn more than the fast food worker, janitor, Target cashier, postal worker, or construction worker. It is fair to say, I think, that central to the dominant American belief system is a commitment to inequality-income and otherwise-and to determining relationships of superiority and inferiority as a means of justifying the unequal distribution of wealth

In this sense, the values of the Confederacy share the dominant commitment to the rightness of establishing hierarchies and justifying exploitation and the unequal distribution of wealth based on that hierarchy. The Confederacy's vice president, for example, was clear that the Confederacy's foundation "rests upon the great truth that the Negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery-subordination to the superior race-is his natural and normal condition."So, not only is "the Negro" inferior, but that inferiority justifies his enslavement and exploitation for the purposes of creating wealth for the slaveholding class. On the basis of skin color, it was decided African Americans did not merit as much as whites.

Race is just one of the mechanisms-still associated in many minds with merit-- at work in our socio-economic system and culture that is used to define relationships of superiority and inferiority-or domination and subordination-and to distribute wealth and resources unequally, just as gender is as well. Indeed, largely flying under the radar during the height of the confederate flag controversy were the ridiculous yet revealing statements of Scott Walker regarding equal pay legislation. When asked if he supported such legislation, he complained that the such legislation "pit[ted] one group against another group out there."In short, he offered a ridiculous excuse for maintaining unequal pay among gender lines. Historically, of course, women and people of color, simply based on the fictions of race and gender, have enjoyed less access to social resources and been relegated to less remunerative and prestigious occupations.

Redistribution of wealth

Perhaps it is because as a culture we have not liberated ourselves from the ingrained tendency to, indeed insistence on, determining relationships of inferiority and superiority as a means of distributing wealth. As much as on one level our nation prides itself on its belief that "all men are created equal," our culture and socio-economic system operate with a powerful commitment to inequality in many forms. In this sense, values of white supremacy espoused by the confederacy are not so different from those that are largely accepted in this nation's dominant belief system which holds dear the notion that some deserve more than others based on their superiority-or supremacy, to use a more charged word.

Our collective refusal to confront this belief, even to deny it by falsely distinguishing American values from Confederate values, hobbles progressives in efforts to transform our world. Even progressives who ask for equality are fighting against themselves, still often deeply committed to inequality, endorsing it, and even complicit with behaviors that sustain it.

Let me be clear, I am not trying to say that some people aren't smarter, stronger, or more skilled than others. Certainly Einstein was smarter than most-if not all-and few if any could do what he did. But we have to ask the question-which our culture rarely does-as to why people with different abilities merit differential access to social resources. Let's even grant that some might be superior. Why is that a basis for enabling, say, a college professor, greater access to social resources (in the form of health care, wages, educational opportunities,etc.) than the janitor who cleans the building she works in and makes it possible for her to do her job? In many ways, we have created the categories of "skilled" and "unskilled" to establish hierarchies for distributing wealth, but how are they really less arbitrary than "black" and "white" or "man" and "women"?

In this sense, our contemporary America shares much with the old Confederacy, and the more we insist Confederate values are extreme and marginal, the longer we will remain mired in a world of brutal violence and stark inequality.

Photo: The idea that one race is superior to another is an idea held by far more people than those who for decades resisted the lowering of the Confederate flag in South Carolina. | Rainier Ehrhardt/AP

New York: I do mind laughing

Mon, 09 Nov 2015 16:44:00 +0000

When Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump was announced as being the host of Saturday Night Live in early October, the progressive Internet ignited with indignation. Deport Racism and other Latino advocacy groups flooded feeds with petitions for SNL to "dump trump."

Whereas Saturday Night Live has had a long history of presidential candidates hosting (from George McGovern to Al Sharpton to John McCain), they've never featured a candidate so polarizing.

But that was the idea, wasn't it?

Donald Trump is a bonafide ratings machine. Without his smug "sorry-not-sorry" attitude and the perception that he's "telling it like it is" propelling his poll numbers, the first two Republican debates wouldn't have pulled down record breaking numbers. It makes sense that the producers of SNL would want a little bit of that Trump magic for themselves. Frankly, his qualities in the abstract can make for some good comedy. Who didn't chortle (if uncomfortably) at Trump's absurdity during the debate?

I'm a Saturday Night Live "lifer," through the best years and the "worst." I can't even acknowledge the "worst" years without putting quotes around the word "worst," that's how much I love SNL.

I remember watching Sandler and Farley with my mom when I was 5 and laughing at the funny accents and the men falling down. Norm MacDonald's Bob Dole was the first piece of political satire I was able to appreciate. When Beck Bennett and Kyle Mooney of Good Neighbor ("wait, who?") were added to the cast in 2013, my friends and I felt like our buddies had hit the big time, like it was our generation's time to mold the show into our likeness.

I was fully prepared to set my politics aside and laugh this past Saturday, but what unfolded on screen during that hour-and-a-half was too deeply perturbing to enjoy. I feel, given my loyalty to the show, that I am most qualified to perform the following autopsy.

Abuse as "quirk"

John McCain famously played to his age when he appeared on SNL and Al Gore played to how boring and litigious he can be. Both of these men managed to come off as somewhat endearing, as they themselves were the butt of their own jokes. Trump's opening monologue tried to play with the public's perception of him as a self-centered bully, but he took aim at others rather than himself.

Saying he has "nothing better to do" than host SNL, he went on to comedically confuse plus-sized cast member Aidy Bryant for Rosie O'Donnell who he, in the past, referred to as a "fat pig" among other slurs.

"Rosie said some things about me that were hurtful and untrue, I said some things about her that were mean but completely accurate."

This could have played well for Trump had Rosie O'Donnell actually come out and sparred with him and maybe taken him down a notch, but why would she want to? Why would he want her to? Trump actually attacked her and he meant what he said.

I don't think you can turn a serious candidate into a playful parody when they're already an ugly parody of themselves. Trump basks in the recesses of his character, the shadowy part that all the other Republican candidates hide or deny. When an impersonator does it, it can be funny. When he does it, it comes off as an uncomfortable admission of guilt.

I laugh at how terrible a person he is on the debates, at his absurdist comments about and to women/immigrants, but now I'm supposed to laugh with him for the same reason?

The premise of the next sketch was "what if Donald Trump was president and everything happened exactly as he said it would"? ISIS is eliminated and all the Syrian refugees have jobs as blackjack dealers in the Trump Casino in Damascus, China is now borrowing money from us, and the President of Mexico shows up with a check "for the wall".

It was then that the first groan of the night came from the audience when Trump thanked the President of Mexico for turning Univision to "all English for me".

Again, if Taran Killam had delivered that line then it could have been funny because it acknowledges and pokes fun of the dark and scary parts of Trump's true character. When Trump does it, the layer abstraction that keeps us safe is gone and Trump is acknowledging his own terrifying absurdity. This guy wants to be President.

The theme continues throughout the night. The premise of one sketch is that he acknowledges at the beginning that he won't be in it, and says he'll instead livetweet the sketch as it unfolds. His tweets appear in the lower portion of the screen and they play on the fact that he has an abhorrent and petty Twitter personality. He calls the cast members everything from "stupid" to "slobs," and then infers that one of the cast members, Kenan Thompson, wasn't born in the United States.

"Sorry folks, but add a 'y' to Kenan and you get 'Kenyan'," one of his tweets reads.

Soooo, are we supposed to laugh because Donald Trump is so uncreatively mean? Or that he still maintains that the President was born out of the country? Or because to think so would be silly? Or because Kenan Thompson is Black and the President is Black?

If we're not sure who or what we're supposed to be laughing at then chances are we won't be laughing at all. I wasn't laughing, and the audience was groaning once more.

The worst moment of the night came when Sia was being introduced for her second musical performance of the evening. Donald Trump was about to set her up when Kenan Thompson dressed in dreads walks into the frame and introduces himself as Toots from Toots and the Maytals, the musical guest the last time Trump hosted back in 2004.

Toots bugs Donald about running for president and says that the musical guest is kind of like the Vice President of the show. The bit culminates when Donald Trump tells Toots "you know I carry a gun, right"? Toots then walks away quickly.

What is funny about this? That Donald is unafraid to shoot people for no reason? A black man, no less.

A hopeful conspiracy

It's hard to say this with no proof, and I know I'm not necessarily supposed to speculate, but I can hope in my heart of hearts that the writers at SNL sabotaged this show. Effectively, they succeeded, whether on purpose or not. The show was terribly unfunny. The only sketches that elicited my laughter were the ones where Donald Trump was absent and, again, I was prepared to laugh.

Every sketch took the worst parts of Trump's personality and had Trump himself perform them in an amplified way. It reminded us of how shallow and fragile his ego is and about how he treats those who aren't like him. Was he just too vain to notice it?

Photo: SNL

How “zero tolerance” tolerates inequality

Fri, 06 Nov 2015 16:17:00 +0000

My son was six. His best friend, Isaac, was seven. They were both in first grade but in different classrooms. Like many boys, they were rambunctious but never unmanageable. Isaac's mother and I used to joke about them being "two peas in a pod" - one white, one black.

But that's not how they were seen. Instead, my son's rambunctious behavior was viewed as normally boisterous. Isaac's as wildly unruly. My son would be given the benefit of the doubt. Isaac was put under a microscope. You can guess which one is black.

The space for black kids to be able to interact in the world, to be kids - loud and tumultuous or quiet and moody, to have an attitude or not - is much smaller than for white kids like my son. There are rarely second chances. Instead they get labeled as troubled or troublemakers and held to a standard that is never expected from white kids.

This memory crashed onto the shores of my consciousness while watching the viral video from South Carolina's Spring Valley High School, when a police officer grabbed a student from her desk, dragged her across the floor, and placed her under arrest.

In her Oct. 29 New York Times op-ed, "Where Are Black Children Safe," Roxane Gay incisively writes, "Schools are not merely sites of education, they are sites of control. In fact, they are sites of control well before they are sites of education. And for certain populations - students of color, working-class students, anyone on the margins - the sites of control in the school system can be incredibly restrictive, suffocating, perilous."

What confluence of policies, practices and laws has come together that brought to a boil today's toxic caldron of "control" - and criminalization? Three come to mind, each with its own start dates and rationales, but continuing on the continuum of racial, gender and class oppressions. These are "zero tolerance" policies, "disturbing schools" laws, and the practice of relying on school resource officers to enforce these questionable laws and policies.

Let's start with "disturbing schools." The teenager thrown out of her desk and her classmate, Niya Kenny, were both arrested and charged with a misdemeanor crime based on a state law that makes it unlawful "to interfere with or to disturb in any way or in any place the students or teachers of any school or college in this State, [or] to loiter about such school or college premises or to act in an obnoxious manner." If found guilty, these students could receive a $1,000 fine and 90 days in jail.

(Interestingly, the Ferguson police used the supposed crime of being "obnoxious" as a pretext to crack down on the protesters, and thereby initiating the violence. Another interesting aside is South Carolina's "disturbing schools" law was passed in 1962, amidst the fights to integrate schools, buses, lunch counters, etc. Is there not a clear line between these laws and the old anti-loitering laws that put thousands of black men on Southern chain gangs during the Jim Crow era?)

To interfere, disturb, loiter or be obnoxious all sound like everyday behavior in schools everywhere. But reaching the level of "crime" seems to be in the eye of the beholder. There is plenty of data that shows black kids are much more likely to be seen as obnoxious, interfering, disturbing or loitering than white kids. Therefore if a black student, like the young woman in South Carolina, refuses to do something, a school resource officer (SRO, a police officer assigned to schools) is more likely to get involved.

These police officers' original job description was to insure the safety of students and school employees, to mentor students and teach crime prevention. SROs became a growing career in the 1990s after schools became sites of gun violence: Columbine, Colo., and Paducah, Ky., are often mentioned as examples of why and when schools turned to police in the schools. Now mission creep has crept into the job description, and officers are called in to deal with "obnoxious" - not dangerous or criminal - behavior.

Pointing to a larger context in which schools and SROs operate, Mishi Faruqee, the national field director for juvenile justice reform group Youth First Initiative, told the website TakePart, "The horrific incident is not about one bad officer, but also about larger policies that criminalize students in schools in South Carolina and across the country. Under South Carolina's Disturbing Schools law, even routine disciplinary problems are treated as crimes."

One of those "larger policies" is zero tolerance, which started with that widely discredited Reagan-era "War on Drugs" and moved to the schools in the 1990s. Like the SROs, zero tolerance was a response to gun violence and related issues of gangs and drugs.

Despite zero evidence that zero tolerance policies improve school safety and discipline, and overwhelming evidence that the harsh measures are more likely to meted out disproportionately for African American students, they remain firmly in place today.

This policy creates an atmosphere that puts huge pressure on school officials and teachers of all races and nationalities (the Spring Hill principal is African American) to crack down on unruly behavior.

According to the report "Zero Tolerance, Zero Evidence" from Indiana University, "serious infractions that are the primary target of zero tolerance (e.g., drugs, weapons, gangs) occur relatively infrequently." But that study showed that schools "punish both minor and major disciplinary events equally."

The most frequent "minor" disciplinary issues that schools deal with, according to the report: "tardiness, class absence, disrespect and noncompliance."

"A broad policy that seeks to [do so] will, almost by definition, result in the punishment of a small percentage of serious infractions, and a much larger percentage of relatively minor misbehavior," the report concludes.

Rethinking, reforming, repealing these policies, practices and laws are in everyone's interest because they would make schools less "sites of control" and more "sites of education."

Photo: Jose F. Marino/AP

Banning the box – long overdue

Wed, 04 Nov 2015 15:52:00 +0000

It's been calculated that one in four African American men is likely to serve time in prison. Given current employment practices - which exclude hiring persons who have been to prison - this means that a quarter of all black men are likely to never find work, many of whom have been sentenced for minor drug offenses like marijuana possession.

Needless to say, the employer practice of asking job applicants whether they have been to jail applies to all regardless of race or gender excluding ex-offenders from leading productive work lives.

President Obama's announcement this week of "banning the box" for applicants to federal jobs grows out of a nationwide movement to end this discriminatory practice.

To date over 100 cities and 19 states have adopted "fair chance" hiring practices that forbid asking the have-you-been-to-jail question at the beginning of the hiring process. Employers can, however, do criminal background checks later on.

Obama's executive action, which is one of several he has taken in the area of criminal justice, is to be applauded. It's an important step in the right direction.

Some wish the president had gone further and included federal contractors in his order. Wade Henderson of the Leadership Council on Civil and Human Rights said, "While the president is with us in spirit, his administration is not yet ready to make an executive order a reality."

The argument regarding requiring federal contractors to ban the box is that congressional action is necessary to give the measure weight and avoid its being undone by an incoming administration.

Perhaps. But while bipartisan legislation has been introduced (the "Fair Chance Act" in Congress) the dominance of the Republican right makes its passage unlikely.

Labor has welcomed President Obama's action. Supporting the president's announcement Richard Trumka said, "Measures such as Ban the Box are the right approach to ease the job hunt for working people with prior convictions. President Obama is taking important steps to help all people get back to work and become contributing members of their local communities."

The AFL-CIO went further calling for other democratic reforms: an end to private prisons and an end to the practice of taking voting rights away from prisoners.

However, in today's circumstances, as the Black Lives Matter movement and other civil and human rights activists have pointed out, a radical reform of the criminal justice system is needed that includes drug legalization, overturning the death penalty, civilian review and control of police and others measures. Banning the box is an important step. Ongoing pressure will insure others are taken.

Photo: Zoom Village

Back in the USSR: setting the record straight

Wed, 04 Nov 2015 15:05:00 +0000

It isn't something that a lot of people lose sleep about, and that includes me. But it bothers me when I see someone assert that the retreat of the working class, social democratic, communist, and people's movement in recent decades began with the implosion of the Soviet Union. Perhaps at first glance this seems reasonable, but with a bit of reflection it quickly becomes an untenable claim. It strikes me as an ideological construction to fit someone's political disposition rather than serious analysis.

The reconfiguring of global power to the advantage of the imperialist states and transnational corporations and the retreat of the above-mentioned movements that followed was well on its way by the time things went south in the socialist world in the late 1980s. Even a quick glance at the facts locates the beginnings of this offensive in the mid 1970s. That's more than a decade before the Soviet Union went belly up.

At that time, the unprecedented expansion of capitalism following World War II had largely exhausted itself, corporate profitability levels were sinking (especially in goods-producing sectors), inflation was raging, inter-corporate and inter-imperialist competition and rivalry were intensifying, the entry of low-cost producers, especially China and India, into the world market was in its early stages but its growth curve was up and out, the special status of the U.S. dollar in the global economy was being contested, and internationalization and financialization were becoming the new frame and engine of economic activity for big and small countries alike.

Faced with this confluence of events and processes, shifting terrains of struggle, and the imperative to reboot and reconfigure their economies, the ruling circles, especially in the U.S., decided (but not in a single room nor by way of a single decision) to reclaim political initiative and reassert their power. To wit: they went on a broad-scale offensive against their working class, democratic, anti-imperialist, and socialist adversaries. (See Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson, Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer and Turned Its Back on the Middle Class; David Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism; and Paul Sweezy and Harry Magdoff, Stagnation and the Financial Explosion.)

What began in the mid-1970s, however, took on a new life with the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980 and his reelection four years later. Reagan and gang gave this offensive new intensity and scope. The long-term process of massive wealth redistribution to the 1 percent, the scorched earth destruction of factories and union jobs, and a second arms race went into hyper-speed under his watch - not to mention that Reagan and his acolytes greased the skids for globalization and the rise of finance and financial speculation to the point where it became the main generator of profits and the driver of the larger economy.

The Reaganites also savaged democratic rights and changed the political discourse. Racism in the "raw" and cries of "reverse racism;" misogyny, homophobia, nativism, and militarist nationalism - these became their mantra. The notion that problems are individual in their making and solution, not socially constituted and collectively solved, was another one of their themes.

Social and political movements - labor included - retreated under the weight of this unrelenting right-wing offensive as well. Their influence and power were weakened if not greatly diminished; some didn't survive the onslaught. More than a few at the time and later (for example Tony Blair's and Bill Clinton's Third Way in the 1990s) went beyond making necessary strategic and tactical adjustments to this new reality: they executed a total political and ideological makeover, seeking a viable niche in the new political environment in which the balance of forces had shifted decisively to the right.

Thus, the offensive of ruling circles had gathered plenty of steam and caused a lot of wreckage long before things began to unravel in Moscow under the weight of a combination of interacting external pressures, long-standing internal/structural contradictions, and social conflict (almost exclusively within the top layers of the Soviet state and Soviet Communist Party).

At the same time, it is incontestable that in the wake of the sudden dissolution of the USSR the offensive of U.S. imperialism gained new momentum, extended its reach, and raised its sights.

Indeed, it took less than a "New York minute" for the occupants of the White House during this period - Bush I and then Clinton - to realize that into their hands had dropped, completely unexpectedly, an utterly unique opportunity to liquidate the main representative and power base of the socialist community as well as claim the superiority - final victory - of capitalism and reshape the global order.

They didn't disappoint. The boundaries of NATO almost immediately were extended into Eastern Europe, despite agreements not to do so. Governments friendly to deregulated markets, privatization, and foreign investment - and of course to the U.S government - were elected with the interference, advice, and generous support of the U.S. government. No opportunity was lost by government spokespeople to remind the world that the socialist, social democratic and communist movements and their ideas proved themselves to be bankrupt. The squeeze on countries of the Global South, no longer able to take advantage of the counterbalancing power and assistance of the Soviet Union, tightened. Finally, the projection of U.S. power by successive administrations to punish and replace unfriendly regimes for the purpose of securing global dominance in the 21st century became the favored policy option of Washington. That it would turn into an unmitigated disaster became apparent when the U.S. invaded Iraq and an expected triumphant victory morphed into a textbook example of the law of unintended consequences, while revealing the narrow limits of American power to any reasonable observer.

Or, to put it differently, while the meltdown of the Soviet Union didn't trigger capital's worldwide offensive, it did constitute a sea change in the balance of power and changed the dynamics of struggle - not to mention constituted a world historic defeat of Soviet socialism, especially for the communist movement that had invested so much of its moral, political, and intellectual capital in that particular socialist model. It stoked especially U.S. capitalism's ambitions and aggressiveness, widen the scope of its attack, and give its offensive a far bloodier and destructive dimension. While every negative and violent turn in the global theater, including the Iraq War and its unintended consequences, can't be fully explained by the meltdown/destruction of Soviet socialism, there is little doubt that U.S. imperialism without a counterweight to moderate its tendency to maim, injure, kill, and dominate showed little restraint in deploying its overweening power in the post-Soviet world.

If it seems like I'm splitting hairs here, I make no apologies. I have been around long enough to understand that the main task of the left is to capture the actual movement of the historical process if we have any hope of assisting a larger popular and diverse people's coalition in their efforts to ease the burden of the present as well as facilitate a "new burst of freedom" in the not too distant future. Neither wishful thinking, abstract ideological constructions, or simple cause and effect schemes will help in this regard.

This article originally appeared at Sam Webb's blog, samwebb.org.

Photo: Wikimedia Commons

No boots on the ground in Syria!

Tue, 03 Nov 2015 13:59:00 +0000

On Friday, the government let it be known that a small number of U.S. military personnel will be directly involved in the war in Syria. This is a dangerous first step that could lead to very bad results.

The Syrian crisis is, in part, the product of wrong policies of destabilization and regime change that our country needs to abandon. Such policies have led to disastrous involvements in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya.

Without defending the governments which our country overthrew in those countries, it is clear by now that the vast destruction, hundreds of thousands of deaths (many of them of women, children and other innocent civilians) and millions of refugees that they have produced have not made the world a safer place for anybody, including the people of the United States.

Making matters even worse, the U.S. military operations have had the effect of stimulating recruitment to Al Qaeda, ISIS and other violent groups.

When Russia began to intervene actively in Syria, some began to call for the United States to establish a no-fly zone in Northern Syria. We found this proposal very alarming because it created the very real possibility that, in enforcing the no-fly zone, U.S. military aircraft would end up clashing directly with Syrian or even Russian aircraft. This would greatly increase the danger of a wider war in the region as well as jacking up tensions between Washington and Moscow with all sorts of detrimental effects. So we were pleased when President Obama announced that he opposed such a no-fly zone.

Yet now our worries are back because of the news that some 50 U.S. military personnel will be sent directly into the Syrian situation. That there will be "only" 50 soldiers does not assuage our concern. Syria is a sovereign, independent country which, no matter what we think about its government, has not attacked the United States, yet we are told that the U.S. troops will be sent in to provide support for "moderate rebels" who are supposedly fighting simultaneously against the Syrian government forces and those of ISIS and/or Al Qaeda.

Serious doubts have been cast on the viability of these supposedly "moderate" rebels as a genuine fighting force. Those who have any historical memory also know about "mission creep" leading to disastrous involvement of more and more troops in increasingly direct combat roles.

It is time to recognize that it is not for the United States to decide who should govern Syria, a role that belongs to the Syrian people alone, and to work, along with Russia, Iran, and the other regional states for a peaceful solution to the Syria situation.

Photo: Syrian refugee boys help their mother in breaking wood to be added under a fire to boil water outside their family's tent at a refugee camp in the town of Hosh Hareem, in the Bekaa valley, east Lebanon, Oct. 28. The United Nations said Tuesday the worsening conflict in Syria has left 13.5 million people in need of aid and some form of protection, including more than six million children. AP Photo | Hassan Ammar